now that smosh is back i am thinking about how i wrote a 30k ianthony fic that has over 25k reads on wattpad when i was eighteen lmfaoooo like go off young kalina

I know Beardsley already alluded to thing but it was really sad and powerful when Kristen tells Cassandra that she knows “chaotic is not cute.” And then Cassandra straight up tells her, “I can’t rely on you.”

And Kristen and the entire audience have to agree. It’s really humbling for me as an audience member but I’m guessing also for Kristen in that moment

the AUDACITY of kristen chilis applebees criticising wolfsong for not being serious enough - MA'AM YOU JUMPED FROM FABIAN'S ROOF ON A SHRIMP MOTORCYCLE INTO A POOL OF TARTAR SAUCE AND YOU DIDN'T EVEN MENTION THE RELIGION!!

i feels like there's an untapped mine of fucked up potential in terms of kalina/pok/sklonda

the CANON as we have it is: kalina and pok were partners who worked together for a decade. kalina pulled some strings to get sklonda a promotion to detective. they knew each other and they were maybe even all friends

pok tells riz that he was unfaithful for a long time, but never again once he met sklonda. kalina has implied/lied that pok cheated on sklonda with her. pok says that kalina can be spread by means other than sex (pok got her from a healing potion). BUT, he never answers riz's question: did he ever have sex with kalina?

one thing we know: sklonda has been a participant in at least one open relationship.

another thing we know: from the first time pok and sklonda had sex, kalina was capable of seeing out of their eyes and feeling things they felt/causing physical sensations

there are like 100 toxic crazy psychosexual dynamics you can theoretically extrapolate from this combination of facts BEFORE kalina even betrays them and i am LOSING MY MIND thinking about them. no wonder riz is so fucking scared of her

Kalina is the most interesting character to me because of all she has going on…

she is Cassandra’s familiar, she is simultaneously a pet and a friend and a servant and a family to a goddexx that is simultaneously her owner and friend and creator and parent and her god and reason to be—Kalina’s relationship to Cassandra is hard to put a name or label on (since what does being a familiar even mean?) but the bottomline is that this cat loves her deity enough to put everything and everyone on the line for her…

And adding in that she is a child of divorce. So to speak. I am extremely normal and haven’t been driven mad by the detail that baby itty bitty kitty Kalina was at Cassandra’s wedding to Ankarna and is remembered to have been toddling after her as she walked down the aisle…

Kalina will be the death of me /lh

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I don't know if it was a mistake on Brennan's part but Ragh was told twice that Kalina was back and acted like this was new information both times.

I don't know if there's some sort of fake-Ragh or his memory is being fucked with or whatever but. This could be something, right?

do y'all think lydia and kalina did the spies tongue curse thing together and thats why kalina can only say ragh's name???????

do you think kalina told them "ragh barkrock" because she was trying to remind them that he witnessed jace stardiamond talking to arianwen and kalina at prom

Actually I think we as a collective moved past the fact that Riz live-streamed his own death way too fast

my rewatch has really hammered in that Brennan's been dropping hints about Jace this whole time, and I was gonna bring it up but that's okay cuz Brennan did it for me

The fact that Once in a Lifetime exists and Alex chooses instead to perform PMA is a fucking disgrace.

"Jace's vibe is kinda cool"

buddies Ragh saw him talking to Kalina right before the Crown of the Nightmare King got stolen

the new fantasy high art style is doing them SUCH a big favor… like kalina’s art alone is 1000x better this season

hi i barely promote my fic on here but i am currently writing a series where Kalina basically uses illusion magic to disguise herself as Pok and raise Riz under her wing if you wanted to take a look heres the general series

and heres the first part

kristen applebees the girl that you are

I think one of the central issues surrounding neverafter that many people are circling around and identifying symptoms of but not the cause, is that the brand of horror that brennan is going for, and the very nature of dnd are at odds with one another.

So much of horror is surrounded by a lack of agency, and the neverafter brand of horror is no different. rosamund wakes up surrounded by briars and cannot move, ylfa is a werewolf against her will, gerard is turning into a frog, pinocchio’s father’s safety is in the hands of an eldritch terror, etc etc. A lack of control over your life or surroundings is the root of so much horror, and you can see brennan try to implement that to varying success.

The issue is that... this is dnd. A game that prioritizes agency and the mechanics of turns, the fantasy of having the control to pick up a sword and fight battles you couldn’t fight in real life. It wouldn’t be a fun game if the intrepid heroes just had stuff happening to them all the time, or if brennan was visibly leading them down one course of action they couldn’t control. In dnd, the pcs choose what to do. But in horror, you’re trapped in the house. You’re transforming against your will. All you can do is try to escape, trapped on the back foot as something or someone hunts you. Moments where the protagonist takes the active stance are few and far between, and often fleeting, giving a false sense of hope.

In neverafter, Rosamund is using her action on her turn to rip briars out of her throat. Ylfa uses a bonus action to go into a rage. They choose where to go next, and roll perception checks to see what’s happening. The feeling of being overwhelmed and afraid is so rare, because you cannot put the horror of a lack of autonomy in a game that is so fundamentally about autonomy. 

The moments of most effective horror for me, such as moments in the princesses castle as they realize the scope of the enemy, rosamund locking herself in her room, even just exploring in the woods in episode 2, are always the moments when the intrepid heroes don’t know what’s going on, or what to do. But these moments have to be few and far between, because in order for it to be a fun game of dnd, they kind of need to know what’s going on.

Similarly, another large facet of most horror is a lack of information, or context. A noise is the dark, mysterious claw marks or figures in the window, a masked killer, etc etc. And Brennan has chosen to do the horror season in a fairytale season... where we almost immediately can guess the backstory of every major npc. Regardless of whether metagaming is happening, the baron of bricks is made significantly less scary for the fact that we can immediately intuit his whole deal thanks to the story he comes from. 

The pcs can roll insight checks, and brennan is not the sort of dm to skimp on backstory or philosophical context. So many conversations this season are full of ruminating on the fluffy-sweet meaning of life and writing our own story, which removes any sense of cold confusion that could come from where the intrepid heroes should go next.

The horror and the medium (as well as the premise of the story within that medium) are at odds with each other.

This post is already so long, but I need to give one example of brennan’s horror working in a different campaign to illustrate my point.

In fhsy ep 3, riz fights baron in the office. This is a famously terrifying scene, proving that d20 is capable of horror, and it cleanly avoids so many of neverafter’s problems:

1. The mechanics or backstory of baron is not apparent in any way, or ever even really revealed. All we know is that Something is in the office, and even when we see it, none of our questions are answered (is it a manifestation of lies, a servant of the nightmare king, even real in the first place? how did it get in the office, how was this mirror cursed, how did riz not notice it before?) brennan is not in a rush to explain any of this, either, as he is in na.

2. We know how the scene ends before it starts. We know that there is no good ending, there is nothing that riz can do to stop what is going to happen. Even if we didn’t, there is no magic to lean on, no friends to call that could get there in time. This creature has the jump on him, and he has no context as to how to act or what to do next. He cannot persuade or fight the creature in any way that matters.

neverafter is in such a rush to explain itself and answer philosophical questions, to send the pcs on quests, that it loses the fear and horror almost entirely. It still makes for a very fun season, but I’m not surprised that people find it unsatisfying in that regard