little moon is here to fuck shit up <3

i drew this in hopes of summoning a party pov switch this week bc i cannot wait two weeks to see if theyre ok 

Worlds Beyond Number is wild because Brennan Lee Mulligan uses every ounce of his philosophic and empathetic learnings to create the most heartrending situations and scenes

Then, like an emotional devastation katamari, this fucker picks up THREE whole ass other people like him. Lou Wilson, who will make you cry while you’re in the middle of laughing. Aabria Iyengar, who is a fucking genius and dives full ass into her character’s flaws because your heart will die of a thousand cuts when it all hits. And Erika Ishii. At first blush, a bit of a clown, albeit a sultry one when they want to be. More than happy to play the fool. Lets you underestimate them, so you let them get close, and when you realize how deep you’re in it’s too late

So these FOUR chucklefucks, these four geniuses of humor and tragedy, hire a fucking Maestro of Sound Design in Taylor Moore to produce their home game. And everything is tighter. And even more immersive. And heartwrenching and hilarious and cozy and creepy.

Anyway, this team of FIVE people decide that they’re going to make one of the best podcasts currently airing and it’s only nine episodes in.

Burrow's End is an absolute masterpiece.

In the span of ten episodes Aabria and Co. weave an exciting and emotional adventure story about a family of sentient stoats. It delivers huge laughs, interesting societal criticism, remarkably emotional and well-acted scenes and concludes with a series of epilogue scenes that feel appropriate for each character, some heartfelt and subdued and others bigger than life and all the funnier for it.

Siobhan and Izzy play the perfect pair of siblings. They fight and argue but they also love each other. Jaysohn (Siobhan) looks up to Lila (Izzy) and believes she's the smartest stoat in the world (and by the end she probably is) and Lila hypes up her little brother's athletic skills. They both fully embodied these kids and I could watch them do fun stuff for more episodes. Give me a version of Saved by the Bell with them. Stoat by the Bell.

Brennan and Rashawn, playing sisters, also knock it outta the park, showing a more mature sibling dynamic. Brennan portrays Tula as the quintessential overtired single mother of excitable kids, and Rashawn as younger sister Viola straddles a very interesting line of being intimidating to outsiders but very much more naive and looking to her older sister when she starts a family.

Jasper as Thorn, a guy everyone just lets be a cult leader because he really wanted to, is fantastic. His is a difficult role as the only non-blood relative. Jasper plays Thorn with such real humanity of a guy in over his head and letting his ambition wife call the shots, but also one who agrees with her goal, really loves her and has moments of real menace. He has some very funny scenes, his big speech is perfect, and I just enjoy him.

Erika is wonderful. They play the epitome of generational trauma as many have said but as much trauma as Ava has, she is also loving and willing to learn. The fact Erika took this adversarial role is incredible. The tense dramatic scene primarily between Ava, Tula and Viola is amazing. They act their asses off and make hard choices that I imagine are difficult even for such an experienced player.

Aabria's DMing always feels fun. She doesn't get bogged down in the rules. She knows them. She plays by them. But as a master, she knows how and when to break them too. Her seasons on Dimension 20 have all had a tenseness, a particular edge to them that can give me anxiety during dramatic scenes between two characters. It always feel like one of her NPCs may say something devastating and the tension between characters reaches really thrilling heights. This is present in other seasons, but I don't think anyone does it as well as she does. The first season of hers to have battle maps, Aabria really swung for the fences and gave us some of the wildest maps to date.

Shout out to Carlos Luna's voice acting. He did an incredible job. And shout out to the whole crew who have put together one of the best seasons of D20. They keep finding ways to build on what's come before and they should be commended for it.

Dimension 20 is most successful when the concept is very streamlined. They don't do huge 100 episode campaigns capable of handling huge winding complex narrative, but short focused D&D stories, which is why many of the Side Quests have been so fantastic. They embody this philosophy most clearly, but it's apparent in the most beloved Intrepid Heroes seasons as well—John Hughes/High Fantasy, Game of Thrones/Candyland, Retrofuturism, Film Noir but in a Brain... Burrow's End fits this perfectly. It's streamlined concept paired with great storytellers and great chemistry sets it up to be a smash hit before it begins. And goddamn does it deliver.

Thanks Stupendous Stoats!

If you want to run a Court of Fey & Flowers Game, dnd isn't what you need

...because it's not what the Dimension 20 cast played, either.

I talked about this a little bit once before, very early in the season, but now that it's done, it's really clear to me that they played Good Society by Storybrewers with a few Dungeons & Dragons elements hacked in, not the other way around. Aabria Iyengar loves Good Society, and it really shows. She merged the systems really beautifully to suit the expectations of D20, and that's why I think players at home will get a better experience by starting with GS materials than by trying to reverse engineer the mechanics Iyengar showed in action.

Things they got from DnD:

-Skill levels/stats.

-Rolling dice to determine success.

-The game master/facilitator (Aabria) playing most characters.

-Some creatures and spells (the dog that has an old man's face, the telepathy spell I can never remember the name of).

-Aabria giving out Inspiration.

Things they got from Good Society:

-The principle of having a character goal that may be kept secret. (In fact, some of D20's specific goals were probably even chosen from Good Society materials. The player character with a secret spouse? There's a card for that.)

-Social reputation tracked by degrees, conferring descriptions and perks. (They did not use GS's exact system. Whether it was a hack or a mix with a game system I haven't played, I don't know.)

-Trading tokens that can be burned to make strong moves. (Again, not GS's exact mechanic--GS uses tokens throughout instead of dice. That game lets you decide what your character is capable of. Tokens make sure everyone has fair chances to act, especially when players have conflicting goals.)

-Additional guidelines and mechanics for agreeing on how the table wants social events to work, as well as how to navigate the varying dynamics of relatives, friends, and rivals.

-Rumors and epistolary phases. (There's a fun post going around about Brennan asking about these because "he wanted to get a good grade in dnd," but I think he was sincerely curious how they worked, because they aren't dnd!)

-The overall cycle of play, dictating the order of phases and pace.

-Some mechanics for the reputations and interactions of fae courts as entities were taken from Good Society's Fae Courts mini-expansion.

-Monologue tokens. (D20 has Aabria as the only one who can use these, GS allows anyone in the game to ask someone to monologue.)

-Additional guidelines for determining world state, character creation, and keeping the story within a consistent style and tone that feels like a recognizably Regency story...even when giant owlbears can get gay married.

-Other flavoring and approach details.

Things Good Society has that Dimension 20 didn't get to show off:

-The ability for players to also choose a secondary character to control, allowing them to participate in more roleplay and experience multiple personalities or social roles in the same game.

-A really rich and thoughtful collaboration phase, before the story begins.

-The ability to share facilitator duties among the table, and to allow the facilitator to play a main character as well as supporting cast.

-Advice and expansions for adjusting the game to various tones, genres, and other historical periods.

So you're looking at buying Good Society:

What you need is pdfs. Definitely grab the base game for $21.00, that has most of what I just described. If you're excited to see their Fae Court specific materials, it's included in the Expanded Acquaintance bundle with many other pieces of content, or there's a bundle of the base game and every expansion they've produced. You do not need to buy the more expensive bundles that include physical books and cards unless professional physical versions delight you, the pdfs are designed to be printable. Storybrewers also made and provide spreadsheet templates for sessions meeting online, so you can all see your worksheet choices.

Good Society is a really fun and flexible system, and it's most of what we loved about how A Court of Fey and Flowers was structured. It's your best route to a recreation, and well worth playing in its original form. I love that it doesn't have stats and dice--if you've never played a ttrpg that doesn't make you do math, this is a great introduction. I'm so glad Aabria featured it on the show!

Do you think part of the D20 journalistic bias comes from D20 being edited? It gives the appearance of much more effortless play and lets them control the pacing in a way unedited play like CR simply can't do. They get to (potentially) hide a lot of stuff people would jump on as flaws while CR has no choice but to let it all play out. I greatly prefer CR's approach, despite it biting them in the ass a bit through no fault of their own.

Answering these both together to group cause and my opinions, and I do want to note this is specifically about journalism/press coverage, not their respective fandoms even though there's obviously some overlap.

I think there's a couple things, but I do want to note this was actually prompted by Daggerheart, not Critical Role. The response from several prominent voices in the Actual Play journalism community, whom I will not name here but whom I do not respect intellectually, really was, within hours of the open beta (which as far as I know they didn't have early access to - more on that later) "um it could be better, I don't like xyz and also it's sooooooo important to have criticism" and again, it is important to have criticism, but also you act like D20 has never had a mediocre moment and that Kollok is brilliant, so.

This...got away from me a bit. I'd say I'm sorry but actually I adore writing thousands of words about actual play and it will happen again but I'm putting the detailed answer below a cut. The short answer is I think a lot of Actual Play journalists actually sort of fell into their jobs through being vaguely involved in nerd spaces and aren't actually equipped to talk intelligently about TTRPGs and actual play as a medium that should, at its best, be a perfect fusion of narrative and mechanics. So instead they're distracted by flashy edits and bright lights and cool noises and some abstract concept of "novelty" and write only about that. Also Critical Role is the 700 lb gorilla in the AP space (though not, actually, the TTRPG space) and doesn't give them early access and that's meaaaaaan. Indeed, for all I think a lot of their coverage of D20 and Worlds Beyond Number is obsessively fawning, I also think it's extremely surface level, frequently factually wrong, and fails to get at what's truly excellent about those shows either.

I think, honestly, the biggest one is that I don't actually think a lot of Actual Play journalists watch series in full. I was looking for Polygon coverage of Fantasy High Junior Year and they have one glowing article but it's more about Fantasy High as setting and institution and D20 "changing the game" (also more on this later) to the point of outright contradicting the pull quotes they used from interviewing Brennan Lee Mulligan (also more on this later). So I started looking through their coverage and actually, quite a number of their write-ups are based on only one episode, or half a season. Clearly, they haven't read the full open beta (nor have I, but I think their complaints about the character build process belie a profound misunderstanding of what TTRPGs are, also more on this later). So editing is certainly part of it because it's really easy to see cool special effects and sound design within one episode and shit out a hacky article about it, whereas actually getting to the substance - character relationships, cohesive narrative, storytelling - requires work that I do not think they're doing. And on the one hand I do kind of get it, because yeah, if journalism is your livelihood then you perhaps do not have the time to watch 4 hours of D&D a week for 2-3 years if you're only going to get one article every six months out of it. But I don't think the answer is "focus intently on Microsoft Powerpoint-esque scene transition tricks while ignoring that nothing occurring at the table is actually fun to watch." For more on this, see this post.

The second, which is very relevant to Daggerheart but also is actually a big gap in D20 and WBN coverage in my opinion, and which I put in the tags, is that I actually don't think a lot of journalists have a solid understanding of TTRPGs nor of most genres. And I think Critical Role has a particularly good understanding of both these things, actually, if one skewed towards collaborative storytelling that is not rules-light. I think one really big example is that one person within the space is mad at the Daggerheart questions for the character archetypes because what if your character doesn't fit these. I think this is dumb as shit. I actually think that a common criticism of D&D - that you can't play ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING - is not valid, or rather, it's a valid opinion to hold but if you want to play a character who doesn't fit into the available archetypes perhaps you need to find another game. We all inherently understand that Blades in the Dark characters will be members of a criminal organization in a relatively low-magic setting, correct? That you can't show up to BitD and play a lawful good wizard prince because that's not the story being told? Or like, how in Honey Heist, you are a bear and you are trying to get honey, and you cannot play a human child investigating the old abandoned house at the edge of town, but there's a cool game called Kids on Bikes that will let you do that? Great! Why is this suddenly so hard to understand in the realm of heroic fantasy, that you will fit into specific archetypes? Why do people's brains, if they have them to begin with, vanish suddenly? I know I just did a big old rant that included this within it but genuinely I think a lot of people are deeply ignorant of heroic fantasy, or don't like it, and either is fine, but then they get mad at the heroic fantasy game for having heroic fantasy archetypes when the answer is "maybe this will never make you happy because it's not for you." (Frankly, I think this is also why they love D20, because it doesn't really do straight-up heroic fantasy, and that's fine, but they do keep acting like doing a Game of Thrones pastiche is equivalent to the invention of the wheel.) Like...I remember in the Midst Q&A that Xen said they tend to not like playing typical D&D classes, but their solution was to, you know, create Midst instead of sitting around going "actually, because D&D doesn't support cyberpunk narrative and the character archetypes within very well it is an utter failure." (I could go on forever about how actually TTRPGs are not a showcase for your already extant OCs to prance around but that's a totally separate post).

Mechanics and story are inherently intertwined, is what I'm trying to get at (sorry I'm really tired and have a lot to do but I'm passionate about this answer, it will be rambly, she says like 3 pages in) and I really don't think most actual play journalists get this. At all. And I do think that CR, and Daggerheart, and the people working for it, and especially Spenser Starke, Rowan Hall, Matt Mercer, and Travis Willingham, get this more than almost anyone else in the field. I also think Brennan Lee Mulligan and Aabria Iyengar get this, and the thing is, for all the praise showered upon them, much of which I think is deserved and most of what I think is undeserved is not because they are lacking but because the person writing about them is an idiot crediting them for things they (Brennan and Aabria) would never claim to have invented, their mechanical prowess is rarely if ever written about well. Fantasy High Junior Year's downtime mechanics actually fill in a famous gap in D&D, namely, downtime, and provide an excellent marriage of story and mechanics in my opinion, and I haven't really seen any discussion, because that would require watching the part of the TTRPG show where they play the TTRPG, and knowing the vague word on the street about D&D criticism that isn't just "*nods sagely* capitalism is the BBEG."

And finally: related a bit to the edit but Critical Role used to not be able to provide any early access to press, because it was literally a live show, and I suspect they never broke the habit, and I think that is for the best. As discussed a lot of D20 coverage actually feels like they watched the press screener and then never returned to the show. And I do not know the politics about them, but given that several of these publications (notably Polygon, but some others) have been shitting on Critical Role for several years, and just generally given the way CR's leadership vs. how D20's leadership respond to fandom pressure, I suspect Critical Role does not give these journalists a ton of early or increased, if any. Honestly, why should you, if you're getting interviewed in Variety? And I think the journalists are mad, because they think they're special and should get treated as such.

I do want to wrap something up, and I want to thank @captainofthetidesbreath for talking a little about this in game design/ttrpgs and giving me the idea, but in story, you should be challenging your audience, expanding their horizons, and being new and interesting. In the actual playing of TTRPGs, especially a new one, it is vital to be inclusive and easy to understand and patient and provide points of reference. I really feel like many Actual Play journalists and some TTRPG ones as well have this equation flipped and are looking for challenging concepts that most people will never be able to get a group to be willing to play, and bells and whistles in production, but leave story as an afterthought. Critical Role designs games to actually be played and to be used specifically to tell good stories, and puts story before production, and I think that undercuts those journalists' whole deal.

This latest Adventuring Party really drove home my favorite aspect of Brennan's DMing style. He genuinely loves seeing his players succeed, even against odds he considered to be nigh insurmountable.

Let's take the Last Stand as an example. Now, Brennan made no secret out of the Last Stand encounter being very hard, and for people who do not play D&D it may even seem like he overhyped it, but from a mechanics standpoint, the CR, functionally the difficulty rating of this battle royale was sky-high. Yeah, none of the Bad Kids went down, but that is entirely thanks to a combination of excellent strategic play from the Intrepid Heroes and some choice luck.

To mention some of the game changer moves, the Scatter spell really re-defined the battlefield more favorably for the Bad Kids, the disguise self was a value proposition because it split the flying monsters, which was the greatest threat to the proctor by far, in two, functionally halving the threat to the squishy normie, not to mention dealing with the mega-mosquitos in combo with Spirit Guardians. Those little flying bastards would have been such a pain in the ass if Fig didn't bug zapper them to kingdom come. And the bless. Dear god, the Bless saved so many asses in this encounter.

This isn't to say magic was the only thing that defined the battlefield. The single-target damage dealers did some truly astounding numbers and managed their attention and abilities shockingly well. Yeah, Gorgug crit like a madman, but he also tanked like three or four non-barb PCs worth of effective HP damage without going down even once. If he had failed his saves and gotten eaten by the Purple Worm things would have gotten nasty for him, but again, the touch of luck (and bless) saw him through.

So, this is all to say that this was an encounter meant to kick the players' ass. Not an unwinnable one, evidently, but this was supposed to be a considerably worse experience even without getting into the non dice-roll exam questions. And how does Brennan react when the Intrepid Heroes put their game face all the way on, get really smart with their level 1 spell slots, and dismantle the whole thing? He's overjoyed, he's cheering for his strange adventure children, and we're cheering with him because frankly it's rad as hell.

This illustrates one nuance I feel sometimes gets glossed over about the DM-player relationship. A lot of people have talked about how Junior Year is the "Revenge of Brennan" or what have you, and I feel that kind of misses the central appeal of DMing and Brennan's style in D20 in particular. Yes, Mr Mulligan enjoys playing the heel on occasion. It's good fun to play the personification of everything going wrong and the inherent shittiness of the world, but like the wrestler heels, all that wicked charisma is meant to do one thing, and that is build up the faces, or the players in this case.

Now, the ghost of Gary Gygax may come after me for this, but I firmly believe it's not the DMs job to kill the player characters, or even to inconvenience or torment them. A good DM's job is to make it seem like they're going to kill the player characters, as to provide an environment for the players to succeed, a challenge for them to overcome. It's all one big improv exercise (or kink scene if you prefer to view it that way), where the DM derives their (near)absolute authority over the world the PCs inhabit from the shared understanding that they're going to show the players a spectacular, if not on occasion harrowing, time.

This is Brennan's biggest strength as a DM I think. He genuinely wants to make a spectacular time for his friends, and he understands that to do that he must on occasion be the monster they oppose, and on occasion he must be their breathless cheerleader. On occasion, one imagines, he must also be both.

i just finished my first watch-through of dimension 20 fantasy high, and man—all i want to talk about is riz gukgak and his bloody hands.

riz and his bloody hands. his white-knuckle grip on control. little freakazoid insomniac wound too tight. “i’m a harsh guy,” he says, but he’s got so much of a heart in him that he leaps into hell to save his father and charges blindly off into the nightmare king’s forest to save the world. he’s a harsh guy, but his greatest fear in the world is being left behind by his friends. 

i love watching brennan and murph. because brennan is truly an extraordinary dm, and murph is THE plot-hound player. his characters move forward, ever forward, only ever onward. riz cannot sit still, he cannot lay fallow. the three days they’re aboard a ship in the open ocean, he wigs out and spends it spiraling below deck. he cannot relax. not even for a second, not even to sleep. because if he does--what? what will happen to him? what will happen to the teenage goblin kid with no father? 

riz and his bloody hands. 

and brennan knows murph well enough that he knows how to turn that into a character beat. he pits riz’s drive for knowledge against him. you love the truth. you seek it so much that you cut your hands upon the insides of crystals. what a metal and underrated line. because riz would destroy himself for the truth. he can’t handle anything less. he’s like one of those dogs that chews its own paws to shreds if it doesn’t have a job to do. it’s always the next mission and the next job and the next adventure. no time for slowing down because the world is perpetually ending and there’s only so much one little goblin can do on his own--even if he never sleeps. there’s no time for slowing down because if he has a moment - even a moment! - to breathe, to rest, what would he do with it? what does riz have, if it isn’t the mission? what does he offer the world, if it isn’t his brain and his bullets and his bloody hands? 

at the end of the day, riz gukgak is just an empty little kid in a room full of empty mirrors. he’s just the kid who sleeps clutching his sword. that’s why kalina preys on him the way that she does. she’s the queen of masks and reflections. she sees right through to the fear inside of riz--that he isn’t good enough, that he is nothing more than some kid playing detective who gets his friends hurt. she toys with him, but i imagine she also sees some of herself inside of him. they are both in their own ways, empty shells. 

and of course, the ironic truth is that riz is far from empty. truth-seeker, paranoid, whip-smart and frantic, riz tries so hard. he tries so hard that he dies for it. he’s the reason for their little team you know, he’s the instigator. he went after penny, and he went after the nightmare king, and he will keep going and going and going, tearing his hands open again and again and again until he gives out. the ironic truth is that riz has one hell of a heart on him, and it beats him bloody. it drives him forward, ever and onward. it will not let him rest, and so he will never feel how big it is. how much space it takes up inside him. how un-empty he truly is. 

all he has are his hands, and they do not stop bleeding.

Adaine: you can just move back in, if you want

Brennan: you see that Sandra Lynn looks at her at this kitchen table and is like [as Sandra Lynn]: we'd love to have you, Aelwyn.

Adaine: she'd love to have you Aelwyn.

Aelwyn: does this invitation extend solely to me, or to my 15 cats?

Emily/Fig: I can make room for them

(Brennan breaks and laughs here)

Ally/Kristen: i start setting up a chicken hutch for them

Siobhan/Adaine: yea we have a catio into the graveyard

Ally/Kristen: we have a catio!

Zac: (aside to Brennan) what happened to you?

Siobhan/Adaine: we turned the graveyard into a catio.

Brennan: (returns from behind the DM screen) i just don't know what Emily meant by make room! "We can make room"?

Ally/Kirsten: you guys kick Kristen out

Brennan: it sounded so sinister. It sounded like there were 15 worse animals that you were going to get rid of.

Ally/Kristen: I have can trim the fat around here

Brennan: we can trim the fat. I think i know exactly who can

Siobhan/Adaine: kristen you're out. The cats: in.

Ally/Kristen: all right. They live in my, like, cathedral room

Zac/Gorgug: they can move in with Fabian

Lou/Fabian: what the hell are you doing here?

Ally/Kristen: I'm bringing the cats

Brennan: Aelwyn does actually move back in

Siobhan/Adaine: hell yes

Brennan: she moves back into the bunk bed

Ally/Kristen: i make a point of being kind of rude to her, but in the way that she likes, so its not all super sweet.

Brennan: yeah

Ally/Kristen: I'm like, nice outfit. Clown! And i keep walking to breakfast. I look back, is she smiling?

Brennan: i think there's a couple --

Adaine: don't talk to her like that *winks exaggeratedly*

Brennan: the first time she does that, let me see how she does measuring how hard to come back. That's a 5

Aelwyn: oh, you don't like this?

Kristen: oh, uh, its, uh. Looks like shit.

Aelwyn: ah, i understand. Well, i'm trying to dress for the job i have which is librarian. But dressing like someone who wants the whole world to know that they're desperately alone is another option.

Ally/Kristen: Kristen hugs her staff

Adaine: okay, actually, don't talk to her like that

Aelwyn: no, we're playing! You wear the same tracksuit every day. You know that's not right.

Kristen: yeah. Yeah! I forgot something in my room!

Adaine: sometimes she dresses as a cowboy

Emily/Fig: i get behind Aelwyn for a tabletop

Ally/Kristen: what are you doing?!

Brennan: you get behind Aelwyn for a tabletop?

Emily/Fig: Kristen, if you don't get this I --

Ally/Kristen: i'm running, i'm running. No I just forgot something!

Brennan: Aelwyn turns down to look at you and says [as Aelwyn]: drop something?

Ally/Kristen: i forgot something!

Emily/Fig: i was acting like a fucking cat, cuz you love em so much! And I give her a wet willy and run.

Brennan: the wet willy gets her way more. [As Aeleyn]: uuugh! Noo! The house -- Mordred is lively. There's very fun study sessions.

Let's Talk About: Mentopolis and The Scattered Mind

Not gonna lie, reading the takes Tumblr peeps have on what's going on in Mentopolis is kind of raising my expectations on how the show is going to unfold. That said, nothing could have prepared me for how this episode ended. Nothing.

And speaking of not being prepared… Wilton?! Wilton with the character art looking like a wrinkly pair of--

How I wish we could get a bonus episodes of Dimension 20 seasons of just the players reacting to the character artwork. Because much like I would have loved to see how Bob the Drag Queen and Jujubee would react to Nyruth, I would really really like to see Freddie Wong and Mike Trapp react to Wilton as well.

Now onto the episode content itself;

Hank Green's "I think it's time to unlearn that?" Chef's kiss. The whole thing with The Fix being built to be menacing and scary but Hank's innate kindness and softness still shining through? I don't remember if it was Brennan Lee Mulligan or Brian Murphy or Aabria Iyengar who said something about how your tabletop roleplaying character is you but through a stained-glass. I feel like that really applies to Hank and The Fix.

Alex Song-Xia, once again, has impeccable one-liners in this episode. Trapp doubling down on his character's… tenacity? Amazing. Danielle Radford is taking no prisoners in her game-play, and I love all of her facial reactions. All of them. Freddie Wong's choices in game continues to astound me, and you never know where he's going to zag next.

But my second chef's kiss for this episode goes to Siobhan Thompson's "Fucks Expletive." That was some very quick thinking that really fleshed out a part of this world, and one character's background, with just two words. And that's not mentioning all of the in-character choices Siobhan makes that truly, truly elevates this episode as one of the funniest and most enjoyable couple hours of content on the internet.

I can't wait to see what happens next. Because, really, after that ender of a scene, I need to know how it all plays out.

Dropout Does The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals

So my theory about overlap of Dropout and Team Starkid seems to be accurate, and people seemed to like my Dropout does Nerdy Prudes Must Die post, so I'm back for another. Same method and criteria as my previous post, you can go see that if you want to know what they are. Also, I have previously done a similar list with Internet Personalities that included a handful of Dropout people, but I'm gonna try to make this one different.

Also spoilers for potentially anything in the Hatchetfield verse

Paul: Ross Bryant

Ross is a great straight man (in the comedy sense, I don't know his sexuality) while being very funny in his own right, and I think, while Paul has a lot of his own funny moments, it's very important that his character is also the more normal guy reacting to the madness around him. Also, he would slay the Jekyll and Hyde homage that is Let it Out.

Emma : Siobhan Thompson

I think one of the essential parts of Emma's character is an underlying exhaustion with the world, and that is very Adaine Abernant and Ruby Rocks, so I think Siobhan would embody that very well.

Charlotte: Vic Michaelis

I don't think I've ever heard them do a transatlantic accent before, but I just have this gut feeling they'd be so good at it.

Ted: Ify Nwadiwe

While I do genuinely think Ify would be great in the part, if I'm being fully honest, this casting is because I (despite my better judgment) find Ted Spankoffski hot, so casting arguably the hottest man in Dropout in this part makes me seem less damaged for being attracted to the self-proclaimed sleazeball. Also him and Vic seem like they would be great playing off each other.

Bill: Brian "Murph" Murphy

He just has "refuses to drink during the apocalypse so he can be the DD" energy.

Mr Davidson: Brian David Gilbert

Since I'm splitting up all the parts, this basically turns Mr Davidson into a Princess Track where the actor just shows up, sings about desire and being choked while he jerks off, but laments how he can never achieve his dreams, and then pretty much leaves, and I don't know why, but that seems right up BDG's alley.

Melissa: Lisa Gilroy

Lisa Gilroy seems nice, but also kinda scares me, and those are the correct vibes for Melissa (#heymelissacore)

Sam: Jacob Wysoki

My only concern about this casting is that he'd go SO HARD in You Tied Up My Heart that he would keep breaking the handcuffs and/or chair, but that's fine, it would be worth it.

Nora: Katie Marovitch

The "Decaf?" parts of Cup of Roasted Coffee already sounds a bit like her TBH.

Zoey: Rehka Shankar

I feel like Zoey is such an underrated, funny side character in the show (I know she's a very small part, but like every line she has is a banger) and I feel like Rehka is a very underrated performer, so this is a good match.

Greenpeace Girl: Persephone Valentine

Making up the Save the Sea Turtles campaign is such a Sam Nightengale move, and also she would eat up Lah Dee Dah Dah Day.

Alice: Surena Marie

She's got a bit of a baby face (I thought she was like 25) and I think she would handle the change from Alice to Hivemind Alice really well.

Deb: Emily Axford

I'm definitely not just casting this because I want Emily to be my protective and caring girlfriend...

Professor Hidgens: Josh Ruben

I don't have an explanation for this one, this is vibes alone.

General MacNamara: Brennan Lee Mulligan

"Wear a Watch" and a song highlighting how the hivemind is essentially fascist and using the military to destroy any resistance to their regime is so Brennan core.

Homeless Man: Ally Beardlsey

I just feel like this is the part they'd want.

Dan Reynolds: Lou Wilson

Icons play Icons.

Donna: Aabria Iyengar

Icons play Icons

Hard Cuts:

Jacob Wysoki as Ted

Mike Trapp as Paul

Emily Axford as Emma

Jess Ross as Charlotte

Lily Du as Zoey

Grant O'Brien as Professor Hidgens

Grant O'Brien as Ted

Ally Beardlsey as Ted

Steeplechase is such a good fantasy setting because justin not only created a compelling world with opportunities for a wide genre spectrum, complicated crime and interesting factions, but he also gave Griffin the opportunity to compete on a reality dating show without ruining his marriage, which is essentially equivalent to letting Brennan Lee Mulligan play Survivor inside

Some more thoughts about Dungeons and Drag Queens (D20), especially Brennan’s presentation as DM

Brennan spent a large chunk of his life attending or working at a LARP camp. He’s no stranger to dressing up for games. He played a space wizard on Ultramechatron Go. He’s no stranger to dressing up on camera.

But in Dimension 20, he is resolutely Some Guy™️ and honestly it feels like he is doing that to make D&D and other TTRPGs as approachable as possible. You don’t have to go over the top. You don’t have to dress up. You can just be Some Person™️ and let your imagination do the heavy lifting

Which brings us to D&DQ. Brennan is full glam. And people are Horny™️ for it. But I think a lot of people might be missing the point. Doing an all Drag Side Quest is a political statement in America right now. And if Brennan was just Some Guy™️ he could potentially give fuel to folks (who don’t actually know anything about him) to say “look at what the dropout sjws are forcing on this poor cis-het dude”

So Brennan cheerfully dons A Lewk™️. For the first time, Denise the super talented makeup artist gets a crack at his face. And yes, he’s meeting his players where they are. And he’s doing his best to let the spotlight shine on the Queens. But. He’s visible. He’s (intentionally or not) telling the world “If you want to come for them you’ll have to come through me”

Don’t get me wrong, I love the “Brennan hotboi!” takes. And maybe I’m reading too much into it. But I love the feeling that this cis-het white boy got sprayed with glitter, tossed on Eursulon’s pauldron, and said “I got y’all. It’s safe here.”

In a world where it is very much not safe to be trans right now, that means a fucking lot

I don’t do this often, but Ep. 22 of The Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One requires me to get out these thoughts the instant I’ve finished the episode. Sneak peek: it’s about Suvi…

SPOILERS BELOW, SO BEWARE THE NOT CAUGHT UP FOLKS

Brennan’s take on prophecy continues to drive me insane. Steel argued last ep that diviners are susceptible to illusions, but I was still so high off of my love of Uncle Sly that I only really listened to her this time around — a good diviner is one who is right 51% of the time. I was taking for granted, given the leeway Sly receives, especially regarding his finances, that wizards put so much stock in his abilities that his words should be taken as gospel. But Steel is an example of exactly what Sly said about why he isn’t respected. You can’t receive acclaim for stopping tragedies that never come to pass. Steel’s doubts about the relability of divination are so in line with her obvious pragmatism. and have also given me a more balanced view on the prophecies we received in “Later Than You Think”… which will also give me a way to sleep at night regarding the fact that Suvi now feels so incredibly far from joining Ame at the Coven of Elders meeting now. I can tell myself that Sly could have been fooled, or wrong about how certain he was that Suvi needed to be there…

Brennan had Sly say things that felt true, but I don’t doubt that there was also some powerful understanding of the world that went into them. I didn’t know exactly what it would mean that Suvi wouldn’t receive permission to leave, but then we saw in this ep and it just made sense. Through an understanding of the changes to the Citadel that were coming, and an understanding of Suvi’s character (esp. her dynamic with Steel), he saw that he had a way of keeping Suvi still. Just have Steel give her a direct order. Suvi saw what happened the last time she was made to disobey Steel by her friends. So she’s not following this time. Not only that, but she tries to bring them back to her. Suvi told Sly that she understood that they wouldn’t let her leave, but being confronted with the actual circumstances in the moment meant Aabria had the opportunity to (in my opinion) lean into the storytelling by (as she put it) making “big swings.”

As he predicted, the way Sly told Suvi the prophecy about her departure and her importance to Ame’s survival didn’t affect her in-the-moment decision. It isn’t a situation where knowing the prophecy helps make it come true. To me it smacks a little of the original etymology of “prophecy” as a diagnostic device. These are true (if somewhat vague) statements about how the world tends to function. Which means that they don’t play a huge factor in the decision-making of Suvi, as the character of the trio who is of the world and molded by systems in a way our Witch and our Wild One are not. [EDIT: And, as Aabria herself pointed out in the comments in this post, the prophecy wasn)t explicitly about the Citadel, which means the ultimate manifestation of that prophecy caught Suvi off guard]

Aabria (@quiddie) made an incredibly hard RP choice by making the decision that was correct for her character, in spite of her awareness that the choice would make her job as a player so much more difficult.

And I love her for it.

Ep 5, rage, and time

This was a FASCINATING episode. We’ve got a lot more questions than answers right now— about exactly the nature of Fig’s curse (we know it hopped to her from Gilear, but how does the armor of pride play into it), the exact nature of what happened to Cassandra, and what kind of big bad god (???) was talking to Kristen after the fight— so I don’t have a snappy thesis about this week’s ep. But I have some themes buzzing around my head like persistent flies. So let’s talk about them.

I saw someone earlier point out that rage and anger seems to be a dominant theme of the season, after Kristen got advantage for leaning into anger at her parents, and I think we know for sure now that that’s true. I refreshed myself on what happened to Lydia— she sealed a dangerous demon inside a soul gem and embedded it in herself to keep the demon from escaping. She was in a permanent rage to keep herself alive, and the impact of that disabled her. As a disabled fan I have always loved this rep, because the gem functions like a chronic illness, and I personally have used anger at the medical system and the ableist world to survive being chronically ill. (She also refused to have the gem removed and risk releasing the demon, which is a great refutation of the magical cure trope). Anger is a dirty fuel though, and if you burn too much of it you’ll end up burning yourself, and compromising your own mental health, in the process.

That reminds me of the kind of things we were circling from the beginning of the season— burnout, exhaustion, being past where you can fight. And if people heap enough stress on you (from schoolwork or otherwise) a kind of natural response to that is to break into rage at some point.

I don’t exactly understand the mechanisms of the star bursts that originated within Cassandra and then made her monstrous. Were parts of her anger embedded in them like the demon was in Lydia’s soul gem, and then when they re-entered her they turned that rage into something uncontrollable? Why did they affect Kalina that way and why did she mention Ragh’s name? I’m really not sure, although I do hope that this means that Lydia will play a larger role this season and we’ll see more of her and her cool wheelchair soon.

The other things that’s bouncing around my head is the theme of time (a recurring Elmville theme; chronomancy is the greatest magic of all after all). I think this season is concerned with time, and what it means to run out of time, even more than freshman and sophomore year. We have Arthur and Ayda traveling through time and the quadrangle situation. Now we have the Synod clock and a verifiable time loop (side note: I did ABSOLUTELY burst out laughing when Brennan exasperatedly said “anyone can roll arcana to understand time loops” when the PCs were confused, like GOD haven’t you all seen this in a million science fiction stories by now??? A deeply relatable moment when the players aren’t picking up the lore you’re putting down). But maybe more importantly, we’re seeing the consequences of not having enough time this season, or maybe what happens when the clock keeps running after the adventure is supposed to be over. No one has enough time to do all the assignments on their plate. Everyone missed out on fun, school planning, and relationship stuff over the summer because they had to be fighting the night yorb and didn’t have enough time to go home. (Also, side note, the night yorb turned everything to night therefore eliminating a way we have to tell time. No more days, just one long bleed of an adventure). And everything we’re doing right now feels like we’ve somehow hit the end of time and then kept going— Cassandra was never supposed to turn back into something akin to the nightmare king again. Kalina was never supposed to come back in the same form and taunt Riz again. The whole thing feels like a lesser, diminished time loop. Even the main high school antagonists, the rat grinders, are like a weird version of the bad kids who are stuck just looping over and over again, grinding out xp and repeating themselves infinitely.

I don’t really know how these two themes are going to hook together yet exactly, but I have a feeling they’re going to. Whoever was on the phone with Kristen feels like a hook for underlying plot, if not an outright big bad, which I honestly wasn’t sure we would get at all this season. So I’m gonna be so interested to see how these themes coalesce as the season goes on.

PS- I think The Seven is also extremely concerned with time (especially that sequence in the penultimate episode, which is my favorite in all of D20 I think. No spoilers if you haven’t seen it, but it is truly transcendent), and especially what it means to grow and change. I love that this theme keeps popping up in Elmville- it’s such a lovely frame for the kind of coming of age stories that get told there.

I gotta talk about FourDogs (again)

It's barely about her, though. I think "he's so lucky his dad was brutally murdered" and "people with trauma need a second handicap because they're too motivated" are such absolute-the-fuck-ly bonkers takes, they're not even worth the time it took me to get mad about them, which was immediately. This time around, I have way more to say about audience reception. I'll try to keep it civil.

It feels like a lot of us are responding from increasingly personal places because these are characters with which a lot of us identify, or we see traits in them that remind us of people from our real lives. And hey! Another performance and storytelling slay on the part of one Brennan Lee Mulligan. Who else can invent 50+ characters every year and play them to the point where any one of them can evoke both an "omg that's literally me!" and an "omg that's literally Dani, the girl that bullied me all of freshmen year until I punched out her front tooth in the student parking lot and got in-school suspension for a month!". And whether Kipperlily reminds you of Dani, or reflects your own anxieties about potential, ability, and trauma, an important thing to remember is this: she is not real!

Brennan made her up! Brennan made her up to tell a story, and when he made her up, he made her annoying, petty, antagonistic, and he gave her not just opposing goals to the the protagonists we know and love, but the explicit goal of ruining The Bad Kids' lives, specifically.

Now, I'm not saying she's fictional to be a dick, or dismiss any deeper readings on her or any of the Rat Grinders. I'm bringing it up because the way I'm seeing people talk to each other about these characters is starting to get a little wild and it's in danger of waking up The Olde Gods™ (i.e. the special brand of Tumblr Self-Righteousness that lives inside us all).

It's important to remember Kipperlilly is a character in a fictive work so that different interpretations of her don't get treated as stone law. Each reading of her is personal and valid, but none are gospel. The "Kipperlilly is but a victim" take is not the only correct one, nor is radical empathy for her as a character the only correct reaction. Also, even if I consider her sympathetic that is not incompatible with an opinion like "Kipperlilly needs to get roundhouse'd in the head by a lesbian in a tracksuit and/or a wizard in a jean jacket, posthaste". Sure, you can say that anyone who doesn't feel a deep and eclipsing empathy for Kipperlilly above all other emotions is immature at best and sociopathic at worst, but then I can just say anyone who demands solely empathy for Kipperlilly and excuses her literal crimes and bass-ackwards world view because she's insecure and has anger issues, is probably also someone who has a history of weaponizing whatever minority status they may or may not occupy to talk over, silence, or harass people of color.

They're both just opinions. And also, like. Y'know. A bit much.

To engage in the long and rich tradition of measuring character trajectories against those in the Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon, let's compare Kipperlilly to Azula. Azula had an incredibly sympathetic backstory and untreated mental health issues. Azula was also a danger to herself and others, as well as profoundly manipulative and abusive (although, it was a children's show so Azula never killed anybody for whatever that's worth). Do I wish that fourteen-year-old girl had an Iroh-type in her life? Literally one adult who loved her genuinely and advocated for her best interests? Of course I do. I saw the Ember Island episode, I watched that one video essay! Does that mean it was any less satisfying to watch Zuko and Katara kick her absolute ass? No! And it was non-lethal anyway, children's show, duh.

That brings me to my other thing; Kipperlilly is a character in a fictive work that is not finished. And I know that point will age poorly, but I'm thinking it won't be the only one (hey-o). Remember the people that were calling The Bad Kids bullies? And then we learned that Kipperlilly hated Riz because his fucking dad fucking died?? And that was a full academic year before getting reanimated by a rage god?? I'll do a tame one; remember when Gilear wasn't cursed?? He was "just a guy"?? The show is serialized, gang, the world is still building! Clerickiller is not done yet, y'all need to let her cook! I'm sure we'll tune in next week to see her graduate from "unhinged" to "unaffiliated with the door frame or any frame-like structure". Reprimanding people on Tumblr will not change the trajectory of this character who, by the way, has not expressed remorse or any desire for a path other than violence. You look me in my black face after your blorbo slits a kid's throat and say "help her"?? Kipperlilly doesn't want get better right now, she wants one thing and that's for Kristen Applebees to go fuck herself and die!! You were there, you heard it!! When the fictional behavior changes, as it often does in stories, so will my opinion. There is no fore-forgiveness. Without an actual redemption arc I will continue to see the villain as a villain.

Speaking of, I think what some people have an issue with is the level of hate Kipperlilly's getting and how aggressive it is. But like.... isn't that allowed?? Because of all the stuff I said but also because like, mama said that it was okay! And by "mama" I mean Siobhan Thompson who said Kipperlilly belongs under the jail. Sure, in the real world, adults don't tell kids they belong in the ground that's crazy fucked up, but all these kids are played by adults and Emily as Fig joked that she was gonna smite the sixteen-year-old girl played by the thirty-something man. You're telling me the antagonist antagonizes the protagonists, and the protagonists go "boo, hiss" and then I, the audience, go "boo, hiss as well" but I'm wrong? I'm wrong, somehow, cool checks out.

"They're XP Levelling*punches a locker*!!"

"That girl is worse than Kalvaxus."

"Littledoggy Girlcollar"

Am I not engaging with the narrative on it's own terms if I say "i'd tell Clerickiller to die mad, but she clearly already did, Jojo Siwa head-ass, in reference to that fuck-ass ponytail and your toxic yuri" Do I need to draw a little caitmay-style OC to say it for me, would that be better?

God-forbid, we have fun? Must we discourse, always? FourDogs is tragic, FourDogs is compelling, FourDogs is Dani from 9th grade. She is Azula from Avatar and Clare from Fleabag and Brennan Lee Mulligan from my dreams and that is something that can be so personal. But no one else has to participate in your parasocial relationship. What's crazy is, I actually like Kipperlilly! As a character. I mean, the "trauma is privilege" obviously hit a nerve with me because of real life stuff, but the image of her over the rogue teacher's grave?? With a backhoe and a "gotcha, bitch" expression??? Come on, that is fresh-off-the-vine Cunt™. Even more so than I imagined that moment to be when we first heard about it. Her ending up in a Ragh or Aelwyn place would be way more satisfying than a Goldenrod or Penelope Everpetal place, BUT IT WILL ALSO be satisfying to see whatever Kipperlilly's version of the locked-in-a-chokehold-and-being-gaslit-into-thinking-you-shit-the-coach's-pants-scene is. In addition to the non-lethal ass-kicking that proceeds it.

Y'all can chuck the insinuation that something so clearly subjective is actually objective and has moral implications that make me bad, directly in the garbage. What is this, religion, hey-o.

I think that the Steel moment from this first episode of Arc 3 is so juicy.

There's some thread about trust and family and how it intersects with the machinery of Empire.

Sort of like, Steel is Suvi's mom, but also her boss commanding officer. And when you work with/for family, there are some lines that can get blurred. We've already seen how this has some benefit to Suvi. In the leeway she has for messing up. But now we see how it cuts the other way when Steel is using the trust she has as her mom to get Suvi to comply with her orders for her job.

Aabria played it brilliantly, sort of noting that she's having this moment where her friends have damaged her trust in them (and Steel really made a hard case to her last arc about trusting anyone but her... like trust me, trust us, maybe don't trust whoever gave you that prophecy tho... oh how sad everyone is too wrapped up in secrets to trust. >.>) and needing fundamentally someone to trust in, so in a situation where she wants to push back, she feels cornered by this need and her need for acceptance and love.

And as I've seen others note, Steel setting the scene super casually as to invoke her family tie rather than her official tie is epic manipulation tactics.

I love the way Aabria and Brennan are building this world together.

And I think it's the tension in Steel's character that Wren observed, that Steel is of the Citadel first and everything else second. Which is why she didn't refer to Steel as someone to be implicitly trusted.

And someone who belongs to an institution first, particularly an imperial institution, can be a lovely person who is nice and who loves their family and who also turns around and does fully horrific acts for their institution. Steel could have been responsible for Suvi's parents' demise and still sleep decently at night if she took those actions for the good of The Citadel/Empire.

Brennan: let's explore how the doers of evil deeds are sometimes nice people interpersonally. An excellent nuance to learn.

Yeah some bad guys are mustache twirling bastards who are rotten to their core. And some bad guys are nice normal seeming folks just doing banality of evil stuff as part of a system.

It's like in real life you have your active pursuit of bigoted behavior folks, full blown fascists, costumes and all. And then you have your folks who are perpetrating the violence of the established imperialist system on folks. And the "if they weren't guilty, why didn't they do thing that wouldn't have stopped or helped the situation" folks.

Brennan: