How come it’s always the characters who crawled out of a grave that get put back in one?

Mollymauk Tealeaf

every party needs an ostenatious tiefling 💜 @woodsmokeandwords

i still won't draw him consistently but at least we've branched from the rbf i got excited about matt talking about him in regards to the m9 show and took a break 2 doodle him today :]

I've been thinking about Mollymauk, as I'm periodically wont to do, and the fandom discussion about him as a moral compass. Because the interesting thing here is, Molly wasn’t a very moral character. He was an unrepentant scammer. He had no respect for interpersonal boundaries and would deliberately push and break them. Generally, he was an asshole. As far as actually having a strong moral stance I would say Fjord was the standout of early m9, and to some extent Beau.

But here’s the thing: almost all of early m9 thought of themselves as horrible people. Fjord had been bullied so bad growing up that he still dealt with self-hate from it, and now suffered from survivor's guilt to boot. Caleb had killed his own parents. Beau, while she hated her dad, also had internalized self-hate and on some level thought she’d been such a shitty daughter she deserved his treatment. Nott was stuck in a body she considered monstrous. Yasha had survivor's guilt and knew she’d done bad things in her blank spots. Even when they did good, they didn’t think of themselves as good. Most of them were suspicious and asocial and faced the world with the same kind of distrust they expected to be (and were experienced in being) met with. (Jester was an exception, an agent of neither good nor bad but of amoral chaos)

But Molly was different. He was outspoken about loving life and people. He wanted to spread joy, even to people he didnt know or had even met: he slipped coin into people's pockets, hid a silver in a tree just so some stranger would one day be happy to find it. He openly cared for the party early on; was one of the first to step in and help Caleb when he went catatonic in battle. Above all, Molly had rules: where everyone else would agonize over what was the right or wrong or smart thing to do, Molly loudly proclaimed we don't leave people behind, and we leave every place better than we found it.

But the thing about Molly’s rules was, they were largely a cover. While the rest of the m9 thought they were bad even as they did good, Molly thought of himself as good even as he did bad. He scammed people, but made it a good and memorable experience, therefore thinking he gave more than he took. He charmed Nott and Fjord without consent, and when confronted would claim it was to help them. Out of the group, Beau saw through this, not because she was a better person but because she was a cynic. She saw that he caused harm, just as she did, and was personally affronted that he still thought of himself as good and tried to leave people happy, whereas she deliberately left every place worse than she found it.

I see Molly as a moral compass of the group not because he was actually any more moral than them, but because they made him their template. He was joy and brightness and he died trying to save them because it was the right thing to do, and they all chose to honor him by emulating his rules more than Molly himself ever did, because to them it was more than just a cover, backed up by genuine moral thought and discussion rather than small gestures. He taught them that it was possible to be kind of a shit person and still be good, to still love yourself and others. The idealized Molly they created never existed, and finally died for good when they resurrected him in the end and were met with a stranger, who they welcomed with the same love and care they would've expected Molly to show them.

A Molly drawing, for the soul :DD

THEIR LITTLE FACES IM DYING

a very squishy Molly now featuring an equally somft wizard boy

mighty nein + textposts

C2 Spoilers

it drives me NUTS when people say that Taliesin and Matt decided together backstage to kill off Molly. It makes 0 sense and it's ??? just such an unnecessary rumor to spread. People on reddit often spout it like it's just a known fact. Like, as if Taliesin didn't famously complain about having to pull all nighters over a busy weekend to roll and conceptualize a new character cuz he had ZERO backup. As if Molly didn't JUST have a huge lore drop and was clearly building to be a major focus of the next branch of the story. As if Matt didn't have LOADS of lore and planning already done that he had to to redo and reconfigure to fit with the Tomb Takers going and exhuming Molly to continue their plans. Matt said he had this whole thing where Lucien was gonna show up in a different body and hunt down the M9 to kill Molly and take his old body back. He SAID that!

Idk why this drives me nuts. It just feels... almost disrespectful. Like. Y'all. Taliesin isn't a baby. He fucked up. It's okay. He made a dumb choice in the heat of the battle and doubled down and it got his character killed. Things escalated and there wasn't a healer and it's JUST as simple as that. Stop making shit up to justify something that only SEEMS LIKE IT'S ORDAINED because these people are talented story tellers. Blowing all the work they did to reconfigure the story and just HAND WAVING and being like "they planned it ahead of time" is just rude. If it all seems preplanned it's cuz Matt busted his patootie off and reweaved a frayed tapestry into a beautiful work. Happy accidents and all that. CMON.

And that was the most extended example I've seen of Matt's dead serious "I really have to do this to them" face

My favourite Caleb Widogast moments:

"I was so sure. I was SO sure... Until I wasn't"

Caleb interacting with Lucien

Caleb being taught spells by Essek

Essek saying "They need you" when we all know it was an "I need you"

Trent using sending on Caleb after they escape

Molly kissing Caleb on the forehead

Yasha shaving Caleb

(Liam physically scratching his arms to show us Caleb's nervous habits)

When Essek (A WIZARD) pulls a HUMAN (Caleb) out from under a BUILDING

Look, his whole personality of a singed cat (similar to wet cat, slight difference) just makes me so interested in his character i focus on him for weeks at a time then forget abiut him for a month

"Things die. Some come back."

✨ COMMISSION INFO ✨

i have been steadily catching up with the mighty nein campaign the past few weeks after i fell off right around travelercon arc a few years ago.... i am ENTRANCED AGAIN and i have been doodling them while i put off thesis film work..

absolutely fucking sobbing

dearly beloved 🤲💞

pair with my equally flirty essek drawing 💜