The Wizard + The Witch + The Wild One

Neverafter: The Curdled Web

CW: Spiders (Though I won't be too descriptive.)

AH, this was such a fun battle! I really love how much the crew put into the setup of this episode. From the ambient lighting, the domes' screens with the webs and spiders, then the boss mini coming down from the center was so cool. Seeing all of the players reacting to that was such a joy. It shows how much time and dedication they put into these campaigns. Always going after more and better than the last one.

Speaking of the boss though, I can't express how much I love that Ylfa immediately was like, "She's like me and I can help." Even while doing her best to help defend her friends and Scheherazade. It's quite interesting at the end with her moment with her hand on the book. And her questioning her story and how she is always afraid in her story while in the Neverafter she could at least be with Ylfa. I thought that was so sweet and it really shows us more about the nature of the book.

I'm so glad that the group was having some better roles this time around, plus making some really smart moves in general. It was so different from the first battle though in a way, for the storyline at least, it almost feels necessary to have had the players experience a TPK as it allowed for the characters to grow and adapt to the world around them.

I can't wait for this Wednesday, I'm quite curious about where our heroes will be going and who they will run into.

Side note, I did finish Mischief and Magic. I will be posting about that sometime this week, maybe even tomorrow. Now, I am off to the stars.

i am begging you all to stop treating this site like instagram if you dont want it to be content free by next year

listen. aging into your thirties rocks. yes your joints get a little creaky. yes you can’t sleep in a pretzel on the floor anymore after a concert or a convention. and you lose some friends. but the thing is that you sort out who your real friends are and you sort out who you really are. and you get to see your friends settling into careers they like, and adopt new dogs and cats, and you find a job you can stand, and get really good at arts and crafts, and maybe that book you loved as a kid gets a movie deal and it doesn’t suck, and you learn to like new food and bake your own bread, and you realize that the great portfolio of self harm scars you all used to curate are going white with age and not updated, and half your friends are a different gender now and so much happier and maybe you are too, and you know who you are, and that it’s a journey and not a revelation. it’s a direction you’re headed, and you’re enjoying the trip.

reaching your 30′s rocks. and i’m hearing good things about what comes next, too.

Twitch Streamer Mary Ann Skuttle AU

She almost exclusively plays video games, tho sometimes she reviews the quality and cuteness of plushies. Sometimes she updates people on her quokki pet's level or how her personal AC Island looks, or her longest running Stardew Farm. (Maru IS her favorite Stardew marriageable NPC because it reminds her of her "loser boyfriend".)

Sometimes she gets her friends to play games with her on stream, or they're just in the background hanging out. Once when a game comes out that Mary Ann is legit excited for (in her own way) everyone gathers in a little watch party in the background with snacks as they settle in for the Marathon stream about to happen.

If she misses some streams she probably tosses out a simple update about her and her friends being on a quest or something similar that she implies is kinda lame. Her watchers KNOW she's an adventurer but there is never any elaboration.

They also know she has a boyfriend but known VERY little about him.

Loser Boyfriend™️ Confirmed Facts

1. Loser

2. His quokki pets gameplay is trash

3. Also an adventurer ig

4. Plays drums sometimes

5. They officially met when she curb-stomped his ass at a sports tryouts and he got mad. (No elaboration)

6. He made her a switch capable of running ROMhacks and mods.

7. Half-orc. The only times they have ever seen him is once or twice when he wordlessly hands her a mango soda from off screen. They have an entire emote of his hand with the soda bottle they spam sometimes. (#bottleboi)

Which is to say when Gorgug shows up in the background of the stream one day, cause Mary Ann rearranged or was streaming from somewhere else temporarily, people start freaking out.

Mary Ann notices but only comments "yeah, that's my loser boyfriend. Don't worry about it."

THAT'S NOT THE ISSUE MARY ANN!!!

THAT'S GORGUG THISTLESPRING, FAMOUS 4X WORLD SAVING RENOWN ADVENTURER BEFORE HE EVEN FINISHED HIGHSCHOOL, THE FIRST EVER BARBIFICER IN THE WORLD, AND GODDAMN FAMOUS ROCK STAR.

YOU CALL HIM YOUR LOSER BOYFRIEND?????

"His quokki pets gameplay is trash."

MA'AM-

To Ragh; or, On Fatness

Hi! Below is an actual play mini-essay. These are written as part of a personal writing practice of thinking critically about actual play. I hope you find this reading engaging and know that all I write reflects my own interpretations rather than as an official representation/canonization of these shows.

Ragh Barkrock may be one of the most beloved NPCs in Dimension20. It would be easy for Ragh, a bloodrush player good enough to potentially play professionally, to be presented as hypermasculine. In fact, the freshmen year art for Ragh, when he was antagonist rather than beloved ally, showed him in a muscular, inverted Dorito shaped body typical of a jock.

He's, obviously, built, and his cut jaw and cheekbones only bolster that image. As Ragh comes to terms with being gay at the end of Fantasy High, his countenance changes. When we see him again, the new art reflects a chubbier, happier Ragh.

The show aligning weight gain with acceptance and happiness already works against prevailing stereotypes that use weight loss as a quick metaphor for improving yourself and being the "real you." Moreover, connecting Ragh's acceptance of his sexuality with what seems like a larger comfort in his own body is a strong indictment of hypermasculine gay culture. As Gabriel Arana writes, gay men "must reconcile their sense of masculinity with their failure to conform to its heterosexuality." Not doing so has negative mental health outcomes, as Arana points out, and contributes to a culture that devalues fat queer people (see the popular "no fats, no femmes, no Asians" that often is touted in masculine gay subculture).

All of this, I think, is why Ragh's art for Junior Year was particularly impactful for me as a fat queer person. If being a gay man (or half-Orc, in Ragh's case) means having to situate your life in relationship to failing compulsory masculinity, then it seems there is an inherent queer aspect to embracing, celebrating, and showcasing a beloved NPC in an explicitly fat and happy body.

Ragh is still strong and he is still fat. His body radiates a commitment to the power of fat bodies to exist in spaces they are often violently unwelcome in, such as gyms. Existing in gyms and sports spaces as fat people means dealing the "impossible standard that rejects nearly all of us" and upholds a diet culture rooted in impossible, Eurocentric and colonial body standards. In TTRPGS or actual plays, there is a unique opportunity to think about how bodies might exist in worlds different from ours, to imagine bodyminds as otherwise. However, as queer critics like Paul Preciado have noted, sci-fi and fantasy representations of cyborgs and other transformative bodies often lean into "fixing" disabled people or moving gender nonconforming bodies more easily towards technologies upholding a normative standard rather than questioning the standard all together.

Spyre is a world that deals with similar issues to ours, even without direct one-to-one correlations, so it, too, is a place where the narrative and artistic choices should be examined in how it helps us interpolate the world the audience resides in. From the Applebees cultish adherence to a deity-based nationalism to the various representations of parental neglect and abuse and every side story in-between, Dimension20's flagship show does not shy away from difficult realities even when recasting them through fantasy. Ragh, as a half-orc gay son of a disabled single mother, then, I see the arc his fat body goes through as meaningful and intertwined with his self-acceptance and queerness. He moves away from the toxic masculinity engineered into his blood rush team to instead pursue coalition comraderie with his friends to the point that he and his mother end up joining a communal living situation with those friends and their parents. Ragh's body expands as his family does, as his ties to community do, and to me, the gift of his fatness is the invitation to expansion that it holds out to us as viewers.

no but if sandralynn dated bobby dawn her taste in men is hysterical cause so far her known dating history is -cleric of sol -literal devil -werewolf with a wild past turned kindly school counselor -gilear

Ally: *says K2 is quitting vaping*

Me: oh lmao what a coincidence I just got patches to stop yesterday and I'm starting tomorrow. I'm doing it for you K2

Brennan: *announces that K2 is real now. A real human woman living in England in our world with the memories of Kristen's life except happening in England*

Me, an English lesbian ex fundamentalist cult survivor who lost their faith in their early teens after their first real interaction with death: Blimey...

It's wild how many people took Kristen's line of questioning as her saying Tracker isn't taking her religion seriously instead of what I heard her asking which was:

How many of these people would be here if it wasn't religious Coachella?

Neverafter: Down Came the Rain

Before tomorrow's episode so I wanted to write down my thoughts for this episode really quick.

Wow, this episode hit the ground running in such a way that makes it feel like even though the characters still don't fully know or are only just beginning to understand their world, they feel so much more sure-footed in the next/new leg of their journey.

I like that we are seeing physically how the Neverafter is affecting our heroes. It makes this feel so much more immersive than it already is. Really bringing in these subtle horrors of living in times of chaos and misery that we get to visually see.

I really like seeing our heroes adapting in such a quick manner cause they have to or it could mean far worse outcomes. Plus most of them have the benefit of knowing both lives they have lived and can use that to their advantage which we have already watched them do. Though I wonder how things for Pinnochio will turn out since he doesn't have those memories but have the crow who is most likely a watch out for the Stepmother, that's my theory.

I can't wait for tomorrow's episode and this fight that is set up. I really hope that they get some better rolls this time around but I also feel like they are at a better advantage overall between being more experience than before and having the stealth that they got set up. I am so excited and wish that I could just binge it all at once but I'm also glad that I get to watch this as it is coming out.

As a side note. I'm almost done with The Unsleeping City: Chapter 2. I only have like one more episode and get out my little post about it tomorrow. I'm not sure what I'll watch next after though I think I'm leaning toward the other Aabria DMed campaign that I am forgetting the name of right now.

the emo kids