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creatingblackcharacters · 3 months

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"It takes HOW LONG?" Black Hair is an Art (pt.2)

(This is part two of the hair lessons, focusing on writing/narratives. If you want to know how the styles LOOK, refer to part 1 and its addendum)

Now that you know what our hair actually looks like, we’re going to discuss incorporating that into your writing (original fic, fanfic, webcomics, anything with a narrative). You don’t HAVE to give us a dissertation on "how you studied 'The Black People’s Hair'" in your story. That’s not what I’m asking you to do. I’m just asking you to CONSIDER the effort and existence of it. The same way you put effort into discussing nonblack hair textures? Should be the sort of tenderness and care you put into discussing ours. It does not stand to reason that I have read thousands of stories describing "the silky, black/blonde tresses/waves that fell down their pale back as their lover ran their fingers through them", but Black readers have nothing of the sort to compare to without seeking our own authors out. Our hair deserves some loving and adoration too!

This is a very long post describing hairstyles and how they can correspond to your character's design and decisions, so I'll put a read more here. The sections are organized into 'Twist Out', 'Afros', 'Locs', 'Braids', 'Black Men', and 'Straight Hair' if you Ctrl F. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE take your time to read all of this at some point though, as I put a lot of resources and explanation into this. I'm trusting you!

The History

As I discussed in the last lesson, our hair is incredibly important to us, and part of that includes the vulnerability and trust that comes along with access to it. This is due to a long history of oppression. There’s a racist history of making Black women hide our hair, as if it would ‘tempt white men’ away, regardless of it were due to actual attraction or the (more likely) rape of Black women. There’s a racist history of touching our hair, as though we are animals or zoo exhibits. We aren’t just going to let anyone touch our heads, so DON'T write that, unless you are doing so to show that it is a microaggression towards your character. Even now, cultural appropriation is rampant. If I were to wear cornrows with hoops, it'd be seen as 'ghetto' or 'gang-like'. Meanwhile, it is a fashion statement for white women. When Miles G Morales showed up in Across the Spiderverse, animators specifically chose cornrows for him, but many people mistakenly took it to me that he was 'rougher and tougher' than the original Miles. This was a racist perception! Hearing the Fade get hyped up in the news as the 'Travis Kelce', when Black men and especially NFL players have been wearing it for DECADES to crickets... it hurts lmao. Point is, you can describe and respect Black hair without being racist about it. Okay? Okay.

Vulnerability

YOUR CHARACTERS NEED TO BE CLOSE BEFORE ALLOWING THEM TO TOUCH THEIR HAIR!!!

It needs to be someone they TRUST wholeheartedly. Again, do NOT let a stranger touch their hair unless it’s meant to be an uncomfortable situation!

Consider CONSENT! Consent is ALWAYS beautiful! Have your other characters (Black or not) ASK to touch your Black characters’ hair! And not in the ‘Oh can I touch it?’ way. But if they’re really close friends or dating, have them ask to help do their braids, or wash their hair, or even just to stroke their hair and face! Or if your Black character is injured with a head wound, and they have to tend to them, have them ask! The asking shows a level of care and respect for your Black character and their body! At any point the consent may be revoked, and that needs to be respected! If they let them tend their head wound, but then smack their hand away after, that’s not ‘rude’- they’re allowed to do that, especially to signify that they aren’t at that level of trust yet. That's still angsty!

One great example of love from a Black character is doing their partner’s hair, or allowing their partner to do their hair. The ‘Hair-washing’ fic is a common thing in fanfiction; we all understand how that shows the depth of the trust in the relationship between the characters. How would you write about that trust with a Black character, if you don’t know what goes into taking care of their hair? If you don’t even know what their hair looks or feels like? The lack of awareness will show, and what should be a beautiful, deep moment will fall flat for Black readers. I wrote one once for my character with locs, and it honestly made me tear up because I realized that I’d never seen one, at least not in the majority white spaces that the fandoms I was in were.

Think about it- how often have you read a hair-washing fic with a Black character? Was it accurate? Would you know if it was accurate? Have you spoken to or heard anyone Black in your fandom space talk about it? Do you know anyone Black in your fandom space to ask? It’s things like this that we have to consider!

If you have a character that is nonblack in a relationship with your Black character, that honestly reveals even more trust because there’s a long history (again) behind that NOT happening! In life, we can’t go to the same places. I can’t go to a white hair salon or barbershop. They won’t know what to do! People are allowed to go through hair school without learning how to work with different, thicker textures. It’s not right nor fair, but it’s a part of the casual, systemic racism in our lives.

My feelings on what Lestat symbolizes aside, the scene where he plays with Louis’ curls in AMC's IWTV was an intelligent way to show that closeness, and how a nonblack character would affectionately play with a Black character’s hair! How he works with the curl in his fingers, rather than trying to pet Louis or run his fingers through- it was an intelligent move on Sam and Jacob’s part as actors to understand that THAT’S how that would go down!

If you have a character that wants to show a violation of your Black characters’ space, touching/harming our hair is cruelty on a very personal level that will generate an extreme reaction.

Think About Your Character!

When thinking about your Black character’s hairstyle, you need to think about your character themselves! What do they do every day? What are their hobbies? Are they Type A, Type B personality? Do they have a lot of time? Are they always in a rush? Are they noncommittal? Are they self-conscious? Artsy? Serious? Are they in a time period where the means to care for their hair are limited?

People make jokes and comments about how Black women don’t like getting our hair wet and dismiss our concerns. But it’s not out of ‘silliness’ or vanity. What you consider ‘just hair’ may have taken days of planning in advance and HOURS of our time! We put a lot of thought and effort into our hair, and it will easily shatter the illusion for your Black readers if you describe our hair poorly or create an unlikely scenario with it. It’s not a joke!

Some Terms:

Protective styles- a style that allows our hair to ‘rest’ with minimal manipulation

‘Tender-headed’- some people’s scalps are more sensitive to the tightness of styles, so it’ll hurt a little bit more and require some more gentleness (Regardless it’s still going to hurt for a bit after a fresh style)

Bonnets- a silk/satin cap of varying lengths that we wear at night to protect our hair and keep the moisture in

Loc Sock- same idea, but for locs

Durag- keeps short haircuts protected; can even help create the wave pattern that many Black men enjoy

Scarf- same idea as the bonnets, except scarfs can be used specifically for straight hairstyles to wrap them up to keep it straight and neat

(It'll seem real legit if you include your Black characters wearing their headcoverings at night! I remember laughing while reading Twilight because I knew that if Edward snuck into my room at night, he'd see me in my scarf or bonnet lmao.)

General Hair Care:

While I don’t completely agree with some of the advertising in this first one (it’s the internet. Can’t go nowhere without someone trying to hawk something) it’s cool in general to explain how our hair looks the way it does.

If you have Black children OCs, it’s important to consider that their parents have to do their hair, and how that will be its own experience! (It can be very stressful for Black children to get their hair done, as it takes a long time and can be physically uncomfortable. There are plenty of stories of burnt ears and tugged tangles and not very nice old women. Children are children! Keep in mind how they may behave while getting the style of your choice.

Moisturizing to keep healthy

Twist Outs

Cute twist out styles

Twist outs are a style that takes overnight to hold, or maybe even a few days! The cool thing is that the twists themselves can be the style! So the tighter you want their curls to be, the longer they’ll wear the twists in. If you want to describe your character with tighter curls, there needs to be a section of time where their hair remains in the twists! If your character has an event, and they want twists… this needs to be done in advance. Your character will NOT untwist them the day of, unless they want weak, limp curls (or you want the scene to compose of them having weak curls).

How long they'll last depends on the activity of your character! If all they do is work a desk job, or they don’t sweat very much, the twists can last some time! But if they sweat, or wear hats or caps, it’s not going to last long. Maybe a week.

Pros: Very versatile! If you have a character that loves trying new looks and enjoy being spontaneous, twist outs are for them! Easy! If your Black character is younger, or haven’t done their hair before, this is a great way for them to start working with their hair! Doesn’t take long (to do)! If your character is in a rush, and they do their twists, they can go just about anywhere. If they’re not self-conscious, this will be just fine.

Cons: It cannot get wet again, or the style will puff up back into your natural texture. It does not last long enough to say “oh my character went on a two year long fantasy adventure with this style.” If you want your character to have a twist out the whole time, they’re going to have to take time to do it. It would be cool if you incorporate a scene where they’re working on their hair, maybe in the background while everyone’s discussing plans or something. Just a reminder that their hair isn’t just staying magically twisted (unless they have the magic to do that).

Afros

Afro Style Guide, Style Guide for Men (works for any gender though)

Wash & Gos are just that- wash it (or really, condition it, you don’t have to shampoo it every time) dry with a t-shirt (to prevent breakage), put some oil and a light crème on it, fluff it up and you’re good to go! Maybe an hour at max and can be done while getting dressed in the morning!

Pros: Easy! If they’re doing a full, combed out afro, it’s not as simple, it will take more time. And at night it has to be plaited so that it maintains its length, otherwise it will tangle. But other than that, that’s still not all that hard. They can show off their curls! Black characters can and should have pride in their hair. It’s beautiful. This is the opportunity that you as an author can describe the pure texture of their hair, how it shines in the light, how the coils look, how soft it is! Romanticize Black hair the same way you do anyone else’s!

Cons: None really! Afros are wonderful! Just make sure that your character has a way to keep their hair from getting tangled. Just because it’s easy doesn’t mean there’s no maintenance! A pick, a bonnet, oil and water go a long way!

Locs

Five stages of locs

A person who does locs is a loctician.

Can be palm-rolled or interlocked/crocheted

I cannot emphasize enough that you do not want just anyone doing their locs! They can really mess up someone’s hair if they don’t know what they’re doing. I say that to say, for your character, if they don’t trust the person doing their hair… they should. They should not be walking into anyone’s place to get their hair locked; they’d do research first.

The time it takes locs to ‘bud’ (that is, to actually form the loc) depends on the texture of their hair. But it can take up to 3 months to even a year for them to actually ‘loc up’. So if your character just got locs, they’re not going to look neat. They’re going to be frizzy.

As long as they’re washing their hair, keeping it moisturized, and not using wax products (DO NOT HAVE ANY BLACK CHARACTER USE WAX PRODUCTS IT IS BAD FOR BLACK HAIR) it’ll last forever! Locs are incredibly strong, especially the thicker they get! It is recommended that locs are retwisted every six weeks, but if your character has freeform locs, doesn’t have the money or time right now, or they just aren’t that pressed, they can grow indefinitely.

Something cute to write in your stories: sometimes locs do just… fall out. Not the whole thing! But the same way thin hair gets everywhere… sometimes the ends of thin locs just… fall off! You’ll find little buds on the ground. This happens especially in the budding stage.

Pros: Very low daily maintenance! At most they’ll need a bonnet or loc sock, and oil/water mix to spritz and massage in. Strong style that can hold any look- buns, curls, etc. They can be dyed, though it will take a long time to do so. I say that to say, if you want your character to have bright green locs, go for it!!

Cons: Low daily, but HIGH wash day maintenance! So if your character has a fancy date or something to go on, they should not be getting their hair retwisted the same day, or at least not so close to. It’s going to be shiny, oily, and tight, which can cause discomfort. Give them the day to let the hair settle!

Locs are PERMANENT!! This isn’t a bad thing, as much as it is a ‘KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING BEFORE YOU DO IT’ thing. Technically they can be combed out, but that would take a very long time and very precise effort, and most people aren’t going through all that. They’re just going to cut them off and start fresh. If you have a character that would balk at such a choice, locs aren’t for them. If you have a character that’s picky and choosy, that likes versatility, that can’t make up their mind, do NOT give them locs unless they’re making the conscious choice to commit. (Again, this is subjective! Maybe they have locs because their mother died and it reminds them of her! Okay! That works!) If you have a character that’s vain, or at least doesn’t like looking awkward… unless they’re going to style up the awkward stage, they’re not going to want locs. (Awkward stage: the first two stages get considered awkward because the locs look messy. This is because they’re turning from curls to locs!)

Braids

Styles

How long braids can take depend on the style. Box braids can take 10-12 hours to do! Microbraids? You HAVE to have multiple people or you'll be there for damn near a day (and that's assuming you have a masterful braider!)

How long they last depend on your character! If they're like me as a kid, I didn't care how I looked, so my mom got me cheap braids and let me run free for two summer months. So if your Black character is a carefree child! Go for it. But if they're a teen or adult (or are very concerned about how they look) a month to six weeks is about how long braids can stay in before your new growth shows. A character that is usually trimmed and proper having loads of new growth over their braids may symbolize that they don’t have it all together anymore.

Pros: Protective style! Great way to let your character have minimal daily maintenance; oil and water and something to cover it. SOME braided styles allow for high activity and even rain without changing. It depends on the hair that’s been braided in, as well as the style. Incredibly versatile! They can have multi-colored braids, long braids, short braids, beads, trinkets… if your character is creative and bubbly and likes to experiment, the sky is the limit! That can symbolize their artistic expression, just by describing what they look like! So long as they have the time, they can have any look and style they want. No need to commit too long.

If your character is capable of doing their own braids (and locs, btw), they’re amazing. Like… that’s mad respect for them. If you describe your character being able to do their own braids, they’ve got amazing arm strength, patience, and skill. That skilled dexterity can be revealed as a trait of theirs through that alone.

Cons: They take a LONG TIME. Your character is not going anywhere. If they’re getting braids… they’re not going anywhere. If you write your character doing anything fancy the day of, depending on the type of braids, Black readers are not going to believe you. Even if it did get finished, it would be very tight. I currently have a poll going on, and so far, a good majority of the 10+ answers are braids! It cost MONEY. It is NOT CHEAP to get braids done! If your character is poor as a church mouse, they will be doing those braids with their friend in front of youtube. Because it can be in the hundreds of dollars. (Don’t get me started on hair culture right now; BACK IN MY DAY IT COST-)

Hairstyles on Black Men

I want to specifically give space and applause to these hairstyles on Black men, because we REALLY don’t give Black men enough credit for all the creativity they show with their hair! And again, with The Killmonger being the choice style in all these damn vidya games despite almost no Black man I know choosing it as a look… PLEASE LOOK! WE HAVE OPTIONS! Try describing how gorgeous these looks can be on your Black men characters! It would be very nice.

Straight Hair

Well, I was going to explain, but ol ‘Guest Writer’ here pretty much lays it all out! So just go ahead and read this article lol.

Just to re-emphasize, straight hair is NOT something that just grows out of our head that way! It takes effort! So if you have a character that doesn’t feel like maintaining straight hair, they shouldn’t have it! If your character has natural hair and lives in a rainy or humid city, they’re going to be fighting that weather to keep it straight- make sure that’s consistent with their personality!

My best friend used to wash and flatiron her hair every day. Like, laser focused on looking that good, Type A shit (she’s a top money banker now, so I guess it worked out). If you have a character like that, it’s fine! If they’re lazy any other time of the day, they’re not suddenly going to be waking up at 5am to flat iron their hair. It’s not consistent.

Conclusion

That’s pretty much what I have! I’m not the guru on all things Black hair, and I obviously cannot encompass every potential scenario you may have for your characters. Really, my intention here is to get you to think about how our hair reflects our character and personalities, and how when you write and/or draw a Black character, you have that ability! And when you’re able to incorporate that naturally, it makes your Black readers feel seen, like you actually cared about that character enough to give them just as much description as your nonblack characters. You don’t have to be a master at it! Just… occasionally the little things that we can go ‘oh, yeah!’ at would be nice. An equivalent effort would be nice.

Remember, it’s the thought that counts, but the action that delivers!

#creatingblackcharacters #black hair #black art #black characters #character design #black writers

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transmutationisms · 2 months

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oh i would actually be curious to hear your thoughts on lolita book covers in that case. i do get the sense that some of the covers are designed to uncritically titilate and seem to misunderstand the text, but that could obviously be an assumption on my part lol.

oh i agree that the cover designs tend to run counter to nabokov's intentions, both in the text and in the literal instructions he gave about covers lol. they pretty clearly rely on putting some young girl on display, which is exactly what nabokov did not want to do visually; they also tend to suggest dolores as some kind of seductress (sultry gazes, pouty lips, &c). clearly this is precisely the opposite of what the text tells us about her.

however when evaluating these visual choices i find that many people portray them as some kind of originary and culturally polluting act: that is, a narrative emerges that the problem here is people misinterpreting 'lolita', and then publishing it with covers that will do harm to young girls &c. i think this is lazy analysis and fundamentally makes idealist assumptions overestimating the effect of cultural products (books, book covers) on problems, like the sexualisation of children, that are in fact grounded in material relations, such as in this case the status of children as legal property and the total power granted to adults over them. that is to say, these broader conditions are at root the reason that cultural products like the cover of 'lolita' look the way they do, and chalking it up to individuals not understanding the book is never going to get us very far; and also, although some of these covers are pretty egregious, they are the reflection rather than the cause of the sexualisation of children, a problem that would continue to exist even if every edition of 'lolita' ever printed just said "humbert humbert is an unreliable narrator and dolores haze is a child he is preying on" on the cover.

fundamentally i also think this sort of conversation often elides some more interesting points about whom these covers communicate to and what they say. you suggest they are meant to "titillate"; although i would agree dolores is often shown as sexual, desirable, and seductive, i'm not sure that's the same as assuming the cover is trying to arouse the potential reader. for one thing, to put it bluntly, this style of cover tends to be associated more with books marketed to women than to heterosexual men. and more broadly, and this is something the lolita podcast really fails to understand imo, the phenomenon of people reading 'lolita' and relating themselves to dolores is not mutually exclusive with this type of rhetorical construction of dolores-through-humbert's-eyes. that is, often what appeals about dolores is, i think, precisely the fact that through her, people find a way of discoursing about or simply re-enacting the kind of sexualisation that they are already subjected to or have been in the past, whether or not at a level as explicit and extreme as what nabokov depicts.

i'm not really interested in a simple moral condemnation of the people who design these covers; that critique writes itself. they are obviously bad and facile, and reflective of precisely the culture of child sexual abuse that nabokov's text condemns. but if we are interested in the reception of these objects, or interrogating the cultural meaning and implications of their existence, i just think there's a lot more going on here than what the podcast portrays as a simple sort of 'broadcast' model of mass media wherein the 'lolita' book cover and trope is beamed out to unsuspecting innocents who are then exposed to its nefarious elements. dolores appeals to people for lots of reasons, some prurient, some pitying, some openly self-projective, and these are not mutually exclusive with one another nor are they mutually exclusive with readings that reproduce elements of the very lolita character that humbert creates and uses to silence and re-write dolores. we can be uncomfortable with that and refuse to talk about it but if that's the position someone wants to take then i'm not likely to be interested enough in their opinions to, like, listen to their podcast about this book lol.

#lolita

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pythoria · 8 months

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something i've seen people complain about is the fact that all the origin characters are these super-powerful people, and that for example gale is an archmage but you start the game at level 1 so he can only cast firebolt ha ha point and laugh. this is... really silly. not only because you're going to start at level 1 regardless (because it's a game), but because them being very powerful actually makes sense from a narrative standpoint! they're not just some randos that the mindflayers happened to capture, they're powerful people that were abducted so that the dead 3's chosen could expand their influence.

of course you would want mystra's chosen tadpoled. of course you would want zariel's right hand under your spell. of course you would want The Blade of Frontiers (ravengard's son!! they probably thought they could extort ravengard, or blackmail him). sure, shadowheart and astarion aren't powerful and influential, but they have connections to the hidden cloister of shar and cazador szarr and his palace, two places that are very hard to either find or get spies into. and obviously tadpoling githyanki helps you destroy the gith from the inside, and since the gith are mindflayer's sworn enemies, you can see why controlling them would be useful.

point is, when you crash-land on that beach, you're not meeting run-of-the-mill ilithid thralls. you're meeting elites, people that are important to gortash's plan, and people who were already considered a threat to gortash and his buddies. i wouldn't be surprised if the ship they were all on was specifically a ship of future political pawns to play an important role in the grand design. and at the end of it all, it's not really surprising that these people would be The Three's undoing. you're not playing as random people who found themselves tasked with saving the world. saving the world was already going to be their job (for the most part).

#pythoria.txt #bg3 #astarion #baldur's gate 3 #baldur's gate iii #gale dekarios #gale of waterdeep #bg3 spoilers #wyll ravengard

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cheeseanonioncrisps · 1 year

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Been thinking about Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and what makes Death the Wolf such an effective villain, and like… character design and voice acting is certainly doing a lot there, don't get me wrong, but I think there's something else at play.

Death is the most terrifying character in Puss in Boots, because he's the only one playing the genre straight.

The premise of the Shrek films has always been that they're normal, modern people living in wacky fairytale land.

The evil king uses his magic mirror as a dating app. The fairy godmother uses business cards to contact her clients. Her workers consider unionising over their lack of dental plan.

Puss in Boots 1 kinda broke the mould in that— while there are plenty of modern elements to how the characters act and how their world works— it's more specifically intended to be characters from the world Zorro living in wacky fairytale land. But the point still stands.

The aim of the Shrek films and spin-offs is to subvert common fairytale tropes for comedic effect. What if the princess fell for the ogre? What if Prince Charming was an entitled dick? What if Goldilocks teamed up with the three bears and started a crime family?

But Death? Death, for the most part, isn't playing that game.

No character questions why he doesn't just kill Puss outright. There are no gags about him being inconvenienced by Jack Horner losing so many men. Nobody makes any self-aware fourth wall breaking jokes about why he bothers with the whole whistling thing.

We all know why he does the whistling thing. It's the same reason why Little Red Riding Hood has to go through the whole "what big eyes/ears/teeth you have, Grandma" rigamarole. The same reason why the wolf takes care to knock before blowing the little pigs' houses down.

The Wolf is scary because he's the only actual fairytale creature in this entire setting. He's not bound by rules of logic or common sense, or his own will, he's bound by the narrative.

And that's also why he backs down at the end.

The first time he and Puss fight, in the bar, Puss is arrogant. The second time, in the Cave, Puss is scared out of his wits. It's the third time, on the wishing star, that Puss learns his lesson. Of course the Wolf backs down after that! The rules say he has to.

But, on another level, there is also the issue of Puss realising that he wants more from his life than just to be a legend.

They say "legends never die", but the most famous part of any given legend tends to be the story of how the hero finally bites the dust.

And "he was such a great fighter that Death himself had to kill him off, personally!" is just the sort of ending that would fit the legend Puss has constructed around himself. In a sense, the Wolf is giving Puss exactly what he proclaims to want— the chance to go down in history.

Puss realising he doesn't want that anymore is the catalyst for sending the Wolf away. Through his own egotistical and reckless attitude, he turned himself into a story and thus summoned a narrative device. Only by choosing to value his life over the legend is he able to escape that trap.

The Wolf's defeat is both the natural ending of the story that he and Puss have been playing out since the film began, and a rejection of the natural ending to the story Puss has been telling about himself since he first became the hero of San Ricardo.

#puss in boots: the last wish #pibtlw #rambles #meta #puss in boots #puss in boots meta #puss in boots the last wish #puss in boots the last wish spoilers #death the wolf

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txttletale · 3 days

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If we're asking about games on your list of favourites, as someone who adored Paradise Killer, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it! I always enjoy your analysis.

so first of all the aesthetics of paradise killer are really good. usually games that were written in english but read like translations from japanese irritated me, but here i think it is very much leaned into and embraced as an aesthetic and set of cultural signifiers in its own right, which i really enjoy. the character designs are outlandish and charming. but what i really like about it is like, the way the core premise works

in most detective games, there is a correct answer, and not getting it is a failure state. you can't end a case in ace attorney with your innocent client being convicted, you can't get the wrong guy in the frogware sherlock holmes games. and this invariably, even if the game is critical in other aspects, tends to come around to a fundamental faith in the legal system and authority, right--something that's kind of baked into the detective genre at a fundamental level.

paradise killer upends that by simply saying "you are the detective. get the facts you need, make a compelling argument, and if the authorities above you believe you then you get to distribute justice as you see fit." you arrive on the island you're investigating and you're immediately told "hey, this member of a disenfranchised underclass did it, we've already arrested him, here's the evidence." and absolutely nothing stops you from taking that evidence and walking into the trial room and presenting it and saying "yep, he did it!" and beating the game! it's not a 'bad ending', you don't get a big popup saying 'you're wrong', the powers that be just accept the convenient narrative you've been given to present and everything moves on.

i like this from both, like, an ideological perspective, and also from an interpersonal stakes perspective. in most detective games, you can't miss a crucial piece of evidence, either because the game will not proceed until you pick it up or because you'll be forced to restart the 'trial' or 'deduction' segment when you game over because you're missing it. in paradise killer, whatever argument you put forward, if enough evidence supports it--even if you know for a fact it's wrong!--leads to the person you're accusing being executed. so the stakes are much higher, right, because instead of a game over screen and trying again, getting it wrong means that's just... how the game ends, with an innocent person being executed.

and more importantly i think it does a fantastic job--better imo even than something like disco elysium--at deconstructing the fantasy of justice. a constant theme of the game and something that the protagonist repeats often is "there is a difference between facts and the truth". you can withhold evidence at trial because it implicates your friends, or misrepresent it to implicate that bitch you hate. nothing in the system exists to stop you getting wrong, in fact your superiors encourage you to make the easy completely stritched up conviction and move on with your life.

and at the end, even if you get it right, if you catch all the criminals--all the time you spend investigating this island shows that, like, the society you're part of is fucking evil! you're all deranged immortals making constant human sacrifices to your evil gods! and you don't change that by solving the case, the whole thing just packs up and moves on. you don't get any comfortable resolution to that or to your role in it. you can play lady love dies as a diehard true believer or as a dissident rebel but either way she's ultimately just another cog in a machine, dispensing an alien and uncaring justice that is only attached to any real morality or truth by your decision to do so. a genuinely incredible game.

plus i like how whenever you open it a voice says 'paradise killer' so you know you're playing paradise killer

#ask

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livinginadumpster · 6 days

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One thing I really like in Dead Boy Detectives is the use of blood/gore/horror. With a TV-MA rating, a show with horror themes is obviously going to have some blood and violence, and there are clear instances if this in DBD, but while it's definitely there, it's almost never gratuitous. That's because scenes like the Devlin murders or Maxine's death aren't really about those deaths, rather, they're about the characters' reactions to them and the way the story is shaped by them.

In the Devlin house, the camera focuses not on the girls being killed but on Edwin, Crystal, and particularly Charles reacting to their murders with horror, shock, and anger. The blood splatters in a meaningful way, rather than simply a horrifying one, over the TV and the popcorn and the younger daughter's stuffed rabbit, tarnishing the innocence of everything it touches. While the tragedy of the murders themselves are important, the main focus is Charles' reaction to them as a result if his own trauma. Showing the minutia of the killings would take away from that, so it simply isn't there.

Even Maxine's death, while definitely played off more for shock value than the Devlin murders, serves a purpose. Episode 5 focuses on the failure of romantic relationships, on betrayals from those you thought you could trust, and the Maxine subplot adds to that. It begs the question, who can you trust in this world? At the end of the episode, the answer we are given is your friends, your found family, because love will kill.

It seems to me that the blood in hell represents the guilt of those it touches - Simon's wounds heal when he forgives himself; Edwin loses the blood covering him after Charles turns up to rescue him (albeit by a horrifying cause); the people in the Lust room are drenched in blood and get it on Edwin when they try to drag him down. It's not just there to demonstrate the horrors of hell, but to brand its inhabitants.

There are lots of other examples. The blood when Niko dies is there obviously because that's what happens when you get stabbed, but also (in my opinion) as a visual callback to her saying that red is the color of courage. The cat king's bloody corpse and Monty's blood-splattered face show Esther's ruthlessness and disregard for anyone in her path. Lilith is covered in blood as a symbolic part of her character design. Everything serves a purpose, narratively or symbolically.

(The only example of gore that served no particular purpose that I can think of was in episode one when the WWI ghost drooled blood all over Charles' face, but it was the pilot episode and that whole scene was meant to be shocking, so it can be forgiven.)

Anyway, I really like the way they use blood in DBD, because it shows such a level of detail and care. I enjoy horror but not gore so much, and to me it's refreshing to see it used so tastefully and executed so well.

#all of my well thought out text posts turn out way longer than intended #sorry guys the adhd said I wasn't allowed to shut up #dead boy detectives #charles rowland #edwin payne #crystal palace #maxine #devlin house murders #niko sasaki #thomas the cat king #monty the crow #esther the witch #dbda spoilers

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utilitycaster · 3 months

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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.

#answered #Anonymous #long post #cr tag #anyway though i am going to go lie down and try to take a nap bc the daylight savings got me but good.

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thefiresofpompeii · 4 days

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an essay about Rogue, The Chimes of Midnight, and how i believe all this ties in to the overarching themes of the series EVEN IF the inside-a-tv-show theory proves untrue

“Rogue” named himself after a stock character. he is the archetypal Handsome Rogue because there has to be a Handsome Rogue role in a period drama story set in Austenesque Regency England.

it’s all theatre — smoke and mirrors. just like the war waged against imaginary foes in boom (because there needs to be an Enemy in a wartime story) was theatre; the creation of the Bogeyman in space babies (because there needs to be a Scary Monster in a children’s bedtime story) was theatre; The Woman following Ruby in 73 yards (because there needs to be a Ghost in a folk horror story) was theatre. dot and bubble less so, but it’s wise to note — the dots created the slugs after all. they invented the slugs so that there would be a tangible Creature for the finetimers (and the Doctor) to fear, rather than simply being betrayed by their own technology. because that’s exactly what the false, harmful narratives colonialists tell themselves — stories of taming and conquering a wild Mother Nature and her ferocious beasts — have trained them to expect from the world. the dots were telling a story too, or rather putting on a play.

the penultimate episode of any doctor who series, if not always leading directly into the two-parter finale, will typically begin to tie up loose narrative strands that have stretched across the entire season. at a first impression rogue doesn’t seem to be doing that. but then you take a closer look at the antagonists: creatures that play a role for fun without the slightest regard for those around them. lethal LARPers. cosplayers out to kill. to put it pretentiously, a hyper-realistic theatre of cruelty.

to nobody’s surprise, i’m bringing up my favourite eighth doctor audio drama — the chimes of midnight. edward grove gives every person trapped in the time loop a designated role: the chauffeur, the doctor-detective, the plucky young lady of the house, the lady’s maid, the scullery girl, the housekeeper. they keep playing these roles, over and over, until they begin to forget their original identity, until the part they’re playing takes over their entire sense of self. the servants keep dying over and over because they cannot transcend their roles, because they believe themselves to be “nothing but a scullery maid”. they are reduced to the parts they play in the narrative until they become nothing outside of it, until they become confined to a single location.

the chimes of midnight is set in Edwardian-era England, a time of restrictive, prescriptive class, status and social roles which defined a person’s life and career trajectory — this strict delineation is driven to its logical conclusion and deconstructed under the unnatural conditions of Edward Grove. similarly, rogue is set in a Regency-era mansion — another historical period defined in the popular imagination by its complicated social rules, elegant courtship dynamics, strict class barriers, gossip and elitism. these two doctor who stories don’t have any intentional watsonian connection, but they are deeply linked on a thematic level.

high society is forced theatre. a 24/7 LARP. play your part, put on your costume, don’t interrupt the performance. the audience is waiting. they’re oh so hungry for tragedy.

the biggest part of them all, the most sought-after role, of course, is The Doctor. a standard to live up to. a name to wear like a banner, a pledge, a promise. he has to be like this because this is what he’s like.

the Scullery Maid scrubs the kitchen floor. The Detective searches for clues. the Chauffeur starts up his car. the Duchess hosts a glittering soirée. the Rake hides a secret fling with the Wallflower. the Rogue breaks hearts and broods on the balcony.

and the Doctor? the Doctor dances. “onwards and upwards”. forever in perpetual motion, spinning and spinning and spinning across the stars. never pausing to breathe. never stopping.

p.s.: so, pray tell, what is Ruby Sunday in all this? “The Companion”, of course. smart, funny, sassy, quick-witted, brave, cheeky, curious, self-sacrificial. she almost feels generic because she’s meant to be. she wasn’t born. she was written. an essential part of the story too. circling the Doctor like a satellite forever.

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molluskmirage · 7 months

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The villainization of Bad is perplexing to me for a lot of reasons. Fandom wanting him to pay for his actions when he didn’t even have the highest kill rate in purgatory on his team… Bad and Tubbo had the same amount of kills day 1. Bad was probably killed more by red team then he killed yet still its not enough for the red fandom.

also regarding Dapper. ‘Bad’s actions made it so no one would help dapper’…. Bad would never hold a parents actions against a child. Leo actively helped Vegetta and Roier place bombs all over Bad and Dappers farm house causing them to move. And even when they moved Bad still included Leo on the allow list. He loves Leo. Dapper really admired Vegetta and wanted to speak with him but was struck by him for teasing Foolish.

Bad teases and tricks and lies about unimportant things, steals furniture and he has trust issues yes, but he also counter balances that by providing others with lavish gifts and items and knowledge that takes hours to do. He repairs broken machines the kids have done for there parents, he takes care of the kids so no one dies of neglect, he keeps people company, he’s provided so much countless food and armor and exp to everyone at such volume its absurd to count. He made spawn so that it would be easy for others to get around when they died and constantly refills the xp.

He’s rp an actual demon but genuinely most of Bad’s actions while surface level inconvenient in depth he’s ridiculously generous and kind. The only time of him ‘cutting loose’ being in a game that was designed for killing and his son instructed him too. So many in the fandom gave weight to Chayanne’s message but for Dapper it was :eyeroll: whatever. Dapper who had been self harming themselves to help aid his siblings and other islanders was instructing Bad to run over other islanders, he wouldn’t say that unless it was important.

I can understand not liking a character theirs plenty I dont personally find my cup of tea but that doesnt make them evil. Its so strange to me that the fandom finds Bbh to be ‘the worst’ narratively, when Slime actively tried to murder Dapper and the other kids, Cellbit has gone full serial killer, Vegetta nearly killed Bobby with bombs, Forever lashed out in anger at Leo yet Bad stealing furniture that can be replaced by sticks and wool is the absolute dread of the server. Bad in a killing game was mean when others were mean and one of the few members of his team that could protect his team.

it’s interesting because for the most part Bad’s crimes are psychological (not to say its not a torment) but it’s interesting because it seems to be labeled so much worse then physical actions other characters have made. Bad doesn’t let others actions get to him he forgives and picks himself up and tries again maybe more guarded this time but he doesnt complain about others actions he always blames himself and carries on. Bad doesnt excuse himself he knows that his actions can cause distress from others and still does them without regret but he also understands others wont like him for his actions and fully accepts and expects it.

#Qsmp post Purgatory badboyhalo villainy fandom discourse

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the-cooler-newton · 6 months

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Unpacking is very cute and I admire the type of narrative it's able to pull off just through the gameplay of moving into spaces. the intimacy of everyday objects, still life, environmental storytelling, etc etc etc

But i have Got to talk about 2010. Unpacking is a game where all you do is take stuff out of boxes and find spaces for it, and for the most part it gives you quite a lot of freedom about where you can put stuff. There are some rules - most things cant go on the floor, stuff generally has to be in the right room, the soap has to be near the sink, etc etc, but apart from that there's no wrong place to put things.

Moving into this fucking guy's house in 2010 felt like putting everything in the wrong place. It felt like I wasn't supposed to be there, a square peg into a round hole. His entire house is pristine when I get there, everything organised perfectly, evenly spaced, colour-matched, sterile. Throughout the level I'm shoving everything around on his bookcase to fit my hoard of knickknacks, putting my red plastic colander in the cupboard above his cool green matching set of plates and bowls, my bright purple toothbrush cup, hairbrush, and straightening iron clutter his pristine bathroom counter. My family of stuffed chickens is made to look silly next to his fancy mixology set and miniature sand garden.

I end up putting my laptop and drawing tablet out on the kitchen island because there isn't a desk anywhere I can use. My markers and hoard of sketchbooks are crammed into my bedside table. I'm not allowed to move his posters in the living room, so my university certificate goes under the bed.

I won't pretend that I, playing Unpacking in 2023, didn't know how the game ended. I knew already that the protagonist would move on from this guy, but even if I didn't, I would have been able to tell. It was not fun moving into his house, it was not easy or charming to meld our lives together, I did not feel welcome there. Moving in with him felt like a transgression, an imposition. Moving in with him felt like a wrong decision in a game where I couldn't really make wrong decisions.

An incredible magic trick of game design, in my opinion.

#also something about how pristine this guys house was #but like. the CDs in his CD rack were all in there at random #and his fucking underwear was scattered randomly throughout 2 drawers #just gave me rancid vibes. this man cares so much about the Facade. the Presentation.#and as a result his house has the character and charm of a fluorescent tube light #anyway. good game #unpacking #unpacking game

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floatingcatacombs · 6 months

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Go Nagai was insane for this one

12 Days of Aniblogging 2023, Day 8

I like to always have manga of dubious quality on tap for when I’m having trouble sleeping. Ideally, reading a few chapters will distract me, but I won’t want to stay up late shotgunning volumes. Devilman Lady was the ideal manga for this, and this is maybe the last time anyone will ever describe Devilman Lady as "ideal".

An extremely brief introduction is in order. If Osamu Tezuka is the godfather of manga, then Go Nagai is manga’s weird horny uncle. He’s arguably just as influential, the two of them just moved in different circles, each reifying entire genres. Nagai is more or less responsible for magical girls, super robot, and ecchi, and also spent a lot of time in the sphere of supernatural and post-apocalyptic manga. These are fundamentally genres of extremity and ridiculousness, and Nagai dials every one of his works up to 11 by the end, one way or another. Devilman is probably his most famous work over here, and it’s a stone-cold classic for a reason. Nagai has kept revisiting it over the years, with side stories, alternate universes, manga cameos, and even entirely new series that function as stealth sequels such as Violence Jack. But his most notable attempt is Devilman Lady, which is far more than a simple gender-swap of the original.

Devilman Lady is about swimming deep in filth. It’s easily the most disgust-provoking manga I’ve read, with pretty much every content warning under the sun applicable. This is a truly rotten and conspiratorial world that Nagai is depicting. Societal decay manifests in countless forms, including rape, child abuse, homophobia, militarism, and hatred towards immigrants. Anything that could be potentially understood as fanservice is placed right next to or directly within the atrocities at hand, and it's genuinely unclear how much Nagai intended that as commentary. His intentions throughout this whole manga are a bit of an enigma, but what's clear that he is firing on all cylinders.

This is an extremely zeitgeisty 90’s work, with intelligent design debates, the mapping of the human genome, new age paranoia, religious zealotry, and anxiety over pollution all playing out on the pages. Where it breaks from many of its contemporaries is a decisive rejection of the end of history. This is the kind of thing you write when you’re still reeling from the subway sarin gas attacks and your country's role in the Gulf War and subsequent militarization. It’s the perfect manga for capturing a time period when ten to twenty percent of Japan’s population were estimated to have belonged to a new religious movement.

The punchline to all of this is that he doesn’t know how to draw women.

By the back half of Devilman Lady, Nagai’s depictions of hellscapes and grotesque monsters reach near-Berserk levels of detail and technical competency. And yet his female protagonists are still drawn in a drastically simpler 70's style, only now with giant spheres grafted to their chests. Either humans and the infernal are two completely different skillsets, or this was a deliberate artistic decision, and both are difficult to swallow. Either way, we just have to accept the juxtapositions.

one of my favorite pages to show people devoid of context

The finale is just nuts. Go Nagai makes textual the homoeroticism and gender deviance of the original Devilman manga, as the world burns in both nuclear warfare and demonic hellfire. The story starts accelerating at an unfathomable pace, the most inscrutable double mobius reacharound yaoiyuri occurs, and the universe resets once or twice. It makes the endings of Jojo Part 6 and 7 look tame by comparison. There is no way to parse this like a normal manga with a plot and narrative. It is raw id.

This has been a year where I’ve tried to deliberately broaden my comfort zone by engaging with more potentially upsetting works if I think they'll have something interesting to say. This was like jumping into the deep end. Devilman Lady may very well be Go Nagai’s magnum opus. It’s not nearly as tight as the original manga, but it’s a glorious mess, just as radical to its own time as Devilman must have been in the 70s. It made for spectacular insomnia reading. And there’s no way in hell I can ever recommend it.

At age 19, Nagai went through a bout of diarrhea so bad that he convinced himself it was colon cancer, and that he was at death's door. He vowed to leave something behind for the world to remember him by, and began laboring away on manga. And for the last 60 years of his career, he’s written and drawn with the fervor of a man who’s about to shit himself to death. Maybe that’s the real secret.

#12 days of anime #devilman #devilman lady

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centaurianthropology · 1 year

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Why C3E51 worked so well (a DM’s perspective)

I have seen a lot of absolutely bananas critiques of C3E51 (thankfully not nearly as many around here, far more on Reddit, which I should not have visited). And the ongoing theme of those critiques is that Matt should not have imperiled former PCs, and if he brought them in should have either done lengthy side-bars with those characters or let them win the fight against Ludinis and have a chance to take him out themselves, since they’re ‘god tier’ or ‘high level’ and that makes ‘logical sense’. What these critiques really boil down to, IMO, are people who were really invested in the former campaigns upset that their faves didn’t get to do cool things, treating it more like a TV show than a game. But even as a TV show, that would have been disappointing from a narrative perspective. Because even in a TV show, this is a sequel spin-off show, starring new characters. The story is about THEM. And more importantly, the game is about the players and about telling their story.

So let’s break this down from a DM perspective. How do you build a Kobiashi Maru situation for your characters? For those of you who aren’t familiar, the Kobiashi Maru is a Star Trek term for a scenario designed from the jump to be unwinnable (Kirk beat it by creativity, but later admitted that he missed the point of it). In Star Trek this was done to test what a future officer would do if faced with certain failure. In a D&D game it’s a little more complicated. Part of it is to set up the BBEG, put their plan in motion, and set the stage for the next leg of the game. But it’s also to give your players, who are clearly into it, a darkest-hour scenario. Not every player group is going to be into facing down the Kobiashi Maru, and it’s clear from the aforementioned critiques that a lot of them are on Reddit. Power-gamers who always want to win are not going to enjoy this sort of storytelling, but players who are really into RP and working through difficult times and failures will eat this stuff up. And this is absolutely the sort of table playing on Critical Role. There is a level of trust there that can only be built after years of working together, and this was finally the moment when Matt could pay off years of planning and campaign-spanning set-up.

Matt carefully plotted the structure of this episode out to give maximum agency and impact to a party of dramatically under-leveled characters. And they knew going in they were under-leveled. This wasn’t a surprise, but a potential suicide run by people who knew they weren’t the heroes they needed to be, but were the only heroes in the right place at the right time to try anything. So they came up with as good a plan as they could, and executed it fairly well, all things considered.

They knew they couldn’t take on Ludinus directly (and this was a great way to demonstrate exactly how much he had planned and how long, to bring in elements from C2, hints we’ve had for years about Ludinis, only to reveal it went deeper than any of the characters could have imagined), so Matt gave them some winnable objectives. This is a great way to keep the characters invested in an unwinnable scenario: the ultimate outcome may be beyond the characters, barring some insane genius or incredible rolls, but they can still help. They can do something that will have a tangible impact on events and hinder the baddies enough to give them another chance at a rematch and a way to stop the apocalypse when they’re higher level. So Matt gave them the batteries: take out as many as you can. While this would not stop the ritual, I suspect that the more they took out the more Ludinis would have to drain his own power to make the key work, and the longer the process would take. Knocking out the feywild key, as well as multiple power sources turned what would have been an instantaneous event if they had done nothing into a more drawn-out affair which, I suspect, could be stopped or even reversed. It gave them a window to come back and demand a rematch.

Then we have the high-level PC allies, and how to play with those sorts of characters without pulling focus from the PCs. Matt handled this very well, by having the players roll for their former PCs, taking the specifics of their actions out of his hands and letting the dice of the former players decide. He also revealed that Keyleth’s involvement, and baiting Vax with Otohan’s permadeath poison, was key to Ludinis’ ritual, which was why she couldn’t just dive in and clean everything up. But again, because of this story, it ties less back to Keyleth and more back to Orym. That was the point of the attack on Zephrah, to get her attention by getting her to look into who did it and then coming to get some payback, but the little guy on the ground has always been caught in the middle. Orym has been Ludinis’ unwitting pawn from the off, his family’s deaths merely a means to an end, and that is vicious and amazing set-up for character growth for him.

Beau and Caleb had to be there by the logic of the story. It didn’t make sense that Caleb would sit out a world-ending event orchestrated by a Cerberus Assembly member after spending years trying to take them down. Beau would obviously go with him. It also made sense that they would be the only two there, because they were scouting when Ryn got taken down, and after that were trying to keep a low profile. Shit accelerated too fast for them to call in reinforcements.

Which is the in-story reason for them to be there, but isolated and vulnerable, making them useful allies and wildcards (who likely could have been more useful if ultimately failing as well, but failed early thanks to Liam and Marisha’s rolls). But they were still outmatched. I have no idea what the challenge rating of Otohan, Leliana, and Ludinis are, but we know Otohan was considered ‘beatable’ back in Bassuras. That indicates she’s the lowest CR, particularly with the glowing weak-spot on her back. But she can still wreck a level-20 PC if she gets the jump on her, which she did. And that meant that she remained a massive threat. Caleb and Beau were playing it smart, keeping to the shadows, but still got caught by Leliana. Between dice rolls, careful planning, and some great enemy design, Matt really set up a team that could take on high-level players and win. And he made it clear that Ludinis did not leave this to chance. He has the best people he could muster after 1000 years of planning. Nothing short of a miracle could have truly stopped them.

Which is why we cut back to Bells Hells. Because ultimately this particular story isn’t about Keyleth or Vax or Caleb or Beau or any other former PCs. This is about the current party being caught up in events much larger than them and having to rise to the occasion. This is the story of the schmucks sent in to take out the batteries, but who have personal beef with the big bads. Ludinis orchestrated the plan to attack Zephrah to bait Keyleth and draw out Vax, and Otohan carried it out. And he used Orym as a pawn throughout all of it. This makes taking them down, but especially taking Otohan down, the cornerstone of Orym’s personal quest. Letting an NPC take her down would be taking away a critical part of his motivation and goals, which is an absolute no-no for a DM. NEVER bring in a god-tier NPC and take away player agency or story beats. Especially never have them resolve important player goals and backstory events! Every NPC, even the powerful ones, are there to support the story the players are telling. So of course Keyleth wasn’t going to take out Otohan. Of course she wasn’t going to stop the ritual. Beau and Caleb might have been able to do something more if Liam and Marisha hadn’t rolled so badly for them, but ultimately, they had to get caught or fail in another way.

For the sake of gameplay, Bell’s Hells had to be the only functional team. They had to be the ants that were beneath Ludinis’ notice long enough to really accomplish something. And as much as it feels like they failed, they had minor victories: Laudna and Ashton took out more batteries, making Ludinis drain his own power to kick off the apocalypse. They only failed to take out Otohan’s backpack by 2 HP, which showed them that she was an achievable goal in the future. If they had rolled a little better, they probably could have taken her out entirely, which would have felt like a big accomplishment for them. Imogen made her mother pause in her assault before doubling down. This leaves open very interesting future beats for their interactions. Can she ultimately redeem her mother or would she have to take her out? Every step that Matt set up in this episode, from the reveals about Ludinis’ plans and Orym’s past, to Imogen’s interactions with her mother, to Chetney and likely Ashton finding themselves staring down their own backstories after the party split, was focused on this party, on getting them ready to step out of low-level play and advance.

And that’s the point of E51. It’s not a climax of the story, but the ultimate set-up. It’s putting all the pieces onto the board in a way that all the characters can now recognize. Yes, unless the players came up with something genius, the apocalypse was going to kick off, but their actions slowed everything down to a place where it could be combatted. Yes, the god-tier former PCs were always going to get neutered, because this is Bells Hells’ story, and you cannot have NPCs fix PC problems. They might have been able to do a little more before this happened, but the dice rolled.

And it’s honestly good for the PCs how things turned out. They have a clear objective, but are split up. This gives them great incentive to level up, explore character backstory, deal with their personal shit, get stronger, and then come back to kick the asses of all three of these villains (or possibly redeem one, we’ll see). Their powerful allies are now temporarily side-lined. Keyleth is badly hurt and will need time to recover. Caleb is collared and will need time to get that removed. Beau is likely up and moving now, but will need to safeguard Caleb for a while.

The Bells Hells are on their own. The Darkest Hour has come, and it’s time for them to rise up and go from nobodies to heroes. This is their true call to adventure. And as a DM, it was so cool seeing how Matt set up all the pieces over the campaign, only to pay them out in such a satisfying and motivating way in this episode.

#Critical Role #Critical Role spoilers #I really liked this episode #both as storytelling #and in terms of structure #this is how you do long-term setup #and payoff for a villain #he had planned for everything #but this annoying party of gnats muching up his works #and the gnats are going to be what takes him down #that is such a good way to let a low-level party get set up to take on a high-level villain!!#anyway #this is to combat some of the negativity I've seen toward this episode

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