journeither

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Midst 3x3, "Change", or

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in light of israel's looming invasion on rafah, south africa implored the icj to call for the protection of palestinians with new preliminary orders. the icj denied this request, insisting that its january orders would be sufficient enough in ensuring the safety of people residing in rafah.

we have all seen how israel responded to the icj verdict earlier this month. they have all but intensified their attacks on palestinians, their favorite of whom seem to be children. this will end in a bloodbath. palestinians, already malnourished and living in literal tents, will be bombarded, they will be shot, they will be slaughtered. and when i say palestinians, a lot of them are actual toddlers. the videos coming out of this are proof enough.

at this point, it has been made amply clear that palestinians will never experience safety in their own homeland. a lot of the families in gaza are trying to raise funds to get out of it, because there's nowhere left to go.

there is nowhere left to go. if these people don't get the funds necessary to escape, they will die.

it's vital that you go to operation olive branch's spreadsheet, choose a family that resonates with you, and donate as much as you can to their gofundme. every last dollar counts. one dollar could be the difference between life and death for a family. please don't fall victim to the bystander effect. your contribution counts, however little it may be. and whether you're able to donate or not, spread this to as many people as you can. each second we stay silent is a second an entire family is brutally massacred.

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for the doodle request!! caleb and beau taking a nap?

Empire kids!!!! I miss these two all the time 🥺💕

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Ame, Worlds Beyond Number / Dogfish, Mary Oliver

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I finished my rewatch/relisten of the Vox Machina campaign in mid-December (although I recently re-embarked on the second half of the Chroma Conclave arc hoping season 3 of TLVOM will be announced (released?? 🤞) by the time I reach "A Bard's Lament"). Predictably, I bawled, AGAIN, but by then I'd already been scribbling and sketching ideas for this for... a couple of weeks? Hence the little WIP preview last month.

I'll never shut up about this moment. It's just as beautiful as it's heartbreaking, in- and off-game, especially taking into account all the context of characters/people involved.

Also, bonus, because after I finished sketching that 6th frame I thought a hug was needed.

"You broke my heart." and all of ours as well 💔

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Reminded again, as I periodically am, that there's a fair number of people in the fandom that think of Nott the Brave and Veth Brenatto as two different characters, and not fundamentally the same woman. In the absolute literal sense, this is false: Nott the Brave, returned to the body of her choice and using her real name once again, is absolutely precisely the same person she was before Caleb cast Transmogrification on her. This is, incidentally, one of her main sources of angst towards the end of the campaign! A part of Nott must have both feared (and, in some ways, hoped) that when she was changed back into a halfling, she would also be a different person. That the person she became traveling with the Nein would be an easy identity to shed, which she may have hoped for because it would be easier to fit herself back into her home life with Yeza and Luc--and because it would be easier to say goodbye to the Nein if that were the case. And she feared it because she liked this person she became, no matter how transgressive society would label her for it. And she loved the Nein and didn't want those feelings to be altered.

But she didn't change. Veth Brenatto is Nott the Brave and Nott the Brave is Veth Brenatto. This was always the point. That's why it's an anagram. It's just that when she's Veth Brenatto again, she is much more focused on the why of what she's doing. Why am I still with the Nein? Why am I still adventuring? Why do I have this reticence to return home to my family? Why don't I long for that quiet, domestic life the way I once did? Her emotional journey becomes intensely personal, sometimes subtly/quietly told, and wholly about what kind of future she wants for herself and how her choice could affect those around her. Her two families become anchor points pulling her in different directions and she has to deal with that. Which is a different story than what she was telling when she was still Nott the Brave. Nott's story was much simpler--I am a goblin and I hate it and I would like to be a halfling again. I would like to be able to be with my family again. It's straightforward and it's achieved! But that's not where it ends, because she still needs to figure out a real, functional future for herself once her goal has been achieved.

All this to say, I think when people say they prefer Nott over Veth, it's important to remember that you are reacting to a certain story arc for the character, not an entirely different character. It may also pay to ask yourselves why you think they're so different. Was "Nott" funnier than "Veth" to you? Does her ability to serve as comic relief fundamentally change whether you like her or not? Did you appreciate "Nott's" themes more than "Veth's"? Or did you even notice the themes being explored in Veth's later game at all?

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*seductively* doomed by the narrative all by yourself, handsome?

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thoughts of the future:

all of it still somehow going wrong before it's fixed and exandria being in some sort of post-another-apocalypse state: years, years later, someone desperately wants to change their fortune. hears about Fatesticher, off in the Feywild woods, where the dawn is always breaking. goes to one of the doors there. and is met by the halfling with vines of the hilt of his sword and is led toward this weird tree-manor. "are you the Fatesticher?" asks someone, and orym shakes his head, saying, i'm just a lil guy. live with my friend's parents. tend to gardens. talk to a door.

"bell's hells," their very name, could be read in horror and fear. and, in a lot of places, after all of this, it is.

#cr spoilers #critical role spoilers #cr3 spoilers #just to be clear I think there’s. a very high possibility of their mission going very bad re: Imogen #and I’m here for it! #but I also liked how laura set up her to maybe have a chance of doing the right thing #so it’s fun to imagine close-to-fey orym at the end of the world #but it doesn’t work like that if they don’t come back alive #and if they don’t “see it through #whatever that means

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into the eye

i understand all the laughs out of "we trust you most the most untrustworthy person in exandria" to essek, but I think his reaction is. so on point. for him, that meant they value him, that their trust in him is more important than, well, quite an incredible amount of power trent and the volstruckers could have brought with him. they trust their odds with him better. caleb, a person who, i think essek thinks, has a similar math brain to essek, does trust their odds with him better. for a person as calculating as essek is... of course, it would have cracked him up. it's (partially) because of this awareness of their choice away from potential power, i think, he says, "i hope to make this up to you."

#c2 spoilers #c2 rewatch #essek thelyss

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rewatching c2 and getting a feeling, from Vess’s warning about Ludinus (gods help us when he’s challenged), that Caleb and Beau imprisoning Trent and Caleb’s “I’ll be seeing you, Martinet,” and their investigation into Cerberus AND Essek who he knows they know (who carries a possibility to unveil the whole beacon history between them of it all; it’s extremely unlikely, but the possibility is enough), if not triggered then accelerated the timetable of Ludinus’ moon plan. nothing pushes you forward like the feeling that you’d be exposed somehow anyway.

all of that, along with the fact the Malleus Key is powered with the beacon (the one, I assume, they’ve excavated from the Pride’s Call) and potions of possibility (the one created from that one) (and Essek probably kickstarted their research into beacons) , I do wonder how Essek, Caleb, and Beau feel about the action-consequence of it all.

#cr3 spoilers #cr2 spoilers #cr2 rewatch #critical role spoilers

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transmogrification spell background music

please help me solve this.. what the music/sequence of songs that start playing as Caleb begins casting the ritual in c2e91? i'm going crazy

#cr c2e91 #cr2 spoilers

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laughing at the fact that, for the first time in years, Caleb is back in Rexxentrum: in Rexxentrum Archive amidst horseback timeloop. what a way to overcome at least some of the trauma connected to it (pop this cherry of no-return (sorry)) (i am sure he was laughing just a bit in character (while envisioning massive libraries decay and melt into the sea)).

#cr2 rewatch #caleb widogast #mighty nein #'it was mostly my fault' #'an absence makes the heart grow fonder'

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mighty nein + a softer world

inspired by fear-ne's post — check it out!

[image descriptions + episode numbers + asw numbers are all in the alt text]

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everyone's favorite wizards commissioned by @that-wee-munchkin! they requested Caleb and Essek finally getting outside and enjoying some whisky hot chocolate at a campfire 🔥 a cozy early autumn night spent sharing stories and petting Frumpkins 🐱

thank you so much for commissioning me and giving me the sweetest prompt imaginable!

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idk if others feel this way about him but like, I don't want Orym to reach breaking point? I would prefer if he remains an inspiration on how to keep your head up high and strive for doing good no matter how harshly life has treated you and I don't want him to suffer more and more till he snaps. I'd rather he keeps rebuilding himself one step at a time without breaking down entirely before he gets to do that. I don't want his story to be that everyone, even the most tender souls, will always resort to hate and violence eventually.

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a fraction, maybe

i'm rewatching cr2 (because what's better to get you towards a two year mark of full-scale russian invasion than a thing that got you through the first few months of it) - and i've burst with laughter when essek thelyss said "light be with you" to caleb widogast as caleb asked him to not execute the scourger too soon, periodically smiling through the entire exchange.

that, after hilarious, in retrospect, dialogue about "i once was on a path to be one of the scourgers" -- "INTRESTING. are you telling me you were a scourger?" - "no, i know about them a little." - "right."

oh, essek, darling, dear. oh boy.

#cr2 rewatch #essek thelyss #i love them so much #caleb widogast