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#I guess we'll see eventually!!
lynxgriffin · 1 year
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Theories on Kris’s soul and Ralsei’s identity
Hey everyone! This is not my usual thing, but after thinking on it a whole bunch, I decided I wanted to fully write out my theory/backstory explanations based on the last two short Deltarune comics. I usually express theorizing through fanworks rather than just talking through it, but since it's still stuck in my brain even now I figured it'd be fun to also just describe it all. I hope you all find it interesting! Who knows what future chapters will bring us, and anything can (and likely will!) happen, but as of right now I'm pretty convinced this is how things are with Kris and Ralsei. It's long and there's lots of screenshots included, so check below the read more for everything. And huge thanks to DemoPhone for getting all these screenshots for me!
So, Kris is adopted by the Dreemurrs at a young age. As the only human in a town populated by monsters, they already stick out significantly. Considering Toriel checked out a book from the library on how to care for humans multiple times, the Dreemurrs were likely going through a big learning curve with Kris, too. 
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Kris is not just different physiologically from everyone, but they’re quiet and weird, often mischievous, and just don’t fit in. As a kid, they wear a headband with red devil horns to try and fit in with their adoptive family, and especially to emulate their older brother Asriel, who seems to be everything that Kris isn’t.
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He’s popular, kind, well-loved by the town, and is always willing to make friends and do the right thing. Despite how different they are, the two kids clearly care for each other, and Asriel in many ways is Kris’s anchor to this town and this life.
Growing up, the Dreemurrs are friends with the Holidays, and the four kids spend lots of time together. Dess appears to be the more bold and outgoing of the two Holiday girls, but is tempered by Asriel’s responsible nature. Everything between them is going well until one day, when out exploring in the woods south of town, they come across the hidden bunker, and something goes wrong. It’s not clear yet exactly what it is…but it resulted in Dess going missing. Of the four kids, Dess seems to be bold, Asriel responsible, Kris mischievous, and Noelle fearful…so it seems likely that Dess and Kris investigated something in the bunker that the other two stayed away from. Kris witnessed or may have even been involved in what happened to Dess. Dess currently appears to be lost in a dark place, perhaps a place between Dark Worlds, perhaps “stuck in the code” of the game itself. Whatever it is, Dess has gone missing and may even be presumed dead by her family, and Kris witnessed it and may feel directly responsible. This is why they’re still nervous around the bunker, and perhaps even why they’re apprehensive about the appearance of the dark world in the school supply closet.
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Dess’s mother, the Mayor, is not going to blame the little kids for what happened…however, she IS going to place responsibility on Asgore, who was chief of police at the time and clearly should have been watching the kids more carefully. Asgore loses his job, and as things slowly deteriorate between the Holiday and Dreemurr families, he also loses his marriage.
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The kids stop hanging out together so often, and when they do, it’s more strained. Kris will be playing with Noelle when they stop, getting hit with the memory of what happened, and wander off to the piano to try and play out their feelings.
Kris builds up years of these feelings…underlying guilt for messing up the friendships and even marriages of the monsters that adopted them. Their interests are weird, their habits are offputting, and they can often only express a desire for attention through pranks.
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Despite the fact that the monsters in the town act friendly towards them, they still feel outcast and misunderstood. Their popular and beloved brother Asriel is their one solid anchor to everything, and Kris often wonders “wouldn’t things be easier and better if I was just like him?”
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But eventually, Asriel gets old enough and leaves for college. Kris is left alone in the town with all their feelings, but no anchor. In some ways, it gets worse, as the other townsfolk continue to talk about how great Asriel is with him absent. And Kris agrees with them…but that doesn’t help at all how they feel.
To top it off, a new girl arrives in the town, who immediately presents herself as a troublemaker. She seems to have some deep problems of her own, perhaps stemming from her own rough upbringing, and takes out her aggression on Kris, the only human in the town. Despite the bullying, Kris takes it all in stride, even amusement. Susie isn’t saying anything about them that Kris doesn’t already believe about themself. If anything, Kris admires how unapologetic Susie is about her behavior, and sees a kindred spirit in her. They’re both outcasts, after all, with gross and offputting interests. And it is pretty funny how clearly Noelle is infatuated with Susie, too. 
And yet, Susie doesn’t seem interested in actually being friends now, and while Susie is admirable, she’s not helping Kris’s long-standing guilt, loneliness and depression. They start resenting how things have gone. They start looking for unconventional solutions. Perhaps they try the church, but the church doesn’t seem to have answers, so they look elsewhere. Maybe things would just be better if someone else was running their life. Maybe someone bigger than them can fix these seemingly insurmountable problems. They start looking up how to do magic online. How to summon demons, stuff like that. 
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When that doesn’t work out, they turn to the local goth girl for help. After all, they’ve done occult spells with Catti before…protection spells for Noelle; something to ease Kris’s worries so that Noelle doesn’t suffer from the same misfortune Dess did.
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One night, Kris asks Catti to perform a spell to summon a spirit. And surprisingly…something seems to happen. Kris is suddenly confronted with a strange figure who seems to be the devil. The figure says that it can bring Kris what they want: a spirit that can possess them and potentially even solve all their problems. But the figure requires something in exchange: their soul. Kris is at first reluctant, but the devil figure promises that the arrangement is only temporary: they’ll get their soul back when the spirit is no longer possessing them. So Kris agrees, and gives up their soul in exchange for another one. 
The deal supposedly goes over, but Kris finds that it doesn’t seem like anything has changed once the spell ends. They’ve gotten a new soul, but it doesn’t seem to do anything. If anything, everything becomes harder. They start operating on autopilot…saying very little, only doing what’s required of them, and sleeping for huge amounts of time. 
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The joke around town now is that they seem like a walking corpse. Sure, they’re not dead, but it often kind of looks like it.
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Maybe this spirit was just a total dud? Maybe that devil cheated them out of their own soul after all and they didn’t get anything in return. They try more than a few times to remove the new soul on their own, in the hopes that maybe taking it out by force will get them their own soul back. They find that they can remove the red soul with great effort! However, without it, they’re even slower and it’s even more difficult to move or act in any way. Removing it at least grants them a small degree of agency, and it seems to prove that their own soul is definitely around somewhere, because they’re still alive. But they can’t go for too long without putting the new red soul back in, because moving without it is such a strain.
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Meanwhile, Kris’s request for something to possess them has worked, just not in an obvious way. The player experiences the passage of time very differently than the game characters they’re playing as, after all. To the player, they’ve suddenly gotten an invitation from an unknown character that they suspect they recognize from another game they’ve played. They don’t know what the invitation is for, but they’re more than ready to find out, even if it means downloading an unknown and potentially shady “survey program.”
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Conveniently enough, this invitation and download become available on Halloween. A bit of an odd day to choose if you want a lot of people to download and play your game right away, since it’s a major holiday and most people already have plans. However…Halloween is a great time to summon a demon.
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And to Kris, they wake up one morning exactly a week before their brother is scheduled to return home for a visit, and suddenly find that something else is moving their body for them. That new soul wasn’t a dud after all.
No time to even get really used to suddenly being physically possessed, as Kris and that school bully they admire just go to pick up some missing school supplies and get swept up into a strange place that Kris feels might be distinctly familiar. Once there, they meet someone else who, strangely, already knows who they are: Ralsei.
While Kris has been shambling around town with their player soul not in use, their own soul still needs to be kept in good condition. You can’t just leave a human soul out on its own for a long period of time. It at least needs some kind of container…a vessel. And the devil figure works out a perfect vessel for it…an object close to Kris, that they have a lot of sentimental value around. Something that symbolizes their desire to fit in with their family, and be just like their brother. Kris might have given it to the figure willingly, or it might have been taken without their knowledge, but the result is the same. 
But hey…why not make things even more interesting? A dark fountain can bring objects to life in their own dark world. What happens if you were to take an object currently carrying a human soul, and bring it to life with a dark fountain? What would it look like if Kris’s soul, filtered through an object that symbolizes their desire to be just like their beloved brother, was given its own form and identity?
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You get Ralsei. A “lonely prince” who looks an awful lot like Asriel, but seems to more closely match Kris’s age and stature. He seems to be more like a remixed version of Asriel than identical to him. He already knows who Kris and Susie are, and he knows where things are located in the light world…because Kris knows all that. 
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He’s able to travel between different dark worlds without being affected by them the way other Darkners are, because he carries a Lightner’s soul. 
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While it’s unclear if he is talking directly to the player, just to Kris, or to both, he is at least aware of an entity distinct from Kris, since he names the castle town after the player. It would certainly make sense for him to be aware of the player’s presence and influence because he was a part of that whole exchange between souls in the first place. There’s even implications that Ralsei is, perhaps, communicating with Kris in ways that don’t involve speaking aloud to them. When asking Kris to pick up the items from the classroom, he uses parentheses, which typically seem to indicate a character’s thoughts rather than dialogue.
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Since the player is able to read other characters’ thoughts, Kris can even respond to them if no one is speaking.
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If parentheses for Ralsei indicate thinking rather than speaking, he is perhaps aware of how to communicate with Kris and/or the player in ways that other characters won’t hear…or perhaps is only even capable of it at all because he has Kris’s soul.
He is always deferring to Kris, even when Kris makes questionable choices. While he’s eager for friends, he seems desperate for Kris’s approval in particular, and takes great pains to not upset them…or allow other things to upset them. He seems to be confident in who Kris is, but struggles more with his own identity.
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For Kris, seeing their own wish to be like their brother come to life, and then to have the spirit possessing them keep directing them to hug him…well, it’s kind of awkward. 
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Just to speculate on the future, if it is true that Ralsei has Kris’s soul, this has the potential for some serious drama, and even setting Ralsei up as an antagonist without him being generically “evil.” Ralsei hasn’t had contact with anyone before meeting Susie and Kris. However, as they go on adventures together, he’s meeting lots of new people and gaining new perspectives. He’s steadily growing more independent from Kris, and establishing his own identity apart from them. What happens if Ralsei comes to the conclusion that Kris was right to trade him away all along…that not only does Kris not need him, but that he’s just fine without Kris? That he, perhaps, prefers being Ralsei to being Kris’s discarded soul?
Considering the player can’t keep playing the game forever, and Kris really can’t be left the rest of their life with a nonfunctional soul that leaves them on eternal autopilot, they’ll have to get their own soul back eventually. And after several chapters of the player themselves getting really attached to sweet and friendly Ralsei, that opens up the potential for some truly heartwrenching conflict. 
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r0semultiverse · 6 months
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Digital Circus AMA Notes
Digital Circus is getting a season 1 at some point!!!!
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#webcore aesthetic board for the series design
Pomni was going to be a frog originally. 🐸
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90s toys Zooble inspo
Caine is an antagonist, but not by active choice, he doesn't know he's not helping. He doesn't feel a whole spectrum of human emotions (he's an AI).
"Caine canonically just lets things happen if he thinks it's funny."
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Characters eat like Chao in Chao garden in Sonic. The characters can eat the food, but they can't digest it.
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Jax's favorite food is spaghetti.
Pomni likes salmon.
Q "Was the ending a 'Last Supper' reference?" A "in a very superficial kinda way yeah." Religious stuff is sometimes just used for the funny.
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Gooseworx tumblr sketches MAY or MAY NOT be canon to the series, so it's up in the air for every single one.
People can abstract from feeling too much pain if it breaks their mind from it being too much. Characters feel pain from things, but not as intensely as they would in real life.
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Zooble is gonna swap parts every episode (implying they have spare parts) except their body & head.
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Jax chose his own name & gooseworx likes to think he chose Gangle's name.
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Ragatha was named "Emmy" originally.
They (the cast of characters trapped in the circus) can't change their clothes but Caine can. It's part of their skin sorta kinda.
There's empty space under Pomni's hat because video game model physics.
Spamton was partially inspo for Caine, Caine's VA did Spamton dubs.
Gangle only has 2 masks. Why's it (her hapiness mask) break all the time? Mental state, but the "real her" is "harder to break."
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Kaumfo was gonna be part of the main cast originally before Jax.
Kaufmo's model has nothing below the waist at this time, but was made for that promotional image on twitter.
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Q "What kinda person was Kaufmo?" A "He was the same as Ragatha in a sense, goofy & cheery, sometimes toxic levels of positivity."
I'm paraphrasing for the sake of note taking in real time, go watch the stream playback for more context & details if you want.
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aibouart · 2 months
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key players in button's lil community
the elf uses he/him btw
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slumbergoblin · 4 months
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Stratos! Teach that kid how to !!!PUNCH!!!
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fbwzoo · 3 months
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Put the boy's new branches in while he closely supervised!
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fandombrainrotcentral · 2 months
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*Slamming my fists on the table*
Give me Kismet content or give me death!
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graveyard-gumbo · 4 months
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a small wip for birdietrait's random cas challenge
i rolled 09 — your favorite tv series 📺 accompanied by blonde hair, hazel eyes, freckles, eye bags and no make up. can you guess what show she's from?
buzz buzz 🐝
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solradguy · 11 months
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One last thing before I go to bed:
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Sol's still mad (win quote against Asuka)
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densewentz · 2 months
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exhausted health update because I have to rant somewhere lol
So we're ending day 12 of my mysterious right-sided numbness. It's moved from just my torso all the way down my right leg to my toes, so now I'm just hobbling around half numb rip. And now the torso numbness feels like im being vacuum sealed or something, just a horrible tightness and lack that makes it impossible to ignore. Went to the ER the other night and had 2 panic attacks within the span of the several hours I was there, got my bloodwork redone and a cat scan which all came back with a big Nothing on them. They told me I needed an MRI but that I'd have to go through my Primary Care and after I told them my primary wouldnt see me until May they referred me to a new primary not in my network so that's been a dead end rip. So far everyone is pointing at my horrific anxiety as the cause but not one doctor has actually offered me help for the anxiety despite me having the active panic attacks in the office lol. My Primary wont see me for several months despite the severity of my current condition and none of the mental health programs I've reached out to will get back to me so for now I'm just. Existing in this anxiety Ouroboros where my anxiety causes my numbness which causes anxiety which causes numbness. I'm trying stupid home remedies to try and minimize the active anxiety attacks but so far we've just been circling around alternating Holy Basil, Benadryl and literally just drinking Rum and going to sleep, which sure all help my anxiety a little maybe but also make it almost impossible for me to function normally during the day. This is making art difficult so commissions are going slow which is obviously making me more anxious lol. I also am home alone most of the week managing the household, which is made more difficult since right now the numbness in my foot/leg makes it dangerous for me to drive and difficult for me to get around my house to do daily tasks. Idk man I'm just tired as all hell and I seem to vacillate wildly between full anxiety breakdowns and depressive/dissociative episodes. At any rate during the week I'll just be constantly calling and harassing every doctor/therapist I can get a number for trying to find someone who will be able to either address my anxiety directly or can at least get me into an MRI to rule out MS or anything else that ISNT anxiety. I'm going to become the bane of the medical profession for a while. Wish me luck!
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owlbelly · 28 days
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"happy" tdov, the local paper published my letter to the editor! this is both exactly what i wanted (not letting the transphobic article pass without comment/clapback) & wayyyyy more visibility for me personally than i would like :')
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snail-legs · 8 months
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new oc! their name is shelby and I've decided they're a magical girl :)
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crehador · 2 months
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screaming crying i'm still going through the story with cn voice pack so i can enjoy the writing but as soon as i saw enigma i was like oh his jp dub voice actor is going to fuck severely, so i looked it up and HE IS UMECHAN 😭😭😭
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beatcroc · 2 months
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listen. i love pizza tower with my whole heart & mind. you know this. you Know. but first and foremost i am a character design bitch, and the pizzas are, frankly, very bland. this is not a critique or a complaint, because obviously That's Not The Point and more importantly i would be horrified if anyone tried doing that much animation with anything more complex than what's there. but also it means when i get a taste of some truly whack ass insane design work again it is like fuuuucking catnip
#ive been DEPRIVED......#pizza business is on hiatus i need to play lethal league for 50 hours and make a surely ill-fated cosplay about it#it really is unfortunate fake pep could have been a fun cosplay for the way i wanted to go about it#but for all the schematics i had sketched out it was never a thing i wanted to get up and actually try to Make#and then i wake up the next day after playing llb once and go like oh. ohhhhhh. i need to be doombox irl#and because of that realizing. oh that was misplaced idle thoughts before; i never actually wanted to do fp for real#i was just on that train bc 1. very passionate about the game obviously [and he was kind of my only option to rep pt] and 2.#i think it was a lot of leftover inertia from my PREVIOUS cosplay idea [baozhai from indivisible] that i also never pursued#lots of Makin Stuff drive still existing but not having a place to go.#fp was certainly more doable than baozhai so it was easy to latch on but#still not....really the kind of thing i actually Enjoy making#this one though. ohgghhgh i feel it. i feel the cosmos#i still dont think i'm actually going to complete it. the current projection is that i just make a shitty prototype and then#realize how impossible and unfun this is gonna be and then drop it. [but its fine bc i still got to make stuff and got the idea out]#however. that first pizza comic was also originally a single-image prototype to get the idea across bc#i didn't think i would actually draw out that whole thing either.#so i guess we'll just see what happens. now won't we.#poor fuckin noisette comic 2 man i put it off for so long and then finally get into it and then this happens#ill get back on it eventually this is just something i have to indulge while i have it and get it out of my system#its like evangelion. sometimes you have to write 8k words of analysis. and sometimes you gotta make a really stupid cosplay#anyway hey i should post the fp cosplay schematics huh. i meant to back when i first did them but then didnt. whoops#bweeeaaahh
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causticsunshine · 4 months
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wanted to share the sentiment here too but didn't feel like rewriting the whole thing lmao so here are some Thoughts i had last night on twt regarding my weird relationship with my art whilst being in fandom:
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i know i've definitely talked about this kind of thing in the past but it's been a very recent development that i actually understand what's been going on with me and why i've picked up this habit of letting a fandom i'm in / a piece of media i'm really into fully dictate my creative drive. like, just because i'm very interested or invested in something, it doesn't mean i necessarily feel inspired by it or inspired by it for the duration that it holds my interest, and forcing myself to create relative art or fic or what have you for the vested interest(s) has both dampened my desire to be creative as well as my imagination. i know a lot of people can be super into something or a few random things at once and that can keep them going for ages without them running out of ideas, but in my case, things that hold my interest aren't always synonymous with my creativity and i'm just now learning that despite how obvious it seems!
i also imagine i'm not the only person who functions like this but i personally haven't seen it spoken about very often (if it even needs to idk), so i wanted to bring it up / talk about it a little bit :)
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creaturefeaster · 1 year
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doing a batch of these now ig
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b1gwings · 5 months
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swashbuckler rogue my beloved
#i would never regret the storm sorc/tempest cleric combo that i chose for Bonk because they're an absolute damage MACHINE#but sometimes i wonder who i would be if i had gone down the martial road instead#bonk literally has a pistol and a sword and they're pretty fucking good with both of them. you normally don't see that in sorcerers.#i think my attack bonus with the sword is higher than my spell attack bonus which is kind of insane#next time i level up i have to go through all my spells because honestly im starting to get a little tired of the same old lightning bolt#PLUS now i have transmuted spell so i can just take pretty much any damage spell i want and turn it into lightning damage#for my sweet sweet bonuses#there is just some part of me that needs to play a rogue though. swashbuckler. arcane trickster. soul knife. phantom. anything#normally i don't like playing stealthy characters but there are so many good rogues out there#even a “ruff boi” a la magnus burnsides (fighter/rogue)#multiclassing my beloved too i guess#so hard for me to make a character that i don't multiclass#i might even go paladin/bard with one of my newer characters eventually#inspired by calliope petrichor#but he's different. he'd be a bard because he's a theater kid#but also i want to play a straight up paladin because i want to explore with being a character who has a connection to a god#because i've never done that before#and the themes and motifs are too strong#idk man we'll see how it goes :)#i love dnd#ALSO i feel like i cant make him a bard because i already have TWO OTHER FUCKING BARDS#GUYS (sweating) IM NOT A BARD MAIN I SWEAR#maybe for my paladin i could just take magic adept and learn some bard spells or something? like beverly naddpod? maybe#but it's not about the spells... it's about the performance checks...#i really should be working on my finals right now#im so serious if you've read this far down 1 hi :) and 2 if u have dnd characters PLEASE tell me about them. bats my eyelashes. please
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