#is this crit?? i don't think so.... just introspection

[stoopid-turtle]

made-up thoughts about dd's thoughts

Hi there! I warned y'all that I might post more and I've been watching SDC so I wanted to compile my massive load of DD thoughts. Apparently, I think about dd a lot.

I've struggle with how to organize these thoughts because they're so scattered and there are just a whole bunch of them. So I decided to center them around moments I think about a lot. Not necessarily fun dd moments, though some of them are fun. But just...moments that I feel tell me a lot about dd.

As a disclaimer, I'm making up a bunch of nonsense about dd as a person, but I don't actually know him and you shouldn't take anything I say seriously. I'm very likely to be wrong about most of it. In fact, if dd somehow managed to read this humble post, he would probably roll his eyes. And you know what? It would be an honor for him to have done so.

There'll be a few posts. There are three others in drafts right now, though I may combine two of them. We'll see. But I'm starting out with this one just because it was done first.

I'm at around ep 8 of SDC4, and I think the only way to watch subtitled versions of SDC5 are by downloading an app that Google won't let me download because of region restrictions (and then paying a subscription fee). Needless to say, I probably won't be able to watch SDC5 anytime soon. :(

(those episodes are sooooo looonnngggg)

There's an episode in SDC4 when the captains have picked 4 leaders to start off their teams. They put together a rehearsal battle to show the other contestants the captain's style and help make decisions during the next recruitment segment.

DD picks 4 top dancers as his leaders. These are fantastic dancers, specifically battle dancers. And they do horribly in the rehearsal battle because they're not used to dancing routine, there are no choreographers so while their performance was highly technical, it wasn't really entertaining or meaningful, and the team itself just didn't cohere because these are all people who specialize in battling alone.

DD has a little meltdown while his team loses, and it's kinda uncomfortable to watch. He says in a debrief with his team afterward that he's one of those people that likes winning (which, yeah, duh, DD).

I think a lot about DD's initial strategy. It seems straightforward. Get the best dancers. Have the best team. Work hard. Win.

DD's not a deep thinker. I don't mean he's stupid, because he's actually pretty smart and quick to pick up on things. But he just doesn't see the need to introspect or dwell on things. He strikes me as the type of person who might go through some difficult event and come out the other side wanting to just move on because, "It's in the past. Why bother thinking about it?"

(I think he is getting more introspective as he gets older, as evidenced with his performance of Like the Sunshine. I think that's typical as one ages though)

I'm also struck by the feedback he gives as a captain. He usually makes pretty detailed comments about the technical aspects of the dance, and sometimes, with the more thematic pieces, he'll just outline the story of it. He's pretty literal and straightforward in his thinking.

In any case, dd stands out among the captains for his emphasis on winning. The captains of the other teams cultivate a family atmosphere and often make an effort to emphasize having fun over winning (dd emphasizes fun...as long as his team is winning). The other captains will break down in tears when they have to eliminate dancers, and they'll give nothing but praise to the dancers.

DD is the prototypical "not here to make friends" competitor (though he does actually make friends). One of the most common comments dd gets from dancers or judges is that he works really hard and is a perfectionist with his technical performance. (As a fangirl, I love hearing other people remark on how impressive dd is. I'm all like, "Damn right, that's my bb!"). Dd has high expectations of himself and of the dancers in his team, and he'll criticize the dancers if he feels they fell short.

It's not mean-spirited but it is blunt and is something that the other captains don't do. DD will point out mistakes and be outspoken when he's disappointed with a performance. He also doesn't cry when he has to eliminate someone. He obviously doesn't like doing it, and I do think his style of doing it quickly without the anxiety of drawing it out is kinder. But it also fits in with his decisive, direct way of doing things.

I think about this all in connection with the bts of gg saying he prefers men without makeup. DD gets incredibly defensive, misconstruing what gg's saying as a slight against idols. It's a funny bts, because gg's clearly trying to pay dd a compliment, but dd doesn't even realize this because he's so caught up in defensiveness.

But the defensiveness tells us that dd's felt belittled and looked down on for his idol background, I think especially in some of his hobbies and other activities. Professional dancing, motorcycling racing, skateboarding. His being an idol has made people not take him seriously (I think that's what happened at the beginning of SDC3 when dd got the fewest towels of all the captains from the start).

I think that can be frustrating because dd's initial interest as a teen boy was dancing. I don't know all the decision-making that went into him going off to get trained by Yuehua as an idol, but doing so ironically made it harder for him to get respect from the professional dancers that he admires.

That's why dd works so damn hard, often to the point of overwork. He's demanding of his team just as he's demanding of himself. This is a guy who puts himself into the hospital with how much he works (and then forgets about it afterward). He's wearing himself out in trying to prove himself, and I'm glad that he recently actually took a day off when he was sick. GG's a good influence.

This all takes us to another DD moment, one that is more fun to watch, and that is dd's whole thing with the waacker, Xiao Bao. During a battle, Xiao Bao touches the back of dd's head, and dd immediately stands up and grabs Xiao Bao, keeping a hold of him even as he tries to dance away. Then there's some minor waacking and, um, lip-licking from dd.

When asked at hotpot, dd explains that he was trying to get Xiao Bao to run out his time by keeping a hold of him so he couldn't dance. By touching him, Xiao Bao had challenged dd and dd responded according to street dance rules. DD seems confused by others' confusion because it's self-explanatory to him.

It is just...so very dd to be so single-minded about a thing that he doesn't even realize how incredibly gay it looked. Just, immensely fantastically gay. (I'll get back to this in another post, but I'm focusing elsewhere here)

Honestly, he's sometimes come across as being on the spectrum, though that may well be me overidentifying with some traits. But he has his special interests and while he may be generally quiet, he will start happily rambling if asked about motorbikes or legos or skateboarding (or if plopped down next to gg). He's incredibly fidgety and has a weird thing with stroking tassels.

I know people on the spectrum are more often associated with sensitivity to lights and noise, but there is variation in that. Some folks tend towards the opposite and end up being thrill-seekers.

Some of his mannerisms and social interactions ping me as spectrum-y. During the "JC's fake butt" bts conversation with the rest of the cast, gg characterizes dd as the type to bluntly go up to JC and ask him about the fake butt. He's probably not wrong.

In the bts, dd also has several moments of not being properly romantic by gg's standards or of being a little mean to gg and then apologizing later. This may be more of a young man thing than a spectrum thing, though. IME, guys that age are more prone to that sort of thoughtless behavior than guys who are older.

In any case, dd's reputation as aloof is surface-deep, as seen when he's comfortable with people. He's able to joke and play around with others once he warms up to them. I know gg is often seen as uniquely able to soften dd up, and I do think dd is distinctly more affectionate/playful with gg. But it's a difference in degrees. DD also seems comfortable with the other DDU hosts, with his UNIQ brothers, sometimes with the other SDC captains (though not as often), with certain dancers (like Bouboo and Yang Kai).

Heck, Yang Kai even lampshades this in SDC S4. The captains are recruiting their team members and they send gifts to the dancers to woo them. Even though Yang Kai is a definite joiner on dd's team, dd sends him a framed photo of the two of them from Yang Kai's win the previous season. He also gifts Yang Kai a charm for his newborn son. Yang Kai is touched and he comments that he wouldn't expect these gifts from dd because dd just doesn't express his emotions like this usually. (I wonder if dd had some help in choosing the gifts, because all his gifts are incredibly thoughtful in a very uncharacteristic way (sorry, dd))

So, yeah, I have so many thoughts about how dd shows him feelings. I'm not super-attached to the autism spectrum thing, so don't take it too seriously. Hell, don't take any of this seriously. I've never met the guy. I'm just wildly extrapolating from translated glimpses of him.

#yizhan #bjyx #thoughts about dd #don't tell me you don't think about dd this much #pls tell me you think about dd this much #i feel like a weirdo

[petitprincess1]

I'm confused when critics say it's concerning that Vivzie retweets things praising her show and/or the writing. Isn't that normal for showrunners to do? I've seen other showrunners do that. I've also seen other showrunners sass back people critizing their shows but I haven't seen Vivzie do that.

It's literally just because it's Vivzie. Idk why a showrunner would rt anything negative or even just criticism for their shows. It's not necessary. Plus, the only thing she really rts/likes is mainly fanart. No shit that's going to be positive. Not many showrunners tend to listen to those that consistently shit on them with little to no CONSTRUCTIVE criticism.

Also, they're just mad that she's not recognizing them. Why else would they care about what she likes/rts/rbs? They want to be noticed just like everyone else. That's why they comment or qrt her posts, constantly talk about her, and get pissed when Vivzie blocks them because how else will baka senpai notice their extreme dislike.

It's seriously hilarious to see antis/crits get so angry at Viv for blocking them. You'd think that would be a good thing, but nope. They say it's because of their "criticism", but then don't bother acknowledging that fans give their criticisms and DON'T get blocked. It's almost like it has nothing to do with their critique at all and more about how they consistently insult Viv AND her fanbase.

Although, for them to realize that, it would require a lot of introspection on their part......and they ain't doing that shit. Actually thinking for themselves???? Nah. Sounds like work and requires brain cells.

#hazbin hotel #helluva boss #zoophobia #ask answered #ok 2 rb

[anubisisms]

Ask game!

you're getting song lyric fics. "Take the phone off the hook and disappear for a while" & "Don't ask for help you're all alone". (both Billy Joel songs, "Viennna" & "Pressure")

Ohohohohoho, both fantastic lyrics! I always appreciate some Billy Joel.

"Take the phone off the hook and disappear for a while"; the vibes on this one are to me, the kind I would love to apply to a more introspective fic, or maybe something where canon diverges a bit in a dark way. Hurt/comfort isn't one of my more typical genres to write but I feel it could fit that quite well!

For Crit Role that would 100% be a Percy or Caleb fic for me. Those two are very easy to punish. I also get the sense it could fit very well for a Caleb/Lucien fic specifically in CR. Those two have the fucked vibes necessary to live up to the title. In terms of specific fic ideas, what came to mind was something related to Caleb's backstory: for those unfamiliar, canon involves a few incidents of dissociation related to it, so exploring that via a short fic (with that banger title) would work great. Especially regarding Caleb's feelings on it, since we don't get a ton in canon about how he feels about the dissociation specifically.

Weirdly, if I went the BNHA route, I would actually go for something Hawks-related, even if he's not as overtly an angsty character. Maybe some villain (or anti-hero) Hawks (a beloved fave trope of mine) for the flavour. There are just so many possibilities for this one; I may have to scrawl it down somewhere for future use <3

"Don't ask for help you're all alone"; My brain immediately went to the most literal interpretation of the title, aka one of those impeccable 'Character A is in trouble/hurt and (thinks) they can't ask for help from anyone.' Basic, but it fucks for a reason. Again, I have a litany of sad pathetic male characters to put in that situation. Or a nice little trope reversal would work as well!

I get strong Tomura vibes from this one: BNHA strikes again! Maybe something examining his leadership of the PLF, or even the weird fucky mind-state with him, AFO and etc. Another possibility is something for Crit Role, maybe Jester-centric, about the first few days outside Nicodranas. Seems either way, I end up writing angst for these prompts. Woops!

Thank you so much for the ask! Hopefully there was a coherent answer somewhere among all the rambling XD

(ask game is here)

#ask answers #juncobirds #<3 #anubis yells

[thedragonagelesbian]

@mypeggableromance replied to your post “the ancestral guardians subclass just has such...”:

oouughh yeah those tags,,, tasty (also welcome back!!!! the way i started buzzing when i saw cyrus postin,,, real)

​omg <333333 i missed yelling about him with y'all

i have. so many thoughts about the relationship between barbarian rage & the dark urge, because the two are so similar-- the loss of control, the bloodlust, the reaching beyond your mortal capacities to become an instrument of death...

but rage also has a survivalist component that the urge doesn't, and in my head, that's the aspect of being a barbarian that cyrus first reaches for. in the fight outside of the emerald grove, he ends up pinned underneath the warg and close to having his throat torn out. already once dead and resurrected that morning, some quiet, half-conscious part of him says no, i want to live. and he taps into a well of resilience he didn't know he had, sprouting his wings and finding a frightening, furious desire to survive.

when the haze of blood dims (because it never disappears completely), cyrus begins to worry that this new way of fighting is feeding his urge, and it takes him a lot of time & introspection to separate those two things. to understand that his rage taps into something deeply and fundamentally his, whatever profound and minuscule kernel of himself that can be said to be his alone and not bhaal's. becoming a path of ancestral guardians barbarian--being able to use his rage not just to kill or to survive but to protect others--is a part of that realization.

also, i don't think durge!cyrus was a barbarian pre-tadpoling. he was still plenty ruthless, but too poised and efficient and perfect for that kind of butchery. rather, he was an order of the profane soul blood hunter (instead of post-tadpoling ghost slayer) with bhaal as his patron with a couple of levels of oath of conquest paladin. bc. it's not cyrus if there aren't some levels of paladin in there somewhere.

(and i know bhaal probably doesnt count as a great old one, but i think you could do something fun chaining its frightened on a crit + aura of conquest's auto psychic damage to frightened creatures...)

#OH AND I JUST REMEMBERED SHIELD BASH IS BACK!!!!!!!! #NOT RELEVANT TO ANYTHING IM DISCUSSING HERE I JUST MISSED HER A LOT #durge!cyrus #woe 5 million cyrus thoughts be upon you

[utilitycaster]

so, idk if this is in your wheelhouse or not but I remember you mentioning something about West Marches style campaigns a while back, so (hoping you have some insight here that I'm lacking):

up until this point I've mostly run the published campaigns, but I'm slowly putting together a sandbox style setting for my group, and I'm hitting a bit of a snag when it comes to setting up random encounter tables. namely, that my players will be starting at 1st level, and I don't want to risk accidentally tpk'ing them while they're just starting out, but I also want random encounters to still provide challenges at higher levels....but I'm worried about having *too many* tables to be manageable from my end if I divvy things up by levels rather than just sticking everything the party could potentially encounter in a given location on one table.

any advice? do I make things easier on my end, limit my tables, and risk upsetting my more sensitive players with a tpk, or do I just bite the bullet, take some added pain in the ass on my end, and make tables scaled to levels?

So this isn't really my wheelhouse for a couple reasons but I can walk though how I'd approach it and hope that helps!

So, I do not really do significant random encounters for my west marches campaign. I plan out the encounters. I use tables for myself, but when we know where they're going, I say "ok these are the specific reasonable encounters that make sense", or I make up my own encounters. This would be more work for you, but it's honestly not that much more.

I also will openly admit to struggling with encounter balancing, and I tend to make things easier than they should be. I took the reverse route from you, namely "HEY I could probably make up a giant fantasy world to suit your characters" rather than running published adventures, for my DM-ing so far, and I am only just now running a published adventure, and I'm also *Ashton voice* been getting a little introspective lately, specifically regarding my attitude towards encounters and the signalling of danger in them, so my answer right now is a giant ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ on how to best approach this.

The last thing is how to cover the TPK, and I think it's worth just...asking the players, sensitive and otherwise, how they want to deal with death. I happen to like death in D&D, and multiple popular actual plays in D&D have depicted permanent PC death, but if your players genuinely don't want it, you can play a game without PC death. I don't like this, because it lacks certain stakes, and I think people who say "well D&D is about FUN" are people who think that there is no fun in exploring loss and catharsis and dark themes, and who don't understand that games are fun because there are win and lose conditions, and generally fucking suck, and if I talk more about this I'm going to sound like some kind of kids these days get off my no participation trophies kind of person, which I am actually not.

But, I do think it's valid, if your table wants to not get TPK-ed in the first session, to give your PCs a little plot armor until they hit level 3. You could give them periapts of wound closure that will expire in a few weeks; or have them receive a blessing before they leave that grants a certain amount of extra HP each day that will only last the duration of the first two adventures, or something like that. Honestly, a lot of low level monsters CAN just TPK a party if rolls go bad simply because one crit or one failed save can do that, and you're allowed, quite honestly, if the players don't want that risk, to fudge a roll or two if you're willing, so long as you know how to stop.

You could also, because it's west marches, just be honest and say "hey, at low levels, it is super easy to die with no chance of return, so my idea is that you play some throwaway characters for L1-3, and then if you DO have a TPK, your level 3 "real" characters come in to find out what happened to the original mission. Or, because it's west marches and the plot isn't really that important, you can make a dead character miss the rest of the adventure, but everyone respawns back in town and can go out on another one.

This is really rambly so I think what I'm trying to say is talk to the players, ensure you're all on the same page re: character death and how you all want to handle it, because there's no way to truly guarantee that you won't tpk a L1 party unless you're just taking death off the table temporarily or faking rolls, even if the encounters are planned.

#answered #Anonymous #d&d mechanics

[mcmoth]

If I may ramble about c!emerald duo for a bit.... theres just something about how they place their hypothetical ideals ('sending a message'/'returning the favor') over actual realistic consequences. A show of their disconnect with the rest of humanity, and how along the line they've developed maybe even a 'formula' of sorts, of dealing with people. Also about how this sort of prioritisation of shallow ideals is no different than the items and places that they so condemn people for valuing in the end. But they've lived such long lives, people coming and passing, that they've long stopped seeing it from another point of view.

They may not have places or materialistic things to worry about protecting, but that's because their lives are not mortal. Mortal people create legacies to outlive them, to create a mark in the world. They've forgotten that. They've forgotten how it feels to be young and vulnerable and clinging for meaning in a life that's still so fresh, so finite. How it feels to be weak and unprotected and seek a home that you could live out the rest of your days in, safe, because for them, no homes do last. But for mortals they do. They should. They've forgotten how valuable are communities, and banding together, for people forever evolving, generations arising. How creation is so essential to humanity. How it feels to be tied to the world, not living above it. They've forgotten how it feels to live amongst it all.

And thing is, they don't even realise it. Time has warped their perception, and for them, this is their normal. They've forgotten that their normal is so different from most. And they could do with being reminded, that being disconnected is not what makes them wise - is not what keeps them safe. Because all that mentality has shown, in clear abundance, is that they're tearing everyone apart.

They may think that what they're encouraging is maturity and true loyalty - but really, all they're breeding is nihilism.

#dream smp #emerald duo #technoblade #philza #meta #character analysis #is this crit?? i don't think so.... just introspection #also #here comes the theme of attachment again #it makes techno and phil so clearly stand out #in a world so desperate to cling despite the fear of losing - what good does it do to teach the lesson that loss makes the joy worthless? #reblog