#this is just like when I made every one of them Dimension 20 Fantasy High bad kids in Neverwinter | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

aloekat · 1 month

Text

giving pokemon teams to d20 characters!

The Bad Kids / Fantasy High!

pt 1/?

part 1 || part 2

hello chat and welcome to aloe shoves their hyperfixation onto everything they enjoy! making pokemon teams for fictional characters has always been a fun past time for me that i enjoy greatly so i wanted to apply that to dimension 20! i plan on doing every season once i’ve watched it, starting with all the intrepid hero seasons before moving on to side quest seasons

(also i finally decided to post these after @jadelion made posts sharing their team picks, so go check those posts out as there are some great choices! i also wouldnt be inspired to finally post these without him doing so first! i made my list completely independent of hers so if there's the same pokemon its purely coincidental lol)

first i want to talk about some guidelines i’ve given myself for this, which will apply to future posts as well:

only 4 pokemon per team - this keeps things more easy and makes them feel closer to mid-game trainers rather than fully stacked end-game ones. or feel like gym leaders maybe? it also helps with rule 2…

try to have no repeat pokemon - this just keeps things unique between seasons but sometimes a pokemon is a perfect fit for more than one person but for the most part everyone gets unqiue pokemon and there are almost no doubles

low to no legendaries on teams unless for a good reason - same goes for shinies but im more lenient on the shiny rule lol

i made a lot of these these like 3 months ago as of posting this - some choices may be outdated or the character has changed enough that a choice may not fit as well but i didnt want to change it lol (this is solely for the fantasy high kids tbh)

thats all for the rules! finally it’s time to get into the teams!

! SPOILERS AHEAD FOR THE CURRENT SEASON! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED !

Kristen

Lycanroc - representing Tracker, again i made these before junior year so trackerbees was still a thing but i imagine it can count for cassandra also since it’s a night themed pokemon. don't know which form of lycanroc she would have though Solrock - she was given solrock during her time with Helio, and while i know sunflora exists i think solrock makes a little more sense, since she was a chosen of Helio she would be at an elevated status and therefor have a better pokemon if that makes sense? it also pairs with... Lunatone - representing her change to Cassandra, a goddess of night. there's like cool symbolism with her pokemon now wow isn't that so cool and awesome!! Unown ("?") - a question mark unown to represent Yes? (and the other Yes forms) along with her cool question mark staff! can also ALSO symbolize doubt with cassandra

Fig

Toxitricity (Low Key) - low key form gives the vibes of a bass and Fig plays the bass! toxitricity would help fig practice her instrument and come up with music. also literally called “the punk pokemon”

Obstagoon - similar reasoning, obstagoon has The Vibes that fit along with also being a sort of rock n roll pokemon

Moltres - representing Ayda, i imagine Ayda gifted it to her once they became girlfriends :)

Mimikyu - a pokemon known for its imitation of another pokemon, very much fits into Fig’s actor feat and her high deception and her not wanting to be her real self sometimes

Fabian

Dhelmise - big connection to his father and being a pirate, his father probably gifted it to him as his first pokemon

Marowak (Alolan) - fun idea i had for this is he originally just had a cubone with him during freshman year, but once he went to Fallinel and learned about the power of dance it evolved into an alolan marowak! it's a fire dance pokemon of course he would have it lol

Sirfetch'd - representing his mother and also his general fencing/fighter style that he works with

Tentacruel - just a cool ass water pokemon i feel he would have, also vaguely pirate-y with big kraken vibes

Riz

Pikachu - detective pikachu go brrrrr i imagine he would have gotten a pichu when very young, and it's evolved over time! it would wear a tiny detective hat as well because um i said so

Inteleon - super spy/gun pokemon also go brrrr, very much a reference to his father and just the general super spy-ness of Riz and Pok in junior year especially

Togekiss - ok this one feels very out of place and i forgot why it was here originally BUT i think it's to represent like a guardian angel sort of? again another reference to Pok because i love Pok and think he's very cool

Voltorb - he's the ball. this is a pokeball pokemon. are we starting to connect the dots

Adaine

Politoad - representing Boggy of course, nothing much else to say

Espeon - a very psychic pokemon representing her oracle powers, it would be fun to think that she had an eevee that simply evolved into an espeon once Adaine realized that she in fact was the elven oracle!

Delphox - another powerful psychic pokemon, again this is just vibes and it's a cool pokemon and adaine is a very cool character lol

Audino - these pokemon are known for being able to hear super well and know how their trainers are feeling from listening to their heartbeat. a gift given by Jawbone to help with Adaine's anxiety but still a good member of her team regardless

Gorgug

Archen - "i'm Cloaca, i suck!"

Gogoat - a grassy pokemon which can sorta represent the tree he lives in but also intended to represent Zelda in some ways (again i wrote these before junior year came out). it would help him carry around a lot of scraps for tinkering

Rotom - found in the village near the Nightmare King's forest, this rotom had gotten lost in the forest and, with no tech from solace nearby, couldn't find a way home. gorgug rescued it and lets it inhabit the Hangvan a lot

Rillaboom - another grassy pokemon but this one is also a drummer! can we take a wild guess as to why i picked this one. for it's drumming ability. because. because gorgug is a drummer.

=====

whew ok that's the first season done! i'll probably do unsleeping city next, which will be linked to this post once it's done!

have a better option that would fit a PC better? please tell me i would love to hear everyone's takes on this!

ok that's it that's the post everyone go home now (once again go look at @jadelion for their pokemon team picks!)

40 notes · View notes

heliza24 · 2 months

Note

I'm kind of confused about how you feel about Lydia, I didn't think there was anything negative about the portrayal. You say she was just there for a lore dump but the way I see it, she was talking about her own life, an adventure she'd been on before. I didn't see it as dismissing her as a character

The short answer is that there isn’t anything hugely wrong with that scene. But because it’s the only real scene we’ve gotten with her so far, and because she is the most developed physically disabled character in all of D20, it is not enough.

To expand on that: Sure, she was telling the Bad Kids about her life and her previous adventures. But let’s think about why she was doing that in that moment. She was there because the Bad Kids needed to know more about her embedded crystal/metaphorical chronic illness in order to solve their own personal mysteries. She is a (very) supporting character in their narrative. We don’t get to see her go on a character arc, or change, or learn more about her desires as a character. Her disability story, which is very interesting, is in the show only because it serves the story needs of the nondisabled PCs.

Now of course all stories need supporting characters/npcs, and I am happy some of them are disabled. The problem arises when there has never been a physically disabled PC in Dimension 20. So the only disability narrative we see is in service of nondisabled characters. The problem is not Lydia; the problem is that she is alone.

You might recognize this problem with other media and other marginalized groups. To use a kind of simple example, I spent a lot of my childhood frustrated that the only women seemingly allowed in fantasy or action movies were the romantic interests of male protagonists. These love interests existed to serve the story of their male counterpart (often by dying dramatically and sending the male protagonist on some kind of revenge quest). There are still plenty of movies and shows that follow these tropes, but it bothers me way less now in 2024 because we also have a ton of tv and movies with complex female protagonists. The abundance of representation is what has changed.

I think this problem is extra clear on Dimension 20 because they have gotten SO many chances to center a disabled narrative and have not. They get up to six protagonists every season, which is way more than most tv or movies get.

Compared to a lot of other pieces of media that try to add in disabled characters, Dimension 20 is doing a good job with Lydia. They haven’t hired a nondisabled actor to play her (super common in tv and movies unfortunately) and they’ve clearly worked with consultants on her. I really like, for instance, that her persistence with the crystal prevents her being magically cured, which is one of my least favorite tropes. However, there is a huge trend in Hollywood of hiring disabled consultants when they want to tell a disabled story but never actually hiring a disabled writer for a full time, credited writing gig in a writers room. The players on D20 are the writing room. Why has a disabled person never been invited there?

Imagine, for a second, that we got a Fantasy High prequel season. All the adults we know in Fantasy High are teens, and they’re PCs. Imagine a really talented performer, who uses a wheelchair, playing Lydia. Imagine the emotional scenes we would see! Imagine the insight into her psyche we would get, the way her relationship to the Crystal would be developed. That’s what the scene with Lydia in Junior Year made me long for.

(I do have some frustration about the way Kristen reacted to Lydia, and the way that fandom reacted to Kristen. I did find Kristen offering empathy to Lydia in the form of the help action sweet, but being nice to a disabled person doesn’t deserve outsized praise, because we are not objects of pity. I also think the way that Kristen touched Lydia’s neck without permission is reminiscent of the way many wheelchair users are touched and pushed without permission, which is very violating. I don’t think Kristen would have had that same reaction to Sandra Lynn, for instance. Kristen is really Going Through It right now, so I’m not particularly mad at her for doing that. But it is irritating to see fandom singing the praises of the help action without acknowledging the touching without consent that followed).

Thank you for the question! I appreciate the opportunity to have a dialogue about this.

#dimension 20 #d20 #my meta #my crip media reviews #fantasy high junior year #fantasy high #d20 fhjy #ask box #dropout tv #dropout

38 notes · View notes

callmemaeverick · 1 year

Text

Trouble at the Smithsonian - The Spy Next Door Part III

AN: Sorry for the late upload, you guys. The story was already written, but I’m just struggling with the chapter titles, lol. Im still not feeling the title as much. Also, so hard to find a suitable GIF to accompany these fics.

Ps: this was inspired by that episode on Modern Family

WC: 1.2 k (sorry, I went overboard)

Part I Part II

“You can’t be serious.”

You looked up at Peter’s face, surprised at the incredulity in his voice. “What?”

“You’re gonna wear that?”

The that he was referring to were your boots. Your high heeled suede Chelsea boots, to be exact. You had bought them almost a year and a half ago but you hadn’t really had the chance to properly wear them.

“What’s wrong with my boots?”

Peter looked at you like you’d grown a second head. He scanned you down and huffed out a disbelieving laugh. “You- you do know we will be doing a lot of walking right? The Smithsonian is like 20 museums.”

“Oh come on, it's not like we're gonna see all of them. 3 at most.” You assured him as you locked your door. “Besides, I’ll be fine! I’ve been looking forward to this since I was a girl and I wanna look my best when I visit places they filmed those movies.”

You knew it was highly unlikely that the Captain America exhibit was actually filmed in the Smithsonian or if they even have the Blackbird that was actually a Decepticon in disguise in the Air and Space Museum. But even the thought of standing close to your favorite movies sent a thrill through you.

“So you’re dragging me out to this place, on our off day, because you wanna check out the places where they film your favorite movies,” The look on his face had not changed. “Not for the museums themselves?”

“Well, no! Of course not! I am going for the museums… but I can’t help the geek in me from being also excited about the movies. I mean, c’mon. Transformers!”

Peter watched you do a little hop of excitement and shook his head. “Well, don’t come to me when your feet start to hurt.”

This time, it was you who scoffed at him. “In your dreams, Sutherland.”

~ One of the best things about going to a local attraction, or anywhere, really, on a weekday was that the place would still have people, but not so many that you get overwhelmed too quickly. It was one of the reasons why you applied for a special leave on a Wednesday to go to the museum.

In fact, it was actually Peter’s idea.

And just as you planned, finding a parking near the entrance was a cake walk. The both of you started with the Museum of Natural History because it was the one that contained your interests the most.

The moment you entered, it was like you were absorbed into another dimension. Your eyes went wide at the marvels before you and your heart thumped in your chest in excitement. Turning to Peter, you grinned wide before you grabbed his hand and ran into the first hall.

It was your first museum that day and you were already so happy. There were many exhibits on display. There was a hall full of fossils of ancient dinosaurs, huge and intimidating and you couldn’t help but feel like Ellie Sattler as you named them one by one. Then, more excitingly, you got to live out your Evie O'Connell fantasies when you climbed up to the second floor to the Ancient Egypt exhibit.

And Peter. Peter indulged you with a small smile on his face. Not once did he make fun of your abundant movie references and not once did he look at you funny. He followed you from exhibit to exhibit, listening attentively to every anecdote you made. He even pitched in some of his own memories when he could.

Before you knew it, the both of you had managed to clear 2 museums. And by lunch, your feet had started to hurt.

The Smithsonian was better than you thought it would be. And it was also bigger than you thought it would be. But being the stubborn creature that you are, you kept quiet. You had known it would happen eventually, but you had wanted to look your best more than you cared about the pain. The boots, while not that high-heeled, was not your normal attire. However, wearing them made you feel good and confident. It gave you a boost in height and a sexy walk.

Besides, you didn't have to look up so high to talk to Peter with them on. And you could better see the smattering of freckles on his face. That alone was totally worth the blisters.

The call of your name snapped you out of your thoughts and you blushed as Peter took his seat beside you and handed you a hotdog.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. Just... thinking where to go next."

"How's your feet?"

A muscle in your jaw ticked and your smile was tight. You bit into your lunch. "They're fine."

Peter eyed you like he knew you were lying, but let it go.

After lunch, the two of you made your way to the Air and Space Museum. But as you went through the exhibits, you began to lag behind as the pain in your feet slowly got worse.

By the third time Peter noticed you were not beside him, he has had enough.

"That's it. Come on,"

All of a sudden, there was a hand at the small of your back pushing you gently towards a bench.

"Hey, what?! Careful!" You exclaimed as you stumbled along, hissing when you stepped wrongly and aggravated your ankles.

"Sit.” Peter’s voice brooked no argument and reluctantly, you did as he asked.

"What's this about, Peter?"

"You're hurting." He nodded to your feet.

You opened your mouth to rebuke him, but he levelled you with a look that shut you up. There was no use in hiding it. He was right.

"Stay here." He sighed and disappeared somewhere in the crowd.

Disappointment churned in your stomach. You were pissed at yourself for being so stubborn, for ruining the whole day. Now both of you were upset and it was all your fault. You heaved a long sigh and reached down to massage your ankles.

The crinkling of a plastic bag made you look up and you watched as Peter approached you with a pair of flip flops he bought from, by the picture of the rocket on it, the museum gift shop.

"Put this on."

You looked at him incredulously as he knelt to place the footwear by your feet. "Did you just-"

"It's either this or you're walking barefoot. And I'm not about to let you do that. So, come on."

Something in you reacted oddly at the action, spreading warmth across your chest. You stared at Peter for a few beats as your thoughts ran rampant. But then you blinked them away, too shocked to examine them and turned your attention to the flip flops.

"But it's so ugly though," You complained, but toed off your boots nonetheless.

"Too bad. It's the only design they had." Peter took your boots and put them into the plastic bag as you grumbled, standing and taking a few steps.

"How is it?"

It was perfect. The cool air against your abused and pinched skin felt like a balm and the ability to wiggle your toes made a small smile creep onto your face. Before turning back though, you schooled your features to indifference. "It'll do."

Peter rolled his eyes. "Yeah. You're welcome. Now, come on," He passed you, the plastic bag dangling from his fingers. "Jetstar is waiting for you."

"Jetfire!"

TBC

Tagging: @strnqer @thefictionalgemini @bcon24 @medievalfangirl @coldheartedmar @iamzuul

#peter sutherland #peter sutherland x reader #the night agent #gabriel basso #netflix the night agent #the night agent netflix #the spy next door series #mav's posts

224 notes · View notes

loving-jack-kelly · 6 months

Note

Yo!! Hello!!! I am like 90% sure I've seen you post about dimension 20 before!!

I just got a dropout subscription and I'm thriving but I am looking for advice for where to start/go with the dnd-verse on it? I'm assuming that the separate campaigns are relatively stand-alone but I would love an opinion (or just input on what the actual chronology is lmao)

hehe sleeper phrase discovered i'm honored you came to me :)

so the first thing to know which you probably already do is that there is a main returning cast for some seasons, and then some campaigns are a different group with an occasional different dm. the Intrepid Heroes are Lou Wilson, Zac Oyama, Brian Murphy, Ally Beardsley, Siobhan Thompson, and Emily Axford with Brennan Lee Mulligan dming, so they play as that exact group multiple times. There's usually one or two of them in a non-main-cast campaign, too, including Brennan sometimes as a player when somebody else is dming.

So! In terms of watch order! I recommend starting with Fantasy High because it's the original campaign and also fantastic. There are currently two seasons, Fantasy High and Fantasy High: Sophomore Year, and they are both masterpieces. We're also getting Junior Year this winter which is extremely exciting for me personally because I Love Fantasy High lol. Fantasy High is a great starting point especially if you're new to dnd/dnd actual play shows (which you may not be so feel free to disregard this bit of advice lol) because multiple players are learning how to play in the first season, so there's plenty of opportunity to learn with them. It's also generally pretty light-hearted and funny, though it doesn't sacrifice story for comedy which I love. If you don't know, the concept of Fantasy High is that these young teenagers live in a world where everywhere else is a stereotypical fantasy world but their country is like. Classic high school Americana. It's silly, the characters are great, the storylines are great and only get better in Sophomore Year, it's an all around great time and great intro to D20!

I went right from Fantasy High to Unsleeping City, which is also fantastic (you'll notice a recurring theme here, I love every campaign I've watched so far lol). If you like the lighter parts of Fantasy High but want a little bit more tension, Unsleeping City is perfect. It's set in modern-day New York with a twist: there's a magical underside to the city. Lots of fantastic commentary on modern life in the storytelling that slaps, I won't spoil but it slaps, and also really wonderful characters! Unsleeping City also has two seasons, so you get to see the characters grow and change a lot over two full plotlines which is very fun!

If you like the more serious side of things, my personal favorite D20 campaign is A Crown of Candy. I watched this third and it made me cry hard enough at work that my boss asked if I was okay lol. The set-up is simple: fantasy world made of food, but make it Game of Thrones. It's intense, the stakes are high from episode one, it's incredibly character driven and everybody plays really, really interesting characters, and because of how high-stakes it is, every payoff is just insane. We all talk about Ally's poetic nat 20s and believe me, they exist, but Mr. Lou Wilson (love of my life) has a nat 20 near the end of A Crown of Candy that genuinely made me feel so crazy when it happened that I had to take a walk lol. Cannot recommend it enough, it's devastating and perfect.

A Starstruck Odyssey is really good again if you like the lighter end of thing but still want stakes and tension! The world is based of comics that Brenna's mom wrote which is really sweet, and it's a very different vibe because is sci-fi instead of pure fantasy, which is honestly really fun. Some of the characters are up there on my favorites list, shoutout to Skipper and Sundry Sydney!

In terms of the campaigns that aren't Intrepid Heroes, the first one I listened to was Misfits and Magic, which is a Harry Potter spoof dmed by Abria Ayangar, who's fantastic, and featuring Brennan as an utterly unhinged in the best way player. There's also Mice and Murder, which is a super great mystery with anthropomorphic animals that was shot on zoom over the first lockdown (a few seasons were so don't be shocked by that lol). I'm a bit more than halfway through A Court of Fey and Flowers which has been great so far, and I'm super looking forward to getting to The Ravening War, which is a prequel to A Crown of Candy, and Mentoplis, as well as the current season, Burrow's End. I have to watch Neverafter first though, which is the most recent Intrepid Heroes campaign.

Anyway! To summarize!

My advice is to start with Fantasy High and Fantasy High: Sophomore Year, and then pick which elements you liked best to decide what you want next! All of the campaigns that aren't explicitly linked are completely standalone, like I'm not missing anything important from the one's I've watched by not having watched some of the others, so don't worry too much about chronology or anything like that! The only ones that need to be watched in a specific order are the two with two seasons already, which are Fantasy High and Unsleeping City, but those are labelled quite clearly with season titles! Also if it's easier to keep track of, Dropout has the campaigns sorted into their own shows on the site so you don't have to choose seasons of D20, you can just choose A Crown of Candy.

PLEASE update me as you watch! I love love love talking D20 lol it's one of my favorite shows like ever!!

#dimension 20 #dropout #d20 is so so so good have SO much fun watching!!! the important thing is it doesn't matter how you watch just have fun with it!

19 notes · View notes

autisticgirliesbracket · 11 months

Text

What makes Ayda Aguefort from Dimension 20: Fantasy High the autistic girlie ever of all time? Here's what the people have to say:

Ayda-related asks/reblogs: x This post will be updated after each round!

Image ID in alt text and under the readmore.

[Image ID. White slide with a picture of Ayda on the left. On the right are many MANY text boxes which read,

"It's canonical, but outside of the official stuff, she's struggled all of her life (lives) with not understanding subtext to the point where screwing it up is one of her greatest fears, she made her crush sign an NDA before admitting that she liked her, and she was so concerned about her paramour (she calls Fig her paramour) that she considered sending fantasy memos to every single plane of existance telling everyone to be nice to her or she'd kill them, and the she made good on that threat by drowning hell, which could just be normal but feels like an autistic swag moment."

"She’s canonically autistic. She runs a library on a pirate island, she’s a half phoenix pirate wizard, she has an entire section in her library dedicated to books on how to make friends, she loves her friends, she loves her girlfriend, she has no control over her tone of voice, she constantly sounds angry, her best friend made her a spell called “Ayda’s comprehend subtext” so that she wouldn’t feel left out of conversations, she tried to flood hell for her girlfriend, I relate to this woman on a personal, spiritual and emotional level."

"she's canon!!! they say she's autisticit in the show!!! she's super monotone and blunt (but SO kind), she can't understand subtext/is super literal, she's very transactional in how she thinks and behaves. later in the show, her best friend invents a spell to help her understand subtext! they MAKE HER A DISABILITY AID FOR HER AUTISM!!! she's so full of love, she's so smart, she's learning how to have friends for the first time, even though she experiences things differently than them. i love her."

"Ayda is canon autistic. She's a librarian on a pirate ship city. She's a lesbian phoenix. Her autism leads to humorous moments but she's never the butt of the joke. AND she has a super cool rockstar gf <3"

"she was incredibly autistic-coded right from the first introduction of her character, she has trouble understanding hidden meanings to statements and prefers to just bluntly say what she means, she has trouble expressing her feelings in a way that she wants to, she struggles with social situations, she dedicated an entire room of her library just to books about friendship because she really wants to have friends, and she's half phoenix and is reborn when she dies. also there was so much positive response to her and so many questions about her being autistic that brennan then went and did some research to better understand autism and made her explicitly autistic in cannon (like, says the word out loud in character, very direct). also she's gay and dating one of the player characters and they are incredible and fig loves her not just in spite of the things that ayda perceives as bad things about herself (related to autism making things like social stuff hard for her) but for them, because they are part of her and she loves all of her just for being her. also i love her so much and her character arc is so important to me of accepting that there isn't anything wrong with her, she's just different because she's autistic but that's not a bad thing and she can find friends (and a girlfriend!) that love her for exactly who she is."

"She's canonically autistic! she generally misunderstands social cues (always admits it and asks for them to be explained to her which is iconic behaviour, I wish I could shoot that straight lol), often speaks in a monotone and uses minimal facial expressions, is a librarian (autistic ass career), hasn't had any luck friends prior to the story (but now her gf and bff are super supportive and great!) and is a Huge Nerd (very intelligent)"

"She canonically has autism! She's a wizard whose special interest is spells and the history of magic and she lives in a library that she runs by herself. Despite the DM Brennan not having autism (to my knowledge at least idk) he does a really good job playing her without dehumanizing her and she's a beloved NPC by the cast and fans alike. Also she has a girlfriend :)"

"Canonically autistic!! She is very blunt and transactional with others, even close loved ones, takes things very literally, and is normally extremely stoic and intense as her resting emotion (but gets very excited about magic + her new friends!). None of her autistic traits are ever seen as negative, and she is celebrated by all her friends for being the way she is! She wasn't specifically written to be autistc, but as the show was coming out many fans were asking if she was, and since this season came out live over the course of months, the DM added a whole section about her realizing she's autistic + her loved ones supporting her and helping her find ways to express herself and exist comfortably. There's also just something very autistic about wizards idk."

"Canon autistic black lesbian teenage pirate librarian. Look at those words and tell me what’s not to love. Has a cool devil girlfriend. Makes her sign a contract after they kiss. Best friends with anxiety wizard. Incepted “fascinating” into my vocabulary. I love her."

"She canonically autistic!!!!!! She was confirmed in the last episode of the show she’s in but leading up to that she’s shown to misunderstand social cues and have formal ways of speaking and special interests in wizardry. She’s very self conscious about this and struggles with it throughout the show and the thing that’s so important about her to me is that so many people love her. So many people see her how she is and they think it’s wonderful and perfect. Ayda gets to have a cute teen romance with her cool girlfriend just like anyone else. I adore her. She’s a phoenix, she’s a lesbian, and she’s autistic, perfect woman."

"Ayda is a black lesbian, clearly shown to be deeply emotional and caring despite her flat affect, hyper-aware and anxious of her social awkwardness (rather than being comically oblivious), never infantilized, capable of having strong friendships and relationships, who is also confirmed autistic in canon without it being an offhand joke. She is also a half-phoenix divination wizard and the librarian of the Compass Points Library which is located in Leviathan (a vast pirate city made up of thousands of shipwrecks all connected together to create a floating island). In the epilogue of the final episode of Dimension 20: Fantasy High Sophomore Year, Brennan (the DM) narrates that Ayda is diagnosed with autism by the school’s therapist/counselor. Finding language for her experiences clearly brings her great relief, as she seems to finally have context for her place in the world. In the first episode of Adventuring Party, Dimension 20’s talkback show, Brennan stated that he “wanted to model her after the Sherlock archetype,” of a person who is “brilliant and goodhearted… but not necessarily existing on that social level,” through a lens that audiences never get to see: a Black lesbian. She was not intended to be autistic initially, but soon after her creation, he realized—through the audience questioning if Ayda was autistic—that she was modeled after his friends with ASD who are also “very academic and intense in that way,” and decided to do research to make her representation more accurate and nuanced. She has an entire section of her library dedicated to friendship. The books in it have advice like "give your friends oranges so they don't get scurvy" because it was written by pirates. Because she thinks naming spells after yourself is arrogant but having a spell named after you is awesome she invented a spell as a gift for her friend. It's called Adaine's Furious Fist and lets you channel rage and arcane power into a supercharged punch that you could hypothetically use to absolutely wreck your abusive father. And in return Adaine invents Ayda's Comprehend Subtext, which aids the caster in understanding implied but not stated communication. All of this: Link!"

Continued,

"confirmed as autistic in canon! she has a very monotone yet intense way of speaking. she feels emotion quite strongly but usually has a neutral expression. she'll frequently ask for clarifications about what is normal or expected in a given social situation (which surrounding characters always answer without judgement or teasing). she's stated that she knows she thinks and experiences the world differently than most people, but doesn't understand why this is until the end of the series when she's able to learn about other people like her"

"canonically autistic!! speaks bluntly and plainly and often asks for subtext explanations. rejection sensitivity is a theme that is explored for here and it is very important to me :) also in a beautiful adhd/autie relationship!! she is one of my fav blorbos and I get emotional thinking abt her"

"It’s canon!!! In the finale she’s holding books on autism and crying saying “this is normal” and her best friend makes her a wizard spell called “ayda’s comprehend subtext” to help her out. It’s adorable and I love Ayda sm. shes a half-phoenix who cries fire and she loves her girlfriend so much they’re adorable❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥" End ID.]

#autistic girlies bracket #autistic girlie masterpost #Dimension 20: Fantasy High #ayda aguefort

44 notes · View notes

mymaleficaria · 9 months

Text

mthedm ---> mymaleficaria

Hi gang! I've had this blog since high school, but somewhere in college it fell into disuse and disrepair. I've been itching to get back on here, as a space on the internet that's not...ya know *gestures at the Twitter-sized elephant in the room*. But I also wanted to go in with a fresh coat of paint and reintroduce myself to y'all, maybe even make some new friends (or enemies. That could be hot.) A lot has changed!

Wait, why do I follow you?

Statistically, you followed me because of Wolf 359! I was big into podcasts back in the day, WTNV, Wolf 359, all those. I also wrote some Wolf 359 fics and was semi-active on the discord. Still fondly remember the show and might reblog fanart once in awhile, but it's not the direction this blog's going to go, so feel free to unfollow if what up I'm to now isn't your jam.

What's this blog about now?

Wouldn't you like to know, weatherboy? Frankly, I'm ADHD as fuck, so that'll vary by the day, but I have a few fandoms (do we still say fandoms in the year of our lord 2023???) that I've been into lately.

Dimension 20: I started watching D20 a little less than a year ago, and it entirely took over my life. It's just a series that's so robustly funny, wonderfully told, and never fails to make me smile. I'm especially fond of ACOC and Fantasy High.

Dracula Daily: I'm in this shit for the long haul! I think Lucy and Mina should kiss, but that's neither here nor there.

Game of Thrones/HotD: This show ended in a trash fire, but it literally lives in my head rent free. The political intrigue, the drama. Ugh. I'm a targ girlie through and through, so I've been eating up HotD, though it's nowhere near as good imo. Am also currently reading the 1st ASOIAF book.

YA lit/Whatever I'm reading/watching: I've read almost 50 books this year so far, and am frankly, insane. Bonus points for queer reads! Not many people to talk about books to irl, so might ramble about them on here instead. Also watch a lot of random TV drama and some anime.

Writing: I'm a fanfic writer, and a fiction writer in general, so I'll post stuff about writing--complaints, story snippets, link to my fics, etc! Headcanons and all will be found here. I've also copyedited before, which is like writing but if you get even more nitpicky about it.

Personal/Whatever the hell I feel like/My D&D Games: Life happens and sometimes you want to scream into the void. Ramblings, jokes, whatever. I transed my gender in the past few years and sometimes I'm mad about it! I also just graduated college! Madness! I play a lot of TTRPGs, and I'm usually on brainrot for one of my characters at any given time.

Why's your new username that?

One of my favorite book series is The Scholomance by Naomi Novik, and in the series, Maleficaria are the horrifying monsters that threaten to kill the students every day, and what is tumblr if not a place full of vile, evil beings? Plus, it means you all can call me Mal.

Anything else?

Nope! Other than to feel free to drop me a line and say hello, especially if you want to scream about D20. I'm p alone in this brainrot irl, so I'm pretty much always down to talk about the Bad Kids... especially Adaine and Fabian. I'm also always down to take fic suggestions in my asks! This show genuinely lifts me up when I'm down, so sharing it with people is one of my favorite things.

My fics (shortlist):

In Sweetness, There is Violence: Angsty ACOC one-shot about if Ruby had made a different choice in the finale. Obligatory Caramelinda Caramelinda-ing.

the words i speak are wildfires: A HOTD one-shot I intended to be smut, that ended up instead being more like a romantic sapphic moment of healing between Alicent and Rhaenyra. What can I say? I like childhood friends to enemies to lovers.

Stay Stellar: An unfinished (and, very likely, discontinued) 15-chapter high school AU for Wolf 359 that I wrote with an old friend. Featuring some truly crazy shenanigans, a lot of embarrassing Kepcobi moments, and a surprising amount of theatre.

#mal speaks #dimension 20 #d20 #a crown of candy #intro post #fantasy high #game of thrones #asoiaf #dungeons and drag queens #dadq #the scholomance #dracula daily

7 notes · View notes

miles-edgewords · 4 months

Text

ABOUT ME

AKA Actual Introduction Post Because It Just Came To My Attention That I Never Actually Made One

art tag: #milesedgeart

non-art post tag: #milesrambles

Fandoms

(Except they get increasingly more… not)

- Carmen Sandiego

- Ace Attorney

- Trigun Stampede

- Over the Garden Wall

- Dimension 20: Fantasy High

- Promare

- Undertale (I got into it very late 😔)

- Sally Face

- Lackadaisy

- Nimona

- Minecraft Story Mode (cringe is dead fight me)

- Dan and Phil (again cringe is dead but also please respect people’s boundaries, if you’re publicly posting creepy/invasive stuff I will block you. This isn’t directed at anyone specifically but I feel like I need to say it upfront because uh. some of y’all scare me)

- Cinema Therapy (do they have a fandom? I hope so)

- Bits and pieces of Danganronpa V1 and V2

- Groundhog Day (the musical specifically)

- Sneakers (remember that nerd movie from 1992? no? well too bad I’m telling you about it anyway)

- Wargames (you know how the people who made the previously-mentioned nerd movie made a different movie 10 years earlier called wargames which ultimately inspired the creators to take an interest in whitehat hackers which eventually resulted in the creation of sneakers? no? well too bad, you know the drill)

- The True Meaning of Smekday (THE ANIMATED MOVIE DOES NOT DO IT JUSTICE I WILL PERISH ON THIS HILL)

- The Lifeline Games but specifically the Taylor ones

- Brennan Lee Mulligan (just. In general)

- Whatever it’s called when you have not consumed a single piece of media from a fandom but you know more about it than some of the fans because you have a friend who’s really into it and you like listening to their opinions/theories. (ie. I have watched playthroughs of Poppy Playtime and FNAF and I have enjoyed them by proxy)

Theatre

Roles I’ve played & other stuff I’ve done in theatre (not counting anything I did in school because there would be way too many well-technically’s):

- Karnak / SABM art lead (Ride the Cyclone, Stone Soup Theatre Co.)

- Hanz* / Sailor (Cabaret, Stone Soup Theatre Co.)

- Lead puppet designer / puppet constructor / Pig 1 / Milky White Titty Committee** (Into the Woods, Stone Soup Theatre Co.

- Part of Christmas Future / Man 1 / Marley’s makeup, hair, and OHGODTHESECHAINSARE70POUNDSIMACTUALLYGONNADIEFORREAL manager (A Christmas Carol, Center Theatre Co.)

- Shakespeare’s Valet (Something Rotten! Stone Soup Theatre Co.)

*This was one of my favorite roles to play and I still don’t know if it’s meant to be spelled with a “z” or if our director just made a typo. Hans? Hanz? Hanzsz?

**Milky White’s udders kept falling off. It was a Whole Thing.

Hobbies

As an aspiring jack of all trades, I have a running list of hobbies which range from “I’m really bad at this but I have tried it and am familiar with it” to “I am Really Good at this Thing”. Here are all of those, in no particular order (to avoid personal bias, I will not be ranking which of these I’m best at. Feel free to guess though! I’m also happy to elaborate on any of them— I just don’t generally know how skilled I am in a broad sense.)

- Poetry

- Fanfiction

- Novel-writing

- Other writing-related activities

- Digital art

- 2D & 3D animation

- Traditional art (I like markers and pens a lot)

- D&D

- Painting D&D miniatures

- Violin

- Piano

- Singing

- Acting

- Guitar (and related instruments)

- Pennywhistle

- Origami

- Cross-stitch

- Comic writing/illustration

- Journaling

- Gaming

- Listening to Every Genre of Music Ever

- Attempting to take care of houseplants

- Space/astronomy

TO REITERATE, BECAUSE IT TOOK ME FOREVER TO GET THIS THROUGH MY HEAD. I AM NOT “GOOD” AT ALL OF THESE THINGS THEY ARE JUST THINGS I DO AND THAT IS NORMAL AND OKAY. HOBBIES DO NOT HAVE TO BE MONETIZABLE IN ORDER TO BE HOBBIES. IN FACT THAT’S LIKE THE SELLING POINT OF HOBBIES. I’M SORRY I DID NOT MEAN TO YELL THIS MUCH.

So uh

Yeah that’s me

Thank you for reading I will be updating this probably more often than I should

#intro post #introduction #blog intro #introductory post #pinned intro

2 notes · View notes

d20-brainrot · 7 months

Note

who are your favorite pcs on dimension 20? (either as a whole, per season, whatever you want!)

oh gosh, that's such a difficult decision! i might go based on seasons i've seen? and as a disclaimer: i love every single pc, everyone plays so well on dimension 20 and i love the choices people make, this is all just my opinion!

fantasy high freshman year: god i love gorgug in this season, he was such a goofy guy, and i love him. he honestly was what made me switch to playing more barbarians in my own gameplay

fhsy: fig was sooooo good in this season, the stuff with her and ayda, all the skateboarding away, and just her coming into her own as a person hit very hard for me.

the seven: ostentatia wallace was so good, and izzy was so fun at the table! i'm so excited to watch her in coffin run and in burrow's end. just yelling "i love you" at her dad and all the cleric shit was amazing, and i loved every second of her.

unsleeping city: i've only seen the first season, but i loved kugrash so much!! him being rat jesus was too funny, but he also had his heartbreaking moments. he was a very well developed character and murph played him so well

crown of candy: it's a tie between 3, which i know is so bad, but they are liam, lapin, and theo. they each are just so fantastic and i love them all so much. liam was so sweet, and then when he was a war guy, that was so good too! him and primsy <3. lapin was fucking hilarious, i don't care what anyone else says. his banter with theo was unmatched, and the last episode with him was heart-wrenching and i loved every second of it. theo is also so good. casting knock on the door!!! the banter, sprinkle, the protectiveness all of it!

ravening war: god i love colin and raphaniel so so much! they are such a duo. but so are colin and deli! but then deli and karna! but then karna and amongeux! god, that season was full of top players and i probably couldn't choose one rn.

starstruck oddyessy: god i loved gunnie! the ball is rolling up is in my vocabulary now, and i honestly enjoy everything that lou wilson does, he's phenomenal. also skip is fucking hilarious in the beginning, when he's learning how to talk, it makes me giggle all the time

neverafter: tbh i loved everyone in this season! my top favs were definitely ylfa and pinocchio though. lou's voice was fucking crazy but it was wonderful. his arc with his stepmother slayed. ylfa is a character that i relate to a little too much probably, but she is so wonderful. her and the wolf are crazy. i watch way too many edits with ylfa clips, it's probably something i should work on haha

escape from the bloodkeep: tbh i love leiland! i'm only on episode three but he slays figuratively and literally (though not much literally lol) matt mercer is a great player and i love everything he does!

i'm so sorry that this was so lengthy lmao, can you tell that i like dimension 20 and dungeons and dragons???

#dimension 20 #asks #dungeons & dragons

4 notes · View notes

potatoesandsunshine · 5 months

Text

the tierlist trend seems kind of over... but i love ranking things :) here's the official anna potatoesandsunshine d20 opinions

told myself i wasn’t gonna write a whole long commentary about this but c’mon. that’s who i am.

💖BEST💖: to make it to this tier a season has to be either tailor-made for me specifically (the acofaf announcement made me feel like someone had seen my diary and it remains in my opinon The Best D20 Has Ever Been) or be something i never knew i needed. unsleeping city was one that i didn’t initially think i would care for (i’m just not super into urban fantasy) but it pretty quickly became a comfort food season for me. when i’m sick TUC 1 is what i put on. acoc and fhsy are a bit more complicated for me—those seasons are what got me really into the fandom side of d20 (writing fic, listening to fan music, etc) but pretty soon i realized hmm i don't really... enjoy the fandom side of this so much! so i hit the brakes on making fanwork pretty hard after those two, but they’re still two of the best seasons imo.

Good ♥️: i like these! i rewatch episodes sometimes! i was surprised how much fun mentopolis was, but i fell in love with the season as it went on and i’m super happy it exists. we all know my eftbk feelings by now (it’s good but i wish it had a longer runway so we could have some more character development throughout). ravening war is tricky because it had some of the best character moments and dynamics for any season of d20 for me (i am the tragedy enjoyer! i love when a season makes me sad!) but the overarching illuminati plot just didn’t hit at all so that kept it out of the top tier. Mice & Murder Is The Most Underrated Season Of Dimension 20 And Everyone Should Watch It.

Had fun, won’t rewatch: what it says on the tin. if i finish a season it can’t make it into the bounced off tier, so even though i retroactively don’t super care for the seven i must’ve had a good enough time watching it in the moment. maybe the Hottest Take of this list is.... i think fh is more popular than is really warranted by virtue of being the first season. it’s good! it’s a good story! but i like fhsy so much more and i basically never go back and rewatch fh episodes. (DISCLAIMER fantasy high LIVE in brooklyn is my child and that episode should be carved out and stuck in the best tier. love it.)

Bounced off: also what it says on the tin. coffin run just didn’t catch my attention (might’ve been a me thing, sometimes if i’m not having a great time it’s harder to care about d20) and while i loved everyone on shriek week i had a tough time with the system. that one is worth a revisit when i have more time. aso and tuc2 are really tough for me 😔 it seems like people love aso so much and i’m happy for them but i tried to get into it probably six times, made it to episode two, and said “why am i watching this?” every time. i will never finish it. tuc2 felt even wilder to not connect to since i love tuc so much but i have a certain threshold for extended explanations of metaphysical concepts in the world and tuc2 blasts past that like every 20 minutes. tried maybe four times to watch the season (my best friend really likes it! she thinks i would!) but just couldn’t.

Active Hatred 🔪: tiny heist is the worst season of this show! i hate it! i can’t believe they had both jess ross and lily du and wasted them on this season!! (i was already sort of falling out of love with mcelroy content when this season came out, but this was what put my taz fandom in the grave)

Didn’t Watch (Yet): just haven’t gotten around to them 👍

#dimension 20 #like i said i know people are kinda done doing these but. truly any excuse to talk about how much i love acofaf

6 notes · View notes

grasslandgirl · 11 months

Note

Im new here but ive seen you posting alot about noble pining, what ive gathered is that its a currently unfinished fanfic of yours but i have NO idea about anything else about it, but it caught my eye so like. What is it?

hiiihihiii anon <3 getting asks like this is one of the great joys of my life for real !! so thank u <3

so yes! noble pining is a fic that i am currently in the process of writing, and have been intermittently working on for the last three years!! it's a dimension 20 fantasy high au centering on the bad kids, and specifically centering on Adaine, Fabian and Gorgug who are gonna be an endgame ot3 over the course of the fic!! it's kind of mid-level fantasy, but separate from the canon of fantasy high, so like there aren't really any specific classes for any of the characters and i'm not using any of the goblin/orc/teifling/elf etc dnd races in this au. it's a royalty au wherein Adaine is a princess of a kingdom and Fabain and Gorgug are two knights of the realm, her guards, and very dear childhood friends and the three of them end up on an incredibly complicated adventure when Adaine gets kidnapped, and end up meeting not only the rest of the bad kids, but a lot of other fh npcs as well lmao sfkvjnsfbbsf !!

currently noble pining is hovering at around 105k words, and i'm currently working on writing the 19th chapter. i don't plan on posting it until the whole thing is completed because there's a lot of editing i want to be able to do to earlier chapters once i have the whole thing plotted out and fully written, but when it's done i do plan on posting it chapter by chapter on ao3, so keep your eyes peeled for when i finally finish the damn thing !!! "noble pining" is just hte working title for the project (because i never really expected people to notice or care about me blogging about it occasionally and asking about it-- but here we are and its WONDERFUL every time) so i've got a couple formal titles im considering between for when i finally start posting it, but i'll probably continue to refer to it as noble pining even once its done so that people (like you lovely anon) who've shown interest in it before it was complete can know and read it once it's being posted!!! i do also have an organizational tag (ill tag this post with it as well) that i use to keep track of most posts referring to or talking about noble pining, and you're always welcome to go and backread through those older asks and posts ive made if you've got more interest, and my inbox is always open if you've got more specific questions about what i'm working on!! <3333

#xoxoxooxxooxxooxo to u anon #noble pining asks are the true and earnest delight of my life #asks #noble pining au #<< for organizational purposes

5 notes · View notes

xyloophones · 2 years

Note

Hey Cher, seen you posting abt dimension 20 a bit, and yeah I could Google it but it looks very cool and I'd rather hear it from you if it's that cool 💜

helloooo my beloved pal <333 yes yes lemme talk about dimension 20 !!

dimension 20 is an actual play dnd show (theres also an audio only version if you prefer podcasts !) !! there are several campaigns, some with wildly different settings & different players, most of them DM'd by brennan lee mulligan who is an INCREDIBLE storyteller. d20 has a diverse cast & really memorable characters and i've kind of passively watched for a while but i recently finished watching one of their campaigns and Fell In Love

i'm just gonna list the campaigns ive seen so far in order of my favorites:

fantasy high. 6 teens go to a high school that like. specializes in adventuring parties, found family and shenanigans ensue. everyone is gay and neurodivergent. i'm very attached to the characters and their dynamics with each other AND the npcs <33 season one is on youtube for free, however season 2 is my favorite bc it contains probably my fav dnd npc to ever exist (i am an ayda aguefort stan until i DIE). i'm making my way through The Seven right now, which is a spin-off of another adventuring party that are friends with the original 6 in seasons 1 & 2.

a starstruck odyssey. fun campy space romp feat. more found family. this one is has the same players and dm as fantasy high! it has a sci-fi spacey setting and the party is the crew of a spaceship that looks like a giant hotdog. the fights in this one are absolutely wild.

the unsleeping city. an urban magic setting in new york city! another one with the main player cast and dm and once again the party dynamics and character relationships are just !!! so good !!! you will cry over a rat man !!!!! i think these two seasons definitely made me the most emotional. i aspire to get to this level of world building in my own writing.

a court of fey & flowers. ok this one is still ongoing but !!!!!! the only reason it's not number one on this list is because it's not done yet but hsajkf holy shit it's so good?? it's dm'd by aabria iyengar and it's basically using dnd in a regency fey setting to play around with high society gossip and court expectations and AAAAA i have never been so invested in wanting someone to roll well when sending shady letters to other members in the court. it's so good.

there are a ton more campaigns + one shots but i'm still making my way through them! unfortunately, most of it is only available with a dropout subscription so i'd recommend watching the first season of fantasy high on youtube to see if you like it before diving in!

if anyone else has any questions about dimension 20 feel free to send me an ask!! i could probably talk for hours about my favorite characters and details but i'll leave it here <33

real quick edit: if anyone needs trigger/content warnings for things please send me an ask !! every episode has content warnings in the description, but some campaigns in general have darker themes so let me know if you need warnings !)

#ask #xylo speaks #SAEEE <3333 ur always letting me ramble abt thinks thank u #oh i mentioned brennan lee mulligan bc i believe ? he did ? a thing ? with the critical role cast?#and i know a lot of people like cr so maybe yall have seen him there

14 notes · View notes

levymcgarden55 · 1 year

Text

I got tagged by @caprisun-overlord to do 10 characters, 10 fandoms, 10 tags :D

I didn’t have to do the little blurb but since the point is to get to know me, why not? Here are my blorbos, arranged in no particular order (but psst my favorite is 10)

1. Frisk (undertale, when the game was really popular I dressed up as Frisk for Halloween and was surprised to find my best friend as Chara and two acquaintances as Alphys and Sans. God that was a great Halloween.)

2. Roserade (pokemon, I love the design and the gay flair. Plus queer flower fems are very good. [holding budew, roselia, and roserade in my hand] I just think they’re neat.)

3. Fae (Fire Emblem Heroes, god I love this baby, but she gets 0 recognition bc her og game was a Japan-only release. Yes she’s a thousand year old dragon who looks and acts like a little girl but look I just want to give her a juice box and a plushie)

4. Angus McDonald (the adventure zone balance. God I love my boy!! For a good while my icon was various images of him in the “do it for them” meme format. It’s still my icon on discord bc I LOVE joining a server and having people flip their shit over My Boy. Once someone went “Angus Mcdonald?!” And I went “yes that’s my christian name.”)

5. Natsu (Fairy tail, it was the first anime I really got into. I looooved it and Natsu specially was my first fictional crush that I wrote fanfic for. I watched fairy tail up to the 190s where I kinda… drifted off of it. Years later I rewatched it and can say with a certainty that it is Not As Good, with a lot of problematic bs. But I’ll always have a soft spot for Natsu.)

6: Zelda (breath of the wild. She’s a trans icon. Also I played the game before and after I left the cult, and GOD does her story hit different. “You’ve been trained your whole life to forge your connection with the divine, just as your ancestors did before you. You’re trying and trying and trying, pouring your whole heart into it. And it’s… not working. Everyone’s expectations are crushing you. If they could just let you do what you’re good at, you might be able to thrive! But all your parent can say is try harder.” . . . Of course I love this poor doomed princess.)

7: Ralsei (Deltarune. Yes, blush when Kris is too close!! Hug the combat dummy!! Shield by wrapping yourself up completely in your scarf!! God I love them. Also even though the ch 2 sprite debunks it, my headcanon is that the heart on Ralsei’s dress is actually a chest cutout so it’s black fur, not fabric.)

8. Flayn (fire emblem three houses. She’s adorable and sweet with a cutesy design and soft mannerisms. Not great in combat so I made her my dancer. I desperately wish they had varied the body types on the girl characters so they weren’t all mannequin doll perfect— Flayn deserves better, and give my buff girls muscles, cowards! Honorary mention to Petra from the same game, who I love and is one of the aforementioned girls who deserve huge watermelon-splitting thighs, goddamnit!!)

9. Yoosung (mystic messenger, ik 707 was all the rage but Yoosung was my first route and will always have a special place in my heart.)

10. Garty O’Brien (dimension 20’s fantasy high. I adore every part of them. They’re a nonbinary aasimar half orc who runs a tavern on a moving pirate city made of lashed together ships. They have top scars and cool as hell sacred geometric & floral tattoos. They’re strong and muscular and on top of all that they’re classy & chill beyond belief.)

I am gently setting them in your hands

I have so much gender envy for them my god

[id: an image of Garty O’Brien. They’re standing at ease, one palm up and the other at their side. They’re facing forwards and looking at the viewer with a friendly expression. Besides the other features mentioned above when describing Garty, they have medium green skin, golden tattoos, and their eyes are a black sclera with a hollow gold ring for the iris. They are shirtless with gray pants that have a wraparound shawl on the torso. They are wearing plain boots, lots of dangly gold jewelry, silver makeup, and have short black hair with an undercut on both sides.]

Bonus 11th: Master Firbolg (adventure zone graduation. He’s not really a blorbo but he’s very good and I love him. After I listened to this, one of my druids (who already spoke broken common) just totally took on his speaking cadence?? Also Justin really did go “yeah there’s huge hype around my character name so I’m just Not Gonna Name Him, fuck you.” Gotta respect it.)

Hope y’all enjoyed getting to know me a little (:

Tagging @lol-who-is-this-guy @ratbastarddotfuck @quinnception @in-bituin-the-stars @photosinthesisforthewinthesis @axiomofhope @zeta999 @tallsa and anyone who sees this and wants to do it too (:

#mostly tagging ppl I interact w or who usually show up in my notifs. ily (:#levy makes content #tag games #accessible #my ids #get to know levy

6 notes · View notes

fire-and-swan · 2 years

Text

Today I watch the last two episodes. Dimension 20: A Starstruck Odyssey, episodes seventeen and eighteen. The final set. It all comes down to this.

(prev episode notes are here, here and here, btw)

Battle Stations!

Ponytail Barry is the good Barry.

Gold Tier Jib-Job makes Jib-Job fight! That is ridiculously useful.

"I need the surrender of X" "Oh, that's lovely, please hold."

All the U4F backup!

Amusing that the Bad Call is U4F

Enemies starting a slap fight, like "mine" "get off, they're mine!", which does make things a bit simpler.

Wait. What? When the heck did Barry Nyne get on board the Wurst? And why is he targeting Barry Syx, rather than seeking Skip?

So ridiculously cool that the group came up with a way to defeat a Slug. That they took the time and effort to work out what would beat Skip, and bought the stuff, for this exact moment.

Margaret has a minor war room. That is awesome.

Oh no. It was going so, so well. Except now, Barry isn't a slug, and the Princeps is. (Did Zortch use something like Dominate Person on Barry Nyne? Is that what happened?)

Yeah, this. This would've been so tense to watch live. There is so much going on. It was all going so well, and that last reveal? The pilot got attacked? Now we're really in trouble.

Anyway: Eighteen!

Skip: in trouble. Barry: safer than he was. Everyone else: honestly, doing fine.

Ooh, the decision of whether to do ship stuff, or people stuff is so key here.

There are so many people in this combat. I though the battles of Crown of Candy were bad for management. This, however. Comparable, at the very least.

Nyne thinks that he's Syx? What? This is wacky.

The Barry v Barry discussion is really really something. Both in all of Murph's incredible argument there, and in Brennan's Barry preformance. "In this roll, you have expertise. Because you are expert in nothing more than than being a Barry."

One tiny FTL jump. One round, no pilot, no prep. Oooooh. Oookay. That was stress. That was legit fear they might go down. I'm sure that being thrown into space wouldn't have killed them all, but still, that could have been disastrous. But that's dnd.

Loose Duke? LOOSE DUKE?!?

Call to Guards is such an amazing use of action economy. Absolutely amazing!

Worm fight!

All hail the King!

Holofract success! And the entire house of Frangus is gone. Oh boy, that's a lot.

Yesss, all the debt gone.

Calling it now, a full ship sweep is now going to be a part of daily operating procedure.

First ever lie, and it's a 21! Go Riva!

Amazing to have saved the galaxy, to have achieved success on basically every level, and there is still another ship left to fight.

*blinks. Stares at screen. Taps back to rewatch scene just to check what I'm seeing* Skip is helping Skipper fly the ship. Ookay. Well, that is kooky.

I love ship fights in this game. They're completely, 100% teamwork. It's beautiful to see.

They have the ship down to nineteen fifteen hitpoints before they ram it. WILD!

Okay, turns out they needed that. Don't ram things, just boost guns and shoot them. Noted.

This has been so wild. I literally cannot sit still. All fidget and stim rn. All fidget and stim.

Skipper had a moment to be actually supportive of the crew. Which is oddly cathartic. Like, he learned something through Skip and the crew. And then chose to become Skip again. Which, uh, yeah. That's a choice.

I do wonder if they are both conscious and aware now.

Oh, the end of a gallivant. She learned to lie. She learned to look out for herself in the harsh realities of space. And now she's leaving.

Oh, oh heart. These campaigns always end so strong. Such beauty. Found family and strength and everything. The adventure save the galaxy, yes. But more importantly it saved a small rag-tag group, and it made a family. And that is beautiful.

And now it's over. It's all over, and now I have to just pick up and go on with my life, as though watching through Fantasy High, Unsleeping City, A Crown of Candy, and now this hasn't been life-changing.

The ball is rolling up.

#luci watches dnd #d20 aso epsd 17 #d20 aso epsd 18 #a starstruck odyssey #dimension 20 #there is something painful and beautiful about spending weeks catching up on a show #and then finally making it #its bittersweet #i no longer have to block tags to dodge spoilers #because there's nothing left to spoil

1 note · View note

supercantaloupe · 3 years

Text

okay yeah actually, i’ll bite. i’ve got some of my own thoughts about the unsleeping city and cultural representation and i’m gonna make a post about them now, i guess. i’ll put it under a cut though because this post is gonna be long.

i wanna start by saying i love dimension 20 and i really really enjoy the unsleeping city. i look forward to watching new episodes every week, and getting hooked on d20 as a whole last summer really helped pull me out of a pandemic depression, and i’m grateful to have this cool show to be excited about and interested in and to have met so many cool people to talk about it with.

that being said, however, i think there is a risk run in representing any group of people/their culture when you have the kind of setting that tuc has. by which i mean, tuc is set in a real world with real people and real human cultures in it. unlike fantasy high or a crown of candy where everything is made up (even if rooted in real-world cultures), tuc is explicitly rooted in reality, and all of its diversity -- both the ups and downs that go with it. and especially set in new york of all places, one of the most densely, diversely populated cities on earth. the cast is 7 people; it’s great that those 7 people come from a variety of backgrounds and identities and all bring their own unique perspectives to the table, and it’s great that those people and the entire crew are generally conscious of themselves and desire to tell stories/represent perspectives ethically. but you simply cannot authentically represent every culture or every perspective in the world (or even just in a city) when your cast is 7 people. it’s an impossible task. this is inherent to the setting, and acknowledged by the cast, and by brennan especially, who has been on record saying how one of the exciting aspects of doing a campaign set in nyc is its diversity, the fact that no two new yorkers have the same perspective of new york. i think that’s a good thing -- but it does have its challenges too, clearly.

i’m not going to go into detail on the question of whether or not tuc’s presentation of asian and asian american culture is appropriative/offensive or not. first of all, i don’t feel like it’s 100% fair to judge the show completely yet, since it’s a prerecorded season and currently airing midseason, so i don’t yet know how things wrap up. secondly, i’m not asian or asian american. i can have my own opinions on that content in the show, but i think it’s worth more to hear actual asian and asian american voices on this specific aspect of the show. having an asian american cast member doesn’t automatically absolve the show of any criticisms with regard to asian american cultural representation/appropriation, whether those criticisms are made by dozens of viewers or only a handful of them. regardless, i don’t think it’s my place as someone who is not asian to speak with any authority on that issue, and i know for a fact that there are asian american viewers sharing their own opinions. their thoughts in this instance hold more water than mine, i think.

what i will comment on in more depth, though, is a personal frustration with tuc. i’m jewish; i’ve never really been shy about that fact on my page here. i’m not from new york, but i visit a few times a year (or i did before covid anyway, lol), and i have some family from nyc. nyc, to me, is a jewish city. and for good reason, since it’s home to one of the largest jewish populations of the country, and even the world, and aspects of jewish culture (including culinary, like bagels and pastrami, and linguistic, like the common use of yiddish words and phrases in english colloquial speech) are prevalent and celebrated among jews and goyim alike. when i think of nyc, i think of a jewish city; that’s not everybody’s new york, but that’s my new york, and thats plenty of other people’s new york too. so i do find myself slightly disappointed or frustrated in tuc for its, in my opinion, rather stark lack of jewish representation.

now, i’m not saying that one of the PCs should have been jewish, full stop. i love to headcanon iga as jewish even though canon does not support that interpretation, and i’m fine with that. she’s not my character. it’s possible that simply no one thought of playing a jewish character, i dunno. but also, and i can’t be sure about this, i’m willing to bet that none of the players really wanted to play a jewish character because they didn’t want to play a character of a marginalized culture they dont belong to in the interest of avoiding stereotyping or offensive representation/cultural appropriation. (i don’t know if any of the cast members are jewish, but i’m assuming not.) and the concern there is certainly appreciated; there’s not a ton of mainstream jewish rep out there, and often what we get is either “unlikeable overly conservative hassidic jew” or “jokes about their bar mitzvah/one-off joke about hanukkah and then their jewishness is never mentioned ever again,” which sucks. it would be really cool to see some more good casual jewish rep in a well-rounded, three-dimensional character in the main cast of a show! even if there are a couple of stumbles along the way -- nobody is perfect and no two jews have the same level of knowledge, dedication, and adherence to their culture.

but at the same time, i look at characters like iga and i really do long for a jewish character to be there. siobhan isn’t polish, yet she’s playing a characters whose identity as a polish immigrant to new york is very central to her story and arc. and part of me wonders why we can’t have the same for a jewish character. if not a PC, then why not an NPC? again, i’m jewish, and i am not native, but in my opinion i think the inclusion of jj is wonderful -- i think there are even fewer native main characters in mainstream media than there are jewish ones, and it’s great to see a native character who is both in touch with their culture as well as not being defined solely by their native-ness. to what extent does it count as ‘appropriative’ because brennan is a white dude? i dunno, but i’m like 99% sure they talked to sensitivity consultants to make sure the representation was as ethical as they could get it, and anyway, i can’t personally see and glaring missteps so far. but again, i’m not native, and if there are native viewers with their own opinions on jj, i’d be really interested in hearing them.

but getting back to the relative lack of jewish representation. it just...disappoints me that jewishness in new york is hardly ever even really mentioned? again, i know we’re only just over halfway through season 2, but also, we had a whole first season too. and it’s definitely not all bad. for example: willy! gd, i love willy so much. him being a golem of williamsburg makes me really really happy -- a jewish mythological creature animated from clay/mud (in this case bricks) to protect a jewish community (like that of williamsburg, a center for many of nyc’s jews) from threat. golem have so often been taken out of their original context and turned into evil monsters in fantasy settings, especially including dnd. (even within other seasons of d20! crush in fh being referred to as a “pavement golem” always rubbed me the wrong way, and i had hoped they’d learned better after tuc but in acoc they refer to another monster as a “corn golem” which just disappointed me all over again.) so the fact that tuc gets golems right makes my jewish heart very happy.

and yet...he doesn’t show up that much? sure, in s1, he’s very helpful when he does, but in s2 so far he shows up once and really does not say or do much of anything. he speaks with a lot more yiddish-influenced language than other characters, but if you didn’t know those words were specifically yiddish/jewish, you might not be able to otherwise clock the fact that willy is jewish. and while willy is a jewish mythological creature who is jewish in canon, he isn’t human. there are no other direct references to judaism, jewish characters, or jewish culture in the unsleeping city beyond him.

there are, in fact, two other canon jewish characters in tuc. but...here’s where i feel the most frustration, i think. the two canon jewish humans in tuc are stephen sondheim and robert moses. both of whom are real actual people, so it’s not like we can just pick and choose what their cultural backgrounds are. as much as i love stephen sondheim, i think there are inherent issues with including real world people as characters in a fictional setting, especially if they are from living/recent memory (sondheim is literally still alive), but anyway, sondheim and moses are both actual jewish people. from watching tuc alone you probably would not be able to guess that sondheim is jewish -- nothing from his character except name suggests it, and i wouldn’t even fault you for not thinking ‘sondheim’ is a jewish-sounding surname (and i dislike the idea/attitude/belief that you can tell who is or isn’t jewish by the sound of their name). and yeah, i’m not going to sit here and be like “brennan should have made sondheim more visibly jewish in canon!” because, like, he’s a real human being and it’s fucking weird to portray him in a way that isn’t as close to how he publicly presents himself, which is not in fact very identifiably jewish? i don’t know, this is what i mean by it’s inherently weird and arguably problematic to portray real living people as characters in a fictional setting, but i digress. sondheim’s jewish, even if you wouldn’t know it; not exactly a representation win.

and then there’s bob moses. you might be able to guess that he’s jewish from canon, actually. there’s the name, of course. but more insidious to me are the specifics of his villainy. greedy and powerhungry, a moneyman, a lich whose power is stored in a phylactery...it does kind of all add up to a Yikes from me. (in the stock market fight there’s a one-off line asking if he has green skin; it’s never really directly acknowledged or answered, but it made me really uncomfortable to hear at first and it’s stuck with me since viewing for the first time.) the issue for me here is that the most obviously jewish human character is the season’s bbeg, and his villainy is rooted in very antisemitic tropes and stereotypes.

i know this isn’t all brennan’s fault -- robert moses was a real ass person and he was in fact jewish, a powerhungry and greedy moneyman, a big giant racist asshole, etc. i’m not saying that jewish characters can’t be evil, and i’m not saying brennan should have tried to be like “this is my NPC robert christian he’s just like bob moses but instead he’s a goy so it’s okay” because...that would be fuckin weird bro. and bob moses was a real person who was jewish and really did do some heinous shit with his municipal power. i’m not necessarily saying brennan should have picked/created a different character to be the villain. i’m not even saying that he shouldn’t have made bob moses a lich (although, again, it doesn’t 100% sit right with me). but my point here is that bob moses is one of a grand total of three canon jewish characters in tuc, of which only two humans, of whom he is the one you’d most easily guess would be jewish and is the most influenced by antisemitic stereotypes/tropes. had there been more jewish representation in the show at all, even just some neutral jewish NPCs, this would not be as much of a problem as it is to me. but halfway through season 2, so far, this is literally all we get. and that bums me out.

listen, i really like tuc. i love d20. but the fact that it is set in a real world place with real world people does inherently raise challenges when it comes to ethical cultural representation. especially when the medium of the show is a game whose creatures, lore, and mechanics have been historically rooted in some questionable racial/cultural views. and dnd is making progress to correct some of those misguided views of older sourcebooks by updating them to more equitably reflect real world racial/cultural sensitivities; that’s a good thing! but these seasons, of course, were recorded before that. the game itself has some questionable cultural stuff baked into it, and that is (almost necessarily) going to be brought to the table in a campaign set in a real-world place filled with real-world people of diverse real-world cultures. the cast can have sensitivity consultants and empathy and the best intentions in the world, and they’ll still fuck up from time to time, that’s okay. your mileage may vary on whether or not it’s still worth sticking around with the show (or the fandom) through that. for me, it does not yet outweigh all the things i like about the show, and i’m gonna continue watching it. but it’s still very worth acknowledging that the cast is 7 people who cannot possibly hope to authentically or gracefully represent every culture in nyc. it’s an unfortunate limitation of the medium. yet it’s also still worthwhile to acknowledge and discuss the cultural representation as it is in the show -- both the goods and the bads, the ethically solid and the questionably appropriative -- and even to hold the creators accountable. (decently, though. i’m definitely not advocating anybody cyberbully brennan on twitter or whatever.) the show and its representation is far from perfect, but i also don’t think it ever could be. still, though, it could always be better, and there’s a worthwhile discussion to be had in the wheres, hows, and whys of that.

#sasha reviews #sasha speaks #the unsleeping city #unsleeping city #long post #dimension 20 #gd i stayed up way too late to write this #tuc #the unsleeping city chapter 2 #the unsleeping city 2 #tuc2 #antisemitism

155 notes · View notes