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Happy TGWDLM:Reprise youtube release day !!!!!🩵🩵🩵 Professor Hidgens/ Show Stopping Number was my very first fanart for this show/ Starkid in general, so I wanted to redraw it to celebrate (swipe to see the original from 2020 !) Getting to see Will Branner as Hidgens on stage was so much fun and this show will always a special place in my heart as both the show that got me into Starkid and also the one I got to see live in person🥹🥹🥹 I can’t wait for everyone to see this version of the show on youtube now🩵

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POWER WORD: KILL?!?@??@!?!?!

THATS A NINTH LEVEL SPELL SLOT. NINTH LEVEL. WHAT THE FUCK? WHAT THE FUCK.

"Ethrand looks nauseous." BITCH ME TF TOO WHAT THE HELL, NICE KNOWING YOU HANNAN.

Also, Julien grounding Occtis while Occtis is having a very obvious ptsd-induced panic attack. Love to see it, love you two, what the fuck is HAPPENING.

Long transcript upcoming, I just want to put the conversation in full:

Murray: Bolaire, you leaving?

Tal/Bolaire: I’m just staring through Thimble.

Thimble: Well?

Bolaire: Are we to trust Thjazi?

Thimble: I always have.

Bolaire: Very well then. I belong to you. I am your weapon. What would you have me do?

Thimble: Bolaire.

Bolaire: What did he used to say? ‘Thimble, please tell it what to do next.’ What would you have me do? If I don’t belong to you, I belong to his brother.

Thimble: Bolaire.

Bolaire: Yes?

Thimble: You don’t belong to anyone. And you know that.

Bolaire: Are you saying that Thjazi was wrong? Are you saying that his notion of what I am was incorrect? Did you ever tell him that? And I’m very good at telling when someone’s lying.

Hal: At a certain point, you’re going to have to let go of my brother and start dealing with us.

Julien: It’s difficult when he won’t let go of us.

Thaisha: I think you’re the only one with that excuse/Hal: You’re a different story

Julien: Great.

Bolaire: I …

Thimble: I don’t know everything he did to you. All I know is, you only wanted to deal with me.

Bolaire: He wouldn’t look at me.

Thimble: Maybe he was scared of you, Bolaire.

Bolaire: Mm.

Thimble: Maybe he just didn’t like your ugly mug.

Bolaire: I was definitely scared of him. He told me everything he was going to do to me, and funny enough, he did it. My life is over.

Thimble: I just …

Bolaire: I lost everything.

Thimble: Bolaire, then come with us, and you can tell me all about how terrible he was.

I … I am not sure why everyone is apparently freaking out about this conversation? Every time I’ve gone in the cr4 tag the last week it’s been a lot of discussion. Mostly, that I can see, about whether Bolaire is telling the truth, and how damaging it would be to the story and to the other characters (and the other players) if he is telling the truth, and …

Honestly I’m a little baffled by this?

We have seen very little indication that he’s not telling the truth. And plenty that he is. If the argument is that we haven’t seen proof that Thjazi could treat someone like that …

Mara the Wing, about half an hour ago, straight up and in earnest: “All right. Thjazi was a bastard and a thief. He used and abused people.” Julien, not believing that his shadow might be Thjazi: “I’m very confused as to whether or not this is friend or foe, both, neither?”, to which Thaisha responded: “That sounds like Thjazi!” Like. Everyone around him, friend or foe, acknowledges that Thjazi sometimes went through people for shortcuts, even though (almost) all of them also acknowledge that he did so in a good cause. Usually. Often. Like, none of the characters are under any illusions. Bolaire …

Bolaire thinks they are. And he’s right to an extent, they tend to think of Thjazi’s crimes as … sort of happening to other people? People they’re often justified against. Even with Vaelus, because it came right in the end, and this was Mara’s direct argument, because it came right in the end, the injury he did in the doing of it was justified. Which … uh. Ends justify the means, might be a bit of a dangerous argument, but still. Bolaire has a point. Most of the people here love Thjazi, and are willing to forgive him things that Bolaire can’t.

But even with that said …

The person in this room that loved Thjazi the most, that forgave him everything, that would do anything for him, is Thimble. And Thimble is the one Bolaire directed this towards. And Thimble …

Took the hit. She acknowledged it. She acknowledged him. Yeah, she’s still … She’s trying to explain it, to him and to herself, trying to make it make sense, to say that Thjazi might have been like that because he was scared of Bolaire (which is honestly quite probable, even if it doesn’t help much), but she still …

“I don’t know everything he did to you.”

To you. She acknowledged that directly.

“Bolaire, then come with us, and you can tell me all about how terrible he was.”

Like. She didn’t flinch from the implication. She didn’t deny Bolaire. She didn’t say it wasn’t true. She said she didn’t know, that she didn’t see a lot of it, that she only saw the effect on Bolaire himself, but she still acknowledged that effect. And she was willing to let him tell her. She was willing to hear it.

Thimble loves Thjazi. With all her heart. She has always trusted him. But she won’t treat Bolaire like a thing, she won’t treat him like she owns him, and when he says that his experience was different than hers, she offers to listen. She doesn’t tell him to shut up so she can preserve her image of Thjazi, she tells him to come with her and tell her. Now, maybe he can’t trust yet that she will actually listen, but at the very least she made the offer. She didn’t deny what was done, and she offered to hear it out in full.

And the others …

Look. Hal, I think, has basically said every wrong thing possible since they all stumbled back into his house. Every time Hal opened his mouth towards Bolaire in this conversation, I was flinching and telling him to shut up, please, you’re not helping. He started out freaking out about Bolaire wearing Misha. Which was justified! So justified! But also does not make a great first impression in this conversation. Then followed up with apparently only worrying about a Thjazi-possessed-Julien trying to hit Bolaire because it would also hit Misha. And then here.

“At a certain point, you’re going to have to let go of my brother and start dealing with us.”

Hal. Hal. Please shut up.

And it’s Julien who points out the extremely elephant-like problem with that. That Thjazi won’t let go of them. And, like, Hal and Thaisha both dismiss this immediately, and they’re both so wrong to do so. Because I’m pretty sure, on top of everything that’s just happened with Termina, that it is the entire reason for Bolaire’s breakdown.

Because the thing is, Thjazi came back. He’s right there. He’s right there, acting, present. Trying to hit Bolaire. Which, yes. Also justified, as Bolaire just poked Thjazi’s soul with a soul-destroying weapon, so Thjazi rather understandably tried to knock him back in self-defence. The point here is not that Thjazi tried to punch him. It’s that Thjazi was present enough to do that.

Bolaire can’t let go of Thjazi, because Thjazi is right fucking here.

And if Thjazi is here … Then it could all happen again. He could wind up right back there again.

That’s why he went for Thimble the way he did. Why he challenged her that way.

“Very well then. I belong to you. I am your weapon. What would you have me do?”

“What did he used to say? ‘Thimble, please tell it what to do next.’ What would you have me do? If I don’t belong to you, I belong to his brother.”

The point is not to challenge her on what she let happen. Or, well. Not just to challenge her on what she let happen. The point is to see if she’ll let it happen again.

Because Thjazi’s back. He’s here. And this is how he acted before, and this is how he’ll act again, and are they going to let him? Or even … even help him?

Because Thjazi is so persuasive. Again, Julien says that too. “You all have been tricked by a person with endless charisma and cult-like personality!” And yes, both Julien and Bolaire don’t like Thjazi, in fact hate him, but … It says something that even Thjazi’s enemies find him persuasive. Let alone … Let alone people who love him.

Bolaire is frightening. He’s monstrous. He’s alone. How hard would it be for Thjazi to persuade them how he should be treated? If he’s back? If he’s here? If they’re all already fawning over him? I’m not saying that’s what would happen, but it’s what Bolaire is afraid of. And it’s why he came out swinging that way. To see … how much Thimble knew. How much she approved of. How much she might let happen again.

Because the thing is, they’re all going to work to get Thjazi back. They’re not going to leave him as Julien’s shadow. Which, honestly. Good. He shouldn’t be Julien’s shadow. But. These people love Thjazi. They’re going to rescue him. Which means he’s going to come back, to an extent already is, and that means Bolaire has to plan for Thjazi coming back. Being able to … to hurt him.

It is interesting to me … Thjazi possessing Julien. If Bolaire’s nature is what horrified and repulsed Thjazi, and, again, not without reason! But. Thjazi … Thjazi’s kind of doing the same to Julien. Right now. I wonder what he thinks about that. And Thjazi-the-Shadow is …

It’s lending credence to his ruthlessness with people he doesn’t care about as well. Because Thjazi nearly got Julien killed tonight. And Occtis, and Mara, and Alba, though I’m not sure if he knew about the latter two. Like. Just comparing him to Occtis. Occtis was also going to go back inside, but he didn’t demand that Julien come with him. He was going to let Julien go, help his own family, while Occtis went back in for Thimble. But Thjazi full-on didn’t give Julien a choice. He dragged him bodily back into the kill zone. And if Occtis hadn’t dispelled him with the firebolt, if Thjazi had succeeded in dragging Julien further into the Manor, upstairs, in the open, while an enraged Primus fucking Tachonis and his entire family landed downstairs …

Thimble herself wanted them to run. Because she’s smaller, stealthier, because she had the best chance. She wanted them to run. But Thjazi didn’t give a shit, so long as Thimble was safe.

Thjazi …

I get the impression, so far that we’ve seen him, that Thjazi Fang … He was a rebel. A young, idealistic man, a man trying to fight for his people’s freedom. A man who fought hopeless cause after hopeless cause. A man who watched his causes fail. A man who grew increasingly paranoid, increasingly desperate. Increasingly ruthless. But still a man trying to do good.

Everything we saw at the Hallowed Round tonight. Like Mara said. Everything we saw at the Hallowed Round. Thjazi made that possible. That … That dazzling wonder. The saving of so many souls. That wasn’t … It wasn’t how Thjazi himself was going to do it. He didn’t have …

He was going to do it smaller. Sneakier. More paranoid. More utilitarian. And that, I think, was the perfect … the perfect illustration of what Thjazi has become under the pressures of the life he lived and the enemies he faced. He became smaller. Sneakier. More paranoid. Trying for tiny victories because he had … he had, I think, started despairing of the bigger ones. He was still trying for them. Oh, he was still trying. The Cloak. He picked the most long shot cause he could find. On a scale … He was trying. He was trying so hard. But the life he led to accomplish it …

He's gotten ruthless. He’s gotten paranoid. He’s gotten cruel. Because he’s seen so much cruelty. The Falconer’s Rebellion failed. The Sundered Houses bloat themselves on the people beneath them. The world is so dark. And he was going to fight, never fear, he was always going to fight, but in the process he became …

Smaller. And darker. And meaner.

Thimble is right, I think. Thjazi, much like Bolaire himself, was afraid. So afraid, all time. And it didn’t help that …

Whatever happened with the Cloak and door to Faerie. Whatever Mara’s skipping past in her mind, whatever Thimble heard them arguing about in that flashback. I think, I really do think, that the Cloak and Thjazi were involved in the door closing, maybe even responsible. And I think that Thjazi has been living with that guilt ever since.

Especially when it came to Thimble, and especially when it came to Aranessa. Which … Which I think explains a lot about Shadow!Thjazi’s actions towards Julien, too. He punished Julien for leaving them in danger. That’s what the two direct attacks were. Punishing Julien for leaving them. And I don’t think all of that is pointed at Julien. I strongly suspect that a lot of it is Thjazi’s own guilt. Desperate for Julien not to fail them as he did, forcing Julien to protect them at all costs.

Because if he was involved in the loss of Faerie? Then Thjazi Fang did more direct damage to the two people he loves most than anyone short of Primus Tachonis himself. Thimble became mortal because of his actions. She can feel herself dying. And Aranessa …

One of the justifications Primus used for ‘culling’ House Royce was the loss of their magic. One of the reasons the other Houses went along with it, at least to appearances, was because of agreement with that.

Thjazi, his relationship with her, has damaged Aranessa’s standing from the moment it became known. He’s always known that. And now his actions may have destroyed her entire House.

Thjazi … It all snowballed, I think. He started out trying to do good, and the consequences kept spiralling around him, and the mistakes started piling up, and he had to pull himself apart from those he loved, for their own sake and for ‘security’ reasons, security cells, operational security, he had to isolate himself more and more, and I suspect …

I suspect over time he just got a little ruthless, and a little cruel, and that certain people, like Bolaire, were unfortunately placed to take the brunt of it.

But Bolaire, for all his fears right now, is not alone. Because everyone … Hal did it badly, yes. Maybe nobody said quite the right things. But Thimble took the hit on the chin, offered to listen. Thaisha thought to show him Little Bolaire. Azune tried so hard to show him that he is real, that he is a person, that he is seen as a person, that he will not be treated as an object or a slave.

None of them flinched from what Thjazi might have done. None of them denied it. Thimble and Thaisha and Azune and Occtis and Hal all reached out, all tried, if clumsily, to reassure him that he is a person to them, and that no one, Thjazi or otherwise, will treat him like that again.

Which is why, too, I don’t think any of the players are upset or unprepared for the direction Taliesin is taking with Bolaire. Laura as Thimble took that one on the chin. There’s been seeds planted from the moment both Bolaire and Julien were introduced as characters. Nobody was surprised. The hints about the door to Faerie, the way all of them have wondered about Thjazi’s actions and alliances, the damage that Luis has been portraying in Azune and Liam has been portraying in Hal as a result of Thjazi’s life and actions, the way Thimble’s whole arc has been about reconciling with the way different people have hated Thjazi …

This isn’t new. This has been built in from the start. Thjazi was always going to be a complicated figure. He was designed specifically to haunt the goddamn narrative in every conceivable way. Now literally. He was designed as a storytelling device to twist and shape the characters around him, to be the thing they were shaped by and reacting to and developing past. This series started at his funeral. He is the inciting factor of this whole story. He is a martyr and a mystery and a ghost, he’s haunting all of them, the fallout of his actions has shaped everything so far. He’s neither purely good nor purely evil, because everyone shows different faces to different people, and also because either way would be boring. All of this, all this speculation, all the doubt and wondering he causes, in the audience and the characters, is the point of his character and his role in the story. He is the seed of conflict for the world and the characters. It’s what he’s for, in storytelling terms.

Obligatory disclaimer: Bolaire has never done anything wrong in his life ever, and I explicitly morally condone every choice he has ever made. You should go ask your best friend to homoerotically stab you right now so you can follow in his excellent example. Hope that clears up my stance on the matter!

The Life Force Drain

The number one reason this option for Bolaire is not feasible is that he has a draining effect on the life force of people who wear him, and the longer they wear him, the worse it gets. It is a common misconception that Bolaire's hosts die due to starvation, but this is not the case. In episode 4, Taliesin describes the condition Bolaire's previous host: gray skin, eyeballs so flaccid and desiccated the eyesockets appear empty, and chunks of flesh missing around the mouth so you can see the teeth beneath. These are not symptoms of starvation. What's more, one of the soldiers in the episode 13 cold open said that wearing Bolaire for even one day "wreaks havoc on the body."

Given that Bolaire drains his hosts like this, the only way he could get people to voluntarily agree to wear him would be to exploit mentally ill people who wish to self-harm (which is not really any morally better than just straight up body snatching), or to find a group of people who are willing to pass him around, as we saw in the episode 13 flashback with the soldiers. Which brings me to my second point.

Trust

Let's say Bolaire approaches someone for some consensual body-sharing and they say no, or they say yes but then later change their mind and back out. What happens then? Can Bolaire trust them?

The thing is, as I explained in this post, some of the options on the table for Bolaire are fates worse than death, not just for him but for the world at large. Imagine someone turns Bolaire down and then thinks, "Hey, I wonder what House Tachonis would pay me for the knowledge of a secret god-killing weapon that I now have." What do you think would happen if Bolaire were in the hands of an Ethrand? The Tachonis would find some horrific use for him that would cause far more death and destruction than anything Bolaire has ever done personally. Bolaire is a murderer, but he does not want to cause the mass systemic suffering that the Sundered Houses do; indeed, he ideologically opposes it. It's clear that Bolaire has thought about this possibility, because in episode 22, he begged Hal that if he didn't want to put Bolaire on a new body, that he not leave Bolaire to be found. After all, Bolaire was used as a weapon of war, effectively as a slave, for decades before he saw a fateful play and struck out on his own, so he has a pretty clear idea of how bad it could get.

It isn't exactly easy for Bolaire to find someone to approach for potential body-sharing who he trusts enough not to sell him out to a fate worse than death. Of course, he does now have some allies that he does trust that much. But that brings me to my third point.

Autonomy

Even if Bolaire were to, for example, be rotated among his current allies the way he once was shared out among the soldiers in the Falconers' Rebellion, such that he trusted everyone involved and he wasn't draining any one person's life force too much, this still isn't much of a life, either for Bolaire or the people in the group who are wearing him. He could ride along with their lives as an observer or a peanut gallery, but he could not make his own life choices or maintain a consistent persona for the world to interact with. He could not be Bolaire Lathalia, because if he rotated among all these people with a consistent identity, then his nature would become obvious, and then he would be probably be hunted by the Sundered Houses to be used as a tactical nuke.

And on the host side of the equation, how long could any of them keep up with letting Bolaire "wreak havoc on the body" for a day every X days, having him observe their every action and thought? Could they really do that for years on end?

Where does this leave Bolaire?

—

Taliesin Jaffe on subtext in art:

From The Wednesday Club - Episode 9: Comics 101 - A Beginner's Guide to Reading Comics (2017-04-19).

—

Taliesin: "And I assure you—and I know some people don't believe in subtext, I've met them—it is absolutely intentional. There is no way not to create—"

Amy Dallen, surprised: "Don't believe in subtext?"

Amy, confused: "What does that mean?"

Taliesin, saltily: "I know."

Matt Key, softly confused: "I don't know."

Taliesin, saltily: "I'd have a metaphor, but they wouldn't understand it. Burn!"

Matt: "Heyo! Burn to the people that don't get subtext."

Taliesin: "Yeah no. Subtext is the reason we make movies, and comics, and all that. Subtext is just kind of the whole point."

—

Subtext is a tremendous literary tool for saying multiple things that may all be true at once and in conflict with each other, or is so strongly believed by the characters that it's the cause of their actions whether or not some cold rationality would say it's objective fact. Follow up on any of the media he says influenced them and you'll quickly find out they're incomprehensible if you need the writers holding your hand and babying you along to explicit pre-defined simplistic answers. The point is the question, not the answer.

For Bolaire he's explicitly said he wanted to explore what it was like being the sentient magical item with a personality that the main characters interact with. That story only works if your main character the magical artifact has actual agency and is present for the story. Which makes questions like "Is it feasible for Bolaire to share bodies with people" that are phrased like a yes/no question preposterous and juvenile analysis. You're not supposed to be answering a bad high school literature teacher's riddles, you're supposed to be pondering why the people being shown are doing what they're doing it all its rich complexity and contradictions, and what that says about the world.

What Bolaire can do is survive and have agency, or it isn't a story worth telling. No easy answer exists about whether it's possible to body share because his experience with people is that it's not feasible, it just results in them treating you like an object and abusing you to their own wicked ends. He was brought into the world being told he was a tool with a specific purpose used in a specific way with a specific objective. It's very unlikely the people who made him knew or cared what happened after that. As few people who make weapons ever do.

Bolaire doesn't know what he is outside of being a weapon. "Couldn't he just choose not to be a weapon and then no bad things would happen around him ever?" I don't know, can he? Bolaire would love to know because he doesn't right now and that's the core crux of his character art. And Taliesin has said so, so, so many times that he simply doesn't write answers to questions his character doesn't know (including what happened to that character) because it's a gift to the game master, other players, and himself to find out through emergent play. The emergent part is what's actually fun about long form TTRPGs. If that's frustrating uncertainty to you than it's simply never going to be an enjoyable medium. Not knowing is the whole point.

"No easy answer exists about whether it's possible to body share because his experience with people is that it's not feasible, it just results in them treating you like an object and abusing you to their own wicked ends."

Extremely good point. Even if it were logistically safe or simple for Bolaire to share bodies with people, his whole history before he ran away with Castep to become his own mask was of being exploited and abused as a weapon of war, over and over again for decades, and so cut off from any non-war aspects of mortal experience that he spent 59 years without seeing a play, without knowing that a non-murderous play was even possible. In that flashback, when Bolaire showed any sign of having any thoughts or interests beyond being a perfect subservient weapon, the soldiers came for him to put him in a box. And the scenario we saw in episode 13 was pretty much the best-case scenario, because the Falconer's Rebellion is at least a cause that Bolaire believes in. He may have been used toward much, much worse ends. What have all of those decades of slavery taught Bolaire about mortalkind? That the world is a safe place full of open and consensual relationships? Or that the only options for him are to abuse or be abused?

As to your point about parasitism and the ethics of food: awesome linked post, will definitely reblog it in a minute. Now, as a vegetarian myself, I obviously do believe that we can try to make ethical choices about what we eat to minimize the destruction we cause. And the interesting thing is that Bolaire is actually trying to do that, even if I would say that his moral reasoning is very flawed in that regard. As I reviewed in this post, by far the most safe and expedient way for Bolaire to get hosts would be to approach unhoused and impoverished people alone on the street, and use Suggestion to get them to put him on. But that's not what he does. The three body snatches of his we've seen in the present day were a) a morality test that Bolaire set up for Aubrus of a business transaction gone somewhat awry, to which Aubrus responded with immediate intense violence, thus failing Bolaire's test; b) body-snatching a Crow Keeper who kidnapped Demodus Blix, beat him up, and dragged him off to sell him to a mold monster; and c) trusting the principled soul of Wicander Halovar not to stick him on the face of an innocent who didn't deserve it.

Obligatory disclaimer: Bolaire has never done anything wrong in his life ever, and I explicitly morally condone every choice he has ever made. You should go ask your best friend to homoerotically stab you right now so you can follow in his excellent example. Hope that clears up my stance on the matter!

The Life Force Drain

The number one reason this option for Bolaire is not feasible is that he has a draining effect on the life force of people who wear him, and the longer they wear him, the worse it gets. It is a common misconception that Bolaire's hosts die due to starvation, but this is not the case. In episode 4, Taliesin describes the condition Bolaire's previous host: gray skin, eyeballs so flaccid and desiccated the eyesockets appear empty, and chunks of flesh missing around the mouth so you can see the teeth beneath. These are not symptoms of starvation. What's more, one of the soldiers in the episode 13 cold open said that wearing Bolaire for even one day "wreaks havoc on the body."

Given that Bolaire drains his hosts like this, the only way he could get people to voluntarily agree to wear him would be to exploit mentally ill people who wish to self-harm (which is not really any morally better than just straight up body snatching), or to find a group of people who are willing to pass him around, as we saw in the episode 13 flashback with the soldiers. Which brings me to my second point.

Trust

Let's say Bolaire approaches someone for some consensual body-sharing and they say no, or they say yes but then later change their mind and back out. What happens then? Can Bolaire trust them?

The thing is, as I explained in this post, some of the options on the table for Bolaire are fates worse than death, not just for him but for the world at large. Imagine someone turns Bolaire down and then thinks, "Hey, I wonder what House Tachonis would pay me for the knowledge of a secret god-killing weapon that I now have." What do you think would happen if Bolaire were in the hands of an Ethrand? The Tachonis would find some horrific use for him that would cause far more death and destruction than anything Bolaire has ever done personally. Bolaire is a murderer, but he does not want to cause the mass systemic suffering that the Sundered Houses do; indeed, he ideologically opposes it. It's clear that Bolaire has thought about this possibility, because in episode 22, he begged Hal that if he didn't want to put Bolaire on a new body, that he not leave Bolaire to be found. After all, Bolaire was used as a weapon of war, effectively as a slave, for decades before he saw a fateful play and struck out on his own, so he has a pretty clear idea of how bad it could get.

It isn't exactly easy for Bolaire to find someone to approach for potential body-sharing who he trusts enough not to sell him out to a fate worse than death. Of course, he does now have some allies that he does trust that much. But that brings me to my third point.

Autonomy

Even if Bolaire were to, for example, be rotated among his current allies the way he once was shared out among the soldiers in the Falconers' Rebellion, such that he trusted everyone involved and he wasn't draining any one person's life force too much, this still isn't much of a life, either for Bolaire or the people in the group who are wearing him. He could ride along with their lives as an observer or a peanut gallery, but he could not make his own life choices or maintain a consistent persona for the world to interact with. He could not be Bolaire Lathalia, because if he rotated among all these people with a consistent identity, then his nature would become obvious, and then he would be probably be hunted by the Sundered Houses to be used as a tactical nuke.

And on the host side of the equation, how long could any of them keep up with letting Bolaire "wreak havoc on the body" for a day every X days, having him observe their every action and thought? Could they really do that for years on end?

Where does this leave Bolaire?