Roiben being in love with Kaye is why she didn't die at the Tithe, why she was able to bring down the Court of Flowers, it's why he trusted and listened to her advice even when he had no real reason to trust her

Kaye being in love with Roiben is why she wants to help him so much, why she declares herself to him and solves his impossible quest, and why she brings down the Court of Flowers to save him

Ravus being in love with Val is the only reason she gets help with her addiction and is kept safe from other Fae

Jack being in love with Hazel is the whole reason she goes to the moonlight revel and gets enough info to save Fairfield

Severin being in love with Ben is the whole reason Ben and Hazel have any interactions with him and get his help to fight the Alderking

Madoc being in love with Eva is the reason he asks her to come back years and years later and kills her when she refuses, the reason why he took Jude and Taryn to Elfhame

Cardan being in love with Jude is vitally important, most of his decisions are made because he loves her and trusts her

Vivi being in love with Heather is the reason she learns to respect and understand humans more than her sisters ever did, the reason she's willing to start all the way over with Heather just to be with her

Oak being in love with Wren is the reason he continues to trust and help her when she literally tries to kill him and locks him, why he risks his sister's trust and the High Court never letting him return to help her

Wren being in love with Oak is the reason she tried so hard to help him, the reason she makes such confusing decisions, she's confused, she loves him so much but she's supposed to let him die

there are tons of Fae scattered throughout the books who are trapped in servitude or prison because they had to save their lover, at any cost

(ofc familial and platonic love also matter and affect the Fae but in an entirely different way)

and the way this all connects back to that line in either Valiant or Ironside saying that Faerie do everything with their whole self, love and hatred, they can love and hate for centuries, promises will never be forgotten and heartbreak hurts deeply

a Faerie loves so deeply in this incredibly genuine way and when a Faerie is in love it thoroughly influences their actions

they tell the truth even in ways they may be unaware of (or deeply ashamed of)

For example, one thing that seems clear is that fairies feel, and they feel intensely. If they hate, they can hate for centuries. If they love, they will love eternally and be willing to give their life for their beloved. In "The Darkest Part of the Forest," this is told as a horror story. In "Modern Faerie Tales," Kaye's entire adventure is based on her desire to become Roiben's consort.

In "The Cruel Prince" trilogy, Balekin hints at this difference when he talks strangely about how humans love — this is all without mentioning Tiernan and Hyacinthe, who became enemies and still love each other enough to fight for each other, or Lady Nore with her late husband's hands around her neck.

We see this firsthand with Cardan not once, but twice! The first time occurs when he throws himself in front of Jude to save her from being hit by one of Grimsen's traps, and the second time is when, similarly, Cardan throws himself in front of Jude to save her from having a blade buried in her body.

The first time, he shows surprise with himself. It was the moment he realized he loved her on that level — in fact, he just loves her as is natural to his species. The second time, any surprise seems to have vanished, as if he had already accepted that he would do it for her a thousand more times if necessary.

but then toward the end of the season, more truth got revealed and it was just... more city people making fun of small town leftists for their own profit. sure, bigfoot (brennan) broke the fourth wall to encourage people to get into their own local politics. but the focus of the season so quickly became "murder the gentrifiers" when the people at the table are also the ones doing gentrification. we just happen to like them because they're the intrepid heroes.

I am a little disappointed that we didn't get any sort of emotional resolution in the finale. Like it seemed like there would be a moment when bat child got turned into a human but that got buried?

Let me just say I laughed so hard my stomach and my head hurts. I have no memory of what even happened because i'm so delirious. I love all bits shows. Never stop blowing up was one of my favorite d20 seasons. I love the fact that d20 is a comedic show its what draws me towards it.

HOWEVER, ccod i think mixed up the tone of the season. Some episodes felt tension filled and with emotional substance. And other times it felt like there are no consequences. It's like The camarilla changed their difficulty settings as the season went on? Suddenly keeping the masquerade or vampiric hierarchies didn't look so important as we saw in episode 1? You could argue that's because the coterie in purpee were finally free from camarilla oppression i guess

And also maya and cody characters basically got reduced to nothing in the last episode which i think is weird considering the amount of time we spent on them. I get that there was simply not enough time to give them "speaking roles" (heh. mismag 2 reference.get it?)

Same goes for beholdr, douglases and the whittakers who did absolutely nothing as enemies. The coterie didn't really feel in danger at all which made their win way less satisfying. At no point was i worried for their safety and therefore not invested sadly.

Saying all this, i will shamelessly still say that i enjoyed myself a lot. I think if i reprogram my brain a little ccod can feel like an "all bits season" in which case i have no problem with the finale at all

(Ps: Did any of you read this far. Be honest. If yes then im kissing you on the mouth/j)

I absolutely get the upsides of this experiment - having the characters and locations pregenerated reduces Brennan's cognitive load when he's juggling approximately 500 plates at once, for a start. But when the end came, he also seemed unwilling to kill some darlings, which is why we got the surprise clown that had nothing to do with anything and ended up eating several minutes of precious runtime.

Don't get me wrong - the clown was hilarious! I get why it was a darling in the first place! But the PCs never got to it during the season, so it had no business being in the finale, except maybe as an epilogue hint of future adventures. The same thing goes for Vesper's were-bat bio-dad. Frankly, even Gary Sinise Banksy didn't need to be there, but that one I can let go. But all of that stuff took oxygen away from the characters and storylines we'd actually been watching for the past 13 episodes, and there wasn't any to spare.

D20 has always been a game of "how do we make a TTRPG campaign fit into episodic strictures." The earliest seasons have an orderly pattern of one combat every two episodes, and even as those rules were loosened up, in any battle set season you had to get to those battle sets one way or another. You can see Brennan and crew messing with this more and more as time goes on, trying for more and more freedom, and I think the sandbox was another experiment in that line. But as anyone who plays sandbox-style video games can tell you, it's very easy to spend a hundred hours making sand castles instead of going to the boss battle at the end.

It's not that I think the Intrepid Heroes were wasting time throughout the season - the sand castles are part of the experience! And they were absolutely moving the plot forward at the same time. I just get a sense that the planning phases of this campaign didn't allot enough time for fucking around exploring the setting, so we ended up with 18 episodes of plot in a 14-episode bag.

Brennan then allowing all the other rules to go out the window as the rest of the players start demanding DnD5E rules instead? All of the tension is now gone, because the dice mean nothing.

"Rules are made to be broken" sure. But only at strategic points.

This was not that.