#campaign 2

A fairly sympathetic portrayal of an antagonist’s inner life that’s hardly be out of step with a protagonist’s, until she hardens a little near the final pages. Inured, but certainly not cruel and unfeeling, which fits my read from the subtle touches in the campaign portrayal, and doesn’t feel out of character. She finds Wyatt terrifying like in the campaign, finds the displayed, mutilated corpses unpleasant, muses about allowing herself to open up to love, doesn’t like to be denigrated, nor does she like being kept in the dark by Vandran. There’s also quite a large amount of screentime spent on Vandran and Avantika’s (unequal) relationship and romance, in which she needs to fight for her spot.

The foreshadowing goes hard throughout, threading both the entire story and individual strands and details into a ‘life flashes before your eyes’ instant, and feels tragic as it courses through a largely shitty, often terrifying, occasionally promising existence to the unavoidable end - you already know it’s inevitable when you start the chapter, while throughout there’s opportunities for it to maybe have gone differently, the door to which kinda snaps shut when Vandran pulls that dick move there and the last few events unfold and lock in the course of the future.

the foreshadowing.... oh, avantika....

while im on the topic of her short story i really enjoyed how the author layered her backstory with persian(and some french of course) culture/language. i think people forget way too easily that she has dark skin and curly hair and is not white, so to see this was really really cool.

caduceus who became touch starved because suddenly there was no one who would pat his shoulder or hug him

caduceus who had no one to save him from his own thoughts and would be left in a depressive spiral all alone

💗💗💗

🍭 Jester Lavorre is a Critical Role character by Laura Bailey

🦄 Jester cosplayed by me

I'm asking you to open your heart to chaos. 🍆

🦄 Jester cosplayed by me!