positive vibes only

Most of the m9 have been badly hurt by people - sometimes people who should have loved them, like beau’s parents - but mostly by people who didn’t love them, and who they didn’t love.  caduceus is probably the biggest exception to this, and he’s still dealing with his own shit that’s stopping him from even recognizing his issues.

it’s so important to jester that they understand that the traveler loves her.  and to them, it looks like, well, if he loved you he wouldn’t treat you like that, so he must actually not love you all that much, and you don’t have to love him – we love you, we expect nothing from you, this is what love looks like.

but sometimes people love you to the very best of their ability and they still do hurtful things and fuck you up!  and it’s not just the traveler!  it’s her mother, too.  before they met marion, jester’s descriptions of her childhood really worried the nein because it sounded like she was being neglected by a mother who didn’t really care about her.  beau and caleb were both ready to be highly critical of marion if she turned out not to care about her daughter!  

but when it turns out that, actually, marion adores jester, and wants only the best for her, and tries her absolute hardest to do right by her, it makes it much harder to criticize her and her parenting!  it happened to the fandom, too!   “the ruby of the sea is the best mom ever!”  

she’s not.  she’s really not.  she’s a flawed, fucked-up person who loves her kid and does her best and sometimes she still fucks up.  that happens.  marion’s unconditional love for jester didn’t make jester’s childhood hidden away in her room any less traumatic and damaging - it just makes it harder for her to say “this hurt me.”  it makes it feel really bad to complain, because you know she loves you and you know she’s doing her best, and really shouldn’t that be enough?

i think it’s really hard for jester to open up about the ways in which the traveler’s behavior has hurt her, in part because she feels like she has to defend him, and defend their relationship, and defend his love for her.  someone needs to say, you know, you’re right, it’s amazing how much he loves you, he clearly cares about you an awful lot, and that’s a wonderful friendship to have - AND he’s fucked up very badly here and you are entitled to feel hurt!  because people can love you and still hurt you!  and when they do, they should apologize and try to make amends, because they love you, and they don’t want to hurt you.  and loving you a whole lot does not make any of the things he’s done here okay!  

i just think it’s very hard for the nein, who have largely been victims of intentional cruelty, to really understand how jester is feeling here.  veth came closest, i think, talking about how friends can call each other out on their shit and still care about each other. 

Honestly I’m not sure how bringing Talks back would work, and I’m incredibly sympathetic to the conundrum they are trying to solve regarding it. 

Because they could surely stream it remotely from each person’s home or even pre-record it to make sure there were no tech issues, like they did with AWNP:U. But the bigger logistical challenge is definitely how and when to request fan questions, and how to avoid spoilers.

Before the era of pandemic pre-recording, CR never needed to worry about spoilers because it literally wasn’t possible to spoil an episode that hadn’t happened yet. But now they would be trying to make sure to only respond to questions based on knowledge up through a certain episode/plot point, and honestly I’m not sure if I would be able to do that when talking about my D&D game - everything gets kind of streamlined together as one story. And absolutely no offense here, but we know at least a few of the cast are kind of forgetful.

So yeah, I dunno. I think your suggestion of having sort of an “end of an arc” Talks might be the best idea, but I also think it would work better if they did it while taking a break from recording (sort of like the big “new year” full-cast Talks episodes they sometimes did at the end of the winter break). And I’m not sure if a week or several weeks off from the main game would be logistically feasible or even desirable, just to bring Talks back. 

Except for a couple other kids and like 3 adults Everyone is remembering stuff. And all of a sudden they’re talking about what they lost, how they’ve been living a lie. But you haven’t been. This is your whole life, and everyone is so ready to toss it aside, they treat it like it’s some of horrible curse.

You hear your mom talking about the family she left behind, your dad talks about the same. You have sisters and brothers and 3 houses across the world.

And when your parents don’t think you can hear them? You hear them cursing Vokodo, talking about how horrible it is. How horrible it was to forget everything and have to start over.

They don’t ever mention regretting you, but you know that you were a product of that lie. Apparently everyone around you was a lie. Every personality you knew was fake, watered down and constructed to help some false god.

Everyone around you deals with remembering the real world they left behind when they got lost in this fake one.

Please talk to your fellow players when you feel like your PC could be developing feelings for another PC! Please ask your DM how they feel about you flirting with an NPC. Please, please, please make sure everyone’s comfortable and on the same page. And I don’t mean that the other character needs to reciprocate the feelings, but the players need to be aware of what’s happening and need to be comfortable with it!

WAIT WHAT????

one of the only hints we had about molly’s past is that cree said something along the lines of “did it work? did you see the city?”

and molly bullshitted some “well, it’s complicated, yes and no” answer because he doesn’t know

but they were doing some ritual that involved a “city,” and it’s what killed lucien & led to molly coming into creation

and when they were getting vokodo’s flashbacks, matt said “eyes of nine” - that’s nonagon.  yasha said molly had a total of nine eye tattoos; nonagon means nine-sided.

the nonagon cult is involved with this somehow, i just don’t quite know how.

Of course it was a move full of foolish hubris, that was kind of the point. It’s one of Caleb’s key character flaws, and one he hasn’t truly grappled with yet because his self-loathing often makes him blind to it. “I was sure, I was so sure…until I wasn’t.” “I’m going to kill Vokodo, obviously.”

^based on that last line, spoken when Liam was sure Matt had rolled a 20 rather than a 1, my guess would be Liam thought the target of any potential reflection was going to be Caleb himself

(related: sarcasm and joking about potentially terrible outcomes is a thing, no one actually wanted certain characters to die)

Liam very clearly and loudly told the entire table his intentions, giving room for objections. A few of them (Laura and Marisha especially) commented on it but either joked about it with him or just sort of agreed that “wow, that’s a risk.” No one said “don’t do that” - and we know from past sessions that they would if they really had a problem. Especially Laura.

Going off the last bullet point, it’s fine if that’s not what you would have done at your table or something you would have found fun with your gaming group. Everyone at CR had fun with that risk though. It’s part of how they play. It’s why they fit so well together as a gaming group - yeah, everyone was stressed, but it’s how they like to play. So dislike of it that projects those feelings onto the other players is a miss for me. None of them need to be protected from their friend.

Anyone ever, listening to the message:

@ramsiegel: An attempt was made.

[starts at 01:31:41 on Twitch VOD]

B: Jester.

J: Hmm?

B: How are you feeling about Travelercon? You know, if we defeat the looming volcano god that has this entire island held hostage.

J: Um.

It was a low save, but Jester’s duplicate, Vilya’s storm, Veth’s Phantasmal Force, Fjord’s Major Image and Caduceus’ Bless would’ve all been in danger (as well as Banishment, which would’ve actually been beneficial for them). 

Jester, outright weeping: I’m not sad, y’know?

yasha, just vibing and not truly paying attention: