[Image: A digital sketch of Imogen, from Critical Role, looking fondly at a palomino horse and feeding it from her palm. The horse’s eyes are closed in contentment, one ear loosely turned towards Imogen. End ID]
my favourite genre of anything is watching best friends hang out
witnessing friendship can actually be something that’s so personal
witnessing friendship
can actually be something
that’s so personal
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
Some of my friends like to make fun of me, because I said the only shows or movies I wanted to watch were “A group of friends going on an adventure.”
But like….
Lord of the Rings
Stranger Things
My favorite Star Wars, Return of the Jedi
Star Trek
Young Justice
Avatar: The Last Airbender
Harry Potter
They accuse me of being childish, of not wanting to grow up. I just don’t care about angst-ridden argudramas where everybody is mad at each other 98% of the time. You can keep your angst-ridden grimdark “everyone broods and then probably dies” gritty prestige dramas and CW-hormonasulks. I want to see friends going on an adventure.
You know what? This is what’s really great about Critical Role.
Because not only do you get to hear/watch the story of a group of friends on a series of adventures, but you get to hear/watch said story being played out by a group of friends having the time of their lives together.
i think all fictional couples should be evaluated by how funny an AITA reddit post about their first couple fight would be
… Three fictional couples popped into my head immediately and I can’t decide which would be funniest: Aral and Cordelia Vorkosigan, Fox and David Xanatos, or Silas and Delilah Briarwood.
I am hanging on Matt’s lips and yet I still have no fucking clue what the city actually looks like. I’m going to need a map I have no idea where anything is.
One of my favorite things is that canonically, Imogen doesn’t even wear glasses; but all of us collectively looked at this soft little bitch for .00001 seconds and said “she wears big round glasses” and I personally think that’s very cash money of us.
I was just thinking about how one would showcase different mental illnesses in dnd when I realized the perfectmetaphor for body dysmorphia has already been done without even intending it.
Veth Brenatto aka Nott the Brave was transformed by a hag (we’ll call the hag mental illness for the purposes of this metaphor) into “everything that [she] thought [she] was” before she was cursed the hag was told “make her suffer”. She covers herself in bandages to avoid herself or anyone else seeing her. She avoids reflective surfaces. Even being called “Nott the Brave” in her goblin form…some days it takes real bravery to exist in your own body. And that name reflects that.
But the real thing that gets me is her first scene with Yeza. When she’s seeing Yeza for the first time she’s under an illusion that makes her look like her true self. But underneath that illusion she knows she is truly a goblin.Yeza sees her but she is existing in her goblin form, her body still feels like a goblin. She’s afraid for Yeza to see her the way she is and afraid of what he might think of her. Yeza sees Veth, but she knows how she truly looks underneath this illusion. And when she talks to him he keeps saying “but it’s still you, right?” and she can’t understand how he loves her, grotesque appearance and all. She voices this and he asks “you think that matters?” and she says yesbecause how could anyone love her when she looks the way she looks? Even the scene where Yeza is touching her face to see bits and pieces of the goblin beneath, this could be beautifully equated to describing bits and pieces of how you see yourself with body dysmorphia and letting someone you love see how you see yourself bit by bit.
Going back to the hag being mental illness, this actually works perfectly with how the Mighty Nein v Hag went. They didn’t fight her. Nott made her known to them, and they did all they could, they were ready to defend Nott and do whatever they could to break her curse. But they didn’t fight her. The only person who can fight and defeat your mental illness is you. Jester offered this hag a cupcake. This cupcake is what allowed the curse to be lifted because what your friends can do is distract, be there for you, comfort you, and take care of you. Even after the curse was lifted, Nott didn’t transform back immediately because she needed time. She needed time to work on herself and make sure she was ready. Just because you know the problem doesn’t mean you can implement the solution. I know my body dysmorphia in and out but it still haunts me because I need to do some more work on myself. It takes time to unlearn things.
Eventually she transforms back into herself, into how she is truly. This is accomplished using friends sticking by her, loving her, being there for her, helping her find a way to become herself again. Still though, this experience as a goblin will always be with her. She won’t be able to forget it, not truly. I know that this metaphor isn’t flawless, that you can’t be cured of body dysmorphia. But I’m not looking at her transformation back to her body as a cure, more just her transition out of her darkest days. The days when it was the worst, when it was the hardest.
There’s more little tiny things that I can add in the comments because they’re not as moving as these points, but I just wanted to share. Feel free to add on.
So Imogen dreams about storms on Ruidus but she ALSO sees DEAD PEOPLE in the storms and its thought that the RAVEN QUEEN might have been Ruidus-born just like either Imogen or her mom but WHAT DOES IT MEAN
