skullhaver

[skullhaver]

for @bisexualthorin <3

#the terror

[skullhaver]

So who's your most problematic one?

Okay. So I've done Alec, Kelp, and Oak, so really the only one left is Tarlyn, who I honestly think is indeed my most problematic guy (gender neutral)

First of all, he's dead. Best get this out of the way. He is doomed by the narrative and bitches would die mad about it.

Then, let's talk about "guy (gender neutral)". He's an nb amab character who never questioned his gender and therefore used he/him all his life, so basically we're all misgendering him somehow so this is problematic.

His whole story is dark and edgy and awfully problematic. This sad wet rag of a boy covered in glitter never had a break; he was tormented by his mother his whole life and he never stopped loving her.

And that's not even touching on his actions yet. This anxious pixie nightmare boy is a spoiled LIL BITCH who thinks (or at least acts) like he's larger than life and better than everyone because that's the only way he can cope with his loneliness, looking at everyone as if they are beneath him. He is an arrogant bastard who genuinely thinks his nobility means he is entitled to his luxury, and that his intelligence makes him superior, and that his command of magic makes him deserving of accolades and applause and praise. But that's just to cover up his abysmal lack of self esteem, his vulnerability and his need for connection.

He is never nice to other people unless they're of higher status than him, or important in some way, otherwise he is either catty and rude or just uninterested and aloof. He unknowingly yearns for someone to love him (granted, abuse has made him incapable of identifying, let alone giving love), but whenever someone is nice in any way, he can't believe it is real and reads it as interest, as them wanting something in return. He reduces everyone into shrewd social-climbers in his eyes (thus insulting them) bc that's what his family is.

He insults his servants, he wears blood jewelry (and a bunch of it), he is vain and petty and snobbish and finicky, he uses magic to spy on people, he never prepared a single meal in his entire 150 years of life, he was over 100 years old when he started questioning whether it was really true that short-lived races are inferior to elves. He is a poor little meow meow born and raised and abused by multimillionaire right wing conservatives. My boy Tarlyn would vocally defend Trump in a modern au, what more do you need me to say? He is Problematic.

He spends a lot of time overthinking and questioning his family in his mind, but he never actually does anything to change shit.

Negative intervention wizard all the way. He doesn't start bullying anyone, but his friends do and they count on his magic to execute it, and he delivers. He was witness to {redacted}, designed a destructive magical item to be used by foot soldiers in an attack against the neighbouring nation, witnessed workers being gravely injured in his family's mines, and possibly even more! What other shit will we discover Tarlyn did?? The horrors are not over yet weeee!

And then, to escape all this shit, this extremely romantic asexual bitch (who needs to like someone to enjoy sex with them) seeks out sex with randos!! Because he is so lonely and he copies his jackass friends and his jackass brother and he is a people pleaser and he doesn't know how to set boundaries.... But he is so intelligent he convinces himself love is not real (he's never fucking seen it! Only in fiction! So it must!!! Be!!! Fake!!!!) and that he does want sex, when in reality he wants kisses and cuddles.... And he keeps getting in (or remaining in) these situations where he just proves it to himself that people only want to use him/his body/his magic/his position (whether that's true or not, he always manages to see it that way), thus confirming his cynical expectations and keeping himself miserable.

And that's not mentioning {redacted}.

Tarlyn wins my Problematic OC of the Decade Award!!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉

#shaking tarlyn so so gently by the shoulders #weird eyes and pronouns

[skullhaver]

ray said it so I didn't have to <3

I'd like to see you try to find a way that Espen is problematic

@raymurata 🧠🧠🧠

espen danlys callout post:

"do as I say not as I do" sort of martyr attitude. what, you want your companions to keep safe in battle but you're totally fine risking death yourself? you listen to your friends' problems and give them a shoulder to cry on but won't say a word to them about the shit you're dealing with when they offer you the same??

inflexible morals, ethical stances, and social etiquette that she holds not only herself but everyone else to also. surely this will cause zero problems on a different continent with entirely foreign customs

THEEE most stubborn woman in xhorhas

emotionally intelligent but bottles up her bad feelings if they might inconvenience someone else. went to therapy and still actively chooses to intellectualize her feelings instead of feeling them

a fucking buzzkill. would it kill you to let your friends commit minor crimes without mom-ing them about it??

on that note, a tendency to gentle-parent other grown ass adults. especially problematic when this clearly Will Not Work (seriously dude you should have just hauled off and decked ayo after the oozes incident, that was probably the only way to get your point to land)

thinks she's not anyone particularly worthwhile. not in a self-pitying way, but in the I-know-I-am-an-NPC sort of way. girl this is embarrassing for you at this point

can't stop talking like she was cursed by a witch to speak only with archaic synonyms of normal words

most convoluted mechanical build ever that is somehow both minmaxed and weirdly generalist. why are you a healer and a tank and support and dps all at once. what

uhauled with her bestie after reuniting in the same place she watched her wife die horribly

#weird eyes and pronouns

[skullhaver]

More of man because I need to figure out how to draw him

#omg hi hello our friend!!! #waterdeep dragon heist

[skullhaver]

#athren exclusively flirting with male npcs for some reason #athren dahana #listen he could have tried to flirt with istrid but every single conversation with her felt like pushing his luck already #savra? vajra?? not great candidates #some of those bregan d'aerthe ladies were hot but they would have eaten him alive

[skullhaver]

Thrilled to see someone carrying on the tradition of protest folk music. Keep fighting the good fight!

[skullhaver]

First you procrastinate on the task because it is not a big enough deal to get done urgently. Then you procrastinate on the task because it has become such a big deal that doing it is overwhelming. You would think that this implies a middle point where it is just big enough of a deal to get done easily, however the inherent perversity of the universe's causal geometry prevents this

#god so real for this one

[skullhaver]

to prevent potential overlap: dealer's choice for the callout post of a beloved netherdeep npc

ayo jabe my beloved. you all have barely seen the depths of this woman as she exists in my head, but I'll give you a few for free:

god she wants to be a hero so, so bad and she's so charismatic and strong-willed and well-traveled but deep-down so utterly insecure.

she has the best, most loyal friend in the whole world, dermot wurder, and she totally takes him for granted.

hates her home town to a comical degree. listen, ayo, I understand that your worst fear is a cage, to stay behind bars until use and old age accept them and all chance of valor has gone beyond recall or desire, but does that really mean you have to call the orcs and goblins of your home village boring provincial hicks?

toxic bisexual representation because she left her husband for a woman but is nevertheless Still bisexual.

(the woman was the sea)

(also there was another woman involved)

both she and moxie were way too drunk for sex to have been a great idea back in bazzoxan, but in fairness to ayo, moxie is pink and very persuasive. it worked out fine for them in the end. they both had fun and woke up in the morning with no regrets.

#call of the netherdeep #weird eyes and pronouns

[skullhaver]

#im surprised you didnt add selfish and self-preserving to a fault to the list lmao

Oh, this was a mistake to omit tbh. Yeah, Gal's selfish as fuck. Backed into a corner, he would unapologetically say or do a lot of things to save his own skin.

well, well, well... you obviously know I want you to discourse on how my hubristic wizard boyfriend is problematic. XD

Our game's version of Galsariad Ardyth:

classic wizard hubris. if he stumbled upon a book titled "Forbidden Spells," he would not fucking hesitate

very judgmental re: intelligence. straight-up thinks he is smarter than most people and will not give others' the time of day if he thinks they're beneath him. his respect for Oak directly correlates to the weight he places on a combination of book-smarts, problem-solving ability, and intellectual creativity

skipped the required wizard ethics courses at the Marble Tomes. his ethics vibe check is pretty solid for some things, but he has a lot of examined assumptions about how the world works

related: limited class-consciousness. he grew up lower middle class and on some level knows he was simply extremely lucky to get where he is today, but also, he does NOT want to look or sound poor by any metric

#weird eyes and pronouns

[skullhaver]

I am also going to ask you to roast Athren, please.

my rotten soldier, my sweet cheese, my good-time boy.

told his parents his brother was dead instead of asking his brother like, two follow-up questions.

flamboyant slutty bisexual who fulfills the important niche in the party ecosystem of being the only who hits on hot npcs.

did not even manage to bag jarlaxle, despite multiple audiences with him and some flirty banter exchanged.

in a party with three good-aligned PCs, he was the chaotic neutral asshole who constantly asked, "what's in it for me?" which was embarrassing for everyone but mostly for me who was roleplaying him.

weirdly secretive to a fault. it's 80% a deliberate move for privacy and 20% socially awkward "it's been too long since I met someone to ever tell them [X thing] about me, so now I suppose I simply never shall." to the point where it can cause genuine confusion for his friends.

a major interpersonal arc for him throughout the entire campaign was teaching a teenage girl how to do petty crime and avoid getting caught.

his boyfriend got sent to jail for a crime he didn't commit and it took athren like a week to to visit him and check in.

seemingly could have supported himself with a legitimate career but his ambition and adrenaline-junkie ways pushed him toward an unapologetic life of crime, anyway.

almost got killed by a gnome named skeemo weirdbottle. what a fucking loser.

only decided to reconcile with his estranged brother after post-nut clarity, a secret he intends to take with him to the grave.

only achieved said post-nut clarity after unlocking the ability to get gently dommed, which happened after recovering a massive stolen treasure horde and becoming a hero to the city of waterdeep, thus helping him ease-up on like, 40% of his overwhelming anxiety and general sense of inadequacy.

#roasting him is so easy--he's such a loser #also he has so much pathos 2 me #if you cast zone of truth on him and asked 'did you want to find neverember's gold for your parents or for yourself?' #he would look you in the eye and tell you it was always for his parents #athren dahana

[skullhaver]

well, well, well... you obviously know I want you to discourse on how my hubristic wizard boyfriend is problematic. XD

Our game's version of Galsariad Ardyth:

classic wizard hubris. if he stumbled upon a book titled "Forbidden Spells," he would not fucking hesitate

very judgmental re: intelligence. straight-up thinks he is smarter than most people and will not give others' the time of day if he thinks they're beneath him. his respect for Oak directly correlates to the weight he places on a combination of book-smarts, problem-solving ability, and intellectual creativity

skipped the required wizard ethics courses at the Marble Tomes. his ethics vibe check is pretty solid for some things, but he has a lot of examined assumptions about how the world works

related: limited class-consciousness. he grew up lower middle class and on some level knows he was simply extremely lucky to get where he is today, but also, he does NOT want to look or sound poor by any metric

#call of the netherdeep #weird eyes and pronouns

[skullhaver]

new favorite bit is saying "I would be fangirling so hard if I met him in real life 😍" about random species of fish

#okay but you need to understand that Em and I were in a museum #and we saw a brief video clip of a sturgeon and we actually gasped and clutched each others' shoulders

[skullhaver]

Your fave is problematic: OC edition

Ask me about one of my OCs and I’ll list out why they’re problematic.

#y'all know my ocs but @ my players feel free to ask about call of the netherdeep npcs also if you wish

[skullhaver]

Meet me at the hollow log

#illlustration

[skullhaver]

time to promote my college friends' bands 🥰

It’s extremely easy to get me into new music. Recommend me a song or two from your friends’ band. Hold on. How many of you know a band

Ok. Now post a link for me

#Bandcamp

[skullhaver]

#i verbally spell out my last name every available opportunity because the misspelling bothers me so much #but unfortunately that STILL does not prevent people from misspelling it

[skullhaver]

Elzavhir 🩸

#hi hello hi there #other people's ocs