vicious-molly-maukery:

In Response to Travis’ Between the Sheets

So that whole interview made me super emotional but I particularly relate to Travis’ initial feelings about D&D, like, a lot. Pretty much all I knew about role playing games until college I learned from that one episode of Lizzie McGuire where Gordo gets addicted to it and Lizzie and Miranda have to stage an intervention. It’s made out to be weird, kinda cult-ish and just not portrayed in a very positive light.

Fast forward to college: I’m a theatre major and a group of my very closest friends were like “Hey, we’re gonna start a D&D campaign, do you want to join?” And my answer was a super resounding “NOPE.” Even as someone who adores reading and movies and different ways to tell stories, I was genuinely put off by the medium at first. So my friends were like “That’s okay, you can always come watch if you want!” (Matt Mercer, you were right about “no one watches D&D,” we’ll get there in a second) And again I said “Yeah probably not, kinda weirds me out! Thanks but no thanks.”

And then. And then it happened.

The majority of my close friends were involved in this campaign, so I was facing a day of hanging out alone when the invite was offered again: “Hey, just come watch! If you’re bored or you hate it you can leave.” So I went.

I have no clue if the DM was doing a home brew or a guide based campaign or what. I sat down on the floor and I was a little skeptical, I was listening to everyone plan stuff out and trying to figure out the character sheets and what all the dice were for, I was just so lost. And then they sailed to an island where the people had velociraptors as pets. And someone in the campaign said “I’m gonna try to pet one.” He rolled for it, didn’t do so hot, and the DM said “She hisses at you.” And without even thinking, I just kinda hissed under my breath to my friend on the left thinking we’d just have a laugh.

IMMEDIATELY, the guy that just tried to pet the velociraptor looks at me and dangles his hand out with an imaginary fish and said “Okay, I’m gonna try to feed her then!” And held out a fish. To me. And I sat there thinking “Ok dude running the show, you can jump in any time now and take over!” until I realized he was looking at me, too. He had given me total control over that dinosaur and was waiting to see what I was gonna do.

And I GOT IT.

In that moment, playing a dumb dinosaur in a narrative I didn’t even half understand, I got it.

And then I ate the fish.