the freedom of stupidity

 Having grown up as a Gifted Child ™, there was the constant pressure to be smart all the damn time. I still have a very vivid memory of my mom flipping out in panic and anxiety upon seeing that I’d gotten mixed up in my ABC’s Of the Ocean project whether the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean was bigger. It was a huge crisis… and this was just the fourth grade. 

Now that I’m three times older, I’ve finally started playing D&D, having finally found a group of friends I’m comfortable to play with. I made my character for a pun, which involved her needing to be a full Orc, and y’know what? She’s dumb as rocks. She’s a charismatic bard of an idiot, and I love her. I love playing her, in part, because she’s stupid.  She’s also a lesbian, because I always gotta gay, but as I have no idea how to flirt with women (and my dice apparently don’t either), she keeps striking out due to the stupid. She has the best damn awful ideas, and the look on my DM’s face is always priceless when she hears what the everloving fuck my bard is going to do. 

“I fling myself out of the cart.“ 
“You what?“
“He’s coming at me with a sword, I’m tied up, I launch myself over the edge of the cart with my feet.“
“Okay, roll Athletics… You’re now upside-down hanging out of the cart. I think we’re gonna count that as prone.“

“All right, crew, it looks like we’re facing a werewolf,“ says our wizard. 
“Does anyone have glue?“ my bard immediately asks, being in possession of a mace and seven silver coins. 

“The werewolf turns and runs.“
“I throw the glitter [that I bought with the glue] at it.“
“Uh, why?“
“To make a sparkly trail we can use to track it.“

Some of these awful ideas have actually worked, which I guess makes them good ideas, but at no point am I ever afraid of offering a stupid plan. She’s supposed to be stupid, she has a -1 Intelligence modifier and is interested in only music, birds, and women who could beat her in arm wrestling. She’s allowed to mess up. Moreover, because she’s used to it, she even knows how to move on from it. 

So yeah. I’m having a blast.