Whether you know her from Dimension 20, Critical Role, Dice Envy, or any of her other epic endeavors, Aabria Iyengar has a talent for inflicting top emotional damage with the slightest sound, but when she goes for gusto, painting wreckage in what characters don’t see or walking players into traps of their own making, Aabria blows our minds. Enjoy Boss Rush’s list of five of our favorite Aabria Iyengar quotes, and leave any we might’ve missed in the comments below!
5. “It’s interesting to watch someone go from wanting to survive to wanting to live.” – Aabria Iyengar (Dimension 20: Burrow’s End)
Aabria constantly challenges Rick Perry and the Dimension 20 art department, eagerly pushing the boundaries of what they’ve done and exploring the possibilities of what they can do. Her style has clearly influenced other seasons, but in the twentieth season, Aabria created an Eldritch horror for the modern age, combing fantasy and science fiction into a gory glory which explored the line between surviving and living. While the players each represented this ideal in different ways, it was Aabria who underlined the external demarcation.
The exploration of that line was incredible, and anyone who has seen that moment or experienced themselves knows how true Aabria’s words were.
4. “You eventually lose it across the horizon line, and it’s out of eyeshot and earshot, so you don’t hear the strangled sound it makes when it is snatched out of the air and disappears from view, and something laughs menacingly.” – Aabria Iyengar (Dimension 20: Misfits and Magic)
Picking up the reins from well-loved DMs might just be Aabria’s expertise. No matter what table she is at, Aabria makes it her own. When she dropped the above line in the D20 dome, everyone saw how the players’ heads spun. Brennan brought the moment up at Critical Role’s Game Masters of Exandria Roundtable, talking about how it inspired him and was an incredibly cinematic moment.
3. “It was the sort of desperate lack of anything to adhere to; I felt I was falling and standing eternally spreading in every direction and yet unmade entirely.” – Aabria Iyengar as the Skullwarden (Roll 20: Chaos 2)
Aabria has a talent for meeting players at their level, matching energy and controlling the flow of even the most chaotic table. After the Citizen Doctors Without Borders crew goes in guns blazing, they realize their mistake, leading to Citizen Doctor Abraham Mehermblur bringing back the Skull Warden, who reveals that nothing good awaits a mage-formed abomination like him.
Earlier conversations about Yahui’s echo, Deputi, enjoying the unbeing leaves this quote all the more poignant. With the multitude of afterlives available for even the living to visit and know, Aabria’s description of a contrary state of being and unbeing, everywhere and nowhere, calls back to when Bilbo Baggins said, “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Tolkien).
2. “What is a coin to a fey? You are the source of magic, and it is magic that you trade it, and they bandy it about without a care, and you think about all the people here and other places that were starved out, that were choked out because they didn’t have access to this, to a fraction of this.” – Aabria Iyengar (Dimension 20: A Court of Fey & Flowers)
What could have been a throwaway bet between the Lords of the Wing and Delloso de la Rue became a deeply pointed commentary on the underlying injustices of the fey, foreshadowing the core issue of the Bloom in this riveting monologue by Aabria. Her words took the one character who seemed to have no heavy expectations for the Bloom and created space for Bix’s tragic history even before we knew that Surena Marie played a character in disguise.
Beyond that, Aabria’s words strike at a familiar torment, especially in the age of influencers and reality television where the lives of the rich are readily available for entertainment, revealing the glibness with which some of the more privileged treat what would be life-ruining moments for their viewers. For some, their petty cash is more than the average person’s rent. Aabria poetically paints that acidic frustration when faced with injustices ignored either by ignorance or apathy.
1. “Imagine life is like being a snowflake, and your fragile and discreet and you dance on the wind. But when you cross over, it’s like landing on the ocean, and for a little bit, you’re a snowflake on the ocean, but after a while, you melt and you are the ocean.” — Aabria Iyengar as Deanna Leimert (Critical Role: C3xE52)
Aabria paints a poignant image, and if you close your eyes and think on the sensation of melting into something like a snowflake on the ocean, there’s a strange calm to the sensation compared to many other dust to dust analogies.
While Aabria’s character, Deanna, continues on to discuss that melting into that ocean makes it difficult to return, the seed of thought in the quote resonates regardless.
Are there any quotes we missed? Share them in the comments below or join the conversation on Boss Rush Network’s Discord and Facebook.
Featured Image: Dimension 20 and Critical Role
The Boss Rush Podcast: The Flagship Podcast of Boss Rush Media and the Boss Rush Network
The Boss Rush Podcast – The Boss Rush Podcast is the flagship podcast of Boss Rush Media and the Boss Rush Network. Each week, Corey, Stephanie, LeRon, and their friends from around the internet come together with other creators, developers, and industry veterans to talk about games they’ve been playing, discuss video game and entertainment based topics, and answer questions solicited on social media and the community Discord.
New episodes of the Boss Rush Podcast release every Monday morning on YouTube and all major podcast applications like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Patreon supporters gain one week early access.
Listen on your favorite podcast application or watch on YouTube!
Anchor | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google | Twitch | Overcast | Pocket Casts
Follow The Boss Rush Podcast on Social Media:
Twitter | Discord | Instagram | Twitch | YouTube | Facebook Group | Facebook
Leave a Reply