zee 🌙

Imogen and Laudna own my whole soul

Imagined Screenshot series, from Critical Role C3E35.

One thing I noticed that I’ve not seen anyone else mention is Laudna’s moment of paralysed silence when she first wakes up. This moment:

Or more to the point, the voice that she uses when she first speaks.

Two lines: “I… I don’t…”, and “Have you found anything else out about your Mum?”

And both of them are delivered in a different accent than her usual voice as Laudna - in a much flatter English accent. We noticed during the previous episode that Laudna’s voice was a little more cockney and less Mid-Atlantic when her younger versions were interacting with Imogen, and that seems to have continued here.

Two takeaways.

Firstly, in this moment of awakening, Laudna is having trouble nailing down which version of herself she is. When FCG looks at her surface thoughts he sees a flip book of the memories she has been reliving in Delilah’s hellscape. She seems to be embodying a version of them in her first stuttering words to her friends.

Secondly, I can’t be the only one who’s noticed how similar Delilah’s and Laudna’s patterns of talking are. They share inflections, choices of where to draw out syllables and put emphasis. The accent is almost identical. My thesis: Laudna’s very way of speaking has been shaped by Delilah’s presence in her head for the past 30 years, until she speaks more like her than her younger self.