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@ghostdexd
every sundered house fucking wishes they had their shit together the way halovar does. royce? almost completely wiped out. einfasen? idk about them yet but they're getting tricked all the time. cormoray? your lady got eaten by a box last week. tachonis? so inclined to do ridiculous shit that it's easy to blame them for your own plots. you fucking wish you invented the candescent creed you fucking wish you had angel babies
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Dol-Makjar really is a fascinating setting. Both in its own right and as a place to start this story. It has thousands of years of history, but in so many of the ways that matter, it feels like a brand new city. Hal is opening the first amphitheater. The Blade family business is a generational one, but still new enough post-Azgra to feel like a generational one. It is, based on my understanding, also newly multi-cultural. There are memorials to the Shaper's War honoring all the races, and people of all races comfortably make their homes there, but it is still explicitly understood as an Oricish city. The political structure of Araman is still unclear in a lot of ways, but it seems like the combination of the Shapers' War and The Blooming have put Dol-Makjar firmly at the political and economic center of Araman. All of this also means that, as a city, it has felt the shockwaves of the Shaper's War in a very different way than everyone else. I'm tipping into speculation here, but I imagine a lot of work went into building Dol-Makjar into the cosmopolitan seat of power that it is today. However, I also imagine it was much more joyful work on the whole, than many other places that rebuilt themselves in the wake of the Shaper's War. It makes Dol-Makjar a place I'm desperate to learn more about and see more of its role in the geo-politics of Araman. But it's also fascinating to start a story in many ways about the continuing shockwaves of major political upheaval in one of the places that benefited the most from that upheaval. We'll see how the story unfolds. But it feels like it positions us in an inherent place of hope in the early narrative, even as we start by learning of the dual tragedies of the failed Falconer's Rebellion and Thjazi's death
so if the conflict between the sundered houses is Survivor (which it is, hi Brennan we know you’re a fan) the Halovars have been playing such a classic Survivor winning strategy they’re running circles around everyone else
they’ve been allied enough with the big play makers right now which are the Tachonis BUT they’re letting them make all the big risky moves to actually cut out other players, the Halovars are staying one step ahead while taking none of the social heat, that’s gonna serve them well in the long run while the Tachonis continue to put a target on their back,,, plus Yanessa strategically burning an immunity idol at the Gus vote was inspired play
Royce were eliminated early because they were too trusting in their alliances, Cormoray are being dragged along by the big players to get burned in late game, Einfasen are too far on the outside of the major alliances to have any real influence on the voting
basically at this point in the season, it looks like Yanessa Halovar’s track record is going to be unbeatable at final tribal council
loveeee the wording of awakener of the beastfolk versus shaper of elves etc… it implies that maybe omra ‘created’ the beastfolk by lifting existing animal species into a more complex level of sentience but how does that truly differ from what the other gods did in ‘shaping’ the other existing species enough to warrant a different name?
and what an interesting choice to make if omra did approach things differently, what’s the timeline on this, did they see what the other shapers had done and awakened the beastfolk differently in response to that, or was it something about omra and their outlook that was already inherently different from the other shapers, how did it affect the beastfolk’s relationship to their shaper relative to the other species, if it is an awakening do the beastfolk have memories and culture from the time before the shapers at all or does their awareness begin with omra, if omra is ‘the hunter’ what does that mean for a beastfolk people Brennan what does it mean what does it meannnnnn
I literally do not understand ppl who act like wick is somehow different from all the other characters sam has played...somehow it feels like you guys just like him bc he's more conventionally attractive
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it’s torture when we get these tantalising glimpses into Sam’s widowbrave takes,, i’m sure he doesn’t get into it much publicly because he’s aware that some of the fandom can’t even handle the basic concept of widowbrave but I need him to know there’s a better world out there,,, would genuinely kill to take him by the hand into a room of widowbrave enjoyers, lock the doors, tell him we want Veth to cheat on her husband with the wizard too and hand him a microphone
C2E2 Q&A (2020)
+ Campaign 2 Episode 138 (aka One Year Later)
my hot take on people wanting critical role to livestream again is that the actual viewing experience of watching the current pretaped episodes is almost exactly the same as when it was actually live,, you just miss knowing it was live,,, the pretapes are not really edited down (if they were they wouldn’t be 4.5 hours long for a start) so you’re not missing anything,, when it was streamed they only rarely responded to or even read the chat so the viewers were not really affecting the show significantly in real time, the main difference is they’re often batch filmed now so the cast are not seeing general audience reactions between each episode but the only times I can remember that bleeding into the actual content of the show were largely detrimental (a certain -gate controversy comes to mind)
sometimes when people say they want the livestream back it’s because it’s just kind of nice to know they’re in the room playing at the same time (which is fine but wouldn’t actually make the show better to watch),, but sometimes wanting the livestream back is just a proxy for saying ‘we want more direct influence over the show/cast’ and frankly the show is better when fandom drama is at an arms length,, often the fans who actively want to have influence over the show and cast are the exact people who should not,, this way we get to keep that stuff at bay, not miss any players AND never have to see them roll out the zoom tv screen that sucked every time,, viva la pretape tbh
Something that really impresses me with Travis's characters is that he really just...grasps the structure of D&D. Grog notwithstanding (Grog is great but he was created for a one-shot and ended up being his character for 5 years, and I think his limitations as a character either led Travis to figure out what D&D is about, or merely gave him time to analyze it while the other characters were talking strategy and Grog was off eating mayonnaise) his longform characters and many of his miniseries characters have all recently had something significantly shake up their routines and lives. They enter into the game as people who have a good reason to be adventuring - they don't have a place to go back to and that includes their past self - and they have a new problem to discover. Fjord believes himself to be the sole survivor of a shipwreck and has unexplained new powers; Chetney was kicked out of Uthodurn and recently became a werewolf; and Teor's mercenary group is disbanding and his brother is missing.
The key to making a pretty good D&D character is having someone who not only has a reason to leave whatever their life was behind, but also has something they are working towards. However, there are a couple of nuances that bring this from good to great:
understanding the follow-through of what made you leave. It should be something that you are prepared to deal with in the story - eg, if you were kicked out of town, you are going to have to deal with that should you need to go back to your hometown.
if you get what you were working towards, why do you stay? like yeah, found family, but that's not actually that interesting on its own and really runs a risk of making your D&D character feel like an appendage to someone else's character. You need to be prepared to find new purposes. Travis is an incredible generator of plot; he tends to make characters for whom the journey itself is very important anyway (ie, even after Fjord gets a new patron the idea of self-worth and identity is an ongoing process) but he also focuses on other things that would interest this character, rather than being single-minded. (This incidentally is why he gets dinged by the unenlightened for having too many hanging plot threads; it's because he makes sure to have more plot potential than the campaign requires, as it is an improvised work.)
This incidentally is why I tend to be less enamored with higher concept characters, and why I think they often fail: yes, you're ~weird~, but do you have a worldview? Do you have a mission? Are you flexible enough to keep going if that mission changes? A lot of high concept D&D characters ultimately would make for a great character in a book, but not a very good D&D character for this very reason; they need to have a delicate balance of internal motivations and external flexibility and typically they lack the latter, whereas Travis nails it every time.
my beautiful women exploding robby with their minds since they don’t have guns
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one must assume that the reason why thaisha avoided the fate of lady cormoray when she opened the coffin is simply because she's a far badder bitch with better vibes
sure you may think the theory that Azune is secretly the prince of a fallen noble house is “silly” or “predictable” or “adds nothing to the story or themes” but just wait till we get to episode 90 and they finally reveal that Azune has been a Palpatine this whole time THEN YOU’LL ALL SEE
the interpersonal conflicts on the Pitt this season are delightfully messy I am gobbling it up like a delicious dessert, everyone is completely wrong and also absolutely correct, often at the same time, no one is being objective for even a moment the personal trauma is screaming through every sentence and every interaction, it’s delightful it’s so juicy, this is exactly what would happen when a bunch of complex traumatised people are simultaneously having the worst days ever at each other in an extremely high stress environment, I can see the gauge on the pressure cooker going up and up and I am at the sickos window willing it higher
Primus Tachonis's celestial making is like those crazy people on recipe blogs that substitute half the ingredients for something else because they like that ingredient better and then wonder why the dish didn't turn out right.
★☆☆☆☆ 1/5
Do Not try this recipe!!! My family doesn't really like Tansul so I substituted the offering to the sun with a hand-made call to serve my house, I left out the blood pool because fighting Azgra isn't a part of our lifestyle, and tried to add in some destruction of the Old Path to make up for it, and it turned my niece into a half-undead scorpion angel! I then tried again with my son, using an obelisk because I didn't want to go all the way to Tannesar, and halfway through he just said no, which ruined several of the expensive ingredients. NEVER trying again... worst recipe I've ever seen
Primus Tachonis's celestial making is like those crazy people on recipe blogs that substitute half the ingredients for something else because they like that ingredient better and then wonder why the dish didn't turn out right.
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I've been thinking about this off and on ever since I rewatched FHJY, that when Brennan has had the opportunity to make commentary on sorcery versus wizardry as a concept, he has consistently found sorcery to be wanting. When we first meet Jace Stardiamond in Fantasy High, he's mainly mentioned offhand as the sorcery teacher whose classes are really laid-back compared to everyone else because sorcery is innate and most of the time they're just "hanging out and talking about how easy and fun magic is". In the final battle, he's pitted against divination wizard Adaine and complains that wizards think they're better just because they "understand the principles that are at work"; when Adaine points out that he could have taken a level in wizard, he admits that he tried and couldn't do it. In C4 E17, Occtis recalls a conversation with Primus where he was told that "effortlessness accompanies pure workings of will" and he hopes Occtis will find some, and later on Occtis's successful investigation check, Brennan narrates that he observes that great magic does not come at the pronouncement of a ruler but is based on principles that describe cause and effect.
I don't think it's that Brennan just flat-out hates sorcerers; he's DM'd for several great sorcerers, including on Critical Role and in this campaign. But it is interesting that FHJY and Campaign 4 both have thematic elements of what people are willing to work for versus what they believe is owed to them. Kipperlilly Copperkettle, and to a lesser extent the other Rat Grinders, believe that it simply isn't fair that the Bad Kids are getting recognition that the Rat Grinders are not, and have at no point considered that they're wasting their time killing rats—or, as we learn later, having a more experienced adventurer kill most of a real monster for them—so they can do the bare minimum of gaining EXP, as opposed to being curious enough about their world to engage with it and accomplish something meaningful. They are angry that recognition requires work that is genuinely difficult, and Jace Stardiamond is one of the teachers who exploits that anger. House Tachonis, meanwhile, approaches it from the top down: they didn't have to work to obtain or use magic, and they consider it a mockery of their gifts that other people would try. To them, not having to work at all is the virtue, and they are offended not only by the Penteveral attempting to teach magic, but also by the idea that a member of their family would not remain unquestionably loyal to them, never considering that someone they mistreated might not view the name alone as a gift.
And then he all but looked down the barrel of the camera when he said that prizing effortlessness is "fucking stupid".
the way Thaisha connects and interacts with other people is giving every Thaisha ship incredible sauce,, the deep empathy and emotional understanding she shows them while still pushing back and defending her moral boundaries without hesitation,, she just keeps having these really juicy interactions, i’m bouncing from Hal to Julien to Vaelus and back like every scene, its a goddamn feast, she can do no wrong
