CritRole!

if Mumford & Sons existed in Aramán I think 17-year-old Azune would have listened to Little Lion Man on repeat every night in his tent and cried. And I think Teor would eventually go up to him and say "you are not little lion man" and it would just make Azune cry harder because now he thinks he accidentally offended Teor. And Teor would panic and say "no no I meant you are not metaphorical little lion man, I didn't think you thought you were an actual lion man." Which, of course, would just make Azune even more upset because he feels guilty that he thought Teor would not understand the metaphor. And eventually he'd just be lying on the ground ugly sobbing while Teor is patting his back and saying "I wish to kill Mumford and all of his Sons"

Obsessed with this. It's so gorgeous.

The difference between Zerxus in Calamity and his portrayal in The Legend of Vox Machina is telling. During the Calamity he was filled with a raw anger, anxiety and grief. You can feel the knots he's tied in with every single word. He's earnest and empathetic but he's conflicted and in emotional turmoil and you feel this mix of irreconcilable emotions and how his deep love for his friends, his son and deceased husband and his loathing of Avalir is twisting within. But the devil version of him speaks in a smoother cadence and calmer timbre, and those complex emotions are replaced with a deceitfulness of someone evil. Even his recounting of the Calamity, his emotions feel like echoes of his mortal life rather than the intense sincerity he once possessed. His honesty is a machination instead of an effort to connect. He has the same scheming duplicity as his master Asmodeus had during the Calamity. He is polished from a millennium living in hell amongst other devils. His personality filed to a devilish point as sharp as his horns, capable of stabbing into the heart of others not with the deep well of empathy but rather an equally deep ruthlessness, coming from the same skill of actually seeing people. It's such a terrible tragedy.