redbymegan

Keyleth in Season 3 rages about not being taken seriously, as if the rest of the group weren't extremely reluctant to ally with Raishan, and she runs off instead of actually delivering an argument besides "I don't trust her". At no point do people call her stupid, irrational, or even allude to it - not immediately siding with her is enough for them to have let her down. This is also the start of an annoying habit of when Vox Machina would have argued against being called out, they just stand like lemons and take a flawed criticism without ever biting back. In extension to this, Keyleth gets called a brilliant leader despite her continuing to be rash - Percy and Vex are consistently more mature, leader-like and take charge a lot more than she does. It's almost as if Vaxleth angst takes precedent over actually showing Keyleth develop as her own independent character.

Scanlan comes next - he completely ignores a good-faith invitation to Keyleth's coronation and then bitches about the group not caring about him and only coming to them for Mythcarver, and also has the gall to blame them for the fact he's massively insecure around them. The party comment on missing Scanlan when he doesn't arrive for Keyleth's big day and they also were the ones having to encourage him not to be a coward in a lot of situations. Maybe you could say, but Scanlan wasn't there to hear that - but why don't the characters bring it up like they absolutely would have in campaign? They had even more of an argument than they did in the OG campaign because they didn't rub pudding on his corpse this time! They just take Scanlan's hypocrisy as if they don't have any ammunition to throw back at him! I wanted Percy's "what was Kaylie's mother's name" so bad it made me look stupid (but of course his character development means ALL his grit needs to be sanded out and nothing can remain of his previous flaw).

Finally, Pike - her friends other than Grog don't care about her, except for the time they go to Hell to get her vestige. When they didn't follow her after she explicitly said on her 100th religious crisis that again, she had to do it alone. Also criticized them for not doing anything helpful in their year off, but what were she and Grog doing? Doing some bounty hunter work and sexually assaulting guys in bars. Vex and Percy were literally rebuilding a city, why wasn't her year off spent helping her Pop-Pop rebuild their town? Yes, this is a bit more forgivable because she does get called out by Grog for siding with Legally Distinct Vecna, but again and again they stand there and take it without ever trying to criticise her and she's forgiven in ten minutes.

Meanwhile, Vax is constantly seen as the bad guy in regards to Keyleth for... reasonably being concerned about how short his life is compared to his partners and having reservations about getting into a relationship? Wanting to sacrifice himself for the greater good? As well as getting the animated Mollymauk treatment of having a lot of his flaws shaved down and buffed out because they have this strange notion that doing so will make it sadder when they die.

And I don't mean this as a "change bad", I'm all for change as long as it is good and has a purpose. I think in Mighty Nein having the circus incident be their fault is interesting and much better suits a tighter narrative, for example. But these changes are bad. And if that direction for Pike was originally intended if Ashley could be more present, then it was all the more better that they didn't get to do it.

seven devils

surrender | sacrifice | indecision

hoes depressed!

Do Not Suffer the Witch to Live