Ranting and Raving

To begin with, take some flour

Ah, no, the flour is sleeping. Let’s not bother her, she might bite

And then the hero goes home, and finds home a smoking desolation, his neighbors turned on one another, that secondary villain no one finished off having destroyed Frodo’s last oasis not even out of evil so much as spite, and then that villain dies pointlessly, and then his killer dies pointlessly. The hero is left not with a cathartic homecoming, the story come full circle in another party; he is left to pick up the pieces of what was and what shall never be again. 

And it’s not enough. The hero cannot heal, and so departs for the fabled western shores in what remains a blunt and bracing metaphor for death (especially given his aged companions). When Sam tells his family, “Well, I’m back” at the very end, it is an earned triumph, but the very fact that someone making it back qualifies as a triumph tells you what kind of story this is: one that is too honest to allow its characters to claim a clean victory over entropy, let alone evil. 

“I can’t recall the taste of food, nor the sound of water, nor the touch of grass. I’m naked in the dark. There’s nothing–no veil between me and the wheel of fire. I can see him with my waking eyes.”

TLOTR has some of the type of valorization of war that you find in the Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon literature that JRRT loved and studied and taught because he loved that style and it’s deeply fitting for cultures like the Rohirrim, but it’s also full of the slog of war, the waste and tragedy, and the irrevocable damage that even victorious survivors carry for the rest of their lives. Frodo’s symbolic “death” is also resonant for survivors of what was called “shell-shock” then and PTSD now.

vax’s ongoing quest to get kicked out of a hot topic

percival [say the titles of your three favorite Fall Out Boy songs as fast as you can] de Rolo

“hand me the FUCKING scalpel Keyleth”

every cashier at every corner store in town knows vex, and is terrified of her

“Grog says: Get rekt” 

Pike standing on a chair when she gets mad at someone else in the group so she can be at eye level with them

hiding all the chairs when Pike gets pissed off

“IF YOU DON’T WATCH YOUR TONE, VAX IS GONNA START CRYING”

Vax, audibly crying: “shut the fuck up”

Grog’s attempts to memorize the quadratic equation always ending up being indistinguishable from the macarena 

Percy the Fake ID Guy

the One Hundred Percent Serious Theory that Trinket is secretly an assassin sent from the future to murder Scanlan, specifically

When Vex Ain’t Happy, Ain’t Nobody Happy

Pike has never had a SINGLE alcohol. Not one. Ever. In her life.

That time Keyleth got detention for sneezing

Scanlan’s age is a cryptid

Critical Role Campaign 1 Party!

Tried a different version of Keyleth from my previous take.

Also, bonus Tary:

i love all the new characters So much!!! i feel unequivocally blessed on this day, here’s some doodles