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Critical Role: 10 Years of Storytelling

Campaign 1, Episode 115, "The Chapter Closes." // Taliesin Jaffe, in "As D&D booms, 'Critical Role' makes its own kind of nerd celebrity" by Sarah Parvini // Campaign 3, Episode 31, "Breaking Point" // On Loving by Forugh Farrokhzad, tr. Sholeh Wolpé // The Legend of Vox Machina at NYCC 2022 // 8-bit Stories // Campaign 1 Wrap-Up // “Without You Without Them” by boygenius // Campaign 2, Episode 141, "Fond Farewells." // Campaign 3: Behind the Set // Letters to Milena by Franz Kafka // Campaign 1, Episode 115, "The Chapter Closes." // Explanation of the final Vex’ahlia playlist by Laura Bailey // Liam's Quest: Full Circle // Backwards by Warsan Shire // Exandria Unlimited: Kymal, Part 2 // Explanation of Fearne’s second playlist by Ashley Johnson // Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson // San Diego Comic-Con 2023, Critical Role: Fireside Chat & Cast Q&A // Exandria Unlimited Cooldown: Divergence Episode 4 // Campaign 3, Episode 23, "To the Skies." // Explanation of the final Percy playlist by Taliesin Jaffe // "For Good" by Stephen Schwartz // Campaign 3, Episode 91, "True Heroism." // Exandria Unlimited: Calamity, Episode 4, "Fire and Ruin." // Campaign 3, Episode 121, "A New Age Begins."

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alliepretends

Actually, I'm going to discourse about it. Sorry! And it's very much along the lines of what I said about Murray's doubts over Thjazi's intentions. Thjazi is dead. Yes, he's in Julien's shadow, but he's there as a haunting. He is literally and figuratively haunting the narrative! He is not going to grow and change (maybe a little in his relationship to Julien now, but that's it). It's not his purpose. He is and remains more symbol than character (and while there are avenues open to Brennan to turn him back into a character, I think most of those would be a mistake, because it would very much make Thjazi the main character of the story to bring him back in a significant way.) It is important for Thjazi to be a flawed man. To have been impulsive sometimes, and wrong sometimes, to have hurt people (both intentionally and unintentionally), for him to have used people, and for him to have not had empathy for those still attached to the ways of the shapers/the sundered houses. It's important not for the sake of making Thjazi the character more interesting (that's nice, but it actually isn't necessary to telling this story well), it's important because it complicates his legacy and makes him harder for our protagonist to reckon with. It makes the fact that they are following in his footsteps more complicated because they aren't just blindly following his example. There will be places they diverge from him, for better and for worse. It does not add anything to the story to make him villainous or abusive. It doesn't add anything to the story to say our archetypal freedom fighter actually did have a group of people that he viewed as less than human. That he was cruel to the point where it would actually horrify his family and friends and make them not want to honor his memory. Or make them think less of him. All that does is deflate him as a symbol. He stops being someone whose legacy is being carefully navigated and becomes someone whose haunting of the narrative is a simple inconvenience. He stops meaning freedom fighter to the audience, and starts meaning nothing to them.

Bolaire is a character in this story. He is a PC with the capacity to grow and change and respond to the world around him. In fact, that's kind of his whole job as a PC. It adds nothing to the story if Thjazi is secretly way worse than we thought. It does add something to the story if Bolaire is wrong/hypocritical about him. Because that's an arc! That's something that Bolaire can learn about himself and the world and grow and change in response to! That's the whole ballgame in terms of telling a story. If Bolaire is uncomplicatedly right about Thjazi's treatment of him, that severely damages a central symbolic pillar of the narrative (think about Hal calling up the Falcon's Cry at the end of Kother'ai, that moment matters because of how we think about Thjazi and his final words to the crowd). If he's largely wrong, we've got a character arc to explore!

#this is excellently put #bolaire lathalia #thjazi fang #cr4 #cr spoilers

your-turn-to-role

i also. something about people saying primus is just incapable of caring about anyone hasn't sat right with me since any of the occtis flashbacks, and i think this episode fleshed that out quite a lot

primus tachonis believes he's capable of love, i'm sure of that. whether what he has for people is actually love is a debatable point, but like. i believe him when he said to occtis "i hope you find some degree of effortlessness one day". i believe he wasn't doing it for show when he kissed his daughters' heads before leaving with them. when he suggested to 8yo occtis he try practicing his sorcery here, and that time was of the essence, i believe that he thought of that as a kind (or at least earnest) gesture. it wasn't solely a lie to get occtis out of the room, it was a father who had a lot of expectations for his child but did want to see that child succeed in them. and a father involved enough in his children's business to distinguish their individual signet rings from each other (a task that couldn't have been obvious bc no other sundered house member could do so)

there were a lot of lies thrown around in this meeting, but i don't think him saying "he had already betrayed the family, i'm not a monster" in response to yanessa privately asking if he really killed his son just for power was one of them (not completely, anyway)

the problem is primus' rigid beliefs in societal roles and what makes someone worthy of them, and enforcing that incredibly strictly because the concept of not doing so genuinely disgusts him. yanessa also asked him if he really didn't see the benefit in having commoners on your side and he couldn't even entertain that. primus was born into nobility, so obviously he was meant to rule over the common folk, or failing that, destroy them. house royce were betraying their station, unable to keep proving their own worth (and in the minds of the other houses, leeching off their alliance), so they had to die. he had no vendetta against davinos, but their deaths were a necessity, and as someone who outranks their entire house primus was entirely within his rights to take their lives

occtis is an embarrassment, being handed such a high place in society (by primus himself) and unable to prove he belongs there. the thing that makes primus innately great is missing in him, and his attempts to prove he still has worth despite that are just a source of boredom or frustration to his father. but primus did acknowledge in episode 3 that occtis achieved what he set out to at the penteveral. there possibly is a world where, had occtis not betrayed the family, and the deva vindicta plan not required his heart, he could have gotten into good standing with his family by mastering that magic. and even if there wasn't, as long as occtis stayed loyal primus would have probably seen his death as a necessary evil. not something he enjoyed doing, or thought he was right to do, but something he was willing to do for the greater good

(when i said not completely earlier, i think the lie he told to yanessa was in avoiding the topic of tertia)

but when occtis tried to save thjazi, it doesn't matter that the attempt was a failure, bc the crime was breaking the social order. primus tachonis, by his own beliefs, is in the right to punish someone so much lower than him who had the audacity to try and foil his plans. occtis choosing to align with thjazi over his own family is breaking every principle primus holds so dear. so if there was any part of him that still cared about occtis by that point, i don't think he could physically bring himself to keep a hold of it

he may be one of the most powerful people on the planet, but he is still just a human being. and as ever i think it's far more interesting to be dealing with a man who can do horrendous things to the people he loves if he's got an internal justification for it, than dealing with a man who doesn't love at all

#really great. yeah #primus tachonis #cr4

lesbianpraetor

Now that we have all separated Teor's death from any of the players fault, I do hope that Thimble absolutely unloads on Julien for leaving Teor behind as a sublimation of her own guilt of leaving him and Cyd to go into the vowels of Obrimus Manor alone.

#no like the ‘no one’s to blame’ thing is so emphatically about the above table of it all #in the characters minds. it’s more compelling the More blame there is #and thimble already carrying the weight of ‘i didn’t even get to say goodbye’ re. thjazi. well.#thimble #julien davinos #teor pridesire #julien & thimble #cr4

twinklestarss

“Slit her throat. Has she done some something wrong? She’s annoyed me. Slit her throat, or I’m going to kill you.”-Primus/Wick

Campaign 4 Episode 31: Trick of the Light

#in a way this too is wimble #wicander halovar #primus tachonis #cr4

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captainofthetidesbreath

I feel like the CritRole fandom at large can really take some time to understand what opsec is and why Hollis Kinnywater keeps criticizing the PCs for doing it inconsistently and why Brennan points out that the important step of not telling the Magpies most of what's happening is exactly what Thjazi did as well and why it's a major contributing reason the Tachonis projects are falling apart rapidly and why the intrigue between the Sundered Houses rests very much on it

#no truly #cr4

utilitycaster

I don't want to harp on this a ton (ie, this will be my last post unless I get asks) but I do find any comparisons between Bolaire and Julien as the resident Thjazi-haters disingenuous because the thing is, Julien brings this up all the time, but as his core motivation is "destroy House Tachonis" and he is desperate for allies and knows it, it doesn't really matter as he is going to work with this group to the best of his ability. He might hate Thjazi, but he's going to scream "FUCK" and leave the theorizing to the nerds. Bolaire is set up to be someone who can gain access to lore and information and he really did not do that and he keeps trying to get others to join him and sulking when they don't despite there being objective evidence that Thjazi, while a huge dick to Bolaire specifically, was not ill-intentioned elsewhere (and despite a lot of these people grieving and making it pretty clear that no matter how Bolaire felt about Thjazi, Thjazi's work was in fact for the benefit of the world at large). Like, Julien understands that he is being a hater but that there's something larger going on. And more generally, most of Julien's actions have resulted in consequences that landed squarely on him, with the exception of leaving Teor (which is marginal anyway - like, again, that was a lot of bad rolls) whereas Bolaire's have deprived the group of useful information and almost certainly closed off certain avenues.

Having more knowledge from the coffin and Archanade - actually finding out what Lady Cormoray wanted - would have both greatly assisted with risk assessment and probably set up some Sundered Houses plotting and Search For Artifacts threads that now need to come through other means. Everything going on with Termina is like, well, you could have looked at the coffin and not pissed off Lady Cormoray and you did both those things. I think having Bolaire in a large group that isn't so individually driven as the Schemers are will be really good, so again, if you're tired of my criticism too bad it's my blog but also it will probably be lessening. But any comparison with Julien really is a comparing Watsonian apples and Doylist oranges situation.

#no there’s quite a few disingenuous comparisons being made #of people being like ‘why can x player/character do this but bolaire/tal can’t’#which is just like idk man. maybe because the consequences those characters face don’t lead to like 30 minutes #of that character Woe Is Meing all over a conversation with an npc trying to explain part of the puzzle that the past 30 episodes have been #trying to put together #cr spoilers #cr4 #julien davinos #bolaire lathalia

gorgynei

WHATEVER COMES NEXT AT LEAST YOUR BROTHER WONT HAVE TO GO THERE ALONE

#cr4 siblingsism strikes again #teor pridesire #cr4

mollyjames

I do tend to be suspicious of art that really lauds and worships the idea of being an artist. Like yes, art is cool, I think it's valuable, there's a reason I make it. But let's not get overly self congratulatory here

mollyjames

I think it's okay to love what you do, and even celebrate that. But there's a line that gets crossed sometimes where the art goes... "unlike all of those stupid people, who just dont get it." And it's like... hey... who are you making this for, exactly?

tallspookylady

reminds me of that "artists fuck better because we turn sex into art, mattresses are our canvas" post or however that goes. always makes me laugh

trans-seraphim

also relevant

#prev tags real as hell #on storytelling #queue

navpike

something extremely poetic and deeply tragic about cyd telling teor that thjazi had promised to help them figure out their magic, that they would go off and find teor as soon as this was all done and taken care of, and they’d figure out what the pridesire brothers’ deal was.

and then thjazi died and instead it was cyd and teor left to find those answers alone. but now that they’ve both died too, in a way they are seeking thjazi now. travis narrates teor as going off and awaiting the next adventure as he passes. we know thjazi is somewhere in the tenebral reaches causing trouble still.

the three of them could still find each other and find their answers. their adventure just might look a little different now.

#goes crazy #thjazi fang #teor pridesire #talcydimir pridesire #cr4

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alloutofgoddesses

ASHLEY “DRAGON SUMMONER” JOHNSON

#that’s her legacy baby #cr4 #ashley johnson #queue

charliecornwalls

annoyance (murderous) to annoyance (fondness)

#listen. sam and laura play off each other so well they don’t have to do much to make their character dynamics sit near the top of my favs #but wimble really does have something extra on it #especially with the added like. thimble watching over tyranny and wick at the fire #and seeing a version of her and thaz like #and like thimble saying the only way wick could ever make up for the creed bullshit #is if he finds a way to bring down his family and him steadily moving down that road #they’re so compelling to me.#anyway sorry to tag dump on a silly post #thimble & wick #thimble #wicander halovar #cr4

revvethasmythh

If [Teor] just died, he's real mighty, the others there with him must be in danger. So I think, even though I'd really like to see what my friends here are doing [...] I think I have to dash as fast as I can to the Tachonis house.

#i actually am quite taken with them i fear #wicander halovar #thimble #tyranny #thimble & wick #cr4 #cr spoilers

burr-ell

I've been relatively quiet on Bolaire discourse, mostly because I haven't had anything new to say, but the fandom's repeated "Bolaire is just BEGGING for someone to interrogate him about his deal" "someone just NEEDS to initiate a scene with him" "oh when will someone TALK to Bolaire" is like...y'know those people who get mad when you ask them what's wrong because "a REAL friend wouldn't need to ask"? It's like that, except this is a character for whom two PCs and the DM gave a golden opportunity for an RP scene where he could, in fact, discuss his deal, and the player chose to text them a letter.

Taliesin Jaffe is almost fifty years old. He has worked with these people both personally and professionally. If he cannot use his adult words to say things with his mouth to his friends of over a decade, that is on him and him alone. No amount of staring at someone and blinking is going to substitute for actually talking to them.

burr-ell

"Oh so Taliesin should just ORDER people to engage with him?" No, he should probably have a polite conversation off-camera, or perhaps he should have taken advantage of the clear opportunity he was given instead of openly declining to be present in a scene. Dropping hints is not communicating. There are twelve other players and a DM at the table who actually ARE making their intentions and needs clear; there's simply too much going on for everyone else to prioritize "drop everything and follow Bolaire's every breadcrumb so someone else can facilitate his character arc".

#also like the people crying ableism about it 90% of the time are in fact being ableist themselves by infantilizing a grown man #like. passive rp in a campaign of 13 players . idk about that.#especially passive to the point of opting out of a scene where you could’ve had the conversation you’ve seemingly been inching your characte #towards. jeremy culhane tucker carlson. what are we doing. what’s going on #also slightly tangential but related to other posts i’ve scene re this . does anyone know where the ‘18 hour’ shoot mythology came from?#because while they did shoot close together i really do not recall where that takeaway could’ve come from?#cr4 #cr discourse #taliesin jaffe #bolaire lathalia #queue

Jester for the character ask thing.

Trying to make this shorter than the vex one. Also I cut the head canon question just because I Will and have gotten sidetracked by fic drafts trying to recall ones I have.

Favourite thing

I mean, so much. But I really like how she cares for her friends both in messy and incredibly sincere ways. Like her stealing veth’s flask, writing to Astrid, and messaging beau’s dad, but also her gifting veth flowers so soon after meeting and telling yasha they can be her family and painting yasha’s wall. But also her being so consistent that she really couldn’t care less about veth being a goblin (and in fact, finds her adorable as is) like even when she’s talking to isharnai and asks to have veth changed back its just “I don’t want her to be a goblin anymore Because she doesn’t want to be a goblin.” And when fjord reveals that he files his tusks as a result of childhood abuse re: how he’s seen, jester emphasizes that he’d look good with or without them. She’s just got such interesting stuff going on re: agency with the rest of mn

Least favourite thing

Nothing. maybe the fact that she’s such a popular character but is still so widely misunderstood in the fandom.

Favourite line

“What do I need money for? We’re going up into the North to die.” It’s both a silly line, but it also hints at one of my favourite evolutions of her character where she gets extremely grounded during the aeor arc in like. They’re probably going to die And they need to keep moving if they don’t want the world to end.

brOTP

Once again. A sam and laura combo has never steered me wrong. Jester and veth is an extremely entertaining and fun dynamic. Veth should’ve been at the club but she couldn’t be so she just got a best friend who is in many ways like a club. Also yasha and jester is extremely good, extremely sweet, pretty much all of their interactions end in me either laughing or crying so. Yeah.

OTP

Fjord and jester are both characters brewed in a lab for me specifically AND you’re telling me they fall in love with the versions of each other they see when the masks slip away while still also caring for and loving the masks that one another display most of the time? An army of the media illiterate could claiming comphet or above table interference could never beat the textual development of both characters into people who see the entirety of each other more clearly than anyone else. Like you can hypothetically take the like romantic fjorester out of campaign 2 but you can’t really take fjorester out of each other’s stories without both of them loosing their most consistent engines for development. Like even in a world where they don’t end up together they’re still one another’s closest confidantes. They’re not even really about romance to me (though to be clear, I do love their dynamic and find it incredibly sweet) it’s just so fucking narratively fulfilling that two people so scared to be seen trust one another enough to show them the version of themselves that they don’t think they should be and each of them fall in love with that version. It’s ridiculous (affectionate). Also low wisdom high charisma/high wisdom low charisma couple can be so beautiful.

nOTP

The thing is that like. I have no issue with either beauj*ster in theory, and on a character level I think beau’s perspectives on jester is excellent character work and make so much sense but. Beau’s perception of jester very frequently deeply misunderstands her and her motivations and that leads to various moments where I get the proverbial ‘ship ick’, like beau frequently underestimates jester’s agency (which . Maybe that’s why certain sects of the fandom that favour this ship also pretty much disregard jesters agency) like her whole thing re: jester’s relationship with the traveler (which is not to say that it’s a healthy dynamic, but is to say that beau frequently acts as if jester is blind to the situation and not at least 33% of what makes it so fucked up) acting like jester is a victim while also insisting that jester is more of a god than he is. Which to be clear, I love as a character choice, I dislike as a perspective that someone would have on a person I think they should be in a relationship with that has the tone that any version of this ship I’ve seen has (i.e., if the conceit was that them being together is toxic yuri it’d be boring toxic yuri but I’d get it more)

Unpopular opinon

Similar vein to my vex one re: this isn’t unpopular in my curated space, but I think her character is very frequently misconstrued in the name of blorboism. Like the extremely popular version is manic pixie dream girl esque but another that’s less common but is much more irritating to me personally is an account of her as someone who is Always Sad and like. No. I actually think we get very clear indications of when she’s feeling sad but some of the people who are most attached to that version of her don’t want to admit that it’s very frequently through interactions with or insights from fjord.

Song I associate with them

The Shining - The Neighbourhood (pretty much like. the party’s pov on jester to me)

Gumshoe - Penny & Sparrow (fjord about jester song to me, like “I’ll go by another name / can ya dig the way I change?” And “I can circumnavigate the way you change me / slowly” are you kidding me?)

Iris - The Goo Goo Dolls (kind of a classic character who masks song but for some reason it especially hits for me as a jester song)

#jester lavorre #cr2 #critical role #ask meme

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ask meme vax?

I will say that I don’t think deeply about vax the way I do the other character’s ive received these asks about and I’ve removed a couple of the points just because I don’t have anything for it I apologize. Love the character, he just doesn’t live in my head the way others do.

Favourite thing

I think the tragedy of his story and its outcome tends to overshadow the reality of his character which is that he was an extremely playful guy and I truly love that about him.

Least favourite thing

What the c3 finale did to his story

Favourite line

“What the fuck do we have in this world except for moments with each other? That’s all we’ve got.” It’s an excellent line in general, delivered perfectly vax-like as a way to check his sister’s bullshit. But it’s also a great display of why Vax’s acceptance of his lot in life re: serving the raven queen really works so well for the character.

brOTP

I mean. Vex and vax feels like a non-answer but it’s so true man. That’s his Best Friend. I love that they both love each other so endlessly and both fail to understand one another in such impactful ways, like vax tending to just flat out deny any suggestion that vex doesn’t see herself as worthy or that she thinks she might not be good (even when it might be founded in her literal actions) and vex just refuting his relationship with the raven queen and his acceptance of his life. Like their relationship to me really is the epitome of You’re standing too close to see the whole picture.

OTP

vaxleth. They probably don’t crack my personal like top 10 cr ships, but I do really love their dynamic and the role it plays in the story is so, so, so good.

nOTP

percildan. similar to vexleth, I think this requires a deep misunderstanding of the characters.

Unpopular opinon

I don’t know how unpopular this is but I did really love the concept that vax would get one more night at the end of campaign 3 because it offered the ‘feel good vibes’ that the c3 endgame was built around but also really echoed the tragedy of c1’s end. Alas it didn’t last but for a brief point in time I was psyched about that.

#vax'ildan #cr1 #ask meme

i do say this with empathy in the sense that i was this person until i had my shit appropriately rocked by a good therapist but. bolaire in a room full of people where he’s commandeered a conversation to be just about his interests for like 30 mins who have all thus far been patient with him and hearing him out, just asking more questions to try and understand what he’s talking about. saying he’s more alone than he’s ever been. okay buddy.

#cr4 #cr spoilers

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