#daniel sloss

Via comedian and friend Daniel Sloss’ instastory.

And then it just turned into self flagelating white guilt fanfiction trope. "Oh troy is actually glad shane hates him! That's how he knows he's getting what he deserves" "troy wants shane to never forgive him because this is how he doesnt let himself forget his terrible past." So ....what? Troy can go to a therapist to talk through these emotions? He can't take action himself? Only ever acted upon? (Kinda like how in the book he explicitly narrates he would just stand by and that was largely a part of how he affirmed Dallas Kent's actions? So he learned nothing about how an active ally needs to speak up and speak out)

Heated rivalry fandom has a rascism problem. Fork found in kitchen. Making Troy the poster child of wanting punishments for his white guilt over the (mixture of headcanon and canon) racism and homophobia and creating a pattern of putting shane in a position to take on the burden of soothing Troy's guilt (yes. Even through the means of "punishment" via rejection) shows how many folks have not invested into the WORK of anti rascism in this fandom.

Just like how the gamechanger books are not largely showing a depiction of troy actually engaged in the labor of taking responsibility for his actions (rather its the recognition of his guilt that is the major character conflict) sects of the fandom recreating this pattern through this collective headcanon by writing him to act passively (external punishment does nothing for uprooting the white supremacy and homophobia and sexism that troy internalized)

Like in this version of headcanon troy needs to be enaged his anti-rascism and reparations work. Divesting from systems and beliefs around whiteness s a whole and passive bystander mythos specifically. If that's not what we're doing its just putting the emotional labor and weight back onto the non white characters, like Shane.

In this head canon shane genuinely never needs to forgive Troy. Period. Forgivness for harm and hurt caused to you will always only ever be in the hand of the person hurt.

But the way this headcanon and discourse has evolved REALLY highlights how racism keeps its roots deep especially in a fandom like Heated rivalry where white supremacy and systems of harm run rampant simply because in large part members are not activley invested in engaging and challenging themselves and their own complicitness in these systems.

Passivity is a weapon in systems of injustice, and just like troy's growth and character arc needed to be about moving toward talking ACTIONS against harm so does the fandom and at large white folks have to move towards activley challengeing these systems.

For canon troy analysis and context for what im talking about t large I think this is a relevant clip (please if you haven't watched Daniel Sloss' X set its particularly great for the context of troy as written and came out around the time of role model's publishing) :

Starting this tonight.

The Mighty Nein Reunion: Echoes of the Solstice

From the Critical Role Wiki page for Rab Agg: "Bringing Daniel Sloss to play a character was a last minute idea of Matt. However, Daniel was very nervous with the idea of being on stage with the cast for on long period of time, so Matt made his playtime around 30 minutes to an hour by making Aggy a very low level character in a room full of dangerous traps for level 20 characters so that he could be comfortable."

Technical difficulties, overtime fines, and the current record holder for the fastest guest character death in CR history.