pagerunner-j:

re: all the assassin school business people keep talking about in the CR comics:

I wish I could find the post and figure out the exact wording of the quote, but searching Reddit is unfortunately a pain in the ass, especially since I can’t remember if this comment was on CR’s subreddit or Coville’s. But early on, when the first issue was new, there was talk about this mysterious school. As I recall, the way it was described, Mercer asked about it when he saw it in the script, and Coville’s response explained his thinking for why it was a thing, but also amounted to that he wrote that in there because it’s the kind of thing he likes writing about.

Which has made me take the entire concept with a grain about twenty pounds of salt from day 1.

(In the process of trying to find it, I also found an interview where he was asked, amongst other things, if he’d watched the entire series. He talked very neatly around what was obviously a “no” and landed at, “I think you could watch 30 minutes of almost any episode and get a really good idea who these characters are.” Which…dude. Just. You can also watch thirty minutes and get a battle with almost no characterization. Or you can watch thirty minutes where smaller groups dominate the conversation. And there’s ongoing development that happens very subtly over very long periods of time. There’s a thing called “nuance” here and you are missing a lot of it.)

out-there-on-the-maroon:

curriebelle:

Hiya! I have thought about that a bit, anon – I know that all of these things happened, and I do expect Vex to be different in a prologue, but here’s a couple other things to consider.

first off, the cast members are going to be slightly biased, yes – not just because they’re excited, but also because they’re selling a product. If they do have criticisms, we’re not going to hear them unless they’re quite extreme. It just wouldn’t be worth it.

more importantly, though – I do expect Vex to be different in this early issue – I don’t expect her to be contradictory. I’ve seen some other panels now, and apparently in the comic she talks down to peasants, calls herself nobility, and is generally quite standoffish and abrasive. Vex has never been like that. She’s always been sympathetic to the downtrodden – you know, captured bears, imprisoned Percy, enslaved aasimar, impoverished farmers. She is desperate for money and attracted to shinies, but not to the point of judging people who can’t pay her. And she’s not cruel (except by accident), she’s flirtatious, gregarious, mostly optimistic.

 Her development across the series wasn’t about turning her from a sassy egomaniac into a Nice Person. She started as an underconfident, codependent girl who was incredibly hard on herself, and she grew into someone who took charge of her own life, carved out her own niche, and forgave her own failings.

If I were writing the twins pre-campaign, I would make Vex the cautious one, deferring to her brother (who was VM’s de facto leader in the underdark), but I’d give her a scene or two in a bar or a market to do what she does best – charm and haggle and take pity on someone who needs it.

And the thing is, even if Vex WAS a total jerk before the campaign started, and even if something happened to drastically alter her personality – even if that universe is possible – writing her that way makes far less sense than one that ties more directly into her future character, particularly because all the other characters seem relatively close to the mark (if a little blunter, and more like stereotypes of themselves).

Thank you for asking this, though! I hope you have a good day too 🙂 

^ Thisssssssssssss.

It strikes me as a major missed opportunity to address some of the Vex-haters who talked about what a “greedy bitch” she was all the time. The comic could have shown the desperation and poverty the twins were living in when they were on their own, starving in the woods and on the streets, struggling to feed themselves, Vex counting their meager coins to calculate how far that’ll stretch them into next week. The comics could have elaborated on things the show discussed and hinted at but didn’t delve deeply into. Especially for Vex, whose storylines often got shared with other characters or sidelined by major plot elements. 

Instead in the comic Vex is … a snob who’s proud of her elf heritage? Who trash talks her recently murdered mother? This doesn’t make sense at all or match up to what we know of her from the intro vids and the early episodes. It doesn’t match her arc, her insecurities, or her characterization. 

curriebelle:

Hiya! I have thought about that a bit, anon – I know that all of these things happened, and I do expect Vex to be different in a prologue, but here’s a couple other things to consider.

first off, the cast members are going to be slightly biased, yes – not just because they’re excited, but also because they’re selling a product. If they do have criticisms, we’re not going to hear them unless they’re quite extreme. It just wouldn’t be worth it.

more importantly, though – I do expect Vex to be different in this early issue – I don’t expect her to be contradictory. I’ve seen some other panels now, and apparently in the comic she talks down to peasants, calls herself nobility, and is generally quite standoffish and abrasive. Vex has never been like that. She’s always been sympathetic to the downtrodden – you know, captured bears, imprisoned Percy, enslaved aasimar, impoverished farmers. She is desperate for money and attracted to shinies, but not to the point of judging people who can’t pay her. And she’s not cruel (except by accident), she’s flirtatious, gregarious, mostly optimistic.

 Her development across the series wasn’t about turning her from a sassy egomaniac into a Nice Person. She started as an underconfident, codependent girl who was incredibly hard on herself, and she grew into someone who took charge of her own life, carved out her own niche, and forgave her own failings.

If I were writing the twins pre-campaign, I would make Vex the cautious one, deferring to her brother (who was VM’s de facto leader in the underdark), but I’d give her a scene or two in a bar or a market to do what she does best – charm and haggle and take pity on someone who needs it.

And the thing is, even if Vex WAS a total jerk before the campaign started, and even if something happened to drastically alter her personality – even if that universe is possible – writing her that way makes far less sense than one that ties more directly into her future character, particularly because all the other characters seem relatively close to the mark (if a little blunter, and more like stereotypes of themselves).

Thank you for asking this, though! I hope you have a good day too 🙂 

shadowedhills:

kathatherine

 

“I have not yet read the VM comics, but the consensus I’m seeing from…”

I’ve loved the characterization of Vex’s early self, personally. You can see hints of who she will be when she becomes a bit less untrusting and angry (and Laura herself has said she loves everything). Also, while I agree that there has been a big focus on Scanlan, as the talkative 4th-wall breaking bard, there was some nice focus on the twins and Keyleth in this latest issue that I loved. Just to give you another point of view.

It’s good to have another perspective! As my tags said, I’ll probably read it when it comes out in trade, so I can have the whole story arc in one. (This is why I’m not a huge comics reader, and when I do read comics, it’s in trade – I like judging bigger story arcs, not small pieces at a time.) 

I don’t have trouble believing that Vex was a different person at the beginning of Vox Machina than she was when we finally saw her on-stream, but some of the panels/details I’ve seen of her in the comic on Twitter/Tumblr make me wary. But I suppose I’ll see for myself when I do eventually read the whole thing. 

There’s being a different person and there’s turning her into a greedy bitch who embraces her elven heritage, talks shit about her mother, and generally only seems to exist to be the meaner twin and a foil for Vax as the desginated protagonist. Also graduating from an assassin school your diplomat father yent you to at age 14. That’s just dainty. I will believe in a lot of character development, but this Vex goes against basically everything the character and her arc were about. Also, taking the cast saying they love it all as proof that everyone loves everything is a little… Well. Of course they’re not going to publically disparage a well-selling product of their brand.