Sooo, Matt Colville just posted a video about the CR finale. I was dreading this because during this finale, he annoyed me with posts about how one day, he’d tell us how he’d have run Vecna, but that that would have been unsportsmanlike to do at the moment.

It was unsportsmanlike to even bring it up, I’d say. Pouring gasoline on the garbage fire that is people yelling about how the fight was too easy on other platforms than this one, and quite frankly also contrary to what he is saying in this video now.

For the good things: Having Matt Colville tear up about an emotional moment and admitting this would never happen in the kind of game he runs was great. It is something on the long list of many things I appreciate about Colville, along with his very progressive views and politics and the way he goes about sticking to those convictions.

Not to get into too much detail here, but he is a very vocal ally when it comes to including women and minorities in gaming and the community, and I am very much into that.

I’m also into men getting emoional and crying on the internet about other men getting emotional and crying on the internet. No, really. Seeing that Colville is not above emotional sincerity and genuinely touched by things despite the smug attitude he usually has and the smug attitude that is so popular in general at the moment was pretty powerful.

Kudos to you, good sir. Well done.

And yeeeet. He uses the video to hyperfocus on Sam, Liam, and Sam giving up his 9th level spell to beat Vecna rather than save Vax, calling it the emotional climax of the entire game and saying something this powerful can never happen again.

And I’m not saying it wasn’t a powerful moment. I’m not saying it didn’t move me. I’m not saying Sam isn’t a genius or that his and Liam’s friendship isn’t extremely touching, or anything like that. I’d never.

I just don’t like to apply terms like “climax”, especially in the context of this game which IS NOT OVER YET and which was FULL of emotionally sincere and touching and moving moments, to something that just involves two characters at the time. I believe the true emotional climax of Vax’s arc is going to come next session when the entire group deals with the fall out – or finds a way to foil it. I’m not entirely sure why bending reality with a wish spell is supposed to be time sensitive.

This is also symptomatic of something I have been critical of previously. Colville went on to basically say that the entire game led up to Vax’s death, and imply that this was the one true arc of the one true main character or something like that. And yeah, sure, if this was a conventional story, narrative, or, hell, anime adaptation of the thing, Vax would very easily be the protagonist.

But the beautiful thing about CR is that this is not the case. It’s a group effort. Every single character in that group is as important as the next; there is no pre-designated protagonist. It’s why I recoil every time the fanbase, here and elsewhere, goes out of its way to deify certain players or their characters why completely discounting others. That are usually Marisha. Anyway.

The problem is, though, that Matt Colville is not just another fan voicing his opinions here. His perception of the characters matters at this point, as he is also the writer of the comic book series. So if he thinks Vax is the main character, as a writer, he will – whether consciously or not – structure his story around that.

I already feel like Vax’s portrayal in that first comic book issue was a little too morally superior for a character who started out on stream, so like a year after the comic takes place, as a very shady and morally questionable individual and whose on-screen development led him to be more on the righteous spectrum or moral alignment within the party.

In fact, one of the key aspects about Vax was that he was willing to keep any and all of his second thoughts to himself just to go along with his sister. Which is why I felt that being strongly argumentative and almost hostile towards each other about things as important as their mother was kind of out of character for both characters. And why I fear that Vex will be nothing but a foil to Vax in these comics, at the expanse of her own characterization and development, which is already a very common fandom dialogue anyway.

The fact that Colville is closest to Liam out of the entire cast isn’t exactly helping there, either. Leaves me uneasy and frustrated, is all.