Fun fact: I have seen about 20 times more posts about not pressuring the cast into starting the ships early and to chill with the shipping than I’ve seen people trying to pressure the cast into starting the ships early. By which I mean I have probably seen 20 posts being all concerned about not pressuring these poor babies into anything.

Like. Dudes. As if the cast could be swayed by us in what to do with their characters anyway. Let the people ship in peace. You’re not more legit or better as a fan just because shipping isn’t for you. Chill.

Someday I may go off on a rant about the amount of systematic mysoginistic bullshit Marisha recieves, but today is not that day. I’ve gotta work and this would literally take so much time.

For real, though. “Oh, what, a woman getting hate from the tabletop games d&d fan community? Must be because SHE’S doing something wrong, and Keyleth just is SO CRINGEY you guys!” Yeah. Yeah, that’s it. Keyleth is the only one with cringey role playing, ever. That is totally the issue here.

Seriously, I’ve seen people be like “Wait, Beau is getting hatred, too? So… So you mean… Maybe, just maybe, the issue wasn’t people not liking Keyleth but NOT LIKING MARISHA ALL ALONG?!?!?!?”

I wanna have what they’re having because a world in which the only way to be disliked by a fan community is for what you do instead of what you are sounds like a really fucking nice place.

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.)

The Saga of Trinket – The Surprising First Meeting Between Vex and Her Companion | Geek and Sundry

What a perfect day to share this completely canon little story featuring pre-stream Vex and how she came about Trinket, that apparently someone hadn’t read before they wrote a pre-campaign thing and thought Trinket only happened when the characters reached level 3 because 5e rules. Too bad.

vexahliaderolo:

here are some Hot Takes on the comic from twitter

I mean you do have to keep in mind. This also isn’t start of show Vex. Other Matt talked to everybody about the home game to get their starting personalities down. He’s even said, Vex doesn’t become well Vex as we know her in terms of personality till later issues. And all the cast members say the comic is accurate in terms of like voice to page. (Sure they may be slightly biased) So maybe Vex was more like how other Matt is portraying her at the start? Anyway have a nice day ^_^

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.

I mean you do have to keep in mind. This also isn’t start of show Vex. Other Matt talked to everybody about the home game to get their starting personalities down. He’s even said, Vex doesn’t become well Vex as we know her in terms of personality till later issues. And all the cast members say the comic is accurate in terms of like voice to page. (Sure they may be slightly biased) So maybe Vex was more like how other Matt is portraying her at the start? Anyway have a nice day ^_^

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 🙂

out-there-on-the-maroon:

thelittlespaceprincess

replied to your post

“vohalika:

out-there-on-the-maroon:

notaficwriter:

age at which…”

what kills me is it’s written by colville, self proclaimed as one of the show’s biggest fans and a friend of the cast so that’s why he got the job. i saw a preview for one of the issues’ dialogue he was writing once and i was very confused that that character was written so poorly if he loves them so much

The more I see of the comics the less I believe he’s actually watched the full show. In fact it makes more sense if he hasn’t watched the full show, started watching late in the run, and/or skipped around a lot.

I feel like he just watched some of the key fights to make youtube videos analyzing them, and some highlights for story beats. Hence his baffling depiction of Vex as a bitchy aloof snob, who’s proud of her elf heritage, hates her mom, went to “assassin school,” and has never depended on anyone in her life. (Vex is the gregarious people person from the start of the show, she has a very bad relationship with her father and feels insecure about her heritage, she loved her mom, she was a ranger and MUCH LATER took levels in rogue, she and Vax have never been apart before and on the show and practically have a panic attack at being separated.) This stuff in the comic goes against everything we’ve seen of her on the show.

I can’t understand how someone who watched the Feywild Arc could have done this. It simply doesn’t make sense to me. Who could watch the Feywild Arc and then do this to Vex? People who HATE Vex don’t mischaracterize her to this extent! I’ve seen them, people who hate Vex highlight and misinterpret her negative qualities and insecurities, but they don’t make her into an entirely different character.

Even the roughest, newest, stumbling fanfic author does research into the source material before writing something. Especially something that’ll get a lot of attention. I am so confused about these comics and what is going on with the writing. The thing that makes the most sense to me is the idea that Matt Col/ville hasn’t watched the full show and has likely skipped large portions of it.

He literally said once that is is funny that he spends so much time talking about critical role and yet has watched so little of it.

To be exact, I think he watched the Thordak fight, the Kraken fight, and the Vecna fight, because those he did videos about. I didn’t even bother with the Vecna one, but the one about Thordak was “well, that fight was easy and underwhelming, here’s HOW MUCH MEANER I WOULD HAVE BEEN” and given his reactions on twitter during Vecna, I’m pretty sure the other one wasn’t much different.

Also, more and more people are saying that Vex was blatantly lying to Keyleth to shake her off. Okay. Then that was a veeeery specific lie that was veeeeery absurdly phrased. Vex is actually good at lying. She has like the second highest Charisma after Scanlan, 17 total. She’s better at bullshitting than that. Hell, her messing with the merchant in the first issue was better bullshitting than that.

(Also, even if she was lying, which yes, please, the fact that it seems entirely believable for her to be written that way in these comics is kind of a problem in and of itself.)

People say the actors have said the twins were very stand-offish in the beginning. That’s cool, but why is Vex stand-offish and downright mean to Vax when they’re alone? And no, not in the competitive or teasing way we see on the show. Actually mean.

I’ve also seen someone say the whole bit about being noble in the first issue was about lying to yourself to make yourself feel better, which, okay, cool. But why would she lie about that to Vax, the only person capable of calling her on that bullshit? Not that she never lies to Vax, but it’s usually about how she’s fine when she’s clearly not, to spare his feelings. If anything, going on about the nobility thing makes it abundantly clear that she’s NOT FINE.

(And if Vex had a habit of making a thing about the nobility thing, rewatch the goddamn Feywild arc. Vax was completely clueless that this even MATTERED to her, which Liam also confirmed in a later talks episode.)

Yes, all of this has the seal of approval from the cast. It is a well-selling part of their brand. I’m not saying that they hate it or anything, but even if they did, what, you think they’d probably talk shit about their own brand, be unprofessional, endanger profits, AND start a gigantic shitstorm on- and offline? That’s not how business works.

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.

notaficwriter:

age at which the twins were taken to syngorn: approximately 8 years old.

age at which the twins left syngorn and set off on their own: approximately 13-14 years old.

age at which the twins apparently graduated A S S A S S I N S C H O O L, which is a school for assassins, according to the comic: somewhere between the two above ages, somehow, meaning that vex’ahlia and vax’ildan graduated from MURDER COLLEGE just in time for elf bar/bat miztvah.

Man, can’t you just feel the disappointment in Syldor when they meet again that his half-breed kids never achieved great things with their ASSASSIN SCHOOL education? And which self-respecting diplomat DOESN’T send his kids off to murder school? It’s just good sense. If you can’t do your job right, you can always have your kids murder the other person.

Also, I wonder if there is a diplomat school Vex could have applied to with her ASSASSIN SCHOOL diploma. I mean, she had excellent grades in everything except for maths. ASSSASSIN MATHS. Vax was very good at assassin maths. Which apparently teach you about 20-sided shapes and bodies, because who wouldn’t need to know that at ASSASSIN SCHOOL.

Do you think Vex was archery valedictorian?

Someone answered my post arguing that Vex was just bluffing to get rid of Keyleth. Which would have been an eerily specific kind of bluff. I mean, I hope it was, but this wouldn’t be the first time the comics just don’t make sense, especially where Vex is concerned, now, would it?

Like. Let’s be real. Colville is very open about not having watched a lot of CR and about having favorites. He very clearly hasn’t watched the Syngorn episodes because reading the first issue with Vex’s attitude about nobility in the context of episodes 59/60 is just… Almost as funny as ASSASSIN SCHOOL. No wonder the other elves looked down on them, I bet they all went to NOBLE SCHOOL or something and they had way prettier uniforms.