Tag: critical role

Space at the Table

out-there-on-the-maroon:

I’m trying to be generous here, ‘cause I used to hate-watch things, I get it, you get a buzz from being angry week after week, it’s fun for a while.
 But so much of it from Critical Role fandom is transparently “I hate that a woman is taking up space in the narrative.”

They hate that Keyleth is so powerful. They hate that she’s a leader. They hate that she’s got a major arc. They REALLY hate that she has a drawn out romance. They PARTICULARLY hate that she has flaws and nuance.  

They hate that she is there, taking up space, speaking, existing.

Why don’t they hate Vex as much? Because she takes up less space in the narrative. Her romance is shorter, more subtle, and tied to Percy – who even the haters like. Her arcs do not span dozens of eps. (But she’s not safe either, remember Broomgate?) 

They hate women taking up space.

Vex also tends to get a lot of flack once she does something out of her own agency. The best example is getting naked.

When she does it to inspire Grog or when Scanlan tells her to, it’s funny fanservice. When she gets naked for her own (and, okay, Percy’s) benefit and it’s about her own sexuality, suddenly she’s assaulting Percy by shoving boobs in his face and also their relationship has less value because all the do is fuck, which totally erases all the talking they did before that.

(Of course, when your relationship is mostly talking, it also sucks because lol roleplay so cringey. Keyleth just can’t win.)

See also: People complaining endlessly about her greed. Not just the broom, when that is at least somewhat applicable, but any time Vex tries taking up space by spending a little time on getting a better deal for the party. How dare she.

Fool proof strategy: Everyone bum rushes Scanlan first turn. His AC is really, really bad, and Sam is a returning victor, so better not take any chances. Then, Percy and Vax get the hell out of dodge for the Kaiju battle between Keyleth and Grog, and wait until both of them are low enough to be OHKO’d by a sneak attack or a Percy action surge round. Though the latter has a very high failure rate. We then get the ultimate goth-off we deserve, likely to be won by Vax because if he has the option to hide, Percy is going to have a really, REALLY hard time of spotting him. Vax wins.

Other option: Keyleth zaps Grog anywhere with planeshift and no one forgets he has -2 on all his saves. Then turns dragon and goes off to roast some edgelords – with her wisdom, she has a chance of spotting Vax at any point and pay back some of that psychic damage their relationship has caused her.

(Though to be fair, Vax and Percy both have a decent chance of breaking Keyleth’s concentration. They’re also likely to have a higher initiative. Knocked out of dragon form, and at the business end of a Percy round with action surge, she’d go down and we get another edgelord-off. Vax wins again.)

(Also Percy is probably going splat in round two at the latest. And after giving the snitch away, he doesn’t even deserve any better.)

I feel like every post critrole stats makes about how amazingly awesome Percy’s damage output is under perfect conditions subtracts one round from his life expectancy tonight. So now he dies before they even roll initiative. Good job.

pagerunner-j:

As many things as I like about the Critical Role comics, and there are many, there’s something that keeps bothering me:

Could we let the women talk? Please?

We were promised Keyleth this issue. She spent a good chunk of it either non-verbal or off-camera. Most of the dialogue was right back to “hey, watch me being witty!” and the majority of that went to men. Vex is mostly coming off as annoyed-sibling and while the banter’s good by one light, the scenes feel Vax-slanted enough to me that there’s this creeping undertone of nagging there, and I don’t love it. I also still don’t love that last issue, one of the few women who got to talk didn’t even get a name. (The new faces this time didn’t either, although I expect more will be revealed.)

One of the reasons I love Critical Role is that while yes, as usual, the women are outnumbered, they still matter. But the comics feel tilted in the guys’ favor enough that it’s making me twitch.*

end vent.

–

*No pun intended.

Yeeeaaaah, the way the sibling dynamic and really, Vex’s existence has been handled so far has bothered me since day one. Shows that someone can talk the talk about being inclusive like Colville does frequently, but still kind of fail to walk the walk. Too bad.

arkhamarchitecture:

out-there-on-the-maroon:

vohalika:

pagerunner-j:

vohalika:

pagerunner-j:

(Fair warning: it’s been a day and I am tired, so I am not guaranteeing spotlessly outlined and supported discourse here, but have some thoughts anyway .:)

Today I saw a post going around in explanation & support of the prevalence of slash writing/reading amongst women in fandom, and I understood a lot of what it was getting at. I’ve written more than enough of it myself to spend half of the essay kind of wryly nodding along. Tangentially, though, it also made me marvel again at how in Critical Role circles, so many people jumped right on board with the Percy/Vex relationship even if slash was usually their thing. It pretty clearly made a difference that this show had a vibrant, interesting, engaging female character involved, whose ownership of her own sexuality (often kind of a loaded phrase, especially when it’s getting thrown around by male writers) was not only confident and take-charge but downright playful. She was evidently enjoying herself, and so was Percy, and it’s amazing how much such a simple thing helps. But what I think is also interesting, and somewhat unique to the circumstances of the show, is that this came out of a collaborative creative exercise. This wasn’t the result of a single author’s idea or fantasy; this wasn’t something you could say was an exclusive product of either the male or female gaze. This was the work of two people who both brought things to the story and supported each other’s arcs in general along with the relationship specifically. And it showed. I think some of that mutual effort even sneaked into the characterization despite themselves, which is to say “despite Taliesin’s tendency to shit-talk Percy every chance he gets.” 😉 (Compare any of those comments to how Percy acted with Vex when it really mattered. Specifically, when it really mattered to her.) To borrow a quote, they really did fill in each other’s gaps in a lot of ways. 

And then in the face of all that you got fans saying things aloud like “omg, I actually care about a het relationship, what the hell” and I’m still sitting here thinking, “It’s funny how that actually can work when the character dynamics aren’t completely fucked up, isn’t it…”

(There’s probably a related conversation to be had about Vaxleth, how that developed, and the amount of attention it got, especially in relation to how attached – in a much more typical way – fandom got to the idea of Vax and Gilmore, but again I say “I am tired” and will save that one for later. 🙂

What was the rule again? The amount of slash produced for any given fandom is inversely proportional to the percentage of engaging and complex female characters? Hence why most anime fandoms are full of slash, and critical role kind of isn’t….

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, too. Like, every now and then someone new wanders into the tag, probably coming from a slash-writing or -reading background themselves, looks around, and is like, “wait a second, why are all the most popular pairings het? Why is no one shipping Percy and Vax? This fandom is weird.”

Which really, really just goes to illustrate, like you pointed out, how rare it is to have a complex, playful, and sexy dynamic with a female character who has actual agency in it. Suddenly the het-ness doesn’t even matter, the ship is just so much fun.

(Also Percy will forever exist in the conflict between Taliesin convincing himself Percy’s a bad person, while also doing everything in his power to make sure Vex gets the focus and attention she deserves. People in general and Taliesin in particular seem to think we’re all just liking Percy because we’re conditioned to like fucked up, tragic, revenge-obsessed assholes and overlook their every flaw. Fuck that noise. We like Percy because of the way he got over his shit and the way he treated Vex.)

Quoting for commentary, especially that last bit.

And quite honestly, if we were in an alternate universe where Vex wasn’t around (which would be tragic) or was into someone else (I could absolutely get on board with Vex/Zahra, or even Vex/Keyleth, especially since Kiki clearly has a crush), I might have ended up shipping Percy and Vax, too. It would be a frequently explosive mess, but at least it would be interesting. And Vax has made more than enough comments about Percy’s good looks to make it plausible from that angle. Chalk it up to the twins having similar taste, I suppose. 😉

But still, I’m glad we got what we did. I am so, so glad we got what we did. I fell in love with the idea early on, but was so afraid I was just letting my little shipper heart run away with me that I spent weeks talking myself down so I wouldn’t get disappointed, or so I wouldn’t tread on anyone’s toes. I sat on my hands and kept my mouth shut for as long as I could stand it. Then everything happened. EVERYTHING. And I am still so glad.

Oh, for sure, Perc’ildan is hot, and Vex goes well with just about anyone. That’s another fandom peculiarity. Under normal circumstances, Vex or Vax would be the fandom bicycles. They are just the most shippable – except for the fact that, despite Game of Thrones’s solid effort for the better part of this decade, moooost of us are still not down with twincest, whereas Percy is extremely shippable with both. So he’s the bicycle.

…It doesn’t help that at this point, everyone in the main cast has hit on him in some form. They made him their own bicycle. Wheee. Minus Keyleth. Percy and Keyleth are even less shippable than the twins. All of the social dynamics of incest, none of the kinkyness.

Ahem. Well, I was lucky(?) enough to only be drawn into this fandom after Percy’s first death. When a friend of mine ( @actualinspectorkemp, you know who you are :P) dragged me into this by pointing at the possible Perc’ahlia yelling YOU WOULD SO TOTALLY SHIP THIS. So I only started watching after I knew Percy would survive and what, ah, transpired during his resurrection ritual 😀 still, those 3-10 weeks until they ACTUALLY hooked up were a bit nerve wracking.

Minus Keyleth. Percy and Keyleth are even less shippable than the twins. All of the social dynamics of incest, none of the kinkyness. 

??? I question this assertion. For the first major chunk of the show I was shipping Percy/Keyleth pretty hard. They have their fans too. It’s not a popular ship but I wouldn’t say it’s like, unshippable by any means. (Can we really say anything is unshippable these days? As you said, incest has surges of popularity in various fandoms. People ship stuff just for fun, or based on nothing at all, or because they think the characters are hot.) Considering that Vax point-blank told Percy to look out for Keyleth after he was gone, there’s a nice foundation for something post-show if one so desires.

Percy and Keyleth were very good friends, especially early on before the Briarwoods stuff, they were socially awkward nobility together. They were science buddies, creating the Diplomacy glove together. People have shipped things based on far less. Hell people ship ships based on blatantly unhealthy dynamics (lord knows I do, all the damn time.) What’s wrong with shipping a pair of good friends who have things in common? It’s SWEET. It’s NICE. 

Since when does a friendship mean pseudo incest?! 

Yeeeeeah, sorry I know this is derailing from Page’s original point but as somebody who ships Percleth with my whole heart, I’m pretty fucking confused at the idea that they’re somehow less shippable than twincest.

They’re friends. They’re not siblings. They’re not related at all. Stop calling close friendships pseudo-incest.

(Also confused about the suggestion that it’s Game of Thrones that’s been trying to make fandoms okay with incest. I envy you for apparently sleeping through the entirety of the Supernatural fandom but that shit’s been on for loooooong time)

Oh gods, what have I done here. In case you haven’t seen my response to Maroon, that was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek thesis on why the ship has so little content. I did not intend to start any shit, ship war, or even judge anyone who does like it, and am sorry to have insulted anyone. It always felt very much like a sibling dynamic to me, and I assumed that’s why it never got much traction in general, and that’s what I was trying to say. Poorly, apparently.

Also yes, I am aware it was not Game of Thrones that started making people ship incest. I just happen to come from a community where we make fun of the show a lot, and part of that is how they turned the very abusive twincest relationship from the books into a somewhat disturbingly positively framed power couple – so a main stream show basically condoning incest. I did in fact avoid Supernatural like the plague because I can’t stand brother who is not Dean in this but Dean in Gilmore Girls, but spent enough time in several anime fandoms to know incest was a thing long before GoT came on the air. It was less of a suggestion and more of a joke. A poorly perceived one, evidently, again, and I am sorry.

out-there-on-the-maroon:

vohalika:

pagerunner-j:

vohalika:

pagerunner-j:

(Fair warning: it’s been a day and I am tired, so I am not guaranteeing spotlessly outlined and supported discourse here, but have some thoughts anyway .:)

Today I saw a post going around in explanation & support of the prevalence of slash writing/reading amongst women in fandom, and I understood a lot of what it was getting at. I’ve written more than enough of it myself to spend half of the essay kind of wryly nodding along. Tangentially, though, it also made me marvel again at how in Critical Role circles, so many people jumped right on board with the Percy/Vex relationship even if slash was usually their thing. It pretty clearly made a difference that this show had a vibrant, interesting, engaging female character involved, whose ownership of her own sexuality (often kind of a loaded phrase, especially when it’s getting thrown around by male writers) was not only confident and take-charge but downright playful. She was evidently enjoying herself, and so was Percy, and it’s amazing how much such a simple thing helps. But what I think is also interesting, and somewhat unique to the circumstances of the show, is that this came out of a collaborative creative exercise. This wasn’t the result of a single author’s idea or fantasy; this wasn’t something you could say was an exclusive product of either the male or female gaze. This was the work of two people who both brought things to the story and supported each other’s arcs in general along with the relationship specifically. And it showed. I think some of that mutual effort even sneaked into the characterization despite themselves, which is to say “despite Taliesin’s tendency to shit-talk Percy every chance he gets.” 😉 (Compare any of those comments to how Percy acted with Vex when it really mattered. Specifically, when it really mattered to her.) To borrow a quote, they really did fill in each other’s gaps in a lot of ways. 

And then in the face of all that you got fans saying things aloud like “omg, I actually care about a het relationship, what the hell” and I’m still sitting here thinking, “It’s funny how that actually can work when the character dynamics aren’t completely fucked up, isn’t it…”

(There’s probably a related conversation to be had about Vaxleth, how that developed, and the amount of attention it got, especially in relation to how attached – in a much more typical way – fandom got to the idea of Vax and Gilmore, but again I say “I am tired” and will save that one for later. 🙂

What was the rule again? The amount of slash produced for any given fandom is inversely proportional to the percentage of engaging and complex female characters? Hence why most anime fandoms are full of slash, and critical role kind of isn’t….

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, too. Like, every now and then someone new wanders into the tag, probably coming from a slash-writing or -reading background themselves, looks around, and is like, “wait a second, why are all the most popular pairings het? Why is no one shipping Percy and Vax? This fandom is weird.”

Which really, really just goes to illustrate, like you pointed out, how rare it is to have a complex, playful, and sexy dynamic with a female character who has actual agency in it. Suddenly the het-ness doesn’t even matter, the ship is just so much fun.

(Also Percy will forever exist in the conflict between Taliesin convincing himself Percy’s a bad person, while also doing everything in his power to make sure Vex gets the focus and attention she deserves. People in general and Taliesin in particular seem to think we’re all just liking Percy because we’re conditioned to like fucked up, tragic, revenge-obsessed assholes and overlook their every flaw. Fuck that noise. We like Percy because of the way he got over his shit and the way he treated Vex.)

Quoting for commentary, especially that last bit.

And quite honestly, if we were in an alternate universe where Vex wasn’t around (which would be tragic) or was into someone else (I could absolutely get on board with Vex/Zahra, or even Vex/Keyleth, especially since Kiki clearly has a crush), I might have ended up shipping Percy and Vax, too. It would be a frequently explosive mess, but at least it would be interesting. And Vax has made more than enough comments about Percy’s good looks to make it plausible from that angle. Chalk it up to the twins having similar taste, I suppose. 😉

But still, I’m glad we got what we did. I am so, so glad we got what we did. I fell in love with the idea early on, but was so afraid I was just letting my little shipper heart run away with me that I spent weeks talking myself down so I wouldn’t get disappointed, or so I wouldn’t tread on anyone’s toes. I sat on my hands and kept my mouth shut for as long as I could stand it. Then everything happened. EVERYTHING. And I am still so glad.

Oh, for sure, Perc’ildan is hot, and Vex goes well with just about anyone. That’s another fandom peculiarity. Under normal circumstances, Vex or Vax would be the fandom bicycles. They are just the most shippable – except for the fact that, despite Game of Thrones’s solid effort for the better part of this decade, moooost of us are still not down with twincest, whereas Percy is extremely shippable with both. So he’s the bicycle.

…It doesn’t help that at this point, everyone in the main cast has hit on him in some form. They made him their own bicycle. Wheee. Minus Keyleth. Percy and Keyleth are even less shippable than the twins. All of the social dynamics of incest, none of the kinkyness.

Ahem. Well, I was lucky(?) enough to only be drawn into this fandom after Percy’s first death. When a friend of mine ( @actualinspectorkemp, you know who you are :P) dragged me into this by pointing at the possible Perc’ahlia yelling YOU WOULD SO TOTALLY SHIP THIS. So I only started watching after I knew Percy would survive and what, ah, transpired during his resurrection ritual 😀 still, those 3-10 weeks until they ACTUALLY hooked up were a bit nerve wracking.

Minus Keyleth. Percy and Keyleth are even less shippable than the twins. All of the social dynamics of incest, none of the kinkyness. 

??? I question this assertion. For the first major chunk of the show I was shipping Percy/Keyleth pretty hard. They have their fans too. It’s not a popular ship but I wouldn’t say it’s like, unshippable by any means. (Can we really say anything is unshippable these days? As you said, incest has surges of popularity in various fandoms. People ship stuff just for fun, or based on nothing at all, or because they think the characters are hot.) Considering that Vax point-blank told Percy to look out for Keyleth after he was gone, there’s a nice foundation for something post-show if one so desires.

Percy and Keyleth were very good friends, especially early on before the Briarwoods stuff, they were socially awkward nobility together. They were science buddies, creating the Diplomacy glove together. People have shipped things based on far less. Hell people ship ships based on blatantly unhealthy dynamics (lord knows I do, all the damn time.) What’s wrong with shipping a pair of good friends who have things in common? It’s SWEET. It’s NICE. 

Since when does a friendship mean pseudo incest?! 

Aw shit, I’m sorry. This was just my tongue-in-cheek thesis on why that ship seems to be the least popular of the het ships so far, and not inteded to, you know, judge anyone who likes it.

Like, to me, their friendship always felt like just that, a very close friendship, more like siblings than anything that could ever turn romantic. There’s nothing WRONG with shipping it, and I never meant to imply that there was, it just always felt completely unromantic to me, and judging from the amount of content, or lack thereof, this ship has, I assumed other people feel the same. If you like it, or anyone else, more power to you. Just not my cup of tea. Didn’t mean to start a ship war or anything here, or insult anyone, I’m sorry.

pagerunner-j:

vohalika:

pagerunner-j:

(Fair warning: it’s been a day and I am tired, so I am not guaranteeing spotlessly outlined and supported discourse here, but have some thoughts anyway .:)

Today I saw a post going around in explanation & support of the prevalence of slash writing/reading amongst women in fandom, and I understood a lot of what it was getting at. I’ve written more than enough of it myself to spend half of the essay kind of wryly nodding along. Tangentially, though, it also made me marvel again at how in Critical Role circles, so many people jumped right on board with the Percy/Vex relationship even if slash was usually their thing. It pretty clearly made a difference that this show had a vibrant, interesting, engaging female character involved, whose ownership of her own sexuality (often kind of a loaded phrase, especially when it’s getting thrown around by male writers) was not only confident and take-charge but downright playful. She was evidently enjoying herself, and so was Percy, and it’s amazing how much such a simple thing helps. But what I think is also interesting, and somewhat unique to the circumstances of the show, is that this came out of a collaborative creative exercise. This wasn’t the result of a single author’s idea or fantasy; this wasn’t something you could say was an exclusive product of either the male or female gaze. This was the work of two people who both brought things to the story and supported each other’s arcs in general along with the relationship specifically. And it showed. I think some of that mutual effort even sneaked into the characterization despite themselves, which is to say “despite Taliesin’s tendency to shit-talk Percy every chance he gets.” 😉 (Compare any of those comments to how Percy acted with Vex when it really mattered. Specifically, when it really mattered to her.) To borrow a quote, they really did fill in each other’s gaps in a lot of ways. 

And then in the face of all that you got fans saying things aloud like “omg, I actually care about a het relationship, what the hell” and I’m still sitting here thinking, “It’s funny how that actually can work when the character dynamics aren’t completely fucked up, isn’t it…”

(There’s probably a related conversation to be had about Vaxleth, how that developed, and the amount of attention it got, especially in relation to how attached – in a much more typical way – fandom got to the idea of Vax and Gilmore, but again I say “I am tired” and will save that one for later. 🙂

What was the rule again? The amount of slash produced for any given fandom is inversely proportional to the percentage of engaging and complex female characters? Hence why most anime fandoms are full of slash, and critical role kind of isn’t….

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, too. Like, every now and then someone new wanders into the tag, probably coming from a slash-writing or -reading background themselves, looks around, and is like, “wait a second, why are all the most popular pairings het? Why is no one shipping Percy and Vax? This fandom is weird.”

Which really, really just goes to illustrate, like you pointed out, how rare it is to have a complex, playful, and sexy dynamic with a female character who has actual agency in it. Suddenly the het-ness doesn’t even matter, the ship is just so much fun.

(Also Percy will forever exist in the conflict between Taliesin convincing himself Percy’s a bad person, while also doing everything in his power to make sure Vex gets the focus and attention she deserves. People in general and Taliesin in particular seem to think we’re all just liking Percy because we’re conditioned to like fucked up, tragic, revenge-obsessed assholes and overlook their every flaw. Fuck that noise. We like Percy because of the way he got over his shit and the way he treated Vex.)

Quoting for commentary, especially that last bit.

And quite honestly, if we were in an alternate universe where Vex wasn’t around (which would be tragic) or was into someone else (I could absolutely get on board with Vex/Zahra, or even Vex/Keyleth, especially since Kiki clearly has a crush), I might have ended up shipping Percy and Vax, too. It would be a frequently explosive mess, but at least it would be interesting. And Vax has made more than enough comments about Percy’s good looks to make it plausible from that angle. Chalk it up to the twins having similar taste, I suppose. 😉

But still, I’m glad we got what we did. I am so, so glad we got what we did. I fell in love with the idea early on, but was so afraid I was just letting my little shipper heart run away with me that I spent weeks talking myself down so I wouldn’t get disappointed, or so I wouldn’t tread on anyone’s toes. I sat on my hands and kept my mouth shut for as long as I could stand it. Then everything happened. EVERYTHING. And I am still so glad.

Oh, for sure, Perc’ildan is hot, and Vex goes well with just about anyone. That’s another fandom peculiarity. Under normal circumstances, Vex or Vax would be the fandom bicycles. They are just the most shippable – except for the fact that, despite Game of Thrones’s solid effort for the better part of this decade, moooost of us are still not down with twincest, whereas Percy is extremely shippable with both. So he’s the bicycle.

…It doesn’t help that at this point, everyone in the main cast has hit on him in some form. They made him their own bicycle. Wheee. Minus Keyleth. Percy and Keyleth are even less shippable than the twins. All of the social dynamics of incest, none of the kinkyness.

Ahem. Well, I was lucky(?) enough to only be drawn into this fandom after Percy’s first death. When a friend of mine ( @actualinspectorkemp, you know who you are :P) dragged me into this by pointing at the possible Perc’ahlia yelling YOU WOULD SO TOTALLY SHIP THIS. So I only started watching after I knew Percy would survive and what, ah, transpired during his resurrection ritual 😀 still, those 3-10 weeks until they ACTUALLY hooked up were a bit nerve wracking.

pagerunner-j:

(Fair warning: it’s been a day and I am tired, so I am not guaranteeing spotlessly outlined and supported discourse here, but have some thoughts anyway .:)

Today I saw a post going around in explanation & support of the prevalence of slash writing/reading amongst women in fandom, and I understood a lot of what it was getting at. I’ve written more than enough of it myself to spend half of the essay kind of wryly nodding along. Tangentially, though, it also made me marvel again at how in Critical Role circles, so many people jumped right on board with the Percy/Vex relationship even if slash was usually their thing. It pretty clearly made a difference that this show had a vibrant, interesting, engaging female character involved, whose ownership of her own sexuality (often kind of a loaded phrase, especially when it’s getting thrown around by male writers) was not only confident and take-charge but downright playful. She was evidently enjoying herself, and so was Percy, and it’s amazing how much such a simple thing helps. But what I think is also interesting, and somewhat unique to the circumstances of the show, is that this came out of a collaborative creative exercise. This wasn’t the result of a single author’s idea or fantasy; this wasn’t something you could say was an exclusive product of either the male or female gaze. This was the work of two people who both brought things to the story and supported each other’s arcs in general along with the relationship specifically. And it showed. I think some of that mutual effort even sneaked into the characterization despite themselves, which is to say “despite Taliesin’s tendency to shit-talk Percy every chance he gets.” 😉 (Compare any of those comments to how Percy acted with Vex when it really mattered. Specifically, when it really mattered to her.) To borrow a quote, they really did fill in each other’s gaps in a lot of ways. 

And then in the face of all that you got fans saying things aloud like “omg, I actually care about a het relationship, what the hell” and I’m still sitting here thinking, “It’s funny how that actually can work when the character dynamics aren’t completely fucked up, isn’t it…”

(There’s probably a related conversation to be had about Vaxleth, how that developed, and the amount of attention it got, especially in relation to how attached – in a much more typical way – fandom got to the idea of Vax and Gilmore, but again I say “I am tired” and will save that one for later. 🙂

What was the rule again? The amount of slash produced for any given fandom is inversely proportional to the percentage of engaging and complex female characters? Hence why most anime fandoms are full of slash, and critical role kind of isn’t….

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, too. Like, every now and then someone new wanders into the tag, probably coming from a slash-writing or -reading background themselves, looks around, and is like, “wait a second, why are all the most popular pairings het? Why is no one shipping Percy and Vax? This fandom is weird.”

Which really, really just goes to illustrate, like you pointed out, how rare it is to have a complex, playful, and sexy dynamic with a female character who has actual agency in it. Suddenly the het-ness doesn’t even matter, the ship is just so much fun.

(Also Percy will forever exist in the conflict between Taliesin convincing himself Percy’s a bad person, while also doing everything in his power to make sure Vex gets the focus and attention she deserves. People in general and Taliesin in particular seem to think we’re all just liking Percy because we’re conditioned to like fucked up, tragic, revenge-obsessed assholes and overlook their every flaw. Fuck that noise. We like Percy because of the way he got over his shit and the way he treated Vex.)

So about that One Shot…

(I am officially borrowing the cr wank tag now. No more individual discourse tags, woohoo. Blacklist that if you can’t stand my rants.)

Man. I don’t
even like discourse that much. I’d much rather be bitching about Vax and the CR
ending right now. But this has been a little… Disturbing.

So, to sum
it up, what are people upset about? (All of this is within the context of a
D&D game, mind you).

·       
A
grown woman in sort of a position of power propositioning several tied up
12-year olds for a sexual relationship.

What are
people not upset about here?

·       
The
general raunchiness of the oneshot in question

·       
Amy
Vorpal being the most horrible person to ever walk this planet

·       
Amy
Vorpal casually supporting pedophilia in her downtime

·       
The
moral and ethical downfall of society because of a joke gone wrong

The literal
only issue people have here that in a game that was already raunchy – it’s Sam,
what are you gonna do – someone asked a group of tied up kids around the age of
12 whether they’d consider a sexual relationship.

And before
someone yells about context; the age of the Lost Boys had been established
several times before that line happened. Now, okay, the OS in and of itself was
a little chaotic with personalities clashing and not always paying as much
attention to Sam or the other players as they should have. But the age of these
kids was mentioned. Several times. Before Amy made that joke.

Which, by
the way, also seemed to upset a few of the players, particularly Stephanie and
Molly who then spent the rest of the session making sure the Queen never got
close to these children again, while the whole incident kind of remained a
running gag.

Now, you
know, even without the current political climate being what it is, if you are
generally okay with the concept of there being lines you should not cross,
yeah, uh, this was one of them. And even if it weren’t, if a sizeable number of
people are upset by something, the first reaction being yelling at them that
they shouldn’t be, especially with such a sensitive topic, is, you know, kind
of a dick move.

And just to
indulge the whataboutism that sprung up around this…

·       
But
what about fetch me a young boy/teenage assholes?

Context, is
the thing. The young boy comment was about Grog and/or Scanlan trying to find a
messenger boy for something completely innocuous. The teenage assholes was
something Taliesin said when describing Percy’s level of maturity and general
disposition. The joke here was the poor phrasing. Not the fact that anyone was
actually propositioning minors for sexual activities or their assholes in any
way. In context, the Queen of Hearts asking tied up twelve year olds whether
they’d be interested in a sexual relationship with her is still just exactly
that.

·       
But
what about Grog and Scanlan going whoring?

Pretty sure
the sex workers involved there at any point were consenting adults. Unless you
subscribe to the school of thoughts that sex workers can never consent under
any circumstances, in which case, this is really not the discussion we should
be having here.

(Also plenty of people frequently bring this up and are upset)

·       
But
what about Scanlan’s general creepiness?

Okay, so, I’ll
be the first person to say that some people around here have the tendency of painting
Scanlan as an innocent little cinnamon roll who could do no wrong and we don’t
talk about the modify memory, but there are also just about as many people who
have always complained when he crossed a line. Like. In what universe were people
NOT upset about him forcing Kima to look at his dick? In what universe are
people not violently against Pikelan because of what transpired prior during
their relationship? Not in this tag, that’s for sure.
And – and I can’t believe I’m saying this, you guys are making me defend
Scanlan, what the fuck – in this case, the creepiness died down as a point of
character development. Sam and Scanlan actively got over this issue and
apologized for it. It was part of a longform narrative. And also any and all
predatory behavior was directed at women above the age of consent who were
perfectly capable of smacking him around. And did just that.

·       
But
Sexism! You only complain because a woman is doing it! See also Trish the Dish
raping Tary! Vex assaulting Percy with her nakedness!

Yeah, uh, uhm. Okay. So I’m not one to dismiss the accusation of sexism in fandom lightly. Like,
at all. Some of y’all’s comments about the validity of Vex’s and Percy’s early
relationship being somewhat lessened due to the fact that they were fucking like
rabbits were definitely that. But the thing is, I remember just as many, if not
more, people calling the other people out on their shit. Not to mention that,
again, enthusiastically consenting adults.

And while
there was a lot of discourse surrounding Tary’s one night stand with Trish,
most of that was about the general handling of Tary’s sexuality, the other’s
insensitivity about that, the uncomfortable associations that scenario brought
about… Consent was debated a ton here, and there were indeed voices pointing
out that nope, Tary did definitely consent here, that is not the issue. The
issue was the plotline existing to begin with. I’m personally ambivalent about
that, seen it resonate with a few gay men, but on a list of things people were
upset about, Trish being a rapist was like. Looooow on the list. And they were
called out for that.

(And again.
No one involved was around 12 years old.)

Also, while
we’re on the subject of sexism, the Queen of Hearts was entirely based around
the joke that she liked tiny men in bed while being an aggressive woman, both
sexually and in general. Also making her kingdom bigger or something. And that
is basically all there was to her character. Haha, how funny. She is a woman.
Who is aggressive. If you wanna call sexism somewhere, I’m going to
whataboutism you right back at the character we are talking about here.

Another
thing: So, what have people been doing here, really? Has anyone lit up the
torches, grabbed the pitchforks and led a mob to Amy Vorpal’s doorstep? Called
for boycotting her work? Written a strongly worded letter? Worst I’ve seen are some concerned tweets, and
not very many, that Amy even seemed to agree with? The cast has faced worse for
Scanlan not being on the campaign guide cover. Marisha gets worse than that for
even existing.

So… People
are taking issue with people taking issue with someone asking tied up twelve
year-olds for a sexual relationship. Not even over people hounding the actress
for an insensitive off-color joke that got a little too far. Just… Being
upset. At pedophilic implications. Is that even a word? It should be.