Not to be doing this again, and I haven’t even read the issue in question, but how would you become a shitty guard or an ambassador/diplomat after graduating from assassin school, exactly. Why would you send your half-human bastard children to assassin school. Why does the artbook not mention anything about assassin school.

Like. Cool explanation for how and why they know abyssal. And I guess at least Vex also went to assassin school and wasn’t just complaining while Vax went there, which is, you know, an improvement.

~~Also if my years of Naruto have taught me anything, it’s that you start teaching your assassins early. Earlier than 10-12, at the very least.~~

All I want is for Molly and Jester to have long debates about hoof care and horn maintenance.

pagerunner-j:

Apparently tonight was “get drunk and then get opinionated at Matthew Mercer on Twitter about certain CR ships” night, except for the getting drunk part, which I entirely failed to do despite buying a bottle of wine today. It’s still unopened in the fridge. Oops. Maybe I should have the wine now so I can stop feeling anxious as fuck.

(Note: I never stop feeling anxious as fuck, so hello, pointless ventures!)

All that said, it seems I have opinions about Cassandra and Kynan, so, er…yeah. Tweeted that. The key point: “If they can both heal and find understanding and get along, awesome. I just hope she also gets a chance to breathe and make some relationships and have experiences outside of the whole snarl of what destroyed her family.”

I’ll stand by that much. Even if I should have gotten my shit together and stopped writing run-on sentences.

You know, I used to like this ship, but all things considered… I don’t know. Do you know that feeling when your life is shit, like literally shit including dead and/or hospitalized relatives, and then someone wants sympathy from you for feeling a bit lost on their way? And then you don’t know whether to laugh at them or cry?

Like. I get that this ain’t the trauma olympics. But Kynan did have a hand in his own misery, did have way more of a choice in what happened to him, and it lasted a few months maybe. If Cass feels like laughing when he dramatically opens up to her, I wouldn’t blame her at all.

(There’s also the whole thing where he helped the person who helped kill and murder her family, and then also helped that person murder the family she has left. Yay.)

(My personal favorite ship for Cass is with Kaylie. Dying together is one hell of a bonding activity.)

Headcanon: “Bacon”, “Nugget”, “Salsa” etc. are all actual nicknames of the quarter elves. They’re named after whatever Vex craved during the respective pregnancy.

the-half-elf:

Okay, so apparently there has been some tension in the Critical Role fandom and some comments made in the last few days. I haven’t been able to find the exact tweets or posts being referenced, but I do have some words.

The popular idea on this site seems to be that something or someone has to be 100% perfect or unproblematic at all the times, which is incredibly toxic and harmful. No one has ever been 100% unproblematic ever in their life and no one ever will be. If you think you are, take a couple of steps back and reevaluate that, buddy.

As a non-binary trans/pansexual person, the amount of personal validation I’ve gotten from watching Critical Role has been more than I ever expected. There are so many characters on CR that are either not straight or not cis and it just blows my mind how amazing they all are. J’mon Sa Ord is a character who is a KICK ASS DRAGON and ruler of a major city that they founded and continue to protect up into present-day canon. They have immense respect from literally everyone and they kick ass on a regular basis. That they even exist means the world to me as a nonbinary person.

Yes, there have been some flubs along the way with some things. Fun fact however, you don’t go through anything without making mistakes. And without going into every little thing the cast/Matt has been dragged through the mud over, I think the representation on the show was good, and it all came from a place of wanting to do good. No one comes out of the gate making everyone happy or without making mistakes. Veteran content creators don’t always get it right, and especially not in the eyes of every consumer. What really and truly matters is that you try and you learn, and that is absolutely what those on CR have done.

And remember, it is possible to be a fan of something and still be critical of it. In fact, I would encourage that. But the hate-mail and and this general idea that it’s okay to shit on these real-life people needs to stop.

At the end of the day, this is a show of people improvising storylines that are fun for them. And if we keep flinging shit at all of them whenever something isn’t 100% perfectly unproblematic (as if such a thing exists), it might stop being fun for them and the general attitude becomes why even bother trying if everyone’s just going to be angry anyway.

https://www.tumblr.com/audio_file/vohalika/169058498406/tumblr_p1p96vYaHg1s9ho4p?plead=please-dont-download-this-or-our-lawyers-wont-let-us-host-audio
http://vohalika.tumblr.com/post/169058498406/audio_player_iframe/vohalika/tumblr_p1p96vYaHg1s9ho4p?audio_file=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tumblr.com%2Faudio_file%2Fvohalika%2F169058498406%2Ftumblr_p1p96vYaHg1s9ho4p

You know what I’m really looking forward to? The mellowing out of the people who would constantly fling shit at Marisha for existing at the table and occasionally taking up narrative space. I’m not saying you are or were one of them, but that is what happened week in and week out, which causes knee-jerk reactions from fans and that’s likely what happened to you. Because there are a whole metric fuck-ton of people who seem to only be around to complain about her existence, but mask it as “constructive criticism” on how… She plays her own D&D character. It’s ridiculous.

And I’m having trouble believing anyone can have spent any time in the fandom or on reddit at all and NOT realize that that’s what’s going on. So maybe you are one of the good guys who really only did want to debate story choices without having a personal vendetta. The trouble is that so many people are not, and there is no debating with them, at all. Just scroll through the youtube comments on any given video. And there is just no way to tell who is one of the good ones and who isn’t.

But assuming that you are someone just genuinely interested in debating story choices and all that… What happened to the ditzy druid trying to protect nature? Well, she was confronted with the world burning, and Raishan was the one entity responsible for killing the majority of the fire ashari. You know, the people whose involvement in the story you say you enjoyed.

Raishan was never anything but a genocidal egomaniac, and while teaming up with her to take down Thordak for the greater good might have been a smart choice, it wasn’t an ethically pure one, for the lack of a better word. And Keyleth has CONSISTENTLY been confrontational when it came to dealing with people who don’t conform to her understanding of morality. See Kima. Or how she vetoed the deal with the Clasp.

She got less cheerful during the campaign because a lot of traumatic shit kept happening to her – causing character development.

Also, the spell that conjured the pixie implies that you don’t summon a real pixie, you summon a woodland spirit that takes on the form of a pixie. A spirit that cannot die. And when the pixie loses its hitpoints, the woodland spirit returns, unharmed, to its plane of origin. So no pixies were harmed in the name of science, technically.

PC? Because if Vax’ilmore was canon, Vax would have to constantly go back to him to have a moment. And that could’ve taken a tragic turn really fast, for example during the Vecna arc.

My opinion is go for whatever feels natural. And like, people hooking up within a tiny circle of other people sharing their trauma is a thing. Developing a romance is a lot easier with other player characters because of the sheer amount of time and experiences the characters share by default.

Romancing a guest character is harder because it would be either very brief, or the guest would get prefetential treatment one way or the other. That can be awkward. Romancing an NPC can be awkward because especially when the NPC is enough of a fighter to go toe to toe with an ancient red dragon twice, finding reasons to conceivably keep them out of the narrative without it feeling forced can become awkward. Otherwise, the risk of DM!PCs happens.

I dunno, I personally will take PC/PC over all the other options any day, but that’s just because I thirst for all of the content. But the logistical issues are a thing!

Do you think they will have preexisting relationships in the new campaign? Siblings like Vex and Vax, or longtime friends like Pike and Grog, maybe something else entirely?On one hand I really liked these relationships in Vox Machina, because RP was so layered because of that, it gave them motivation to do things they otherwise wouldn’t. But also it would be very fun to see how 7 strangers form these connections before our eyes. I will miss twinsies though.

I kinda hope we get 7 stand alone characters growing together as a family without any blood relation, anything that feels like a blood relation, or any double pack deals. Chances are they will know each other a little because of the pre-stream one shots they’re doing, but unless Taliesin and Marisha are playing the warlock little brother getting into trouble all the time and the monk older sister who has to punch them out of trouble all the time, I’d rather do without these close relationships at the beginning.

Like. Don’t get me wrong, I adore the twinsies as much as the next person, but, ah. Framing issues. Caused one of them to get the shaft. Over and over and over again. And I could seriously do without that.

so called “constructive cr criticism on youtube” really bothers me. these people don’t see how misogynistic and hateful they are. they claim being fair, but in reality they set impossible high standards for women, Marisha especially. it’s not criticism when week after week someone analyzes every single Keyleth’s action and points out every mistake she ever made, but never praises her. Yet everything Sam or Travis do is amazing, and their mistakes go unnoticed or easily forgiven.

Seriously, 9 times out of 10, “constructive criticism on youtube” is already an oxymoron. Claiming constructive criticism in general unfortunately tends to be the pseudo-intellectual’s “it’s just a joke”.

And like. I find the concept of criticizing how someone plays their D&D character to be a bit of a grey area from the get go. There’s stuff like pointing out that some aspects of Taryon’s character and backstory are uncomfortable (calmly and politely without making Matt cry, please) or that maybe Marisha shouldn’t be using Maori designs for Keyleth’s tattoos when the character has no Maori heritage. There’s calling out misogynistic tendencies and the genral creepiness of early game Scanlan. Hell, I even have some sympathy for maybe the first ten people pointing out that rogue/paladins do not get 5 attacks per round, but also calmly, politely, and maybe not with 20k people at once.

But when it comes to playing a character beyond rule violations or the perpetuation of harmful stereotypes or whatever, I dunno. Of course you will always like or dislike certain characters more than others. But the thing is, demanding someone change their character’s most basic traits not because of some meaningful development, but because YOU don’t like how they play, that’s… You know. Kind of a dick move, considering you’re getting free entertainment out of this.

And of course the women are hit especially, butas soon as you bring up misogyny, you are a crazy SJW or whatever and the argument is over. Even though the patterns are obvious to anyone paying attention. Marisha gets the worst of it, but there’s also this funny little trend where Vex gets hate as soon as she does something just because she wants to, and not for anyone else’s benefit.

Every single player gets their spells and abilities wrong. Marisha gets actually less slack from Matt than anyone else does. And usually, when something goes horribly wrong, it’s because Marisha, Taliesin, AND Matt ALL misinterpreted the spell. The wind walk disaster was also partially Matt’s fault. When Marisha got upset that her 8th level spell apparently didn’t affect Thordak at all, MATT was the one who made the wrong call. As he admitted. Like. Two minutes later at the most.

Meanwhile, Travis has lost and Sam started entire encounters from not remembering their abilities. But hey, who cares about that?

There are many speculations who will plays what, but I hope Marisha chose something she really wanted and felt connected to. Because those assholes in the comments keep saying that she should play barbarian because she’s dumb and doesn’t learn spells or leave the game altogether. And I hate this. Critical role lasted this long not because they chose classes that they would be good at. And if she wants to play a bard or a monk or whoever, fucking let her.

Always remember: Marisha got the final how do you want to do this, and Marisha is the one with the perfect attendance record. We know what the show is like with literally any other player missing. She never has. Sam is gone, Travis is gone, the world keeps on turning.

On a related note, if she wants to play a Barbarian, more power to her. They’re not even dumb by default, it’s just that point buy forces you to dump certain stats. Did you see the stats Keyleth and Percy rolled last time? If there’s enough high numbers in the mix, there’s no need for a dump stat at all. I’ve seen smart Barbarians. I’ve played one. And some of the totem abilities especially require strategic and tactical thinking. So if she wants to play one, she’ll be fucking great at it.

(My money is still on monk, though)