#anyways guess who finally binge-watched all of bluey

[lukmarc10]

me joining the steven universe fandom in 2018 way after "a single pale rose" was released 🤝 me joining the bluey fandom in 2024 way after "the sign" was released

[utilitycaster]

I'm so kdhdkdjdkd jazzed about the fjorester proposal !!!! But something that popped up pretty immediately that baffled me was these like... cope posts i guess? Of how "beau and jester should cheat leaving their partners for eachother and how dw guys marriage is just going to spice up the inevitable affair" and it's not even treated as a joke and Im just confused? Like i got into cr2 by the time it was over with so idk what it was like waiting for releases, but why after all this time do people hold on as much as they do? Do they like the story or not?

So I will be totally honest: I am not above checking the blogs of those I know hold terrible opinions, for a number of reasons both reasonable (keeping an eye out for potential harassment; inspiration for meta; my genuine enjoyment of analyzing fandom trends) and less so (schadenfreude and sending DMs that say Can You Believe This Idiot) but I actually have not seen this! To be clear, I would not be surprised it was out there - heaven knows this was a refrain during late Campaign 2 and in the leadup to the two-shot - but I thought that most people finally gave up in late 2022 after the two-shot made it clear the existing relationships are still very much in place. Granted I, as always, rarely go on Twitter.

Anyway. I think some of it is just that people whose enjoyment of works hinges on their ships becoming canon, rather than that being one of many facets to their fandom, also tend to not know when to give up just generally (you can look around this website and still find people hopping mad and/or pining for resolution regarding shows that ended before Campaign 2 even started). I think most of them did finally give up and leave, which is probably healthier for both them and the fandom, but there will probably be a dwindling number of holdouts who will gasp out on their deathbed fifty years hence "Beau and Jester should have been together" to a politely confused hospice nurse.

To actually answer your question, no, they do not like the story. I know I've been very hard on people who seem to only be able to enjoy fiction through a lens of either shipping or intense projection of the self onto existing characters, but in my defense, I'm right. This is a whole separate post, which to be honest I've kind of already made several times, but the usual complaint about the Campaign 2 noncanon ships (echoed in the complaints about Campaign 3 primarily by those who do like the canon ships thereof) was that they would have happened and been flawless and perfect but for that Pesky Plot, ie, the story. Unless the entire point of a story is a romance (eg: the genre that is cleverly titled "Romance") romance is always optional.

I also think, to be honest, Campaign 2 attracted people who were patient. This is a good thing! I think that, for example, people who are not entirely feeling Campaign 2 13 episodes in are valid, because I was similarly enjoying myself but not entirely won over by the plot yet, and it was only a combination of that patience and the burgeoning character dynamics that kept me going (plus the fact that watching week to week is a lower commitment than a binge). Granted I think if you fully give up at that point you are weak and will not survive the winter and should probably go watch Michael Bay movies or Bluey, but that's a separate point. Anyway. Some people are patient beyond a point where it is rewarding or even neutral and pass into a realm of showing up to the Story That Has Fjorester and Beauyasha In It muttering "I hope this doesn't have any fucking Fjorester and Beauyasha". I don't know how to help them, nor do I particularly want to, but I do know that not going on Twitter has been super helpful.

One final note: again, haven't seen the thing you mention in your ask yet in relation to this one-shot and not for lack of poking around Tumblr at least; but I have seen people who were deeply bitter about Campaign 2 but are still around for Campaign 3, though not a ton, and this was also frankly true of people who loved Campaign 1 and have not really cared since but still stick around. There's a weird zombie problem in the fandom; you get people who are very invested in being a fan of Critical Role and can't seem to leave, but haven't actually been happy for literal years, either because they were ultimately only fans of Vox Machina, or the Mighty Nein, or a specific ship within that. It is actually something I try to be cognizant of because I was very cautious about becoming that during the stretch when I was more frustrated by Campaign 3 than I am now. I think, ultimately, it's a conflation of one's fandom with one's external identity and I don't know how that happens or how to fix it but that might also be a factor: people who really don't like the show and haven't for years and are grasping at a thing they think would fix that and make them happy again, and refuse to admit it might be time to move on because that would mean they need to change their conception of themselves.