#bell's hells meta

[darkdisrepair]

missing imogen/laudna hours meta

you know what's interesting about imogen and laudna where they sit in canon right now?

i think they're the ones who know the least about how they feel about each other.

and hear me out: you may be saying "no, there's no way that they don't know- they're the characters we're focusing on" but you see, i don't think that's true.

i think the other members of bell's hells have had separate experiences where they see how much imogen and laudna care about each other:

laudna, after breaking imogen's rock: sobbing her heart out to anyone who would listen, stressing about how to make it up to her, "let her step on me," how everything was about fixing her relationship with imogen, how it consumed so much of her thoughts that she was blindsided by yu's betrayal/romance

imogen, after laudna's death: inconsolable, devastated, in denial, isolated, lonely, withdrawn, "you know you saved my life, right?" "know that I love you," sundering delilah briarwood

but here's the thing: for both of these, the other girl didn't witness most of what the other was going through.

obviously laudna was dead.

and imogen, though she and laudna made up and talked about how preoccupied they were separately when they were fighting, there's a difference between talking about it and seeing it.

they both have been through hell for each other. laudna, killed by otohan- imogen's adversary.

imogen, killing delilah- laudna's adversary.

but it's so strange, because they're so intertwined in each other's lives but they're also so separated from each other, in such different headspaces?

i think, in the bell's hells minds, the two of them are far closer to some kind of revelation in their dynamic - romantic or otherwise- than they actually are.

but in practice- they're still stuck. on paper, they're moving forward. laudna conquering her trauma, imogen being pushed toward her destiny- but when they're together, there's this block in their friendship that is the other person.

they love and care so deeply that they forget to love themselves. laudna, brushing away her trauma of waking up in whitestone when imogen messages her mom. in some ways, holding herself back from healing because she wants to help imogen so badly.

imogen, pushing away her feelings about her mom (that situation is so fucking sad to me, by the way) because how could she be sad if laudna is alive but she should be sad.

not that they're toxic to each other. that's not what i'm saying. but i think they try so hard to make the other better that they forget to take care of themselves, and they're trying so hard for each other that i think it's going to come back and hurt them, one way or another.

my prediction: i think imogen is going to break first. i think there's so, so much that she hasn't processed yet and i think her mother's lack of contact has started a chain reaction that we're going to have to deal with, eventually.

i, for one, love the idea of laudna having an early-on healing arc. i don't think that's a disservice to her character at all, to have that as early as episode 40. her story doesn't end just because she's finally processed her delilah storyline.

she still has so much to learn about independence, self-confidence, and love. she has so much to receive from the world. i think it would be beautiful, actually, to have the yin-yang dynamic of one character rising from the ashes of her past while the other falls from grace, pulled down by the weight of her future.

i think that's a beautiful theme, for the two of them: the push and pull, of how to lift someone up while trying to do the same for yourself. i think in the end, that's what i love about them, and why, again, the romance will they, won't they isn't as important to me.

[thisisnotthenerd]

a list of things we learned from the matron of ravens in this episode of bell's hells:

for her:

she has a greater awareness as a god, but can't tell what's going to happen in the future. the threads are tangled, and whatever cuts the gordian knot will guide the way to the future.

she and the arch heart are preventing calamity 2: electric boogaloo by refusing to knock down the divine gate and act.

some threads are beyond her reach, especially those who are tied to different realms or those who have artificially extended their lifespans.

in this moment of moments, after proving themselves capable of doing what must be done, bell's hells have seen the original face of the lady of death and lived to tell the tale. the face of a woman who believed in the impossible.

she has granted her aid in the form of her mask, which will call for all that she can muster.

for the people:

opal is on the ground at the hellcatch, serving as the hand of the spider queen there, likely alongside fy'ra rai.

chetney is soon to die, but not quite yet.

vax suffers in the orb, but can be taken out if the beacon is removed and the key destroyed. he was the last thing to surprise her in recent history. take me instead, you raven bitch.

laudna fell out of her realm via the machinations of delilah, but through love, through faith in imogen, in bell's hells, in herself, she is returning to the matron's realm of fate. whether she will be alive again is up to time and the decisions she makes.

she believes that love and faith will be what enables the ruidusborn to contain predathos as vessels. love and faith bolstering will.

the ritual:

the ritual of seeding took the aid of the previous god of death.

she first reached for a taste of divinity and met him.

she became a disciple and learned from him the magics of death.

they became friends, seeking the secrets of the universe and what lies beyond the coil both mortal and divine.

she performed the ritual as an act of love, of taking on the burden that fell to him as the one who looked to the void as what the gods were left from tengar.

in that moment, she who was a mortal wizard, a loving being who sought the impossible both for its own sake and its role in extending her love and faith

became the matron of ravens, she who presides over fate and death, who stewards souls to the beyond and weaves the tapestry of time with ever-changing threads.

[blorbologist]

Y'know, I think I figured out why the Hells still feel like a new low-level party to me, even though they're level 13 and almost 100 episodes in.

I don't quite think it's the lack of conversations, or the fact half the party's plot hooks are big ties to past campaigns - though that definitely plays a part.

... Bell's Hells still primarily rely on quest givers.

Most of their goals are given to them and do not feel organic to the party, and constantly remind us that the Hells are pretty much never the most powerful people in the room. Which is usually something you see with a low-level party.

NPCs offering jobs is not a bad thing; it's a very common plot hook. Matt has been extremely skilled with using NPC quest givers in those two campaigns. Not only do they provide an obvious plot thread, but they can put the party in the path of others (say, the Nein running into the Iron Shepherds while doing a job for the Gentleman and everything that came of that). And the Hells had a solid start with it too - Eshteross was an excellent quest giver!

The problem is that Bell's Hells have never really not had a quest giver.

Maybe it's a byproduct of the more plot-heavy structure of this campaign? But while prior parties have felt like they decided on their course of action and what they prioritized, Bell's Hells feels less like level 13 (13! Level 13!) experienced adventurers and more like an MMO group clicking on the exclamation point over an NPC's head. Where does the plot demand we go next? Who do we report back to?

They're level 13.

At level 13, Vox Machina had just defeated a necromantic city-state to clear their name and Percy's conscience. And, you know, the Conclave just destroyed Emon. No one was explicitly telling the group to gather Vestiges and save the world (though Matt guided them there), and they were usually among the most powerful people in the room. They chose which Vestiges to prioritize, which dragons to tackle when, even if the over-all plot was pretty clear.

At level 13, the Mighty Nein were celebrating Traveler Con (another PC goal, I'll note) after brokering peace between two nations, accidentally becoming pirates and heroes of the Dynasty. The Nein regularly chose what to do based on personal goals, not grand ones. Though definitely smaller fish than Vox Machina at this level, they were very independent and gaining solid political clout.

While we're at it: level 13 is one level lower than the Ring of Brass, who had a huge amount of sway over Avalir. They ended the world, and also saved it, while in the grand scheme of things being only a smidge more powerful than Bell's Hells are now.

Can you really see the Hells wielding that amount of influence, when they're constantly being told what to do next?

The god-eater might be unleashed, so Bell's Hells have no time to do anything but what is asked of them. No time for therapy unless stolen from Feywild time, no travel on foot and late-night watches. They haven't even had time to grieve FCG. Percy was grieved in the middle of the Conclave arc. Molly was grieved when half the party was still in irons.

Matt is in the very unfortunate spot of not being able to give the Hells the same agency as the other two parties. Not only because of the world-ending plot introduced so early on; they are surrounded by characters they know (and the cast knows) are stronger and wiser than them - the familiarity of the past PCs and NPCs is to their disadvantage.

Why would the party reasonably ignore Keyleth's task that will help save the world and go off on a romp? Why would the cast when they know well Keyleth has to be sensible and with the best intentions in mind? The stakes are just too high.

It means that the Hells still feel like they're running errands instead of pursuing their own destiny. Their accomplishments are diminished as just being parts of a to-do list, and any stakes feel padded by several level 20 PCs/NPCs standing 5 steps away ready to catch them.

This isn't Bell's Hell's fault, nor is it Matt's. It could be amended, I think, if the Hells are really left to their own devices for a long period of time without support and shortcuts (like during the party split)... which would be really tricky to pull off at this point in the campaign.

They're level 13. They're big fish, but they're stuck in a pond full of friendly sharks, so they don't feel big at all.

[the-kaedageist]

It’s so funny that Essek was taken aback by Fearne summoning Teven, but if you’d asked me before this episode (or at least before Fearne met him), “which party would be more likely to randomly summon the champion of a betrayer god out of thin air without warning?” I would have immediately answered “The Mighty Nein”. 

I love the implications of this. I love the idea that the Nein’s antics might STILL throw Essek years later, but isn’t that also why he loves them so much? Didn’t they win him over by relentless friendship mixed with absolute batshit amounts of chaos? 

On the other hand, I can also imagine a world where yes, Essek totally would have expected this from the Nein - but he never expected any other adventuring party to be as ridiculous as his friends. 

This poor drow will never escape the confines of being trapped within the indignity of a game of dnd, and I love that for him.

[deramin2]

Orym's argument against Ludinus Da'leth and the Ruby Vanguard is essentially "The purpose of a system is what it does."

This is a systems theory coined by Stafford Beer around 2001. He posited there is "no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do." It does not matter what someone tells you a system does if it does not reliably do that. The things it does consistently do are the actual purpose of the system.

Ludinus (and Liliana) claim the purpose of the Ruby Vanguard's violence is to free Exandria of oppression from the gods. Orym's point is that they have not consistently protected anyone from oppression. They consistently murder innocent people, indoctrinate vulnerable people into doing terrible violence (including children), support a ruling class that dominates the population through mind control and eugenics, and seek to release a predator so terrifying that the warring alien gods and native primordials worked together to seal it away as a threat to both of them.

So the logical conclusion is that the purpose of Ludinus' system is not to free anyone from tyranny, it's to install himself as the tyrant. And it does not matter what Ludinus says it's for or even what he believes it's for. The purpose of a system is what it does. And Orym has been personally and repeatedly victimized by what it does. Why wouldn't he keep reminding them of that?

Add onto that, the Ruby Vanguard is a death cult. They lure people in with believable lies. They use propaganda to control how people view them and to convince people to support them. Liliana has been groomed into a true believer who genuinely thinks what she has been told is true and that Ludinus' system does what he says it will. She has been convincing other people of this for years. Not because she's an inherently bad person but because everyone generally tries to convince others that what we believe is true. It is actually dangerous to let a cultist try to talk you into the cult's perspective. That's why Orym shuts it down.

Orym was already on edge but it's fully in a breakdown after FCG's sacrifice. One more iteration of Ludinus' system consistently murdering the people he loves. But he still told Imogen he wants her to have a good relationship with her mom again. He wants Liliana to make it through the other side of this. But that has to involve consistently stating the reality of what's happening against what she believes.

Ludinus believes in the rapture of the revolution. Burn everything to the ground on a fundamental level and a new perfect society will grow, with him to guide it. The reality is that kind of power vacuum consistently leads to horrific violence and conditions often get much, much worse. Especially for vulnerable people, who often do not survive. A lot about the gods' relationships to mortals probably needs to change, but this an incredibly dangerous gamble to fix it.

The purpose of a system is what it does. Any suggestion otherwise is cold comfort to Orym's family in the ground.

[sun-critrole]

I think Ludinus wants BH to reckon with the faults of the gods. What he doesn't want to comprehend is that it doesn't matter if the gods are bad gods, or good gods, or what the fuck ever.

It matters that BH has already lost casualties that Ludinus dismisses with platitudes.

It matters that BH saw complexity in the gods, and a simple kind of awful from Ludinus.

It matters that, even now, he is manipulating them into falling in line through triggering Delilah's takeover.

Bells Hells will never join Ludinus, because he has proven himself to be the worst option on the table.

[somewhatsentientspellbook]

crusty elf incorrectly thinks he made a valid point: more at eleven

[shellem15]

The thing about Ludinus is that he clearly doesn't have a plan for after. And I don't think it's a case of him not thinking that far ahead, I think this is him, in his arrogance, believing that mortals will just figure it out. The gods are dead, and mortals' great potential is unleashed! They'll survive and thrive, of course they will! Any casualties are necessary sacrifices for the great new order.

And what will Ludinus be doing? Nothing. He'll be dead. I think Ludinus desperately wants to be a martyr, eternally memorialized as Exandria's great savior. He'll die for the cause, but he won't live to see its consequences.

[24-jay-42]

Ashton is not contradicting himself, in fact he is being incredibly consistent.

Ashton is a punk. Now we all have preconceived and general ideas about punk and what it means, But Taliesin has stated multiple times that punk in Exandra is different then punk in our world as The injustices in Exandra are different to the injustices in our world, at least where it concerns Ashton. Taliesin Has described punk in Exandra as quote:

“Life’s not fair. And either you believe that life’s not fair because life is chaos or you believe life’s not fair because there’s a bunch of interventionist assholes above you who have decided you don’t get to be a winner, for whatever reason.— Is it a world Where there are winners and Losers or is this a world where there are Interventionist gods who are like ‘You.’ ‘Not you’"

This is doubled down with the fact that there is seemingly no clear reasoning as to why the gods choose who they like and don’t choose who they like. At least not in any reasoning common folk know of and understand. 

Ashton also has always somewhat respected the Matron of Ravens, Because she is the only god that always keeps her promises and because she is the only goddess who will have to face every single mortal at some point while the other gods get to play favourites. 

Doesn’t help the fact that despite begging a god for help throughout almost all their life, the only time Ashton has actually witnessed divine intervention was when an angel was sent to smite him and his friends down for removing a colonial unwanted ministry from a Village. Of course that would fuel the perspective that the gods are self-serving and only interested in their own gain. 

Which is fair. Why is one person who cries out in pain granted divine repreval and guidance while someone else experiencing the same pain is left to fend for themselves? Why do the gods get to have it both ways where they can plead non-intervention in some cases but intervening in others when it serves them. 

This isn’t about being ‘Deities Specialist Boy’ This is about "Why do you get to decide who is somebody and who is nobody? Why do you decide who is ‘Special’ and who is not with seemingly no reasoning as to why? (other than self interest)."

Ashton literally said himself, to paraphrase: “The gods never chose me so i am not going to choose them. I will Listen which is more than They ever did”

Which he’s been true to. He’s listened to both the Arch Heart and the Raven Queen. The gods that approached him and the rest of the bells Hell and directly to ask for their help.

Which moves onto my next point: The Gods have No checks and Balances. So the gods are free to do whatever they like with no one able to stop them.

As we saw in downfall, and to quote Brennan Lee Mulligan “The Lord of the Hells and the Dawnfather have more love between them then either of them has for [Mortals]” and if you’re a mortal that is horrifying. Because no matter how much suffering they cause, no matter how much love the primes have for mortality, the Prime deities will never put a permanent end to the betrayer gods. They will always live another day to cause misery because the primes don’t have the heart to stop them.

And no one can do anything about that fact.

The Last beings that dared challenge the Gods, the Primordial Titans who were Exandra's original inhabitants and had much of a right to be there and have a say in what’s happening as the primes, Got smited into oblivion. There are no living Primordial Titans anymore. And why is that? Because When the primordials took issue with the gods giving the mortals that inhabited their planet magic and tried to do something about it and take back what was originally theirs, the primes buried them. 

Is there more nuance to it than that? Absolutely. But that is not a stretch of a viewpoint to come to. 

Of course Ashton is going to be attracted to these grand powers that are separate from the Gods, that the gods fear. The Primordials, The Luxon. Because these are the few things that might be able to keep the gods in check, because they sure as hell aren’t doing it themselves. 

And just to address one more thing before I Finish this post. I’ve seen a few post along the lines of “The Gods don’t owe Anyone anything/Don’t have to do anything for anyone”...

Then What’s the Point of having them?

[stickandthorn]

While Ashton’s mentality comes from a number of places, I feel like there’s a chronic illness/pain angle to it that’s really interesting. When you live with chronic pain, you end up having to put your body in harmful or painful situations to live your life. I and most of the people I know with chronic conditions are always doing a little calculation about what we spend our bodies on. For instance, I have hand and arm issues that make it difficult to write. I know I will be in pain when I take notes in class or write a paper, and I might not be able to use my hands for a little while after, but the level of pain that will cause me is worth it for my degree.

The self destructive/sacrificial mentality Ashton has feels like a very magnified version of that mentality. When you view your health and comfort as a calculation, “is this level of pain or injury worth it for this goal?”, it’s very easy to see how that could spiral into “is my life worth it for this goal?” when you’re in the situation and the mental state that Ashton is. I don’t think it’s the cause of their self destruction, but it feels like it could really play into it. If you already have to view your body as something you have to harm to use, the steps to get to where Ashton is now could definitely become smaller.

[thisisnotthenerd]

ok so i clarified otohan's build for myself

she's a 20th level psi warrior fighter base, and the backpack lets her use echo knight abilities. this all tracks--4 attacks, 2 action surges, 12 psionic power dice (+1 if regained on a bonus action) at a d12, and the ability to manifest two echoes at once. i'm going to guess that she uses two-weapon fighting based on the damage rolls from her offhand weapon. plus 3 legendary actions that she could use to attack with either weapon, dash, psi-powered leap (80 ft), telekinetic control (2 actions, move target 30 ft in a direction of her choice), and 3 legendary resistances.

if they hadn't immediately dealt with the backpack she could have been flashing all over the battlefield, 10 attacks each in the turns that she used action surge, 6 otherwise, split across multiple opponents or targeted to one. given her place in initiative, this could have been a full massacre before she went exaltant if she had hit the casters and healers first, instead of chetney. she had the movement for it.

speaking of that: she regained both action surges and presumably all of her psi power dice, gained resistance to all damage, and a +3 bonus to AC. I'm guessing the state was triggered by a damage threshold. i'm willing to bet that if she didn't have the health potion they might have gotten her down within the round, assuming the threshold is 1/4 of the total or something like that, and the 66 she got back brought her back over half.

on the other hand, even given the multiple deaths and 1 permadeath, bell's hells really worked hard on this one. ashton and fearne using the shards and doing big damage. fcg keeping the party up with 2 mass cure wounds and a revivify. laudna debuffing with bane and getting damage in with the eldritch blasts. imogen getting the backpack off. orym using bait and switch to defend imogen and overall being a tiny tank. chet dying, coming back, and still going around to get imogen up. so many crits. fcg's hail mary.

they got her now, so there's no more shadow assassinations, and they won't be splitting attention when they come back to kill ludinus.

good riddance.

[mayapapaya33]

I just watched episode 107 and it is so fucking funny to me that half of these characters are so up their own asses that they somehow missed that the Archeart is trying to prevent Calamity 2: Electric Boogaloo with his plan, not save the Gods from Ludinus. The Gods apparently already have a Plan for dealing with Ludinus. That plan is to break the Divine Gate (I assume) and smite his ass. But the second they do that, it's game over and mortals are FUUUUUUUUUUCKED.

He basically said "Hey, you saw what we did to Aeor, we are about to do that to Ludinus as well, and there's going to be a LOT of collateral damage. Hurry the fuck up and chase us out of here or come up with a different plan already. Do something before Ludinus does, because we will make the decision for you at that point, and you will NOT like it."

The Archeart is actually much humbler than Bells Hells, this is wild. If I'm reading this situation right, he basically scanned them all up and down and figured them all out instantly; all of their resentment and anger and went, ok I know exactly how to act around these people. Then did what needed to be done to save his children from themselves and their own egos and resentment, because he knew they wouldn't listen otherwise. Amazing. I watched a switch flip in his eyes as he talked to Ashton, and it continued with Dorian.

Dorian in particular is so deep in his grief fueled anger and pain that there's no real way to reach him with logic right now, and I think the Archeart can feel it. So he just goes with it, 'whatever gets you moving in the right direction beautiful, I don't have time to deconstruct your vaguely racist (deist? no, deicist? lol) clumping of all the Gods together under the sins of one of us'.

I watched Calamity, I know what the Gods can do, if they feel like it (Vivid flashbacks of Zerxus getting his face ripped off). Dorian is throwing a temper tantrum because his brother is dead and he's sad and angry. He's feeling reckless and powerful because the Gods need his help, this is his opportunity to be cruel and spiteful and regain some control of his life and make the Gods feel small like he feels small! The Archeart knows that, and simply smiles and calls him beautiful.

With Ashton, the hilarious "Does it make you hard?" turns into a seemingly sincere confession of needing their help. It is true that he needs their help. But the help he needs is on their behalf, to save mortals from a second Calamity and free them from the Gods presence in their lives. The presence that, no matter how far removed or diminished in the world, some people will never stop seeing as a tyranny, truthfully or falsely. He's sacrificing his own pride and dignity to ask mortals to help him help themselves and being insulted for his troubles. And people still wonder whether the Prime Deities care about their children!

[the1pandemonium]

" I realize I'm not as good at lying as I thought. Which is weird because I do it all the time! " x

[the-kaedageist]

I can't stop thinking about the developing dynamic between Essek and Fearne, especially since Fearne seems to have discovered a particular joy in needling him, possibly because a lot of his sarcasm has been aimed at her.

But then there was that little moment where Fearne said, "I thought you said don't touch anything" and Essek gave her that little smile and replied, "I'm not touching it, am I?", and I thought - oh. He's starting to like these little shits, especially the faun who won't stop giving him trouble. From Fearne's reaction to this - the mocking that turned into a grin, calling him cheeky - you can see her starting to understand Essek's particular brand of humor in return.

It would be so hilarious if Essek comes out of this adventure having been adopted by an entirely new adventuring party who have forced friendship on him. I can think of nothing I'd wish for him more than that.

[deramin2]

Laudna going through a spiral about whether Ashton is a bad person because he wanted the power of both shards and did something stupidly dangerous to do it vs. Laudna deliberately feeding Delilah by using Hunger of the Shadow on Bor'Dor and Willmaster Edmuda.

Absolutely love it. Girl please keep projecting your worst fears about yourself and destructive habits on your friends and get scared of them without ever stepping back and assessing your own actions, it is delicious.

Bonus points that Imogen and Laudna are the biggest enablers of each other and not at all inclined to check each other's negative behaviors. Imogen still has a healthy fear about her powers, though, especially right now.

Meanwhile Laudna is still convinced that Orym is fine and the stable one while no one questions how Orym got Hex or that he's willingly using Ludinus' Quintessence Array to drain Edmuda of her life force. A totally normal stable good guy thing to do. Definitely no nosedive here. Although Laudna is irritated at him for pressuring everyone to keep going and not back down, and that he got the Quintessence Array use and not her. (Because again, she is trying to feed her own need for power.)

Somehow Fearne is the only one who's beginning to think they all might be going too far and getting scared, but they're not really listening to her. She saw her potential to become Dark Fearne and actually reevaluated her life. (Even if she's still a chaos being.)

Bell's Hells are great because they're like NPCs who ended up as the B-Team who keeps happening to be in the right place at the right time to be in the middle of all these events leading to this cataclysmic events that are so much bigger than they are. It's FUN that it's happening faster than they can recon with it and they're getting more and more desperate to not go under in a way that is actually making them go under faster.

They're seeing it in each other but not in themselves. That's the tragedy. They're so desperate to win it doesn't matter at what cost anymore. They're all just competing to see who can sacrifice themselves for the cause first while dragging their enemies down with them. They're going to end up being the monsters someone else has to fight, even though they kept trying to do good and fight the darkness.

[that-ari-blogger]

Critical Role's Cameraman

So, Critical Role (@criticalrole) just released their newest opening title sequence, an animated sequence in the same style of Your Turn To Roll and I would be remis as a film nerd to not pick apart every detail.

What fascinates me about this introduction, however, is the camera movement and shot composition. Allow me to explain.

I DONT THINK THERE ARE SPOILERS AHEAD, BUT JUST TO BE SAFE

So, we open with a hand, this is a close up, I don't think that is unobvious.

But this stops being a close up rather quickly, before it starts moving away. The shot just gives the hand context, and suddenly you aren't in an extreme close up of a hand, you are in a medium shot of a very large person. Then the camera pans backwards, and you can see villains and places spring up, although the perspective on Matt remains weird. Is he a few metres from you, or a hundred? How big is the Game Master here? There's a sense of mystery, of incomprehension. This is setting up some cosmic horror shenaniganry.

Then, we get Fearne. This is a wide camera motion, swivelling around her in a tracking shot that focuses on her face, and those eyes. It is like a reverse panorama, where Fearne is taking in the world, the world is observing Fearne.

But I want you to take note of the leaves here, because they are used to form a connection between her and Orym. The transition uses them, while it isn't a direct wipe transition (the leaf just flies close to mask an abrupt cut), it is framed as one. The name of that isn't important, though, what's important is the leaves. By being in both shots, they emphasise the relationship between the two characters. But where for Fearn they show off her sense of wonder, for Orym, they take on a very different meaning.

Notice, however, how still this shot is. There is no sense of danger here. This is a scene of a warrior with a sword and two people passing on from this world. But it's calm. Because this is a memory. Orym might not be at peace with the death, but the memory isn't a violent one, it's a memory of his family's lives.

Cut to a close up. Orym creates a gust of wind.

And cut to the next shot.

I will not lie, Bertrand is my favourite character across all of Critical Role, so this shot of him made me smile, but it isn't the point here. The point is Imogen's introduction.

Although is Bertrand not actually the point? Because take a look at how Imogen is shown here. Do you notice anything?

She's shown in the exact same way. Imogen is shown doing the exact same thing that those who have died have done. And she can see them ahead of her. The camera panning back shows a wider perspective here, showing her as she tries to run, tries to get away from the same path as Bertrand.

The wind from Orym's blade that came to this scene gets across a consistent element: Memory. This is a dream. But dreams can become nightmares.

As Imogen loses her footing, the camera gives some of its wildest movements yet. It tumbles around her, then looks up.

The camera stops moving when it sees the red moon, because now the viewer has something to orientate themselves around. There is a constant point, and we can see Imogen falling down. And getting closer, and closer, and closer, until.

These are the three frames in order, there is nothing in between.

Imogen crashes into the screen, and we get an abrupt impact frame (that's the black and white one) then Ashton. This is so cool to watch, in my opinion, but it is quite possibly the opposite of smooth in camera work. So why is it so cool? Motion.

The motion is in towards Imogen and out away from Ashton. They are both falling, just in different directions. And the impact frame both helps smooth over and accentuate the abrupt transition.

The camera around Ashton is a tracking shot. They are falling, but they remain the exact same in the screen (shrinking slightly). The rest of the world moves. And when Ashton lands, the screen cracks. The tracking shot is used to show Ashton's disassociation with their surroundings. Not in a "I feel nothing" type of way, but in a "it's me vs the world" type of way.

Then, there is an abrupt cut away. Nothing hides or smooths this at all, because Ashton's memory isn't smooth, and neither is Ashton. Remember the disassociating thing I mentioned, now it changes again to someone who gets lost in his thoughts. Medium.com calls this an "anxiety stare" and as someone who does that on the regular, I can attest to this abruptness being exactly what that feels like.

I'm not going to talk too much about the ship, but just be aware that there is a Dutch angle (the horison is diagonal) here to heighten the stress of it.

Likewise with this shot, there isn't much to talk about. The slow outward zoom and triangular composition are neat, and the tiered reactions (bottom row reacts, then middle, then Fearne) are amusing, but other than that, not much.

Then we meet Laudna, playing with Pate and giving him life. That's a neat little shot, I wonder if there's a metaphor there.

Oh.

This is a super cool visual because it establishes exactly who this character is in two seconds. But I also want to point out the symmetry of this. The hair becomes the blood which becomes the hair again, and then the tree.

Laudna is introduced as big and scary and imposing, and that is very intentionally undercut by making her look small.

Being small means you are less likely to be the focal character, so shrinking Laudna takes away her agency. Only to give it back through Imogen, and when the camera pans back outwards, Laudna is the same size, but the colours and the surroundings make her feel less alone, and as a weird result of that, less small.

And last but not least in this moment, there is the delayed drop of the hands. Laudna finally feels safe and finally breathes a sigh of relief.

That, however, imediately match cuts to this. FCG's vision. The red tinting has obvious implications that I don't need to explain, but the match cut heavily implies a connection between this group and the Bells Hells. There is a fear that this might happen again made clear by a single transition.

Here's something else. FCG doesn't move. At least, the camera doesn't treat them as moving. It's a slow panning out as if nothing is happening. It's the disassociation vibe that you get from Ashton's falling shots now repurposed to someone who isn't in control of their own actions. This is what FCG is afraid of, this is the important pieces of his character. This is FCG.

And just like Laudna, FCG finally gains agency when surrounded by their friends who hug them, and FCG finally moves.

Chetney Pock O'Pea, outlaw of the RTA, alpha of his own heart. A fundamentally chaotic character who takes rules as suggestions to be intentionally ignored. A man who's first instinct upon meeting you is to consider how you could be killed. And he is introduced whittling, with a steady camera and warm light illuminating his face. This is a peaceful side of Chetney, there is a duality to him.

Speaking of which, notice how Chetney draws back from the light as he transforms. His eyes begin to glow, but they don't illuminate him, until this:

Chetney is now backlit by the cold light of the moon itself (There's a neat reveal of Ruidus caused by the pan, but that's only tangentially relevant). Notice how much further you are from him here than in his first shot. But notice how much of him is visible, and how much of the screen he takes up. It's the same, this is still the same character. It's a true Doctor Jeckyl and Mr Hyde character. This isn't split personality, but a character who can be a different person in each form, while still remaining Chetney at all times.

There is more in this video. I encourage you to watch it, but unfortunately, Tumblr has a limit on how many images I can include, so I will leave you with this final shot. A group of heroes looking up at a threat that is so much bigger than them, a threat that is literally controlling the light. But the Bells Hells are closer to the camera, they take up more of the screen. The battle isn't lost, instead, it is just starting.