#critical role returns

[drawsmaddy]

[ID: A digital drawing of Essek Thelyss from Critical Role. He is facing three quarters to the right with a neutral expression. He has shoulder length hair. End description.]

HOLY FUCKING SHIT

[captainofthetidesbreath]

this little moment was extremely cute

[ilanarose7]

i CANNOT WAIT for Essek to notice Ashton's head/dunamantic abilities and poke at their brain!!! I've been hoping for it since first figuring out that the rage is dunamancy-based and FINALLY it's bound to happen at some point while they are together!

[erandraws]

Save me hot boi, save me

[yashley]

anyway laerryn would've released predathos by now

[ladykeyleth]

At these dusk hours, the light is minimal. It's not quite full nighttime yet. But even from that vantage point, somebody who has keen vision or somebody who can acquire keen vision under darker circumstances would also be helpful.

[greetingsprogramms]

Oh sweet sweet Orym. Prepare to be fucking cherished. Prepare to be fucking courted. Your hot bard is back and he's on a mission to make you smile again.

[leafspiritz]

i have this pet headcanon that imogen actually inherited relvin’s eyes (but tinted by the moon). and when liliana looks at her she’s seeing a little bit of both the people she left behind 🌙

[sparring-spirals]

aabria, tearfully: i didnt kill as many of you as i thought i would. and that's a skill issue.

[nellasbookplanet]

I do think that referring to Essek as irredeemable for regretting his actions only because he was caught and risked losing his friends is both kind of reductive to him as a character and a misunderstanding of the concept of redemption arcs in media.

A person generally isn't changed because you sit them down and hand them a bunch of political theory to read. They change because their circumstances and relationships do. It's like that guy who was deradicalized because he got a bunch of shrimp and started to care for them. It’s our relationships that change us, because they give us not a logical but an emotional reason to do so.

Caleb explicitly says "these people will change you" (or something along that line; I don’t remember the exact quote). Essek, before the m9, didn’t genuinely care about anyone. The people who would die if a war started because of his actions were irrelevant and abstract to him. Caleb, similarly, also started c2 not really caring about others. He had no interest in taking on Ikithon or the Assembly to save others from going through what he did, too preoccupied with his own trauma and his own goals to care. In that sense, he started the campaign in a similar place as Essek post ep. 97: regretful, but too busy wallowing in his own self-loathing to productively do anything to prevent future harm due to his previous actions.

Being with the m9, being reminded of the importance of other people and realizing that they’re capable of caring for them, is what changes Caleb and Essek both. Of course Essek starts out more concerned with losing the nein than with strangers killed in a war. They’re his starting step, the opening through which he realizes that the people hurt by his actions are real, that he cares, that he has the ability to, if not undo his harm, help stop furthering of it.

[towards-toramunda]

HEY ESSEK HAS CANONICALLY INTERACTED WITH KEYLETH DO YOU THINK ABOUT THAT? WHATS TWO DEMISEXUAL BAD BITCHES DOING IN ONE ROOM TOGETHER?

[gluzzo]

IMOGEN & LAUDNA // “foreigner’s god” by hozier

[ariadne-mouse]

As others have noted along the way, Liam's choices as Orym have kept Dorian feeling very present in the story, and in Orym's story in particular, despite the fact that he hasn't been around since episode 14 and all we've had since then are a handful of Sending replies via Matt and that one pre-recorded one from Robbie. And of course it may be that Dorian does not appear again in C3's major arc, at least not "in person" - scheduling can be hard and people are busy and there's a lot going on in the story already. I am enjoying the story how it unfolds and I don't have expectations. But if Robbie Daymond ever walks out and sits at that table I am going to lose my goddamn mind

[eternalmomentss]

I'd like to think that Dorian and Orym now can't sleep on their own anymore. They need to cuddle up. Even just for a nap, they have to snatch the other away for comfort like their favourite nightlight

[elemental-plane]

i was struck with a vision

[liltaireissocute]

preparing for my first ever dnd one-shot so I have no time to do art really BUT I saw this Vax on Twitter and simply knew that I need to draw him with this hairstyle