#discussing the roles of fandom

[shorthaltsjester]

me when the campaign with characters i’ve praised for being essentially pawns/npcs in the greater world is ending by underserving the main characters by [checks notes] highlighting the role those characters have played as quasi-npcs who are nonetheless still the narrators of their destinies within the limits of a world beyond their control

[nellasbookplanet]

people have been fawning over how humanlike the gods are for a month now, but now its wrong to compare them to mortal powers because they're otherworldy beings that can't possibly be thought of in human terms? or is the suggestion that they're like mortals, but they're just an innately superior group of people that deserves to have power over everyone else?

Hello anon! Are you the same person who got all up in my askbox yesterday? You certainly seem to have an equally poor grasp on what I actually said and a willingness to make it somebody else's problem. However, I no longer have a headache and am feeling less cranky, so lets treat this as a genuine question.

I never said it's wrong or even inaccurate to compare the gods to humans/mortals. What I said is that some seem over-eager to equate them with groups or systems where they don't actually fit, or to project our own world onto them. This tends to lead to poor textual analysis. For example, equating the gods with mortal rulers (specifically tyrannical rulers, even), the one percent, a higher social class, rich people, or colonizers of mortals all read as comparisons made from the assumption 'gods are the most powerful sentient beings of Exandria; therefore I will compare them to the most powerful people of our world'. Do these comparisons make actual sense as parallels? No! Kings and rich people and colonizers aren't innately more powerful than others because we don't live in a fantasy world where magic is real. You can take said power from them and redistribute it fairly. You cannot do this with the gods.

Ultimately, the last few words in your ask neatly sum up the problem with this mindset: do the gods deserve to hold this power over everyone else? Lets look at this through a comparison: do sorcerers like Imogen deserve to hold power over everyone else? She, like most sorcerers, was born with powers others do not have and has no way to get rid of them. They cannot be taken from her and redistributed to the masses to make things more equal, because they are a part of her innate self. In using them, Imogen can do good, but she also sometimes ends up hurting people by reading their thoughts without consent or, at times, even meaning to. So, does Imogen deserve this power? By now, you might see the problem. It doesn't matter whether she deserves her power because you can't take it from her without killing her, no matter how unfair you think it is that she has it. 'Do they deserve their power' is an irrelevant question that people keep coming back to. What you're actually asking is, 'do the gods deserve to live', or even 'do we have the right to kill them' which is a lot more loaded.

The gods already evened the playing field as much as was possible by locking themselves behind the divine gate, severely diminishing their influence on Exandria. They can no longer cause any more harm than any mortal, because now they must act through mortals such as clerics and paladins, through which they do a lot of good (or have we already forgotten about c1 and c2, or even the resurrection of Laudna by a divine cleric and the actions of FCG in c3?). If this still isn't enough for you, you might want to ask yourself whether what you actually want is fairness and the good of the people of Exandria, or if you're just looking for pointless revenge for the sake of it.

[fromtheseventhhell]

I love how people are only ever interested in defending Arya's right to be weird-looking. It's never defending her intelligence from people who claim she's incapable of thinking for herself, highlighting her importance to the plot and refusing to see her as just a prop, acknowledging how much of her story gets stolen and given to other characters, talking about her trauma or how often it gets erased and overlooked, seeing her as more than just an attack dog/bodyguard, etc. Nope. It's just a "why can't people let Arya be ugly/unconventional looking? :(" post every other week because people are, for whatever reason, obsessed with how Arya is visually perceived. One of the most misinterpreted characters yet the issue is only ever with her being portrayed as "too pretty" or the wrong "type" of pretty. This fandom will entirely rewrite a character's motivations, values, and role in the story to the point that they consider references to canon "hate" but! The true injustice to canon is we acknowledge that she is described as pretty several times. Arya simply existing as her pretty, important, and non-conforming self is too complex and confusing for people to comprehend 😔.

[instantpansies]

life is hard for us oz fans who are only meh about wicked. have half a meme.

[pocketgalaxies]

"you're a caleb apologist in bowlgate? i see how it is" the speed at which robbie has integrated himself

[utilitycaster]

This is coming up with Orym, and it came up with Yasha and to an extent Keyleth too (as well as many other characters; see tags). Anyway: there is never going to be a moment when those characters are not grieving. If you wait for them to stop grieving, you will wait until they themselves die - and to be clear I do not mean this in the sense of “the grieving spouse clearly seeks death so that they may be reunited”; I mean “that loss will always exist in their lives, and they will grow around it and find other joy and love, but there is no moment when the hole that person left closes and is gone.” You can interpret where those characters are in their grieving process, which is a complex and nonlinear one, and you may perhaps feel they’re not ready, but if you do, it’s worth asking yourself what “ready” would look like because it will not look like an absence of grief. More specifically to Orym, if you are rethinking this because there was a scene at Will’s grave, that’s a big part of the nonlinear aspect - how someone will speak about the death graveside, or how they may speak about it in specific places, or on anniversaries, is very different to their day-to-day experience with grief.

Which isn’t to say you can’t interpret Orym as still in, for lack of a better term, the full mourning period; I’m noting it both because it is a pattern in the fandom for characters who have lost spouses, and because within that pattern, the discussion seems to treat life after the death of a partner as a dichotomy of “grieving” and “not grieving”, in which romantic love is only possible when one is in the "not grieving" state, which is fundamentally untrue to life.

[kuroananosanji]

Thriller bark discourse is funny coz people act like Zoro can’t be devoted to Luffy’s dream AND want to protect the crew. It’s clear that Sanji wanted to sacrifice himself for Zoro’s dream, Zoro refused to let his friend die, so he sacrificed himself for both Luffy and Sanji in the very end? Do people really think Zoro knocked Sanji out because Sanji was “getting in the way of him sacrificing for Luffy”? It always feels weird when some people frame Zoro and Sanji as two harem waifus competing for Luffy’s attention when they just love their crew very much and would do anything for them.

[ittybittyremy]

I really hate the use of the word "hypocrite" in the CR fandom because it doesn't let people appreciate the nuances of the characters/situations. This is not to say that the characters don't have their hypocritical moments. I just think there are people who slap the word on a character and call it a day, not even bothering to try to understand it.

I have more to say but TLDR: Hypocrisy is a fact but it feels like an insult because it implies that there is no reason that the contrast of ideas exists.

You won't like to hear this but everybody (including you) is/will be a hypocrite at some point. There are many cases of this, some more severe than others.

As a small example, I hate the sound of other people clicking their pens repeatedly but I click my pen repeatedly all the time. Is that hypocritical? Yes! You could slap that label call it that and call it a day and it wouldn't be technically wrong. However, you could also figure out why these contrasts exist. In my case, my thing with noises has to do with control. I don't mind my pen clicking because I can choose the tempo and decide when to stop it. But others make that exact same noise, I can't control it and I don't know when it'll stop.

Hypocrisy is a fact but it feels like an insult because it implies that there is no reason that the contrast of ideas exists.

This is not meant to say that all hypocrisy makes sense or has reason. Reasonless hypocrisy is one of the foundations of prejudice/discrimination but that's a whole other conversation.

There will also be reasons of hypocrisies existing that you disagree with. However, just because you disagree with the reason doesn't mean that the reason does not exist.

Back to Critical Role

I made this post because of people's reactions to Ashton regarding their views on the gods versus the primordials. During the CR Cooldown, the cast calls Asthon out for their hypocrisy of their views on the gods versus the titans. This is what Taliesin says about it:

"It's the difference between the feeling of being small in front of someone rather than being small in front of everything. Is really what happened, which is instead of having the smallness and raging at the big person, it was 'I'm in the middle of this.' [Asthon] didn't feel separated from it... It was more feeling the place in the cosmos, rather than actual people going 'oh it's you' and you're like 'fuck'."

Of course, you can understand Ashton’s hypocrisy and disagree with the reasoning. That's fine, as long as you see their reasons and acknowledge that they exist. It may not make sense to you but it makes sense to the character.

[katsmtmsdoodles]

Reblog for bigger sample size! Based on this post by @rigorwhoring

Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

[nezumidou]

Let people be disappointed.

Let them complain on their personal blogs and share opinions about the show they took the time to watch as everyone else.

(And if they only have praise, that's fine too.)

That's what fandom is all about.

How boring not to be able to dissect a piece of media and exchange different perspectives.

Every piece of criticism and praise comes from a place of respect and admiration for Critical Role and their stories. Whether it's love for the source material, the characters (or NPCs), the cast, etc.

No one would take the time to comment on something that means nothing to them.

Being disappointed in some aspects of TLOVM (to a greater or lesser extent) isn't a bad thing, it means someone cares.

[wreckrinho]

Rob was feeling watched, but he didn't think it would be a big deal...

Meanwhile, Gumball was watching, trying to think of a new way to end the cyclops' hopes and dreams...

Sam doesn't approve/srs

[shorthaltsjester]

love (loath) this version of ‘empathy’ for characters that exists in fandoms that somehow means taking any articulation of the fact that x character is given responsibility and context by the story and that their poor choices lead to poor outcomes is actually a slight against the character (and implicitly somehow whatever oppressed group which they belong to or are alleged to belong to by sections of fandom)

to be clear this is something i’ve noticed in several fandoms which is why the beginning of this is general language but the pertinent example to my current frustration is liliana temult and the defence of her that lays on a claim that those who enjoy the narrative showing her poor actions leading to poor outcomes for her have somehow failed the empathy test is beyond incomprehensible to me. like even ignoring the very basic level understanding that fiction is a place to experience satisfaction in narratives that we cannot fulfil in non-narrative reality, it’s also like… holy fuck do I not want the kind of empathy that tells me it will all work out no matter what choice I make. it is actually imperative to human life that the choices we make have substance in the outcomes we arrive in, otherwise we would’ve long given up on the notion of free will. and to look at a narrative, particularly one built in the context of a ttrpg. a game notably influenced by the choices that players-as-characters make. and then see sections of an audience find it compelling and enjoyable that a character who has made categorically poor choices that have caused immeasurable harm to others is now dealing with the very obvious face-eating panthers consequences… idk man. if you see that as a lack of empathy i implore you to consider what role empathy is playing in your world.

like. if empathy to you is about comfort and stagnancy and not about growth and community, then sure i can understand how it might not be empathetic in your view to notice patterns and see their obvious outcome and acknowledge that . but as someone who has been in the position of making horrible choices with obvious outcomes, far more essential to my personhood was those who looked at me with careful but critical eyes than those who nearly babyed me into my grave. that’s actually why i love imogen’s choice to insist that liliana make her own choice and then quasi-encouraging her to stay, because it was a clear reminded to liliana that her choices have consequences, and one of those is that the terrible things she’s down in the name of her daughter have led to that daughter not being able to easily trust her.

and i think another thing that’s related that gets misconstrued with liliana (and as always unfortunately many such cases) is that the satisfaction of seeing her absorbed isn’t that it’s retributive harm done or some sort of punishment (at least not for me, skill issue if people in your fandom spaces are that cop-minded but, yknow, what can you expect from the thought-crimes capital of fandom spaces). the satisfaction is in the analogue (that i’ve seen well memed) to the face-eating panthers joke that liliana’s actions which have pushed an agenda that’s depended on the consumption and threat to her child and the children she specifically has aided in placing in danger via her choices, has led to situations where a) she’s ‘burdened’ by her care for imogen and the children (both of which she has played a hand in inviting into the context of danger) b) she is now the person in danger of being consumed after spending weeks simply shrugging off concerns about what might be consumed in the name of ludinus’ Just World™. like it’s not just ‘liliana does bad things, must be punished’ it’s ‘liliana has played a hand in creating a situation that is threatening to many including herself, it is narratively satisfying and engages in Common Narrative Tool: Irony to have that create situation negatively impact her directly.’

to that end that’s why the ‘if you’re like this about liliana you should also be like this about essek’ takes are beyond missing the point (without getting into the horribly built scarecrow that it is, understand that it’s actually undermining decades of feminist’s philosophical and political development to see a critique of a female character and go ‘well actually if she were a man you wouldn’t be saying that’ when it’s a provable fact that people Would be (and have been) saying that if she were a man. so not the feminist slay you think it is). like, as someone who Was just as interested in essek’s story having consequences as I am in liliana’s, there very much WERE consequences for essek that, just like liliana, were well contextualized and suited to the specific choices he made. they are ones that should be obvious even to the most surface read of the campaigns given that essek still appears in disguise years after the end of c2, should also probably be obvious in the rebuilding of relationships essek had to do with mn after they discovered his betrayal. like the notable difference between liliana and essek is not their gender, it’s that we’ve seen the end of essek’s story (in the sense of like. campaign containment, obviously his Story™ is ongoing) and have yet to see liliana’s— it’s entirely possible that liliana does get saved and goes on to repair her relationship with imogen (or goes on and is unable to repair it) or she just dies and part of imogen’s story is dealing with it; all of those are narratively satisfying. what wouldn’t have been satisfying, in the sense that would leave liliana feeling like a non-agent in a story dependent on her agency, is if her role was entirely dictated by imogen’s interest in reconciliation. because sure if you want to look very microscopically the current threat to liliana that exists is 1-to-1 caused by the fact that she’s been helping imogen, but taking seriously the story, the consequences bloom from all the choices that liliana has made leading to ludinus’ decision to trust her however far he does that made liliana’s choice a betrayal and affirmed ludinus’ strength and position so that he can do something like siphon someone’s life force away.

further the ‘why does liliana deserve to be funnelled and relvin gets off easy’ relvin doesn’t get off easy. once again the satisfaction of his narrative is that he did his best and it was insufficient and that cost him a relationship with imogen they both clearly wish for but neither can rectify. the consequence for relvin is that he’s in an empty house that is no longer home to the woman he loved or the daughter he was left to raise alone. surely i don’t need to unpack why i think someone who tried but wasn’t well equipped to raise a daughter with superpowers doesn’t need to evoke as ‘drastic’ consequences in their story as the stated right hand of the campaign’s bbeg for their story to feel complete.

and idk at least for me that’s the salient point; that the consequences that are happening feel like a plausible and suitable conclusion to the story we’ve seen of liliana even if she perishes at ludinus’ hand. it will be sad but it’ll be satisfying, and maybe i should have realized seeing the frequency with which parts of fandom have been campaigning to undo maybe the most weighty and narratively satisfying choices & consequence of vox machina’s story, but it’s truly confounding to me the amount of people treating the presence of any complex and non-traditional happy ending notion in a story set in a world defined by pyrrhic victories. like, empathy for vax isn’t saying he’s the puppet of a god that manipulated him into service, it’s acknowledging that he made a choice that he knew would have consequences and acknowledging that the consequences he demanded with that choice were pretty severe ones. that doesn’t mean i’m watching the end of cr1 seeing the characters destroyed by the loss of vax being like ‘dumbasses, they knew this was coming, vax chose this, these are his consequences’ it means that when i’m crying watching the end of cr1 it’s paired with my deep love for a story that takes seriously the weight of the character’s choices in the determination of their lives. idk man. maybe interrogate how much of your notion of empathy is dependent on individualism to the point of near complete alienation and get back to me on how empathetic it is to look at someone who has caused unarguable pain with their choices and say ‘no no it’s fine you didn’t mean to + you’re a woman :/‘ while the victims of those choices rot in their graves

[ludinusdaleth]

i wish people realized when someone is talking about characters such as liliana or bor'dor that not one person is asking them to worship at their altars and call them their favorite characters, but just to acknowledge that they were built as People with stories in the narrative. someone comparing them to essek isnt asking you to like them as much as essek but to see how they have all been affected by ludinus's propoganda/manipulation, and why they believe it and got to that point. if your instinct is to call any and all analyses of a villain crazy and indicative of choosing their side, im sorry you're missing out on so much juicy narrative. it will not make you suck ludinus's cock to break down what makes an antagonist tick and compare them to more protagonistic characters whose themes they expand upon.

[astralleywright]

"orym is just a little guy" as a way to reject any analysis of his actions and words that suggests they might reveal or create unresolved tension and damaging thought patterns: boring, bleh, can lead to placing his feelings and judgement above that of the rest of bells hells

"orym is just a little guy" as a framework to understand orym's position in the world as someone who has never stood out, leaving him with a very different understanding of the world than the rest of the hells, and who has never had the power or ambition to enact the kind of change he's now being asked to, leaving him overwhelmed, paralyzed, and desperate: interesting, sexy, engages with the larger themes of the campaign

[revvethasmythh]

I think it's very interesting--and I mean that genuinely--that overwhelmingly in the past week or two, the responses I've seen about Relvin have centered around the idea that "he should have fought" for Imogen or that "he should FIGHT" for Imogen. I've seen this particular line pop up quite a few times in slightly different ways, and I think maybe we should unpack this a little.

Because in the physical sense, Relvin can't really fight. By that, I mean his stats probably look like Gilear Faeths and like, yeah, you can argue that Gilear tagged along during Sophomore Year and therefore, so could Relvin. But Gilear also *spoilers* died three separate times in a 20 episode span, and is only alive at the end because Emily loves him so fucking much and Brennan's resurrection rules in FHSY are more lax than Matt's. Particularly post-Solstice, where there is no resurrection to be had at all if Relvin were to die. If you want Relvin to join the Hells and Fight The Moon And Ludinus Too, it's really not feasible even on just a physical level. That's not even engaging with the question of "why would the Hells even want him there?" They wouldn't. He'd be a nuisance at best and a liability at worst.

If you want to him to Fight The Moon sans the Hells on his own, he's really not capable of that either! He's not a scholar, he's not a magic user, he's--he's a groom. A stablehand. He can't "pick up his pitchfork" (that he shovels manure with) and stand defiantly against the forces that face Imogen & Co. He's really, truly Just A Dude. Which is kind of the point I've been trying to make about him. He's lived his life around extraordinary people, and he is not extraordinary. He doesn't have the tools to fight something like this, which is part of his tragedy. Is there a world where he quits his job, leaves his horses and his home and his life and tries to become a warrior for the sake of his absentee wife and the daughter he loves but doesn't know how to love the right way? I suppose. But wouldn't that be a different story than this one? And isn't it worth finding the meaning in the one we're experiencing now?

If this argument is that he should have fought for Imogen on an emotional level i.e. having been there for her more or more outwardly shown her affection, we kind of run aground of the same problems. The ask here is that we fundamentally change Relvin's character to make him something that he is not. He is a man who struggles with emotions, and was probably desperately scared about what Imogen was experiencing when it happened and didn't want her to feel his fear. Or his thoughts about her mother. And so, yes, he pulls away (for a variety of reasons). And there is a conversation to be had about his choice to withhold information about Liliana--it's questionable. But, then, every option he was presented with was questionable. What do you tell Imogen, who was abandoned by her mother when she was two? That her mother is dead, or that her mother abandoned her? You pray Imogen never develops the same debilitating powers as her mother, but when she does? Do you give her the comfort of knowing someone else had the same powers, the same struggles, at the expense of prompting more questions about her mother? Do you take the chance to be peppered with questions about how these powers work only to helplessly look on and say "I don't know," and maybe send Imogen down the same road as her mother even sooner than she actually did?

There is no good option. There is no heroic version of Relvin that makes all the right choices and becomes Imogen's white knight father, endlessly supportive and wholly committed to her. The situation is too complicated, and Relvin, frankly, is far too much Just Some Guy to be able to really grasp what Imogen is going through or to fight it in an active way. But I do think it's interesting that this seems to be the version of Relvin that the fandom would have found acceptable.

[phoenyxdrowning]

can't stop thinking about how imogen thinks laudna is beautiful and that's supposed to be, like weird and freaky and Not Normal but actually it's the most natural and obvious thing in the world if you think about it

imogen grew up surrounded by all these nice, normal, even pretty faces but hearing all of their darkest and ugliest thoughts. then she met laudna, almost certainly in their minds before she ever saw laudna's face, and was amazed and comforted and delighted by this person who was kind and generous and also had an appearance most people would consider disgusting and terrifying

so for imogen the association of "outwardly pretty = good" is all twisted around and reversed. where other people see horror and death and wrongness she sees kindness and strength and honesty and love

she doesn't think laudna is beautiful in spite of her appearance but because of it