#exu1

[biorust-art]

All the good girls go to hell... Cus even God Herself... has enemies -

A little Opal to start the year off right lol- inspired by this fashion post link HERE cus it slaps tremendously.

[Image Description: A digital drawing of Opal, Lolth's Champion, from Critical Role. Opal is standing at a rough, uncomfortable angle like a broken doll in an all-white outfit. A lacy button-down shirt with a high collar and poofy sleeves, a corset decorated with spiderwebs and a large overcoat that hangs off her shoulders and white slacks. On the jacket there are embordered symbols of Lolth and the corset has a patch of red gemstones and a silver spider like a stab wound. One arm is straight down while the other is up by her face, the shadow of this hand forms a claw on her chest. Opal's hair is tangled in the black spined crown and while black ichor runs down her face, it doesn't stain the white clothes. Sharp shadows and an opalescent spiderweb falls over her. End ID]

[a-witches-place]

alright I'm starting c3 now

I'm gonna finish the entirety in CR content in less than a year yall

[laurasbailey]

FAVOURITE EXANDRIA UNLIMITED MOMENTS » episode 5

BONUS:

[sparring-spirals]

Status:

Dariax: no thoughts head empty [trainwreck himbo]

Opal: no thoughts head empty [partygirl]

Fearne: no thoughts head empty [serene, unbothered]

Dorian: no thoughts head empty [suave]

Orym: no thoughts head empty [composed, Vibing]

Conclusion: Theres a braincell somewhere, only Dorian and Orym see it occasionally, but no one gets to keep it.

[captain-noface]

Ah yes, the face of someone who definitely knows boats

Bonus: Is ThErE a BoAt DoOr ‘RoUnD hErE

[terresdebrume]

Laudna, to Dorian: You already own something?

Me: THE BEIGE SILK???!!!

[dramaticviolincrescendo]

Gilmore.

Gilmore.

Gilmore!

[professorthaddeus]

here's the timeline of cr's canon exandria content so far from dani's article on critrole.com!

it looks like EXU will be taking place about 6 years after the end of campaign 2 and 30 years after the end of campaign 1

[komaeda-nagayto]

Trying to explain gentrification to some really low int and wis characters is great. Love this.

[stubborn-string-bones]

i love that we got Poska for real

[werewolfsonpage211]

This! If it just went “the good guys won and nothing bad ever happened again” then we wouldn’t get more stories! There’d be no more adventures on that level!

If you’d prefer the story that VM won and nothing bad ever happened again, that’s fine! You can stop watching after c1, and let that ending live on in your mind - I do believe that your own imagination is the one place where not even canon can touch the story you love. But if that’s the case for you, then you can’t go around and complain about the actual canon story progressing.

One criticism I've seen of how Aabria is running "Exandria Unlimited" that I want to unpack and push back against (because I think it speaks to a wider problem Critical Role is going to grapple with the more they tell different stories in a shared universe) is this one: "The way she is narrating Emon is disrespectful toward/ruining Vox Machina (or specifically Vex as part of the council) because if it was true to their characters they'd step in and solve it and/or never have allowed corruption or crime or problems like this to get this bad in the first place." And I'm not sure to what extent people realize that what they're actually saying is: "this is set in Emon, why isn't this Vox Machina's story?"

(As a quick aside, the higher level the Mighty Nein got, the more I started to see this idea hovering over that campaign as well. Any problem the M9 encountered that seemed even mildly "big" on a world-level would be met with a certain amount of "why wouldn't Vox Machina just step in and solve this? They're famous and well-known level 20 adventurers." I would be willing to bet anticipation of that kind of question was at least part of why Matt staged the final battle of the Mighty Nein campaign on another plane of existence, and it certainly played into his "minimal crossover between campaigns" rule.)

What's happening is an idea that because other characters have previously existed in the world and now hold positions of power/fame, it would be "disrespectful" of their journeys to have any future conflict or corruption in the narrative for new characters to grapple with. But that is stifling on a storytelling level. Aabria's version of Emon is cool, and layered, and interesting, and engaging with complex real-world dynamics in a fantasy setting. Why should she be prevented from telling that story just because "Vex wouldn't have let that happen"?

For one thing, the Vox Machina characters aren't saints. It's frankly weird to hold onto them as sacred cows. They're not going to solve all problems or always do everything perfectly. That to me seems more a misunderstanding of those characters than allowing the world to grow beyond them does.

But on a larger level this gets back to the point about shared universes that I wanted to get into: with shared universes like this, at a certain point part of audience buy-in has to be that, just because it's existing in the same universe, doesn't mean it's a story about all of the characters in that universe. Big comic book properties have this as a sort of understood rule. A Jessica Jones story might have a really powerful and frightening villain, and that villain is going to be defeated by her because it is a Jessica Jones story. It's possible to ask "Why wouldn't Spider-Man step in if this were happening in New York?" or "If this is so bad where are the Avengers?" - but the conceit of the medium means that's not a good question, because the simple answer is it's not their story. And it's also not a reflection on them that they somehow didn't prevent the problem in the first place, in spite of existing in the same world.

Idk how I want to end this, other than that it's something I've been wary of seeing misunderstood about a shared Exandrian universe since at least the mid-Mighty Nein campaign. References to the shared universe itself and potentially the other characters are bound to happen! But to expect it to center or be behold to the old characters is a refusal to accept the conceit of the new story. Allowing for different stories to exist and have their own themes and ideas is part of how a shared universe diversifies, on every level.

[biorust-art]

Doing some journaling with the EXU trio. I love them so much! and when CR came out with stickers I knew what I had to try <3

The sheet music on Dorian's page are bits of Its Thursday Night <3

[Image Description: Four images featuring some scrapbook pages of the EXU trio from Critical Role. Many stickers are from the critcial role store. Orym's page is predominantly brown green and purple with flowers, and a banner that says 'courage, dear heart' and 'its love that makes people' over an image of a raven. There is also a sticker of lavender and a golden sticker that says 'still growing' and of course a big moon little moon sticker by his shoulder. Dorian's page is predominantly blue and silver, with sheet music, a sticker of his lute and blue flowers aroudn him. A golden sticker says 'forget-me-not' at the bottom of his page. Fearne's page is pedominantly pink and gold. It's covered in flowers and golden stickers and stickers of bugs etc. The last image is showing Orym and Dorian's page side by side. End ID]

[nat1nonsense]

The way Orym tells Fearne that travelling with her is like travelling with a fairytale >>>

[laurasbailey]

FAVOURITE EXANDRIA UNLIMITED MOMENTS » episode 3

BONUS:

[sparring-spirals]

Ashley jumping from Plate Armor Pike Never Stealthy to I Accidentally Blended Into The Background As A Joke Multiple Times Yasha to I Am A Six Foot Tall Deer* Lady With Permanent Stealth Disadvantage Fearne: PARKOUR

*edit: GOAT. GOAT LADY. still approximately bovine but goat

[captain-noface]

No one:

Fearne: OY I’M THE COOK INNIT