#he's Vax I'm Vex

[blackmosscupcakes]

This is the cutest exchange.

[ariadne-mouse]

Alert: this is a very stupid post and not to be taken seriously.

So when it was revealed the first attack on Keyleth was Ludinus trying to test drawing out Vax, folks were pointing out that Ludinus would have had to stay up to date on Vox Machina romances in order to have the information to make that plan, which is very funny. I posit an additional hypothetical: if the preliminary attack had accidentally been fatal for Keyleth herself (I say accidentally because Ludinus would want to wait to execute the plan in full later, so wouldn't have killed her then) then Ludinus would have lost his bait and would have to figure out another way to draw out Vax.

And you know what that means. Matchmaking. Get the sad bird man to fall in love again so he can threaten the new person. Ludinus using every iota of his skill in manipulation and patience and influencing of events to set up Situations, and he needs it because as a celestial champion Vax is not just walking around into your average coffee shop. He becomes the king of tropes. He reads trash romance to get ideas and runs into Caleb at a naughty book store in Rexxentrum and it's very awkward for both of them. With centuries of experience and villainy, HOW has it come to this-

[beedreamscape]

Let me write this before I lose my line of thought, (Again another RANT for the weak of heart)

but I think BH needs to lose something that matters to them, I'm talking true loss --- not like losing Bertrand or Eshteross which they mostly didn't care about, or like losing the skyship which they sacrificed willingly, or 'losing' their newfound friends/lovers to a research mission that should've ended at least a month ago.

I could add Laudna to the above list since everyone knew we'd get her back eventually, but at the very least it gave them drive (which gave us one of the coolest battles in the campaign which was worth nothing in the end, hey Delilah...)

But lose something that makes them ache, that shifts their dynamic into life and gives them purpose --- like losing Dorian! like fumbling the Paragon's Call infiltration and losing that battle in Bassuras with three party members down! like dropping a ship on a wizard's head and meaning very little! like 'losing' each other across a communication-less Exandria when you thought victory was within your grasp! like aaaalmost losing a friend to a million pieces for a decision he made!

There's so much stagnation in Bells Hells that it drives me insane, they're not the same people from the beginning but maybe apart from FCG and a little bit Orym and Imogen, most of them are still committing the same fallacies as they did in the beginning.

[aq2003]

sorry i am still super sick and illnessed over percy and cass and i need to explode. percy who had been driven by nothing but grief and revenge for years and his soul slowly eaten by a demon bc he thought he had no one left to live for. cass who had spent years being manipulated by the briarwoods and resenting percy for leaving her behind bc that was easier than accepting that she had lost the last of her family. both of them having their grief and trauma being taken advantage of for so long and then both of them breaking free of it bc of the realization of "there are still people left in my life that care about me". they are all that's left of the de rolos and the one thing they can do is just be there for each other . like.,. fuck!!!!!! also percy couldn't kill delilah bc he already lost so much of himself to revenge (both in terms of his mind and his actual soul) but cass could bc she was so deprived of any ability to hit back against the people that hurt her . GOD. i'll never be normal about them and also i am always thinking about this shot specifically

[ravendruid]

What if Syldor had died?

Vex mourned the loss of a father who wasn’t really a father but who had taken her in regardless. Yes, he had taken her away from Elaina, and she would never forgive him for that, but he had tried to give her – them – a better life, and for that, Vex was grateful. For the few years they lived in Syngorn, Vex knew not hunger nor cold. She had a roof over her head, warm clothes, and plenty of meals. She studied and learned about cultures and new languages and had the best tutors teaching her how to behave like a lady. But what she didn’t have, though, what she really wanted, was what Vex never got: a father who would read her stories before bed and who she could go to in the middle of the night when the wind howled louder at her window. A father who, one day, would proudly walk her down the aisle and give her away to a man who succeeded in the difficult task of earning her heart. Vex’ahlia gave up her search for a loving father at a young age. Instead, she sought his approval. But no matter how hard she tried, she never felt enough. So when Syldor passed, a sense of relief overcame her. She had long been exhausted from trying, and with his passing, she finally felt free of his scrutinizing look. Vex’ahlia was free to be who she wanted to be now. Yet, his voice still rang in her head, reminding her over and over that she wasn’t good enough. But then another man entered her life and showed her the world was more than black and white. He proved to her not only that she was enough but that she was more than enough. Vex’ahlia felt seen, cared and loved. She was finally free, at last. As for Vax? He was confused at first. Syldor’s parental example to him was only one of what he should not do. Who he should not become. Yet, grief hit him like a wave hitting a cliff on a stormy night. He did not mourn the loss of a father. He had long grieved that. When Syldor died, he took with him the remaining hope Vax had that his father would change one day. That he would love him and be proud of him. The only relief Vax felt upon hearing the news was knowing the pain would now end for his sister and that she would finally be free from their father’s judgment. Vax didn’t know what a father was supposed to be like until he met the man who welcomed him into his house like he was already part of the family. Korrin was everything Syldor could never even dream of being one day: he was kind and caring, he voiced his love and pride for his daughter louder than any other, and he loved so wholeheartedly and effortlessly. Vax lost count of the number of hugs, the words of encouragement and advice, the meals, and the warming smiles Korrin thew his way. If this was what a father was like, then he was sure now that Syldor had never been one. Vax doesn’t grieve him anymore, nor the idea of what he could have been, not when he has someone in his life who grabbed the role with both hands and refuses to let go.

[utilitycaster]

Syldor Vessar: You merely were forced by me into elven culture. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see humans until I was already a man, and by then, it was nothing to be but blinding and irresistibly sexy but not marriageable.

[justalittlebluetiefling]

I’m having so many unpopular takes!

[diabeticgirl4]

Legit can't stop thinking about how in c1 the sunken tomb percy re-rolled his dex save to survive the trap that killed vex, and if he hadn't there's a good chance he could have died alongside vex and I can't stop thinking about how that could've changed things

[xfindingtrouble]

there is so much of percy to understand this journey is truly thrilling

[bisexuel]

scanlan getting petrified trying to save pike i keep winning and winning

[awaytobeunshaken]

I really appreciate how they've been handling death and resurrection in LOVM. Especially coming to most of campaign 1 after campaign 2, the frequency of successful resurrection rituals felt a bit hard to swallow. (In campaign 2 every resurrection apart from the last one was via revivify, which just hits different somehow. Like an 'only mostly dead' kind of situation.)

Now I understand the meta reasons for this (they didn't have a cleric on-site in most of those cases), and it was at one point at least addressed in the fiction, but it still pulls me out of the story a bit. Ultimately, resurrection felt cheap.

There's a clear effort to undo that with the show. Vex is brought back specifically due to Vax's offer to the Raven Queen. Grog doesn't die to Craven Edge, he loses his strength. Scanlan's in a coma right now, but he wasn't killed. And Percy is dead, and treated as such, with no talk of potentially bringing him back.

Because how at odds would that be with scenes of laying the dragon attack's victims to rest in Whitestone, with seeing all the lives that were lost in the assault on Emon. Especially when Percy would rather they save any one of those souls over his.

Now I'm sure we're going to see Percy again; I doubt they would make that big a departure from the story. I suspect it's going to be tied to the fact that Ripley, and more importantly Orthax, are still at large. But it's not going to be cheap, and it's not going to be easy, and while emotionally I miss the terrible tinkerer of Tal'Dorei and wish he was in these last couple episodes, this is absolutely the right decision.

[burr-ell]

Sometimes Things That Shake Up the Status Quo are Worse

I keep seeing people insisting that Exandria "can't return to the status quo, which was bad", but rarely do they say anything in support of that argument beyond "the Primes pick and choose favorites!". And while I'm not confident the show itself won't try to make that claim, the reality is that it just isn't borne out mechanically or narratively. Laying aside that non-Divine Soul sorcerers exist (like, and I'm just spitballing here, Aberrant Mind Ruidusborn), the gods work primarily through the on-the-ground efforts of clerics and paladins—people who have actively and consistently put in the work to devote themselves to the divine. This is a setting where resurrection magic, which relies on divine power, has been intentionally made more difficult than it is in DnD rules-as-written. Even clerics only get access to Divine Intervention at level 10 (when they've already spent a long time devoting themselves to their deity) and up until level 20 the chances of it actually working are vanishingly small—and level 20 clerics are both hard to come by and ultimately still limited.

In the rare event that the Prime Deities choose to bless someone who isn't a cleric or paladin, it's someone who has a good reason to have gotten their attention. Vax offered his life during a divine ritual in the burial site of the Raven Queen's most devoted champion and then actively committed himself to her cause. Yasha was an aasimar being mind-controlled by a devil who wound up at a divine altar and chose to worship Kord after he freed her. Orym is the devoted widower of someone who is in Melora's realm and was present at a ritual in a temple associated with Melora, and one of his companions prayed at a shrine to Melora on his behalf. Vex was directly in front of Pelor, had taken a leadership position in one of his sacred cities, and had received a vision from him directly—and even then, she had to earn it. Scanlan also had to earn the right to Ioun's favor and complete a trial, and had previously shown qualities and values that she believed were fitting of her champion. Fjord was a companion of a devoted cleric of Melora who had sought her help in keeping Uk'otoa sealed and made requests of her on Fjord's behalf, and Fjord also chose to meditate and then became a paladin devoted to her.

And in Exandria, if you don't want to follow a god, you don't have to. Percy, Keyleth, Grog, Beau, Veth, Caleb, Essek, most of Bell's Hells, the average commoner in the various cities the parties have traveled to—whether they outright dislike the gods as a whole or just don't have an interest either way, they're all capable of thriving with or without them, and indeed their problems are almost entirely caused by mortals. It's especially egregious when you consider that cities like Avalir were around during the Age of Arcanum, when the Prime Deities physically walked Exandria, and people like Laerryn, Patia, Zerxus, and Lacrytia Hollow—openly disdainful of the gods or even trying to create feats of magic to get on their level—were continuing business as usual. The previous god of death not only willingly abdicated in favor of a mortal during this time, but outright helped her do the job!

The Prime Deities can't win. If they didn't give anyone any power at all, they'd be viewed as selfish. If they'd stayed on Exandria after the Calamity, they'd be foolish and reckless. They're simply not capable of intervening and helping everyone, so they're labeled capricious. If they leave Exandria, they're abandoning not only their refuge and home, but also the people who need and rely on them. You can argue that "no one should have that much power" all you want, but I think it's exceptionally silly to take an argument meant to criticize the wealthy and powerful of our world (whose only unique quality is ultimately that they got lucky) and apply it to fictional deities (beings who are powerful by their very nature) who, while flawed, also think they're too powerful. They tried to protect Exandria from themselves and the Betrayers while still using their power to do right by the people there, and for the most part it was working just fine.

The "status quo" from before all this was and still is the best compromise available. No one has managed to sell a better one that doesn't amount to "cater to my blorbos and my self-indulgent idea of revolutionary politics, which may or may not also ultimately circle back to my blorbos". I think that's pretty telling.

[abitcaughtinthemiddle]

The Hypocrisy of Vex'ahlia

Before you all come for me, I am a Vex stan and I will defend her until I die - she is my favorite Critical Role character and I'm so glad we're getting a deeper dive into her psyche.

The complexities of her character cannot be overstated. She has a lot going on under the surface, and the breadcrumbs of her deep-seated insecurities have been there the whole time.

I'm really excited we get to explore those in season 3 through her relationship with Percy, in a way different than what we've seen in the actual play streams. I want to commend the writers for being able to convey so much in so little time.

We are introduced to Vex as a sexy, confident woman who uses her looks and charisma to her advantage. She takes charge most of the time, being the unofficial "leader" of Vox Machina. She presents herself as someone who doesn't really need anyone else and does not care about anyone outside of her brother. Keyleth even comments on this in the first episode, "Vex and Vax only care about themselves".

This, of course, is a complete fabrication, a mask she wears to hide her insecurities. A mask, she wants no one to see through. The irony here is that she can so easily see behind Percy's mask - "Darling, take off the mask". It takes one to know one, after all.

She so badly wants to get underneath Percy's mask, for him to show himself to her fully. There's something inside of her that sees the guilt and shame inside of him and that resonates with her belief that she is deeply broken. Vex truly believes that something must truly be wrong with her. And why wouldn't she? Saundor, who said he knew everything about her, saw this, too, after all.

Saundor says plainly, "you will never be enough."

So it must be true, right?

Why wouldn't something be so wrong with her? It would make sense. Her father carries no love for her, her mother died, and Vax had to sacrifice his life for hers. She knows Vax loves her, and she believes he is the only one who does. Even Kamaljiori, an ancient and all-knowing Sphinx, fed into this during their test when Vax fell: "you have no family left who cares for you".

Her hypocrisy lies in the facade she built as a woman who does not need anyone or anything. She presents herself as someone who does not need the love of others, when in reality, she desperately wants to be loved.

Saundor saw this as well.

Vex longs to love and be loved. And yet, she cannot allow herself to give up her facade and let Percy love her and admit her love for him.

The last person to see through her walls was Saundor, and we know how that went.

What he said really cut her deep, as we see after the Kevdak fight when she brushes off Pike's inquiries about her experience in the fey realm.

As we see her relationship with Percy move from harmless flirting to physical intimacy at the beginning of season 3, we see her embrace the physical closeness to Percy but starts to block him out the moment he wants to cement their relationship. But she can't let herself tell him how she feels because that would mean admitting her heart is his - and that would be doomed to end in tragedy, as Vex admits later in the cave.

Putting up this emotional wall between her and Percy will not give Vex what she wants: love.

Love is that emotional intimacy. Vex loves to point out the importance of love between other people- in season 2, pushing Keyleth to tell Vax how she feels ("it always matters"), assuring Allura that Kima's love for her will help her endure after Vorugal's attack, and putting faith in the rest of Vox Machina.

Vex understands what makes love so special, and how important truth and intimacy are to real, lasting love.

And while she comforts others and pushes them to be vulnerable and embrace love, her own fears prevent her from fully doing the same. It's ironic and sad, how one of the only people who can see through her mask is the one she's pushing away.

Trauma makes hypocrites of us all.

Image credits @blorbologist @aq2003

[mayapapaya33]

I had sort of hoped Keyleth would have matured and grown past her anger at the Matron over the past 33 years but I suppose it's in character that she hasn't fully dealt with her grief yet. And the Vorb probably isn't helping her issues either. It just sucks because I think a lot of the fandom take Vox Machina's grief fueled blame and fully accept it as fact when the reality is that Vax's situation is almost entirely his own responsibility. The only other person with any remote culpability is Percy. And even Percy is only really to blame for accidentally Killing Vex, not for Vax's choices. But even if you want to hold Percy accountable for Vax's choice in the tomb as well, that still doesn't make him responsible for Vax's death. Vax could have lived a long full life as the Matron's Champion, as shown by the Delightful Purvan Suul and his companion Galdric.

Vax was a borderline suicidal, self-sacrificing character from day one. He always threw himself into danger headfirst regardless of the cost to himself. Between Percy accidentally setting off the trap creating the circumstances for Vax trading himself to the matron during Vex's resurrection, all the way up to Vax CHOSING to come back as a revenant after being disintegrated in order to help defeat Vecna, the choices have always been his. Especially him, fate touched as he is. Ultimately, Vecna killed Vax and Vax killed Vax. I think it's easier to blame the Matron than to be angry with Vax for being who he was.

The Matron maintains the balance of life and death. She accepted Vax's offers both times, do you think she should have refused? The first refusal would have meant Vex's death, and the second refusal would have meant Vax possibly just staying dead after being disintegrated, and not being there to fight against Vecna, which was truly an all hands on deck situation. There was no time to fuck around with a resurrection ritual that might not even work, the whole world was in danger. One life, a life that was already lost, is a small price to pay to save the world. I'm pretty sure Vax would agree with me!

Frankly, Vox Machina were super lucky and privileged to have so many successful resurrections between them. I think they got a little spoilt and entitled about it honestly. Most people have never even met someone who's been resurrected before, they did it like 20 times! Vax was disintegrated, he chose to come back as a revenant to fight Vecna, protect the world, and help his family. An opportunity he was only given due to his allegiance to the Matron. She gave Vox Machina and Vax extra time together and a chance to help save the world.

For those of you shouting "what about true resurrection!?! I hear you, and Matt said it's complicated and didn't elaborate lol. Personally, I think the Matron has quite the special a barrier of entry to true resurrection, if the spell even works at all in Exandria. I think they touched on it briefly in Calamity but I've forgotten. I can only imagine what insane ritual Matt concocted years ago that he's had plenty of time to work on since. Part of the Matron's whole thing is that everyone must eventually go into death, sure they can avoid it for a while, so some resurrection is fine (the DC gets higher every time), but eventually enough is enough and it's time to go. Hence why necromancers and liches are her enemies.

At any rate, I'm really proud of Keyleth for going to therapy and I hope she goes back when all of this moon business is over because she still needs it and that turtle lady in the frog seemed great lol.

[vaxlethtrash]

Vex sobbing over Percy’s dead body.

Vax looking at Keyleth, imagining if it were her laying there.

Vax realizing anything is worth being with her and that tomorrow is not guaranteed.

“If you'll have me, I'm yours. If you don't want me, I'll understand.”

Vex realizing she was wrong about Percy and that he is so much more to her than she thought.

Love, in multiple ways, blooms from tragedy.

This is about what I’m anticipating and I am not— NOT— emotionally ready for tonight’s episodes.

[shobogan]

Yeah, I feel like any elf walks into a relationship with a human accepting the inevitable. It's going to hurt, obviously, but there's an expectation of it and a willingness to move forward. Caleb and Essek already had to make huge strides in learning how to do that; if anything their relationship is an extension of that progression.

Meanwhile, Keyleth's issues with her extended lifespan intertwine so heavily with all of her other issues - the isolation of leadership, the keen awareness of long term consequences, the fear of becoming someone she doesn't recognise in the mirror, of not having the people you need to be your best self.

And while losing Vax so soon after taking that leap anyway is obviously a huge part of the sorrow here, I kind of hate that it's so often centred around that, as if the romantic relationship was The One That Mattered. She's going to lose the rest of Vox Machina too, and that's just as important! She's going to outlive generations of de Rolos!

The world is going to change around her, and that's beautiful and terrifying and overwhelming and exhilarating. She's going to continue losing the people she loves and trusts and relies on; she's going to find so many more, who never would have met a version of Keyleth who was not Voice of the Tempest. She's going to carry the stories of people time would have forgotten.

re: an earlier ask, what are your gripes with lifespan angst? at worst I'm, like, mildly uninterested, but I don't have many strong opinions on it - curious to see if you might convince me otherwise.

My core issue with lifespan angst is that it tends to go hand in hand with fandoms' disregard for second (or third, or fourth) loves - people really lean hard into the idea that you get ONE soulmate and if they die young you are tragically alone forever to grieve, instead of embracing two truths: first, lots of people lose partners very young in real life. One of my grandmothers outlived her husband (my grandfather, who died when I was about a year old) by over twenty years, and he didn't die terribly young. I know multiple people, including a relative, who lost a fiance in their late 20s or early 30s. The idea of outliving a partner by decades is totally normal in our real world and to act like this is a world-shattering epic tragedy instead of one of the many smaller, realer, and more complicated tragedies that exist in real life is in my opinion quite childish, melodramatic, and ultimately not as interesting as the truth.

To that point I think a lot of people who are super into lifespan angst are just...people who are more interested in romantic angst than character or story, and see characters as like, an epi-pen injector of The Feels instead of as interesting concepts moving throughout a realized world, and their writing suffers as a result.

I also feel it's often grafted onto relationships that don't really have them. The reason Keyleth is exempted is because she has SUCH a long lifespan AND she thinks about this in canon, which makes sense, because she becomes a L20 Druid at age like, 23, and then her partner IMMEDIATELY dies very young! But like...Caleb and Essek? I would imagine they are very realistic about Caleb's lifespan vs. Essek's, particularly since Essek comes from a culture where this is extremely common (and half elves in the Empire aren't rare either; I don't know if Caleb thought about it personally but culturally, elf and human relationships are normal). I also found a lot of the people who were like "omg lifespan angst" seem to think that like, age 50 is decrepit; and for Caleb and Essek they tended to sort of not consider the possibility of nonmonogamy even though Caleb canonically has been in a poly relationship. Like it feels it's almost always comorbid with other bad takes, in addition to being a bad take itself.

Mildly uninterested is not a bad way to be; I tend towards strong opinions for better or for worse, and if your attitude is more go with the flow that is probably a good trait to have, but yeah, it just. takes relationships I really enjoy and distills them down into something reductive and weird and often ageist and overly afraid of talking about death and finding new love again, and I love talking about death and loss and grief in a way that isn't cheap angst but is actually real.