#i couldn't have been more wrong about Bor'Dor

[errantgoat]

I'm back from vacation, caught up on a few shows/started a couple of new ones. Gonna queue some stuff maybe?

Also finally watched the last CR episode. And the first place in the worst character analysis category goes to me!!

[utilitycaster]

I agree what the cast says does not hold as much weight as what happens on stream. I think this is why I get frustrated by the 'Orym is to blame for Laudna killing Bor'dor' debates, using things Liam and/or Marisha have said on 4-sided dive that contradict the actual scene, where Marisha states Laudna barely notices Orym and Ashton, and *nothing* will stop her from doing what she wants to do. At worst, it's inaction. Have interviews and things like that always held so much weight in fandom?

I am absolutely the wrong person to ask here; I was not super in fandom when I was younger. I am going to, as I am wont to do, make some educated guesses but please take with a grain of salt.

I think there's a few things going on. A lot of people have told me that Glee was the first fandom they personally recall where it became about winning more than like, having fun and sharing ideas, and I wouldn't be surprised if that is at least an influence. (The idea that two ships that do not conflict and indeed have incompatible sexualities are in some kind of deathly serious competition is truly so baffling to me that I have to chalk up that particular bit of, if I may use a yiddishism here, mishegos, to Glee for sure.)

I also think that there was a time and there are shows where interviews did (or do) carry more weight, namely, those with executive meddling, or loss of creative control, or, notably, queer ships until quite recently. I have a lot of friends in the Star Trek fandom even though I'm not knowledgeable at all and from what I am given to understand, there's been a few ships squashed or delayed by executive whim or homophobia that the actors would pretty openly and consistently confirm at conventions. (The ones I know are Riker and Troi; and Garak and Bashir; but I have only hazy recollections of TNG and know NOTHING of DS9 so this is second-hand). I've talked about this before, but Word of God used to carry more weight for me when you simply couldn't have same gender romances on network TV or most mainstream film without risking your career. Now? You're a coward and a panderer.

Anyway I think with actual play specifically, which is improvised (ie, intent can shift dramatically and unexpectedly) and which has a lot of talkback shows and also a disproportionately huge amount of content people get in the habit of cherrypicking, and in extreme cases this turns into cherrypicking themselves straight out of the actual narrative and into microexpressions and OOC interviews and side conversations from three years ago.

I also, and I am too tired and too many drinks in (two drinks in, to be clear) to articulate this tonight, find that actual play in particular has amassed a certain fandom that I think was attracted to things I like and support (queer characters, women/queer people/POC creating and driving their own characters, independent creator-owned productions, improvised and therefore at times really unique stories, not needing to have streaming services in some cases) but also doesn't actually like Actual Play as a medium (see: every single D20 fandom meltdown low-key boils down to "I have zero genre awareness of both whatever is going on narratively and also I high-key loathe D&D as a means of storytelling and particularly the existence of violence in narrative, yet I am watching the Violent Narrative D&D show, so dance or me, my puppets, wait why aren't you dancing.") So I think you get a lot of people who are just making dumb fucking arguments because they decide what they believe and then poorly reverse engineer the support instead of doing things in the proper order and I think the people claiming Orym is responsible for Bor'Dor's death are in that category and we should stop treating them as people who are adding anything of worth to the conversation.

[tangent101]

Our other heroes drove an oppressive force out of a village that did not want them there, and did so with a minimum of deaths. And yes, Bor'Dor killed an angel and that freaked them out that they had to face one but... the villagers were not bad people and were being oppressed. (Good people can still do bad things.) In fact, they returned the villagers' tithes (which were collected even for those who didn't worship) and the entire village were celebrating.

(We compare Team Wildemount and Team Issylra frequently here. Do not forget that but for a roll that came within one of matching the DC of Fearne's spell, they would have had to slay a being venerated by the Elves of Uthodurn - in short, a nature-based angel. It was luck that they succeeded.)

They learned that their friends were alive and well after only two days, and traveling with new companions to guide them. Their journey to a way home included a moment of peace and joy as Orym danced with nature spirits... and you can't tell me he or Prism didn't tell the others after the fact. They freed a druid hierophant from being devoured by a dark fey. If anything, Team Issylra went through less hardships than Team Wildemount. They also traveled for half as many days.

If Bor'Dor had not turned on them, honestly, I don't think that we'd be having this discussion. People are so quick to look at the moments of brightness in Team Wildemount but the reason they are so bright was they existed in a period of great darkness.

But again. We are talking about Imogen and about Laudna.

The Dream was not comedic relief. It was a point of high tension and the only reason Imogen was able to stop from going into the Malleus Key's beam to Ruidus was Fearne slapping her face. She was almost lost there. And she is quite scared her mother might be one of those red ghost-beings. (Let's not forget that she also admitted to Chetney that they'd have to kill her mom. Her mother, who is Ludinus' right-hand woman.)

Imogen did not play nearly as huge a role in calming Umudara as did Fearne and FCG - in fact, FCG's Tongues was instrumental in helping calm Umudara, even as Fearne's Dominate Beast stopped it initially. In fact, Imogen's attempt to scout ahead was foiled by the fact she did not speak Elvish and thus could not read the placard.

I'm sure Imogen felt so useful in that fight.

Also... we look at "comedic relief" differently. You look at it as "haha we can laugh" while I look at the humiliation and failures and how it impacts the psyche. I remember how frustrated Marisha was when her dice failed her time and time again, when she almost walked off the set because she couldn't do anything. Oh, but it's comedic relief, right? Not to the person suffering from being the comedy routine.

The moment Imogen sees Laudna I think she's going to immediately try to hug her or something as she only learned Laudna was alive the night before... and at that same moment she learned that the end of the world was upon them as Deanna was forced into a Commune with the Dawnfather to double down on the warning. And if Laudna pulls away, Imogen is going to try to find out what's wrong.

What will Imogen do when she learns what happened with Bor'Dor? She's going to comfort Laudna. And she will likely blame Orym and maybe Ashton for not stopping her. But she is not going to blame Laudna, she will let Laudna know she's without fault, and that they kicked Delilah's ass once before and will do it again. Together.

So... I think things are going to go differently than you fear. Both women have been through trials. Both women feel that they failed - Imogen especially, having desperately tried to convince her mother to turn from Ludinus and failing... and that failure directly resulting in Ludinus' victory. Hell, Imogen was begging with her mom and what was Laudna doing? Breaking the generators, and doing far more to stop Ludinus than her (in her eyes) feeble attempts to reach out to a woman who abandoned her.

I'm seeing people getting all excited for the upcoming reunion episode, particularly for Imogen and Laudna.

I suspect it's going to be very anticlimactic.

You have Imogen reenergized, refocused and rewardrobed. All excited.

Then you have Laudna. Who executed someone in a misguided clutch at control. Knows that through that, it slipped through her fingers. Because she couldn't control herself or Delilah or who cares. She was too weak. I think she feels a tremendous amount of not guilt, but shame.

And when Laudna sees Imogen and have much she's thrived without her, she will either compartalmentalise everything... Or she will distance herself. Two sides of the same coin really.

This is different than with the rock. Imogen isn't upset - she's doing fantastically. How long before Laudna listens to the feeling telling her it's best to be alone. That maybe she's outgrown her, maybe similarly to the child she knew in her past.

It would be interesting seeing if Imogen does anything about it or not. She probably has never experienced a Laudna who distanced herself.

How quickly before she addresses it, if at all.

So yeah I'm setting my expectations low.

[utilitycaster]

Something clicked for me in that last post about Laudna being picked by Delilah because of her sorcerer abilities. Because there's kind of an incongruence there for me? Like was Laudna picked by Delilah because she bore a passing resemblance to Vex, is she a girl killed for the sake of someone else's story? Is that theme weakened if she was actually prepped as a vessel for Delilah 'just in case'? Does the suntree carry less weight if one of the bodies was MEANT to come back? Idk.

Hey anon!

I've talked about this a bit here and I think that might be of interest to you.

For what it's worth: I think it's fair if Laudna was picked for both reasons. The Briarwoods were not exactly looking that hard for verisimilitude with the Sun Tree corpses (couldn't or didn't bother to find a natural redhead for Keyleth) so "dark haired young woman who makes for a good contingency vessel and conveniently can also be a Sun Tree corpse" makes sense. I also don't think that this reduces the weight of the Sun Tree, in that Hollow Ones in the description are implied to in some ways be people denied the peace of death. It's not any less horrifying and tragic if Delilah was double-dipping with Laudna; she's still being used as a thing rather than a person and she is still getting murdered even if she's also brought back.

But yes, narratively, neither of these is really getting explored. I don't think either possibility is a weak theme - there's much to be said about either "Laudna was killed for someone else's story for largely aesthetic reasons, out of sheer bad luck, and this is what it's like being collateral damage in the story of someone else" or "Laudna had strange powers, and in trying to learn more about them and about herself, she ended up being turned into the vessel for a ruthless necromancer." The second supersedes the first, but there's nothing wrong with that! The problem is that neither the first theme (which isn't entirely true, but isn't exactly untrue either) nor the second are being explored by Laudna within the story.

The post you're referencing posits a potential reason, and to be clear I like it as a concept. But I think the reason we're talking about this is because there's been kind of a treadmill of fanon for Laudna. First we thought her theme was a victim, pure collateral damage in the story of Vox Machina. Then we learned about being Delilah's vessel for her own powers. She has been progressing mechanically in those powers but hasn't really been exploring them, and that in turn suffers because we've seen such an intense exploration of what it means to be a sorcerer through Imogen, other Ruidusborn Exaltants, and even Bor'Dor. Nor is she really making an active choice between sorcerer and warlock; Delilah remains along for the ride but doing almost nothing. We can't tell what the themes are because Laudna is allegedly go-with-the-flow; but for the most part just seems stuck.

I have my speculation as to why this is, and I reblogged that post because I'm going to be honest, we're 71 episodes in and I got off that treadmill after the fantastic work during the Issylra arc fizzled out into nothing, but I support the people who are still doing that work and trying to find an in-world explanation for why Laudna is so aimless. But it remains true that the audience has to do all the work, and we're not being met even close to halfway, so we keep having to readjust and pivot, rather than refine our understanding.