#i will get unrelated spoilers

[locustonabench]

so the summer camp island aliens. do they have genders. are puddle and king mlm gay or nblnb gay

[chipchopclipclop]

epilogue making me want to draw them again.... i enjoy coming up with reasons for why charas are wearing clothes games force them into lmao

[newtonbridgerton]

hey creloise nation how do we feel about how every character in has a carefully color coded wardrobe (bridgerton blues, featherington yellows) and cressida is almost always dressed in creams and pinks EXCEPT for two scenes

the scene at the ball where she is wearing what looks like a white gown with midnight blue sleeves and silver accents which is inline with what the other girls are wearing now that they know the queen is looking for someone 'sparkling'

and then in the scene immediately after where she happily skips over to eloise and eloise incorrectly accuses her of gossiping about penelope and colin

in that scene her outfit is a soft bridgerton blue that matches eloise perfectly. is it to emphasize the line she says about eloise finding a looking glass to find the cruel one? or is it to symbolize the effort cressida is putting into putting her (pink) past behind her and aligning herself with eloise (blue)?

[tea-cat-arts]

A reoccurring thought I had for a while now-

On one hand, I'd like to think someone gave him a hug at least once in those 800 years. On the other, idk who Xie Lian would let himself be vulnerable with

[babacontainsmultitudes]

Beth's circuit training pun feels like a happy coincidence with original Trudy's found love of race car driving. You know, like a racing circuit? Anyways, I hope she gets to run Tucker over.

[mari-lair]

i feel like a fun side effect of “i wish the house felt like home” would be forms of their previous culture getting changed to Change in close proximity. such as the observatory wind slowly turning opaque and mosaic-ifying,and the starry hat getting turned into the change hat. just a thought!

Amazing thought, Anon!

I like the idea of this happening whenever Siffrin has a big crisis about belonging and 'everything is fine he has a home now, he is home, this is his family', unconsciously running away from what he craves to not lose what he has, to the point the house make him physically distorts their surroundings (like how The House was wack in act 5)

[shrews-art]

Pain reminds us that we are alive or something I guess

[utilitycaster]

if you're up to elaborating, i would love to hear more about your complicated feelings on Taliesin's reads of this campaign, because that's something that's been itching my brain but I'd been having a hard time pinpointing why and I'm interested to hear your thoughts!

So I think it's best summarized in part as a combination of what was said in this post I just reblogged and these tags from @kerosene-in-a-blender on this post:

#yeeeaaaahhhh#ngl it seems like the characters and parts of the cast got so caught up in the potential moral dilemma of interventionist gods#that they forgot the gods of exandria aren't particularly interventionist#critical role#critical role spoilers#cr spoilers

Ashton feels like they learned something about their own arrogance and assumptions with Shardgate...and then it just vanished. And the fact that Taliesin genuinely read that as what was supposed to happen when like 3-4 authority figures, some of whom (Allura) have existed since Campaign 1 as People To Listen To had said "This is a bad idea" in plain language does give me pause because like...with all due respect, I get why Ashton would do this anyway! But come on, man, how do you hear that and not go "oh maybe it's a bad idea."

I don't want to read in too much to cooldown and 4SD either but I really do just feel that like...some of the cast, and Taliesin isn't alone in this but definitely seems to be using it the most in-game, have come under the impression that the purpose of this campaign is specifically to upend everything we knew...but that idea is just an assumption that is not supported, and as I've said repeatedly, there is no situation in which the world is not drastically changed - there's going to be either a hostile alien invasion, or a friendly alien migration, but either one will be monumental within Exandrian history, and that's not counting the establishment of the Accord/the collapse of local institutions in both the Dwendalian Empire and Bassuras/ If one cannot see any possibility for vast change within the world other than killing/driving out the gods, I don't know how to address this nicely. This is an uncreative and stupid position that I can't engage with because it's so stupid. It's like saying World War II didn't change anything in our world because at the end of it the US and USSR both still existed largely intact. So the over-focus on only one means of change in a way that feels based on an interpretation of this campaign's purpose that isn't even stated anywhere is telling and deeply frustrating.

As the second post indicates, it feels like some of the cast, Taliesin especially, got caught up in a theological argument of divine intervention that personally I had a great time debating in Hebrew school when I was 13, but is not ultimately true in Exandria (or reality, for that matter). On some level it's like maybe read some Harold Kushner and you'll calm down; it feels like you're arguing against like, some very real religious tenets (that are not exclusively Christian for once) but in a story where that's not actually a problem.

I'd throw in that Bells Hells sit in this awkward place of not being nobodies (or Nobodies) anymore but many are still acting like it and Ashton is at the forefront. Indeed, look at the name "the Nobodies." The problem is that Ashton is a Somebody now. He's not like, the ruler of a city, or an ancient dragon, or a god. But they're someone who has the personal raw power and the connections to survive an ill-considered second shard absorption. They're someone who is easily going to survive a fall out of a window, and who can't be bound into service. They are someone who has been entrusted by the world to assist in saving it, and they're too fixated on the gods not personally saving them to consider the vast potential harm to others, and I think it's not inherently out of callousness but rather that they've rather abruptly risen from "orphan criminal who expected to be dead by 30" to "guy tasked to save the world" but they have no option but to rise to the occasion, as the Raven Queen said. To change the world, he must change himself, and I feel like Taliesin, who often enjoys the idea of characters who don't change, is perhaps too wed to that concept for this particular narrative. And, for what it's worth: I've said it before that my personal preference is to keep the gods in place...but I would genuinely be MILES happier with a party that decisively had decided to kill the gods. I would not agree with their decision, but anything is better than this indecision. And since Ashton is pretty staunchly in favor of killing the gods and the rest of the party is varying degrees of strongly against (Orym, Braius), weakly against (Chetney, Fearne, Imogen, increasingly Laudna) and unsure but worried specifically about the mortal impact (Dorian) at some point it's like. Either say "I don't like this, but this is the party's plan" or leave. The decisiveness matters on an individual level too; because Bells Hells does not have good internal methods of resolving conflict for reasons stated above and below, at some point it's like. You have to give it up because no one will make you. If Ashton genuinely cannot or will not yield on this, either commit to betraying the party (totally valid, could be a great story) or have them leave; if Ashton does trust the party, have them reluctantly give in. A party-wide choice must be made and fast. The party is aimless because they are all pulling in different directions and it all cancels out, but Ashton is definitely contributing extensively to that agonizing stasis.

I suppose I should wrap up with what I've been saying a lot but should probably go on this post which is that a lot of the flaws in this campaign are not any singular person's fault. I really do feel like they began with the fact that Matt was clearly building to this specific story, and Bells Hells were not a party terribly suited to it in the first place and then were given an earlier narrative that, because it was heavily on rails to get them to the solstice setpiece, failed to give them the tools to become people who would be prepared for this endgame. I think Matt really wanted the cast to make the decisions here, and did not have a specific decision in mind, and now they're all finding that they're playing characters who can't make that decision. It's a culmination of a lot of smaller out-of-game choices that have failed to gel into a coherent whole. When I say the Raven Queen was right, and if they are not ready for this, to go home, I don't think the party should be tpk-ed or anything, but yeah, if they can't decide what to do when they are essentially tasked with killing the BBEG and diffusing the universe-shattering bomb, they should abdicate. I don't think a story in which the heroes fail is a bad one. I know Call of the Netherdeep has been a touchstone in the fandom throughout this campaign and there's one possible ending to that that's sort of unsatisfying, but the unsatisfying nature itself makes it an interesting story to me. I think this campaign ending with the party saying "we can't do this" is vanishingly unlikely, and complaints aside I think they will probably make a decision now but it all feels exceedingly doylist - Bells Hells are the characters the cast happens to be playing for this climactic final moment so I guess they will play those characters, and those characters will have to make a choice so that the final moment happens, but it doesn't feel terribly organic.

[chubearr]

You're gonna lose your mind! It's seriously so cool. The second most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life.

kenlynn - the break up (1)

[orangecoffee1010]

some few month old doodles of mostly finny ^^^^^ his single father arc will come trust

[luck-of-the-drawings]

OOOH BABY THIS ONE WAS A LONG TIME COMING. NIGHTMARE NIGHTMARE NIGHTMARE!!

YOU THOUGHT IT WAS A DAY LIKE ANY OTHER. A DAY OF ADVENTURE WITH YOUR CLOSEST FRIENDS. OH HOW TIGHTLY YOU HOLD THEM TO YOUR CHEST, AND OH HOW TERRIFYING IT IS TO WATCH THEM GET EVISCERATED BY SOMETHING YOU DONT UNDERSTAND. MAYBE IF YOU JUST LISTENED A BIT MORE, IF YOU LET THE SMART ONE LEAD THE CHARGE, THIS WOULDNT HAVE HAPPENED. ONCE AGAIN YOUR IMPULSIVENESS LEADS TO DISASTER. HEAR ME NOW, YOUNG TIDESTRIDER, YOUR STUPIDITY WILL BRING THE DEMISE OF EVERYTHING YOU WERE BORN AND FORGED TO PROTECT. HOW COULD THE PROPHECY HAVE CHOSEN SOMEONE SO USELESS? I BET YOU WISH YOU CHOSE THE RIGHT LEVER. FAILURE.

[katkat030]

Obsessed with Impulse’s complete change in tone and demeanour in that one bit of Pearl’s episode. It’s so clear he was barely holding back on not only murdering the first non-ally to come into his sight, but actually seeking Ren out for revenge.

[tamorii]

Falin - Dungeon Level 6

[yardsards]

so marcille's succubus totally looked like that general from daltian clan right

[evilsalizard]

ALSO!!!!! can we talk about how in izzys fake story about his leg he says "it served me right, too"? ed is the shark and a wild dog... izzy thinks he deserved what happened because he was the one who provoked a wild animal...

[lokiiied]

i haven’t seen any gifsets of this scene yet, so i bring you more shitty screencaps but this moment felt like it was important me ?

loki walking past sylvie with mobius AGAIN with zero hesitation. (two eps in a row) hmm what does it mean.

(this time loki leaves first and mobius stays behind to look at ravonna, before following after loki - a parallel to last episode with loki & sylvie. and the second time they mirrored those dynamics in this episode! interesting.)