#i would watch the actual cr campaign but

[helimir]

Some top tier Caduceus quotes I've been thinking about in these Downfall times. Something about how so much of Ludinus' position seems to rest on revenge. Showing Bells Hells the squabbling of the gods as they debate what to do about Aeor, and asking 'You can just watch bad people get away with it?'

It doesn't matter if the gods were wrong for their choices. Killing them won't bring back Aeor and it won't stop the violence that Ludinus and the Ruby Vanguard have visited on the world. I just don't see what it's for.

[justalittlebluetiefling]

Sometimes I try to write down thoughts about this campaign but I admittedly have not been paying enough attention to feel confident in my character analysis so I write an incoherent text post and then delete it because I don't know if I'm actually making the correct judgments.

[utilitycaster]

I don't begrudge anyone their campaign preferences, and I think there's plenty of valid reasons to like Campaign 3 the best and this is not directed at people who are genuinely having a great time with it, but it feels like virtually all the nostalgia and wishful thinking I see surrounding Campaign 3 is screaming "you guys want Campaign 2." You want more slow travel and downtime and interparty conversations and slow-burn romance? You wish their main focus was fighting governmental corruption? You want a party that only semi-settles down at the end and keeps adventuring and remains very close? You're frustrated by how everpresent and overarching the moon plot is? You miss when they were just fucking around in a city? I genuinely believe you want Campaign 2, or at best you love a specific ship or a character from Campaign 3 but aren't happy about basically anything else, and would vastly prefer the tone and events and plot of Campaign 2. And I don't really care if you watch Campaign 2, or if you think I'm being annoying here; I simply genuinely believe you'd be happier watching Campaign 2 than Campaign 3 and are so deep in a sunk cost fallacy well you can't see it.

[sparring-spirals]

There is a universe in which i was caught up properly on CR whenever what the fuck went down and Imogen verbally and definitively declared that- after everything leading up to this and the back and forth and indecision- that she'd be willing to take down her mom if need be. and i would have been deeply insufferable and writing 20+ separate meta posts and liveblog yelling posts and shitposts. This is not that universe so instead we will put this post here where i can have wildly uninformed (aka 20 eps behind) Emotions about it until someday i actually catch up.

(I know. i accidentally wrote potentially wildly off base/deeply out of date meta again. what can i say. i like shaking the concept of An Imogen (even if it is Outdated Imogen) in a jar. sorry.)

Because i was watching long enough, I think, to see Imogen in the throes of the hope for something better, to understand that Imogen was viewing her mom was a figure and an idea and an answer, that would make things easier. Her mom was- gone, so early. And so her mom, in her mind, was not a person she was an idea, and there was so much hinged on that! Dogged determination and anger at her father and a deep seated dislike of the powers in her hands and head even as they gave her a guilty rush. There were promises there that maybe no one else had made, but Imogen believed. Things built up. Expectations made. Lore crafted, even unconsciously, around someone who was, yes, important to Imogen, but more importantly: Missing. Gone. A blank slate to be filled in. A promise of an answer guide to open questions.

And then she meets her mom, and Liliana Temult goes from a figure to a person- with all the bells and whistles and rough edges. She meets her mom and her mom turns her away. Tells her to run. Tells her she should go. Tells her to leave.

And Imogen doesn't. In the same way she kept visiting libraries, keps asking, kept pushing for answers when it was just about her magic and her headaches and the voices. Imogen always, always wants to know. She keeps digging, she keeps trying, she reaches out, over and over and keeps trying to touch this figure in mist until she's real under her hands, and. Evidence piles up- of deeds gone wrong, blood on her hands, a figure standing next to Otohan (her friends bodies scattered, lifeless, around Otohan). She keeps reaching out, keeps trying, and is rebuffed, over and over. Things get worse and the skies get redder and magic goes dead and she's still- unsure, because what if there's a better reason, what if there's a better way, there has to be a reason, why. There has to be, right- maybe if- maybe. Maybe-

Its just like- a person as an idea. As a symbol. As a promise. One you build yourself up around and towards. One you talk about, not talk to.

And then the fog clears, and they are a human.

(And she's your mom, and she's not what you imagined. She's done you wrong. She's done your loved ones wrong. She's hurt you. She's hurt others. She's going to keep hurting you. She is going to keep hurting everyone. She is too far gone to reason with. She is not listening to you. She is flawed. She is. dangerous. She looks so much like you. You look just like her. You are so similar. You have always known you were similar. You always hoped. You.

Are not her. You are not hers. She is not yours. She is not who you thought she was. She was always someone else. So are you.)

Imogen walks through the bases pretending to be her mother. Liliana is a known face- a powerful one, a figure people fear. A well known silhouette. Imogen slips into the shadows of it, sometimes, when it serves her, but we know- she knows- its all an act. All a lie.

Liliana, after all, is alive, and well, making choices that she believes in and fighting for things with a dogged determination maybe only matched by her daughter.

Imogen knows this. I think. There's a part of her that maybe wishes that wasn't the case.

"There is no loyalty with this blood." And after all- only living people bleed.

[kingstealer]

aabria going, "as aimee who maybe wants to have a friend sit by you soon" is going to haunt me for the next two weeks. i can already tell.

[dinomighty]

It's taken me a few days to make myself get through it, but I've finally watched Molly's departure, the aftermath, and Caduceus's debut. It was painful and yet I've been fascinated too.

I honestly thought Molly’s death happened much further into the story and that therefore Caduceus wasn't around for that long. Turns out I had that completely wrong and I think it's the fact the death happens so early in the campaign that shocks the most. He's dead now? Facing slavers? When almost half the party isn't even there? It all feels shockingly wrong, because we don't know all of Molly yet. There's such a feeling of more to come, because we know he was someone called Lucien before dying, waking up in a grave, and becoming Molly. Surely that has to be explored, even though Molly is insistently against knowing anything about his past. So we don't get that now?

I love that actually we will get that, and that dying actually brings Molly's past right into the present, which he would have resisted had he lived. The story he had no interest in will get revealed now he's gone. There's something utterly fantastic in that.

I honestly think Matt wanted Lucien to appear at some point in the campaign but that he really didn't expect for Molly to die so early on. As he said, it was just a confluence of really bad things, especially how they were in the middle of nowhere with no one around to heal him. I also think that if any of the Mighty Nein was going to die and not return (as himself anyway), Molly made the most sense. If this was a scripted show, his character would have certainly been killed off. Because his story has already continued once already after death. So surely it'll happen again. And that's now bubbling in the background until I get to the empty grave and Lucien's return. So that was brilliant luck for Matt and his storytelling anyway, knowing there was a way to use this and how good it could be for the campaign's future, even if it happened so early on. That all pleases and feeds my storytelling brain while also feeling really upsetting that we didn't get to see more of Molly, how he might have developed and who he might have even romanced, if he was interested in that.

I was going to write a bit about how awful people were for heaping abusive anger on Matt, Ashly and Taliesin for Molly's death. But just, please don't do that okay? Misaimed anger in grief is understandable but still really hurtful.

And I adore Caduceus, he's so pleasant and inexperienced, in a different manner to Nila. He's so different to anyone Taliesin has played before in CR and I appreciate that, especially as he only had a week to create him. I wonder if they all now have back ups created for campaigns? I love the tea/Tealeaf link, which was apparently completely coincidental lol, and I'm just looking forward to knowing more about him. And I'm really looking forward to getting Fjord, Jester and Yasha back soon, I miss all three a lot!

[wayhaughtn7]

It hasn’t even been a full day since I watched the last three episodes of season 3 of The Legend of Vox Machina and I’m already fed up with seeing all the whining about the changes made from Critters. I think the changes they’ve made not only work narratively for the medium but also work at slowly working in story threads for the Mighty Nein show and a possible Bell’s Hells show as well as some sort of adaptation of EXU and EXU: Calamity. There have been no egregious changes and considering how well it’s been received by critics some of the changes might actually work better.

Sure I’m bummed we didn’t get the whole party taking turns to kill Ripley or Keyleth losing her shit on Raishan but I still have those moments and I think the changes made to those moments worked better for the show than the original version would have. What works in a D&D campaign where the roll of a die controls how moments turn out doesn’t always work in a television show format and especially wouldn’t work for folks who don’t watch CR but watch TLOVM.

I can already tell that this fandom is going to be insufferable when the M9 show premiers next year and considering it’s been 3 years of non-stop bitching about C3 and before that EXU that’s saying something.

[kerosene-in-a-blender]

One thing I find funny about arguments that people who are unsatisfied with how Campaign 3 ended because it feels like it lacks consequences just want characters to die is that, aside from the obvious fact that narrative consequences just means actions have clear follow through and results, is that at least for me, it's like, yeah, I DO like it when characters die in stories.

One my favourite moments in C3 is FCG's final sacrifice and how in the moment of their death they became truly alive because of the connections of love and friendship he had made with the other characters. The first meta I ever wrote for CR (and I stand by the idea of it if not how I conveyed it) was about Laudna and how it actually made an interesting and resonant ending to her narrative for her to have been permanently killed by Otohan in Bassaras. My favourite meta I've ever written for anything is a 6 paragraph rundown of all the character deaths in Midst and how well they're integrated into the overall narrative. One my favourite anime I've ever watched is one which is (in)famous for systematically killing off most of its main cast (Bokurano for the curious). I, personally, love death in narratives and love analyzing how it can be used as a narrative device to add tension, capstone a character's personal arc, influence and redirect the arcs of other characters, and work to create and enhance themes of grief, loss, and trauma. My personal favourite theme that can come out of death in narratives isn't even about the dead character, it's about those left behind and how living can feel not like a blessing but a condemnation after a deep loss but you have to keep going, because you have been condemned to live.

I would have loved to see a version of Campaign 3 where Laudna did permanently die and Imogen had to deal with that. Perhaps the resurrection ritual they attempted with Pike could have failed, and she and the rest of the Hells had to deal with the fact that they couldn't bring her back, but they did free her from Delilah so she'll have peace in her death and they have to be okay with that. Perhaps Imogen could even realize posthumously that she loved her. I would have loved to see the aftermath of FCG's sacrifice more fully explored, with the Hells sitting in their grief even as the world continues to fall apart (though I understand the real world circumstances of Sam's absence are likely what made the cast reticent to do that). I would have loved to see a version of the endgame where Ludinus was successful in fully siphoning Liliana and Imogen has to grapple with her inability to fully trust her mother ultimately killing her (though at least she has a Ludinus-shaped outlet to take things out on).

All that being said though, my issue with how Campaign 3 ended isn't the lack of deaths, it's that everything ended in a way that was nice and pleasant and neat without any real weight, with a few things that DID have weight when they initially happened being completely de-fanged so that they could be nice and pleasant and neat. I can deal with and even greatly enjoy no deaths or even negative deaths if it's handled with narrative weight and care, and I don't feel that C3's ending was.

[terresdebrume]

"Magic remains"

I've seen criticism on the resolution of C3 re: magic but to offer a sort of spoilery rebuttal...

I see why people wanted the Gods' departure to mean no more divine magic: it would be interesting, narratively speaking!

However: Critical Role is a game show. Yeah sure they tell a story but it's also an actual play show (that I think is much less doctored than some people think) The game mechanics are a core part of the thing!

And the mechanical reality is that if you nerf divine magic you lose:

The biggest options for healing magic (most of the big spells are cleric exclusive w a smaller sample also going to druids)

Clerics (including one of the iconic CR subclasses which we haven't seen on a PC yet)

Druids

Rangers' spellcasting (might as well play a fighter)

Celestial Warlocks

Arguably Zealot barbarians?

And that's just off the top of my head

Like, CAN you play DND without any of those? Sure! Is it going to be fun to play? Uncertain, very dependent on your table. Will it be fun to watch? I mean I guess ymmv but personally I don't know that I want to see a campaign that's a quest for greater healing potions half the time ^^"

[utilitycaster]

can you explain what you mesn by monkey ladder in reference to the CR fandom? as someone from C1 i would probably be able to give you the insight you asked for in your tags but im unsure of the angle you are coming from.

Oh yeah, it describes a phenomenon I've repeatedly seen in all aspects of my life but I wasn't aware there was an idiom for it. Basically, it describes how communities/institutions continue following patterns of behavior even when said behaviors are in response to a no-longer relevant problem and even when the people who originated said behaviors and remember the original reason are gone.

So: imagine an experiment with five monkeys, a ladder, and bananas on top of the ladder. Whenever a monkey goes for the ladder to reach the bananas, a researcher sprays all the monkeys with ice water. After enough attempts, the monkeys, understandably, begin attacking any one of them that reaches for the ladder in order to avoid this punishment.

The researchers then swap out one of the monkeys for a new monkey. When the new monkey reaches for the ladder, the other monkeys attack them and prevent them from reaching it.

They then swap out another monkey, and when the second new monkey reaches for the ladder, not only do the other monkeys attack them - the first "new" monkey joins in. And so on. Eventually, you can reach a point where all five monkeys in the room have never even been sprayed with ice water. They don't know why they are attacking people who reach for the ladder other than that they were attacked for reaching for the ladder. And here's the kicker: the researchers haven't sprayed anyone in ages, and actually, they've turned off the water, and if someone reached for the ladder, they'd be fine. But they won't.

So it's about groups enforcing behaviors that arose in response to something specific that is no longer present, even after the group no longer recalls, necessarily, why it was present.

Anyway: as someone with the specific experience of watching campaign 1 and early campaign 2 concurrently, having started with Campaign 2, ie, joined the fandom in Campaign 2 and have been here ever since, the following viewpoints are all imo "monkey-ladder" problems: people carrying forward stereotypes/fandom behaviors that I think originated in Campaign 1 but which many new fans never actually experienced:

specifically the one I mentioned in my previous post - the idea that Sam and Travis make stupid joke characters and aren't taking this seriously. (This sometimes splits into Sam Makes Dumb Joke Characters And Travis Is Himself A Stupid Person. The latter has fortunately abated but it was still alive and kicking as late as early C3)

The idea that Marisha and Laura; or Taliesin and Liam, make characters with exceptional romantic chemistry with each other. (They didn't have this in C1 either; while chemistry is obviously a subjective metric I find these specifically two of the weakest cases of cast romantic chemistry and definitely the two weakest of same gender cast romantic chemistry but they were held up as the only viable PC/PC queer romances given that Ashley was often absent, Grog wasn't interested, and people wrote off Scanlan as a dumb joke and Tary came around after Percy and Vex were already together)

Any criticism of Marisha is Forbidden Forever due to the harassment she received in C1 (we got monkeys who joined the fandom mid-C3 beating up people who were like I'm Not Vibing With Laudna who had been staunch Keyleth defenders during the actual run of C1, for example)

I'm sure there's others that aren't coming to mind but this is a good starting point: basically, it's people who weren't in the fandom in C1 and might not even have seen Campaign 1 carrying over opinions that really only made sense in Campaign 1 and honestly weren't even good then.

For a fun interrogation of this (carryover of an opinion/behavior with no other reason than This Is What I Was Told When I Joined) within the context of an actual play, see Iga Lisowski in The Unsleeping City 2.

[shorthaltsjester]

oh temult family i will never not be insane about you. thank you laura bailey for my rights and the good fucking food this ep with imogen messaging both liliana and relvin. i will have more elaborate rot undoubtedly soon but , the love in those messages! the love!!!! the love and the fact that it isn't enough in either of her relationships to her parents (or their relationships to one another).

like. imogen has just come out of the realm of one of the gods that her mother at best really does not like and at worst is happy to slaughter where she chose to trust the image of her mother and got power word stunned and then watched one of her friends kill that same image. and then she sends a message saying "I don’t know where you are or how it’s going, but I love you and I trust you." and the ache of that message being kind, a reminder to her mother that even when she stands at the side of someone imogen has committed to fighting, imogen is also choosing to love and trust her. but the point that imogen not knowing where her mother is or how its going speaks to how little she actually knows of her mother due to liliana's choices -- ones made out of love perhaps, but ones that aren't rectified by the presence of that love. and liliana returns "Imogen, I’m glad you’re okay. I love you, too. I’ve kept him at bay so far and I think he believes me. I think." and between sending's limitations and the improv setting of cr, i'm not resting any arguments or ideas on this occurance, but I Do think it is interesting that liliana spends words saying she's glad imogen is alright but does not return that statement of trust the way she returns the i love you.

and then. much more life ruining to me because of just. less relvin appearances and general . laura bailey sure knows how to make a character that is a daughter to a father reasons. imogen messaging relvin is my superbowl actually. thinking about like 2 episodes ago imogen saying "he's her father, but he's not her daddy" about zathuda, and today, despite all the distance literal and emotional and temporal, imogen starts her message calling relvin daddy.

like i don't know if i can really encapsulate the way that exchance made me feel, just imagine me pointing at the words and gesticulating emphatically but Good God

IMOGEN: Daddy, things are crazy. I love you, no matter what. Thank you for doing your best. RELVIN: Imogen, I think about you a lot. I hope wherever you are, you’re happy. You always were a wanderin’ spirit. Horses miss you as much as I do.

"thank you for doing your best" in a message sent to her father hours after sending a message to her cult-indoctrinated mother who she is choosing to trust is working on her side. who she can't be sure is actually doing her best. do you get it. do you see what i see.

and the fact that one of the first things in the campaign we heard from imogen about her father was that he was probably better off now that she wasn't there, that she figured based on the distance that grew between them, he was probably relieved without her around. and relvin's message tonight rebuting that idea. because he's a reticent man who has probably uttered the words 'i love you' a maximum of 10 times in his life, but he tells her he misses her as much as the horses do, that he hopes she's happy (implies he imagines she is because she was always a wandering spirit -- me choosing not to think about relvin saying he always assumed liliana would leave gelvaan, he just thought he'd go with her) and that he thinks of her often. i can't take it. i can't.

[shaniacsboogara]

...maybe i will 😈

The setting description and the voices Shane was built for this 👏👏

[your-turn-to-role]

thank you for your reply 🥺 idk like I said it felt like I was missing something because it didn't matter what the cast did people were upset with the direction of the story even back when it was revealed the exu trio coming back to explore those characters more to them choosing their group name to honor their friend 😅 it felt like a no win situation and like I've long stopped going into main tags bc there was negativity out of the gate but I was there when cr 2 started and idk it felt like was worse for cr 3? there's this poll going around and last time I checked most people stopped before episode 30 which on top of everything else kind of made me spiral a bit bc like the question of "what is about bh that I enjoy that they just didn't click with others" has been persistent with me! idk I enjoyed it bc they enjoyed it and told the story they wanted and I especially loved imogen and fearne a lot especially seeing how they were in episode 1 vs now. anyway thank you for hearing me out.

yeah of course!

and for what it's worth i am sorry you've had to fight that negativity the whole way through

i can speculate reasons why this one wasn't as loved as previous campaigns but i don't actually have a concrete answer, it probably varies somewhat from person to person, and i only started to see that negativity get hugely concentrated once the endgame god debate started

(and for what it's worth the mighty nein might be the exception here, bc in almost every poll i've seen regardless of what campaign you started with c2 is most people's favourite)

(so if you were seeing less negativity at the start it might just be whatever magnetism they've got going on 😆)

i do think bells hells were fighting an uphill battle here that wasn't quite fair to them, with the references to other campaigns present from the start, which gave them a lot to live up to right off the bat that the other campaigns didn't have, and expectation does a lot to colour someone's opinion of something

but i definitely think they did bring some really strong and cool character concepts to c3! hell the reason i kept following along via tumblr/the wiki even though watching wasn't really in the cards for me for a couple reasons is because i do really like a lot of their characters! and i have a feeling a lot of the negativity is because people also really like the characters, but would have liked to see them be given more focus

and yeah no you are 100% valid to have liked seeing this story play out and imogen and fearne are excellent blorbos to have

[lenakluthor]

u literally said it perfectly w ur tags on that cr poll w how vm and tm9 got multiple arcs but bells hells just had the moon that’s exactly why i lost interest bc it felt like the same thing every episode

right?!?!!! i knew pretty much from the start that they were gearing up for a big crossover event, but i didn’t think it would be at the expense of bell’s hells’ story and character development.

vox machina started at level ten, and we still saw them through several different story arcs. and each character had countless character beats with important development and backstory. they grew, and the audience got to experience that with them.

the same thing happened with the mighty nein– even more so, actually, because they started at like, level three. we, again, saw them through several different story arcs. the characters had meaningful backstory moments that led to a lot of growth. they did SO MUCH.

and then you have bell’s hells. which, for me personally, was SUCH a disappointment, because i think that campaign has some of the most interesting and relatable characters. they had so much POTENTIAL. i fell in love with them all instantly. but they pretty much immediately dove into the moon storyline and any character or backstory moments they had were not fleshed out. they barely had room to breathe because the end of exandria was imminent. which, okay, would’ve been at least some sort of payoff if bell’s hells had saved the day on their own. but they didn’t. they called in vox machina pretty early on and then wanted the mighty nein to go to the moon. and maybe it was still a good payoff in the eleven episodes i have yet to watch, but tbh i doubt it. so, really, what did bell’s hells even do?

i could go on for hours about how disappointed i am with how c3 ended up. i cannot stress enough how much i love the characters (minus a select few). i was so excited and invested in the beginning. i was even excited about the crossover potential at first. but in reality, it just felt rushed with no real emotional payoff. why am i so invested in characters that are essentially going nowhere? they were small fish in a big pond the entire time. and i still have so many unanswered questions about every single character’s backstory.

i’m SAD about it, dude.

[collectionofsinglefathers]

so this one is gonna get a bit more personal than I usually like to get but I have a bad habit of just not talking about my mental health period so like. I don’t know, I guess I wanna try to break that? and also I’ve wanted to in general start posting here more, not specifically about personal stuff but like anything, which is why i’ve been sporadically posting about me writing and stuff like that. but general content warnings, and I’m gonna tag these too so dw, but yeah general content warning up top for depression and anxiety. ALSO, a spoiler warning (which i’ll also put in the tags) for the ending of the first campaign and the third campaign of critical role since this is gonna be centered around that. now I haven’t actually watched the finale of c3, I have avoided literally everything about it so far except for the tailgate stream which i watched almost all of earlier today during my lunch break, but the spoiler warning is more for the earlier Vox Machina centric episodes. and normally, this many years on, I wouldn’t bother putting a spoiler warning for the first campaign, but with the animated show, in case there are new viewers for the campaign or in case there are people who don’t wanna know what happens at the end of c1 because of the animated show, I wanted to make sure I also put a spoiler warning for c1 as well, just to cover all my bases.

NOW. I'm not gonna get into any specific details about my personal struggles, but I have dealt with some level of depression or anxiety for a good portion of my life. the farthest back that I can remember an actual thing where I'm like "oh yeah that was probably depression" is when I was in sixth grade, and for context I'm going to turn 30 this year. there was a time, before I got into CR, where I was both unemployed AND no longer going to school of any kind (college didn't work out for me). in fact, the period of time when I stopped school/was out of work and me getting a job finally was 2 years, and in that time I was NOT in a good place mentally. not in any danger to myself but definitely not doing great. but in that time, I found critical role.

fun fact, I actually found it through a cosplayer I liked on vine at the time. this guy I followed would cosplay as some of the characters, and I had followed them because he also was quite a good singer and I thought he was funny, so when he started posting CR cosplay videos, I looked it up, and that's where I had first discovered it. I watched the first couple of episodes and was HOOKED IMMEDIATELY. I remember, for three weeks straight, it was the only thing I watched as I binged through the first campaign in order to catch up to be current with the campaign (which funnily enough was episode 69). and the character I connected to the most (mostly due to aesthetic if I'm being honest, and also because he was my favorite voice actor at the time) was Vax.

fast forward to the final arc of the first campaign, where they first face off against Vecna, and Vax dies. I remember just laying on my living room floor staring up at the ceiling in absolutely shock and horror at how that fight played out. and obviously, if you have watched c1, you know how that goes for him. he comes back, but temporarily, and is dead dead by the last episode, and I was a WRECK during the c1 finale because of that.

Vax was already my favorite, but when I got to the beginning of the chroma conclave arc, where you see Vax at first really struggling with what they're even doing anymore, to then almost losing his sister and having this insane downward spiral mentally before pulling out of it... It kind of hit a bit close to home for me, because of how much I was also going through it. and watching Vax be able to get out of his own bad place really helped me get out of mine. so when he died at the end of c1, it really fucked me up. not in a way where I was like, upset at the cast or matt or anything like that. but like. c1 is my favorite campaign, but I have never once been able to rewatch or relisten past the briarwood arc because every time I get to the point where keyleth and vax talk at the sun tree about their feelings, I just can't do it. it's far too close to home for me.

now fast forward A LOT OF TIME. to the end of c3. now, I had been in and out of keeping up with c3. not because of me not enjoying it or being frustrated like I've seen other people talk about when it comes to this campaign. it's been because of my mental health, and how I've been dealing with it for the past year, year and a half I'd say. but as the campaign has started to reach a climax to the end, I decided to finally buckle down and get through it because I knew that I wanted to watch it, it was just a matter of DOING IT. and I actually listened to a good amount of this campaign, but when I finally got to the VM episodes, I actually needed to watch. and actually, what I did, it reminded me a lot of when I was binging c1, just in a much shorter amount of time. for an entire weekend, I watched nothing but critical role. and when I got to the last VM episode of this final stretch, when matt put vax's mini on the board after they freed him from the malleus key. I straight up had to pause the episode because I started sobbing. like full on heaving full body sobbing. I was trying so hard to stay quiet because I was so worried that others in my household were going to be worried about me, that's how hard I was crying.

because Vax means a lot to me. he's very, very close to my heart. he will forever live in my mind and my soul. I have a lot of vague ideas for tattoos that I want to eventually get and for a very long time I thought I would want my first one to be a lotr tattoo but I actually thought about it more recently and I want it to actually be the vax tattoo idea I had planned, which was a general idea I had for something to do with raven feathers and snowdrop flowers, and maybe also a dagger. he's really, really important to me. I get emotional just thinking about how important he is to me. I'm emotional right now writing this.

now like I said, I haven't watched the finale to c3 yet. I probably won't fully finish it until some time this weekend cuz. ya know. 8 and a half hours long. but I have been thinking a lot about things that marisha and liam said in that final 4 sided dive, and about things that were said in the cooldown for that last VM episode when they destroyed the malleus key. and I've been trying really really REALLY REALLY hard to not get my hopes up about the possibility of VM being able to keep vax, because I know if I let myself get too hopeful about it and it doesn't happen, it'll fucking WRECK me real bad. but I also know that I'm gonna be fucked up either way so.

I don't know if I'm gonna end up liveblogging me watching the finale. we'll see. either way, I'm definitely gonna be not checking any notifications on here for this post, or any post I might make while watching the finale, just in case someone reads this and decides to be a dick and send me spoilers. but in any case. I just wanted to say all that somewhere, and I don't know if I quite have the courage yet to say ALL of that to someone I actually know (I've already said some of it to my best friend, but not everything).

but that's it. wish me luck, as I am now about to start watching the finale.

[colealexart]

how did you first get into cr?

i can't remember if i've told this story on here before but here we go: i was really into the last of us, especially part 2. it came out just a couple weeks after my grandad died, so i was using that as a way to process my grief. probably not the best idea given the games themes, but hey.

shannon woodward (who plays dina) started streaming on twitch. i regularly watched her and became an active member of her community (and eventually became a mod) and the people in there would talk about this d&d show with ashley johnson and laura bailey that was on every thursday. i tried watching for ashley and laura, but i just wasn't into it. i couldn't really focus on 4-5 hours of people just sitting around a table playing dungeons and dragons (a game i'd never played before and didn't know the rules for.) the thought of having to watch hundreds of hours to catch up was daunting, even though i really really wanted to. i think i made it to episode 3 of campaign 2 and stopped.

a few friends who i gamed with (who are now my best friends) would talk about it constantly, and they eventually convinced me to try again. they told me about the animated recaps and said that the story really kicks off in the 20s so i was like fuck it. i had nothing else to do because we were in the middle of a pandemic, i was still grieving, and i had been looking for a show to put on in the background while i tried to work on my art. (tried being the key word here. i really was ready to give up on my art before i found critical role.)

anyway yeah, i became obsessed. i binged the entirety of campaign 2 in a few months. not only did i find joy in watching them play, but it pulled me out of my grief induced art block and helped me actually like what i was creating again.

i didn't get to watch the finale live, but i did watch it when i'd fully caught up and cried all the way through. i didn't realize just how attached i was to the characters until i didn't have them anymore. in a way, it helped me process my grief for my grandad. if i could say goodbye to them, i could say goodbye to him.

when campaign 3 started, i watched the premiere live but i said that there was no way i could stay up every week to watch it, since it airs at 3am here. i was very wrong lol. getting up at 3am on fridays is my favourite part of the week. and i'm very thankful for finding critical role when i did :)