#sorry this got off track and i’m certain i’ve said msot if not all of this in pieces else where but GOD

[shorthaltsjester]

you hit the nail on the head with my issues on their failure to address the groups dynamic with scanlan, bc the show paints it that the group still not caring much for scanlan isn’t even an issue, when all the other characters have had these moments of the group rallying behind them during their struggles, scanlan is just kinda left with “now i finally matter bc i have real family” and that’s kinda it?

and i think the vax and scanlan dynamic suffers greatly from this too bc literally last season ended with vax admitting he didn’t believe in scanlan (“i thought you’d run back there”) while scanlan stayed bc HE believed in VAX (“i don’t believe in that matron stuff but you do and i believe in you”) yet this season just reinforces that with no payoff. vax’s only acknowledgement of scanlan was “you’re rather quiet back me up here” and that’s IT, the group as a whole had a bigger reaction to keyleth and vax kissing than scanlan returning from his coma to help😭

i never expected bard’s lament to go exactly how it did on stream nor did i expect scanlan to fully even blow up at the group but my issue is that even if we’re exclusively looking at the show’s writing w/o c1 knowledge, they focus heavily on the development of scanlan’s devotion, that he starts off selfish and becomes someone who feels a sense of devotion and responsibility to multiple people, despite having this underlying feeling that no one cares for him and he doesn’t matter. and that arc and growth has been really amazing to see, but then why have all that development over 3 seasons if over half the people he’s become devoted to STILL don’t view him in a similar light? hell even him opening up about that a LITTLE bit was just used as an immediate transition to keyleth and vax announcing they’re going for keyleth’s aramente… anyway SORRY FOR RAMBLING IN YOUR INBOX and who knows what’s to come with season 4 but i just think it’s a lil ironic that the character who’s had built up self worth issues over feeling overlooked was just… extremely overlooked in the very arc that was supposed to address it.

oh anon. yeah yeah big agree to everythigg bc said . yeah . please do not apologize for rambling in my inbox it’s so very welcome (the delay in response is because sometimes i forget this thing exists and notifications are not friends of mine so apologies for That).

but no like. truly as my criticisms have grown for tlovm re: the reliance on a pre-existing care for the story being told even if you do not have pre-existing knowledge of the story itself for audience buy-in, scanlan has long been a strong rebuttal to my concerns about what the cost of a required lack of character depth might be in a story like tlovm where character depth is integral to the themes and the plot. because like you mention season 1 and 2 really do the work of setting up scanlan and all his flaws and his dynamic in the group and his inability to be genuine with them and the pain he therefore can’t really unpack With them. and then s3, in emphasizing so much the kaylie and scanlan dynamic, kind of loses sight (or maybe. gains sight — but i’ll get to that in a sec) of scanlan’s motivation for favouring kaylie so strongly over vox machina even in a time of turmoil (e.g., seeking her out rather than sticking with the group before whitestone — while he didn’t know about the attack, he Did know they were in the middle of Very Short Timeline End Of Dragon Fighting Urgency, his comment at the end of the season that kaylie is his Real family). and it also doesn’t use the group’s recognition of the fact that kaylie is this powerful force for scanlan at all since they don’t even know about kaylie until half way through the season and most of them don’t even get lines about the fact that scanlan is in a coma at all so. picking battles ig.

idk man it’s like. yeah i also didn’t expect a 1-for-1 bards lament and i actually agree with the sentiment that a perfectly written vox machina adaptation might not have any bards lament moment at all, but given the two seasons of character writing setting up the very same issues that amounted to bards lament in the campaign, there was a requirement for some release of that tension for a story that i would call well done, and, well. we got a calm and collected scene. for the sake of a happy and satisfying ending. in the vox machina show. yknow. based on a campaign notorious for its happy ending.

time doesn’t exist and i can’t remember if this ask was sent before or after the round table from my personal hell where sam explicitly said that most if not all of the scanlan and kaylie scenes were rewritten After Recording because it wasn’t until then that they’d realized what scanlan’s motivations were . that paired with the tlovm team talking about wanting to avoid cliffhangers at the end of s3 so not having bards lament but then still including a cliff hanger with the whispered one stuff. i will always enjoy tlovm because those are my blorbos made real with animation but. sometimes they are Not my blorbos sometimes they are bad iterations of them. it doesn’t matter that their creators are in the writers room if every messy part of the characters that make them compelling and humanizes them have been reduced until easy to swallow and wrap up with conveniently satisfactory end-of-season beats. i won’t call it objectively bad character writing (but i think it is) but i will say it has been extremely hard to get my non-critter/dnd friends who tend to enjoy stories for the characters in them to enjoy tlovm, since they almost always lose interest in characters they see as fairly flat with occasional bursts of depth that just highlight how flat they appear otherwise, and most of those friends have identified scanlan as a high point of the character writing. which is maybe why i find the choices around his arc deflation the most :/-inducing