#the great laudnimogenkaralena debacle of 22

[swashbucklery]

I'm the original anon asking about those ship comparisons and I'm sorry that I even made a response. That other person is getting really defensive.

Also, I clearly misinterpreted your use of your CR tag. Usually I just assume people are posting something with the interest of engaging in discussion. That was an incorrect assumption and I'm sorry.

Hi first anon! So, here's the thing. I actually really liked responding to your ask and having some friendly discussion; thank you for apologizing for your fellow anons' behaviour but it's not your fault.

My deal is like - and I've changed my CR tag because a third anon has emerged to inform me that my posts are showing up in the main tag which I was actively trying to avoid - I enjoy very specific elements of Critical Role in a very particular way only. And I recognize that's not the broader base's way of engaging or enjoying it! I want to talk about it, but only with people that 'get' my way of approaching it - so not exclusive to my dash, but intended to be a conversation with a much smaller group than it ended up being.

For context: I really like D&D! I've played it for years both as a DM and as a player, but my entry point vibes more with The Adventure Zone than with Critical Role, it that makes sense. The player's handbook is a list of Dungeons and Dragons suggestions, and the game that falls out of a DM's interpretation of it can be as serious or as lighthearted as they want but I always prefer lighthearted approaches. The main reasons I haven't picked up CR in the past have been 1) the extremely serious approach Matt takes to DMing and worldbuilding, which isn’t bad but is just not to my taste and 2) the sheer time commitment involved.

The second point is really my biggest hurdle. I’m a healthcare worker offline, and so since 2020 my time for fandom has been extremely limited for obvious reasons. I’ve barely been able to keep up with Supergirl and Legends, which combined are only 86 minutes a week. 3-5 hours of content every week is absolutely impossible for me, let alone catching up on back-episodes.

I started watching the cartoon + the EXU run because I was stuck isolating at home a couple of months ago and needed something to entertain myself since I couldn’t go anywhere. I liked the fact that the cartoon kept the bones of the C1 mythology but broke it down into a vastly shorter format. I also really loved EXU because it had a different DM. Aabriya works much much better for me; I love her approach to running a game and I liked Matt a lot better as a player than I do as a DM. I also loved the tighter plotting and worldbuilding for the EXU + EXU: Khymal runs, and the casting left out some of the players from the core cast that I don’t love which also helped me get more into it. I want to talk about EXU all fucking day and I wish it was its own fandom separate from CR; I see why it’s not because from the broader CR fandom perspective it’s a footnote but 42 hours of time for an entire story is so much more manageable than 230940843 hours or whatever it ends up being for a full campaign.

I have been slowly tiptoeing through C3; I was enjoying it at first but am starting to find it a bit of a slog because the pacing and vibe is just - I want it to be EXU and it’s not and that’s fine but it’s less my thing, which makes me sad. I’m mostly watching for Dorian because I want to fill in the story and mythology gaps between EXU and EXU Khymal and then write a ton of really fun and weird fanfiction. But Laudna and Imogen are sweet at least up to ep6, and I’d like to talk about them bc there’s meat there - although I think I’m a lot more interested in Laudna + daydreaming about how much I want Laudna to hang out with the Crown Keepers than I am in Imogen, tbh.

So it’s not that I don’t want to talk, it’s just that I’m really aware and up front about the fact that this fandom probably isn’t going to be for me; especially not if there’s an expectation that I’m current on canon to participate. I’m not going to be able to keep up with 4 hours of content a week, and I know that as C3 continues to air I’m going to get even more behind because the time investment is just not something I can arrange my life to manage. So I’m actually making a real effort to keep my discussion to circles where people kind of know that about my approach to CR and are not going to tell me to come back when I’ve seen all of the episodes, is really more my perspective.