#tlovm thoughts

[curapicas]

It's so fucking funny that Orthax is on nickname basis with Percival ("we had a deal, Percy"), meanwhile Percy didn't even hear when Orthax said their name in season 1, lmao

[shorthaltsjester]

tlovm interviews with sam and travis constantly talking about wanting to shock campaign viewers. if you are shocking people who have spent 500 hours with the characters. maybe that isn't strong writing. it can be fun entertainment don't get me wrong. but not what i'd call strong writing. and i'm not saying that the audience knows the characters or the world better than the creators, but I am saying that the way the tlovm team talks about shock/surprise-based choices in the writers room isn't particularly heartening or indicative of character-focused writing. which yk i get the suspicion that writing isn't the top of the priority for tlovm and that's up to them. the animation is stunning, the score is beautiful, the voice acting is obviously phenomenal. this is just me being sad that tlovm is not something I would still have any interest in at all if i was not already in love with the characters.

[blorbologist]

[ohnohelpitsagain]

i need to talk about vex and percy and why their episode three arc made me cry genuine, real tears (not kidding, tears left my eyeballs and like, it made my tummy ache)

vex is a bad omen, she thinks. her love for anyone is ruinous for them and she genuinely views herself as unlovable. the closer someone gets to her heart, the more likely they are to see that there is something wrong with her and they will reap the negative consequences of that. there’s something sick in her and sooner or later it will rear its head, so she might as well beat it to that.

percy loves her regardless and he makes that clear to her. he doesn’t insist that she is wrong when she admits this because he wants her to understand that even if any of what she said was true? he would feel exactly the same.

he loves her intensely, deeply and he also sees that she is truly terrified and he respects her wishes. he doesn’t fault her for her inability to reciprocate the way he wants in that moment

vex is someone who thinks she is hard to love.

percy cannot think of anything easier.

like, there is nothing righter in this world than the woman he loves.

so yes she cannot say what he wants to hear. it hurts, it isn’t easy, it has every hallmark of a situation that would breed frustration but he still holds her.

percy does not ONCE get visibly or verbally frustrated with her even with the fact that she’s (in my opinion, very intentionally) pushing him away by being dismissive and a little bit of a jerk when they first set up camp and talk. because ultimately, despite vex’s insistence that she can’t love him (and that she cannot be loved), percy sees her and treats her as someone deserving of gentleness and understanding.

she deserves to feel safe, she deserves to feel heard and she deserves to be listened to and that would be true even if she didn’t reciprocate his feelings the way he wanted her to.

[kymal]

[your-turn-to-role]

so in the original campaign percy was only dead for a day and vm killed ripley pretty quickly, meaning the old fans are just as in the dark about what's gonna happen next with them as the new fans!

but as a balm to everything that happened this week i wanna post the original scene immediately following percy's resurrection, because it's a cute character moment on multiple people's part

[sun-marie]

"Tempting, though."

[andi-o-geyser]

he is so so sexy with his bisexual swag, archangel raven wings, and tendency to throw daggers at peoples' throats

[dol--blathanna]

I have mixed feelings about Zerxus in season 3 of TLOVM, but I’ve gotta say hearing him give a Totally Unbiased Account of EXU: Calamity with Definitely No Omissions Whatsoever was kind of funny. Like “ooh I thought I could count on my friends….they condemned our civilisation….” Ok Zerxus. Buddy. Last time I checked, Nydas was actually the only one trying to stop Laerryn from blighting the tree. You sat there like a chump and did not help whatsoever. And uh. “They condemned our civilisation with their hubris” ummm pal I think you’re missing an important detail there. Like yes the point of EXU: Calamity is that everyone played a role in the disaster, everyone was responsible in some ways for that ship crashing into the iceberg, but uh. Zerxus I think some people were maybe a little more responsible than others. Like, for example, the certain someone who pulled the Lord of the Hells into Exandria. I think that individual’s hubris is maaaaaybe a little bit more important than some of the other hubris on the table here.

And like, this isn’t me bashing the writing, I think it is in-character for TLOVM!Zerxus to say this, since he’s been a jaded miserable devil for a thousand years. But omg when he had the CHEEK to be like “in the chaos I found myself face-to-face with the Lord of Torment himself” like EXCUSE ME??? Buddy you just happened to “find yourself” face-to-face with Asmodeus huh??? Just coincidentally, on accident??? You were just taking a stroll around Avalir and he ran into you without warning??

Zerxus. Please. Be serious for a moment. Would you like to explain to Pike the exact circumstances of HOW you found yourself face-to-face with Asmodeus, hmmmmm? A certain “pulling Asmodeus through the tree and unleashing him upon the world” situation?

Like, I know it was meant to be a serious moment with lots of Calamity-related hype but like, it was really giving “Girl what were YOU doing at the devil’s sacrament” energy. In the most literal way possible

[mara-phelion]

thinking about how vox machina to bells hells is what kima and allura were to vox machina

[spectral-musette]

With apologies to Down With Love (2003) and The Legend of Vox Machina (2022-?)

[curapicas]

Lots to say about Vex's attachment issues. So instead I'll point out: THAT is indeed the face of a man who just found out the guardian angel that took a bullet for him won't put a ring on it

[romancemedia]

At the start of the season, Trinket was not a shipper for Vex and Percy's romance and was jealous seeing them together...

Now look at him. He's cuddling up to Percy as he's helping him walk and all three are cuddling up together. They are all one big happy family now.

[quijotine]

I don't know how it unfolds in the live play but I keep thinking how wild it was that vex thought she and percy were being so clever hiding their relationship from the rest of the party when THEY ALL KNEW.

love that she used them as a thinly veiled excuse like, "oh noo but what will they think, they'll be distracted, and my brother will be so mad, oh noo" like. miss girl, allura knows. cassandra knows. the party knows. YOUR VERY BROTHER HAD THE 'YOU BETTER TAKE CARE OF HER' TALK WITH YOUR MANS, BUTT NAKED. THEY ALL HEARD YOU GOING AT IT IN SCANLAN'S CHATEAU. IN WHITESTONE. IN LITERALLY ANYTHING THAT LENDS ITSELF AS A SURFACE. PLEASE. I BEG.

[stardustedknuckles]

It's looking like there's a growing divide between Campaign watchers and Tlovm watchers in terms of like. We're here for the characters. 12-episode seasons aren't. They can't be. I'm already making peace with everything we'll lose in the Mighty Nein show, and I know I will enjoy it for what it is but I also know that almost nothing that made the story so special will translate to the screen, because turning it into a show automatically means (in this day and age) that plot must be the number one priority. They've already come out and told us it's going to be different, the characters we know and love but new stories.

Because that's how this has to work. And I feel bad for campaign one lovers, because while it is certainly the easier of the two to translate to a big, overarching story, even though it's a more "traditional" high fantasy story with easier archetypal characters, the archetypes and the plot aren't what cemented most people's love for the campaign. So much of the love for critical role is stored in the interpersonal dynamics and the payoff that comes from hundreds of hours of tiny interactions that one day become cornerstones of development and even affect or dictate the plot.

There's no room for that. There's no room for Bard's Lament in a story that cannot afford to remove and replace a main character. A lot of tlovm is for people who have been here for all of campaign one. Most of it, however, isn't. It's for a new crowd. While CR may have creative control, you can bet your ass that there were months and years devoted to figuring out how to map a character-focused love of the show into a plot that hits the right beats to be viable in the show market.

And it worked. Tlovm has consistently high viewing numbers, and its popularity has brought and will continue to bring new people into the universe who have never interacted with CR previously. That's not a bad thing - imagine finishing your favorite show and discovering it has another FIVE HUNDRED HOURS of the equivalent of behind the scenes content. That's incredible for these newcomers. But man, it is in many ways a loss for us.

[last-of-the-lot]

One thing I find funny about the assembly scene we got in the recent batch of episodes.

All of us saw the fucker with a beard and pulled one of these

Instantly.

We are united in our hatred of that man. Even if he isn't that man.