#vax'ildan

[jadequarze]

I'm so normal for the twinsies urgh

[ahsoka-livesxxx]

I love it when they sit together and Marisha's complete lack of spatial awareness, which ended up turning into a bit where they just hit each other.

[bloodinmymilkshake]

I bought a laptop and procrastinated my entire weekend playing The Sims. And of course, the first thing I did was create Percy and Vax.

For now, they both live with their sisters. They met when Vax broke into Percy's house to find out his family's dark secrets, and Percy came home from work and Vax did nothing better than say hello and introduce himself. After that, they went on a date and were completely smitten with each other.

[galacticjonah]

And that's a wrap on my official VM art!

I am still so so amazed by all of this.

We have truly come full circle: It was art of Vax that first made me watch CR and now here we are years later, me drawing official Vax?!Thanks for all the intense critter support over the years, folks < 3

[aspiringsophrosyne]

TLOVM, Group Dynamics and Theming

One thing about TLOVM that I’ve seen CR fans bothered by is that the Vox Machina of the show is more tight-knit co-workers than a family.

Here’s the thing: in the stream, aren't Vox Machina more tight-knit co-workers than family?

Most of Vox Machina are oil and water. They don’t blend. They’re individual archetypes: the box in the basement full of old action figures from different TV shows.

Does that mean the stream didn't have incredible gags and heartfelt talks between various pairs in the group? Nope. Does that mean at the end of the Campaign we didn't get a group of people willing to literally go to hell and back for each other? Also nope.

Just...well...did they have the varied yet consistent character dynamics that later groups did? At the very least, to the same degree?

Scanlan and Keyleth would absolutely die for each other...but what would they talk about?

On that score, TLOVM isn't that disloyal to the original.

And that's not a knock on Vox Machina or their campaign! It’s just how Critical Role has evolved. What did the stream have going into Campaign 2 that it didn’t beforehand? Hindsight, which let them build the Nein (and later the Hells) differently. It let the players mold their characters—and Matt his story—around a cohesive theme.

Something Campaign 1—as great as it was—didn’t start with.

However, going into TLOVM, the CRew had hindsight, didn’t they? Couldn’t they have found commonalities between characters and built Animated Vox Machina around a theme like CR did with their successors? And then use that to integrate a wider range of interparty interactions?

I’m an unprofessional doofus operating far away from the pressures, time constraints, and demands of professional scriptwriting…. but I’ll take a crack at it:

Becoming the Mask, You Are Better Than You Think You Are, and Dare to be Badass.

(Light spoilers for TLOVM from here on out.)

Concept: we meet our protagonists right after they’ve saved Uriel and defeated the Glabrazu. The show builds VM up to be these strong, competent, heroic, unparalleled heroes who just saved the kingdom. But as soon as VM’s alone…

“They think we’re heroes!! We just stumbled ass backward into all this by accident! The fuck do we do now!?”

(Basically, take the Rocks Fall Everyone Dies sequence from the start of the first episode, apply it nonlethally to VM and draw it out a little more.)

What they hear from this point on: “The Briarwoods are evil? Well, surely heroes such as you can put a stop to whatever wickedness they’re committing, right?” And then later: “You saved the kingdom and defeated the Briarwoods; surely you can take care of these four dragons, right?”

The overall story: a gaggle of rag-tag fuckups who are mistaken for heroes must keep pretending to be the real thing, and in the process become the real thing.

Go full The Road to El Dorado in this bitch.

Imposter syndrome and perceived inadequacy work beautifully as a common thread for multiple members:

Percy was never supposed to lead.

Vex and Vax are considered mistakes.

Pike’s family has an unsavory past.

Grog was the runt that was left for dead.

Keyleth’s trying to pass the test her mother failed.

Scanlan is the odd one out, bursting with almost undeserved bravado… until Kaylie shows up. Then it’s a question of, can this gnome, who’s only ever been good at putting on a show, learn emotional sincerity?

No matter how disparate the members of Vox Machina may be, what does this guarantee? That they all have one thing in common. They all come from vastly different backgrounds and have vastly different perspectives, but what can they all commiserate over?

Not feeling good enough.

This, in turn, makes it easier to bring in gags from the stream and build on less prominent intergroup relationships.

And this was the Nein’s advantage. As crazily different as each member was, what did they have in common? They all struggled with identity and self-image. This allowed them to form sub-groups that had unique dynamics distinct from the Nein's overall group dynamic. Character pairs could bond over that commonality.

What do we get, taking this tack with the show? We don't just give Vox Machina that same advantage, we give it from the opposite angle. TLOVM’s story is now about living up to heroic expectations to Become The Mask. This is a fabulous lead into a potential Nein series, because their story is about dropping the mask and Being Yourself.

What does this do? As both series come out, it highlights the contrast between groups and makes for a real one-two-punch.

And as a nice little bonus...

This could've brought in some real-life subtext. A joy unique to Campaign 1 is watching the cast look around at each other throughout and go “Holy shit, we can go that hard?”

Marisha’s tree dream, Taliesin’s No Mercy Percy, Liam’s speech when Vax was at the mercy of the Briarwoods…all these moments and more had everyone at the table speechless, picking up on their potential; starting to imagine how hard they could go with these characters.

And the idea of Vox Machina themselves learning to take that same leap of faith, I feel, would’ve been really cool.

[yudol-skorbi]

its forever missing the twins time again :(

[counterspelling]

Endless TLOVM

[kyo-mei]

Twinsies

reference:

Liam and Laura laughing at Matt's brain fart in C3 E106

[brokenphalange]

Critical Role characters live in my head rent free. In this economy? I should start making them pay for the space or something.

[septembermonologues]

just yesterday i was thinking about how matt mentioned that vex keeps a black feather in her hair instead of blue when bells hells first met her again and now i'm finding out that vax has three blue feathers on one of his wings...... they keep finding new ways to make the twins more devastating.

[song-of-baldy-ron]

Imagine being imprisoned and tortured in an orb for weeks after having died and served the god of death for decades only to suddenly come to consciousness and seeing that one of your closest friends is inexplicably a centaur now

[erandraws]

All three Liam O’Brien romances??? ending happily??? in this economy??

[elleskinner-justart]

A little Vaxleth art because my wife is at the live show rn and I have Critical Role on the brain.

I personally love a strong lady with a delicate lad so my interpretation of this ship is going to have a bias ;)

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patreon | kofi

[fairymonk]

Percy's Walk of Shame

[gwynrieldreams]

Vaxleth picrew

[isvaxstillanorb]