#which is something I didn’t experience with m9 or VM

[vethbrenatto]

.

[mimymomo]

Great idea: Beauyasha Wedding Oneshot!

Alternative to said great idea: BEAUYASHA PROPOSAL ONESHOT!

I know lots of Beauyasha stans want a wedding oneshot but personally I think that since the CR cast already did a wedding storyline in the VM Dalen’s Closet oneshot and that would kinda feel too similar, instead of a Beauyasha wedding, they could do a oneshot where as a subplot, Beau is trying to decide if and how she wants to propose to Yasha and the rest of the M9 is trying to help her!!!

Think about it: set maybe 2-4 years in the future, all of the M9 decide convene for the anniversary of them meeting for the first time (or defeating Lucien/Aeor idk doesn’t matter) and while hanging out Jester starts asking Beau how things are going with Yasha, but people start noticing something is off with Beau and she’s acting really weird. The M9, especially Jester and Veth, try to figure out what’s up and it’s revealed that Beau is actually thinking about proposing to Yasha and confesses that she wants to get married, start a family, etc. all that other mushy stuff that she’d never thought she’d ever want/get to have. (What if at the same time, Beau is terrified to ask Yasha because she’s convinced herself that Yasha would take it as her trying to replace Zuala and would say no? In reality, it’s just Beau struggling to believe that she deserves Yasha/that she’ll end up alone (she’s overthinking everything and being insecure about her self-worth. (Yes I’m being angsty, sue me)).

So for a good portion of the oneshot, even sometimes during the main plot, it’s just Jester and Veth (and let’s be real, the rest of the M9 would get involved as well) trying to “subtly” get Yasha and Beau to propose/engaged. Imagine all the crazy hijinks and conversations that scenario would create!! (I just keep picturing a scene where Veth/Caduceus have a convo with Beau about healthy relationships (since Beau didn’t grow up with any) and tell her she deserves to be happy and that she should be honest with Yasha/Caleb and FjordJester stumbling through a conversation with Yasha to see how see feels and then my heart goes 🥺😭).

And for like the actual “main plot,” we could have the Hag Jester tricked plus the dick hand lady from TravelerCon come back for revenge (I imagine the lady discovered the hag while trying to get glue off her hands and tells the hag she wants revenge or something and the hag figures out that it’s the same group that screwed her over and they decide to team up) and the M9 has to stop them. And as consequences for what they’ve done, she curses them to experience some of their worse fears (which could be like Veth’s curse comes back, Jester could struggle to her hands, Beau could end up isolated from the group for a bit, idk). The possibilities are endless!

And like before the climatic final battle, Beau does end up proposing but not really cause she does it by asking Yasha if she would marry her as an awkward hypothetical question:

“Let’s say, someone ask you if you’d married her, shoot no I mean them! Them! What would you say?”

“Are you asking me or...?”

“I mean-”

“Because, I mean, if it was you then I would say yes. Hypothetically of course!”

And that somehow ends up with them planning their “hypothetical” wedding! So then at the end once everything is over, Beau actually does propose to Yasha! It’s not anything big or drastic; it’s weird, and awkward and goofy. It’s beautifully Beauyasha and it’s perfect!

This is dumb idea (I’m no Matt Mercer) and I definitely wouldn’t mind having a Beauyasha wedding oneshot, but this has been plaguing my mind for days and I just miss Beauyasha/the M9 a lot!!!

[stormbow]

How to get your CR friends into Hermitcraft:

Do they like Jester? Show them Stress

Do they like Beau/Vex/Marisha in general? Show them Cleo

Do they like and miss Viktor? Show them Zedaph or Mumbo

Do they like Percy/Molly/Caduceus? Taliesin in general? Show them Joe Hills, they're probably a similar eldritch/fae species

Do they miss the way Matt weaves his worlds? Show them Ren

Do they miss Matt's maps? Show them Scar

Do they like Sam and his feral gremlin energy? Show them Grian

Do they like Keyleth? Show them Gem and Pearl

You got anymore ideas? Ik you probably have some followers who're only here for CR and I'm in a propaganda mood

oh boy i definitely love this a lot! it is a definitely a very similar vibe, but my first recomendation would be:

are you into rp shows and want a series with similar vibes that can introduce you to a lot of hermits and wonderful ccs in the myct world? try 3rd life.

3rd life is an amazing bridge between the two shows (not only CR, any other rp heavy show also as they have the same premise) because you get to experience:

grian being grian which is the spiritual son of jester and veth

smajor and solidarity being just two husbands being husbands aka what we would have like to get from the shadowgast epilogue and /better/

bdubs. just... him. have you watched honey heist (1/2) and lost it with the two bros played by liam and taliesin? boy do i have the cc exactly for you.

impulse and tango relationship, even if explored a /lot/ different in 3rd life, reminds me a lot of fjord and molly's relationship in the weird good kind of way.

rendog and his whole rp masterpiece with inthelittlewoods is definitely matt!boss fight energy right there

and scar not only has great maps it has the chaotic and murderous energy of grog on suude.

but members of hermitcraft similarities? oh i have a lot of ideas

do you have the hots for beau and/or yasha? or maybe vex? have at it with false, the woman that makes me think for 3 hours that i could be bi after all

do you love matt's maps but scar's pace is not of your liking (hey, we all have different tastes)? try bdubs, or keralis, or xisuma!

do you like liam's characters (and himself) in any way, shape, or form? etho and doc may be right up your alley.

are your favourite scenes the ones where either VM or M9 plan something and it the plan goes to shit in about 10 seconds? ZIT team baby.

or maybe your favourite episode and character was sprigg, played by darin de paul, because i know that's mine! also similar if you like caduceus clay, nila, or shakäste: consider checking TFC out. i just can't recommend him enough.

do you absolutely live for laura's sexual innuendos in any situation? again, recommending keralis, rendog and/or doc. if you make a combination of either of these (or all) three of these hermits, you get the chaos crew x 1000.

do you absolutely adore grog? did you cry a little inside because we didn't get to experience himbo!verin? -points at mumbo- just go, he has one braincell and only uses it for redstone. sometimes.

is gilmore your favourite character? i know you're out there. go watch iskall and rejoice.

i'll shut up now because that was a lot but... yeah. definitely cr fans should check up hermitcraft because it's not exactly rp, but you can have livestreams that go double the time the amount of time we consume in a thursday... but b*tch we have a WHOLE WEEKEND.

[cranesofibycus]

a collection of CR headcanons

A week ago I asked for 29 Critical Role headcanons for my 29th birthday. I got 33. Thank you all so much for sending them in, they made that day such a good one. I thought I’d share the joy, so here they are! 

Jester

At some point, for funsies, Artagan tied Sprinkle's life force to Jester's, so the weasel has her hitpoints (@iisuikyouii)

Jester's Spiritual Guardians make tiny rainbow poops. (@kaarchin)

Post-campaign, Jester writes her own wildly successful smutty romance novel. (@the-littlest-goblin)

Sprinkle is just the tiniest bit magical. I don’t know how or what kind of magic, but he is. (@the-littlest-goblin)

Jester is much older than we all think. (anonymous)

Beau

Years in the future, teenage TJ runs away from home to visit Beau at the Zadash Cobalt Soul. He ends up going back eventually but they have a very nice bonding weekend where she teaches him how to throw a proper punch and tells him he doesn’t have to take over the family business if he doesn’t want to. (@the-littlest-goblin)

At some point when she’s much older Beau will need reading glasses but she will refuse to wear them, much to Caleb’s annoyance. She will place books on the other side of the table in the library and squint really hard “SEE, I DON’T NEED GLASSES. THIS IS FINE” (anonymous)

Veth

Veth loves being back in her halfling body but sometimes she misses the freedom of being seen as a feral goblin and getting away with all kinds of “nasty” behavior. (anonymous)

Luc has a level in rogue by the time he’s ten. (@the-littlest-goblin)

Veth taught Caleb how to braid her hair so now it has become their morning ritual. (anonymous)

Caleb

Caleb's mom had a difficult pregnancy and birth, which is why he's an only child in a farming community (@iisuikyouii)

Caleb is like 5'4" and the only people in the group shorter than him is Veth and somehow miraculously Jester by like half an inch (@ishti-ishti)

When the blumendrei were at school, whenever Astrid and Caleb went on dates Eodwulf would end up going with them and it was just a thing, because they didn’t realize they were in a polycule. (anonymous)

There is a librarian at the Soltryce Academy who often wonders what happened to the kind, blue-eyed, red-haired boy who ran about the stacks, piled books high on his table like The Candles of the Shimmerward. A stronghold of a mind sat in their shadows, but awe, wonder, and ambition showed on his face. He'd leave, often in the company of 2 of his classmates. That made the librarian happiest. A mind like that belonged in the light. (@swagsolidarity)

Caduceus

Caduceus cooking for people to bring them closer together is something he picked up from his Aunt, and is one of those "third kid" gifts - something for him to stand after Colton and Calliope. (@iisuikyouii)

Caduceus Clay is aro ace!! (anonymous)

Caduceus has secret therapy sessions with Sprinkle. (anonymous)

Fjord

Sabien is Fjord’s former lover and that’s part of the reason he’s desperate to find him. (anonymous)

If Fjord had made it to the Soltryce Academy he would’ve become Trent’s newest pet-experiment, possibly training with Eodwulf (anonymous)

Fjord is not from Wildemount (but he’s not an alien either lol) (anonymous)

Yasha

Yasha actually has a lovely singing voice and a knack for music and her low performance score is because she sings too quietly for anyone to hear and she makes really weird and off-putting faces when she's focusing on an instrument. (anonymous)

Zuala made the first move with Yasha, because Yasha was as horribly awkward with her as she is now with Beau. (@the-littlest-goblin)

Molly

Lucien/Molly has at least some recollection of his time as Molly, and the Tomb Takers have hired the Bad-Luck Bandits to aid them at this time. (@cattatra)

Vox Machina

After c1, Percy and Keyleth get a set of mirrors enchanted so they can have fantasy facetime chats whenever. His hangs above his desk so she can see him and out to the grounds through the window. She takes hers on walks while they chat and shows him the gardens or her sun tree, or sometimes they just kinda virtually hang out while they work. (@a-case-for-wonder)

I can imagine Keyleth and Caduceus hitting it off and becoming nature-loving buddies that meet up for tea (taking my wholesome headcanon and making it kinda sad: they're both much more long-lived than their parties so they can take solace in each other) (@flowersforvex)

Misc

The big bad end boss is Tharizdun; we are SO not done with that guy yet and since two the shackles are in Rexxentrum and Whitestone it actually makes sense that VM might be occupied elsewhere while we see the MN's point of view. (@flowersforvex)

Yussa is a client of Marion's, but he also has agoraphobia so they're erotic pen pals. That bathtub was his gift to her. (@swordshapedleaves)

The gods walk among Exandria. (@alan713ch) 

If Essek ever gets the option to be consecuted he refuses since he never wants to live without the M9 and he knows already he'll be doing that for at least 1000 years and he doesn’t vibe with it. (@adira-trek)

Essek is ace (@the-littlest-goblin)

Reani and Fen do eventually get married.  (@the-littlest-goblin)

The housekeeper that the m9 hired basically moved into the Xhorhaus and has been living it up there rent-free. One time Essek went by and found her chilling on the rooftop garden. (@the-littlest-goblin)

Everyone in the m9 is either autistic or has ADHD or both. (@rwbypro)

[utilitycaster]

among the m9, which characters have had your fav arcs?

Hi anon! Good question, and one with answers that I’m sure will change in the future because obviously all arcs are ongoing but some are in a less resolved place than others.

I think I like Fjord and Beau’s arcs the most now, just because while they’re both still learning and growing and there’s a lot of room for things to change, their growth from teh beginning has been the most apparent to me.

Fjord has been learning to be more honest, to trust the party more, to be more understanding of others, to relinquish control and to find some power within himself and from a positive influence rather than, you know, an insatiable sea monster. I’ve always liked him as a character, even when he was (ironically enough) losing to his control issues during the pirate arc, but he’s made so much progress.

Beau, similarly, has been able to show affection and to actually care about something. I don’t think she ever truly wanted to only make a lot of money and drink a lot of booze (and one of my favorite empire siblings conversations is Caleb saying as much to her), but I do think she didn’t entirely know what she wanted to do, only what she didn’t want to do, and now she’s found a purpose and a family. And she still is working through a lot and recently hit an incredibly low spot (which is realistic - even when people recovering from childhood trauma are doing significantly better as adults sometimes they hit an age milestone or have a specific experience and realize they never thought they’d make it this far and it triggers a whole bunch of issues all over again) but she’s getting through it.

I like everyone’s arc but like, we’re right in the middle of it for both Jester and Caduceus and it’s hard to judge right now. Nott’s arc is possibly the most fascinating but that’s precisely because it’s so in flux and she canonically has no idea what’s next for her, and Caleb has improved drastically in his own way since the beginning and Rexentruum went far better than I thought it would, but everything is so deep under the surface for him that I don’t think I quite know where he’s at - like, he can tell Beau you can’t change the past, but I don’t know if he’s able to follow his own advice. And Yasha is similarly getting over massive trauma and we haven’t revisited her story when she was under control.

(that said the arc of Nott revealing her story and reuniting with Yeza is a mini-favorite, if you will).

L11 is considered mechanically a milestone level (by which I mean the difference between a 9th and 10th level character exists but isn’t huge; but 10th to 11th is a pretty significant jump). It’s the start of the journey from regional fame to hero of the realm (think VM at the start of Briarwoods to VM during the Chroma Conclave) and I think the story as it is reflects that sense of being at the precipice of greatness. So ask me again when they hit L13 or 14, and I might have new answers.

[loquaciousquark]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E49 (Jan. 29, 2019)

Hey hey hey, we’re on the internet! Filling in for @eponymous-rose​, it’s time to fake my way through a Talks without having quite caught up yet. What could possibly go wrong?

Tonight’s guests: Sam Riegel & Liam O’Brien!

Announcements: The second season of Between the Sheets debuted last night, ft. everyone’s friend Bobby. It’ll be on Youtube tomorrow morning & is already on the CR Twitch. Next week will feature cinematographer Quyen Tran (aka Sam’s wife!)! Everyone agrees Sam married up. It’ll air Monday night on the CR Twitch.

And now, episode 49: A Game of Names

Brian comes back prefacing some comment with a mention that Matt names the episodes, which Sam immediately derails because he thought Taliesin named them. Poor Matt.

CR Stats: The M9 have cast Disguise Self 97 times. Liam: “What a bunch of lying motherfuckers!” 20 were by Nott; 17 were by Caleb.

Sam’s found it interesting that his in-game persona has been a bit of a facade, but Nott as a character is in an in-between place between who she was and who Nott purports to be. “It might be weird to be called Veth, actually, because it’s just not in the course of her experience in the last couple years. She’s gotten used to the name if not the body.”

Caleb doesn’t like to think about Bren or the old self that came with it; he winged the name “Caleb” the moment he met Nott, but now he has a lot of good memories associated with that name. Brian asks if it was a name of someone from his past; Liam points out you can always retcon anything. Sam’s surprised it was the day he met Nott; Liam says he’d actually been using different names everywhere he went, and Caleb happened to be the one that happened to keep being used by people he never left.

Sam and Liam goggle that they both picked characters with false (very similar) names, that their questlines are so accidentally intertwined, and that they’re so linked despite the fact that they’d decided they’d traveled together right before the first show. Sam wonders who else has fake names.

“Nott the Brave” and “Veth Brenatto” being anagrammed was a purposeful decision out of an accident. He was originally going to be Vix off a gag he made in Campaign 1 re: Vex & Vax, but decided he’d better scrap it & just go with a V name instead as homage. He created the anagrammed names together (without the help of a fantasy name generator, he points out).

Everyone thinks Fjord still has secrets to reveal. “What if it’s Ferrrd?” “What if it’s Fred?”

The water issue for Nott grew out organically in the game. He knew she’d been turned into a goblin (and assumed she’d been killed in the process), but wasn’t sure exactly how she’d died until a few months into the campaign. Then he emailed Matt and asked if it was okay if the way Nott had died had been by drowning, and Matt said, “Yep!”

Liam agonizes over the fact that they all can email Matt, asking if something can be added to character history based on how plots are going in-game, only for him to say “Yes!” and then be silent for six months before walloping someone over the head with a barbed-wire bat. Ha!

Liam reminds everyone that Caleb canonically does not know Beau’s last name. Liam knew it and was talking in third person (even though it was in an accent). It was not meant to be metagamed knowledge.

Liam was surprised by the “Fuck him!” comment but was not surprised Nott had had something chambered, so out of game he recognized this was the beginning of Nott’s story & was ready for it. Caleb still feels like he’s walking a tightrope and juggling plates, but Liam points out it’s his own fault if anything drops.

Everyone marvels at Nott’s use of “Bren” as a false name in episode 2. Sam remembers looking over at Liam as Liam gave him “the weirdest look! Liam looked at me like I had just said the c-word.” Liam: “I was staring holes into your skull.” Sam thought Caleb was judging Nott for being deceptive. Liam sat there for a hot minute wondering if Matt had let something slip, if Caleb was talking in his sleep, if Sam had seen a sheet from Liam’s binder... “Anything but this impossible fucking coincidence.”

GIF of the Week: @winteristboi with an incredibly topical GIF of Liam revealing his name, Sam commenting “That’s why you looked at me,” and including a flashback of the just-mentioned episode 21 moment.

The intertwining of Nott’s & Caleb’s backstories has been fun for both of them. Sam finds Liam an excellent actor and likes doing scenes with him. Liam and Sam both talk about how they actually prefer bumps in the road and complicated relationships instead of everyone being friends & peaceful. They had a conversation months ago about how they’re looking forward to things falling apart within the group. Liam reminisces about how much he loved the bowl argument with Beau. “That’s the best part of the show.”

Nott is very excited that part of Caleb’s backstory is out so that he can get some healing, maybe.

Caleb is closer to Beau than the rest of the M9 at this point. In the moment of his backstory, “he was wanting to borrow her spine. And Beau had rested her hand on his shoulder just moments before, and that was reassuring to him because he knew things could get ugly, so he was looking for that again.”

Very quickly, Nott saw something in Caleb that reminded her of her son. “A boy who was scared and alone in the world and needing someone to take care of him.” Even in game zero, Caleb was knocked out and Nott had to save them, kill the gnolls, and get them out of there singlehandedly.

Sam finds out onscreen that halflings live much longer than humans. It’s hilarious. “I thought they lived the same as humans!” He’s worked it out with Matt that Veth is not older than Caleb, who is 32. Veth got married at 20ish (childbearing age), spent a couple years happily married, goblins intervened, escaped, and is now about 25 years old (a young mom). “Similarly, as I understand it, when you are reincarnated, you are given an adult body, so goblin Nott is 7-8 years old.” Liam gasps that if she doesn’t get changed back, she’s taken a 200 year lifespan and violently compressed it to only a fraction.

Many of Veth’s quirks (collecting things, general nervousness, and enjoyment of wine) were badly exacerbated and heightened in goblin form. Where she enjoyed a nip of sherry wine before, she’s now a raging alcoholic. Where she enjoyed collecting baubles before; now she’s compulsively stealing. She was a nervous Nellie before; now she’s ratcheted anxiety. Sam discussed this with Matt. Liam again: “Her lifespan was condensed down into this dense little ball; her habits were condensed into a dense little ball too!” Sam, brightly, dancing: “It’s a saaad episode!”

Liam’s asked about his arm-scratching as Caleb. (Sam’s stunned; he never realized!) In Liam’s mind, the scars are extremely faint and old, and it’s cold in Wildemount. He doesn’t imagine them as large or even visible gashes unless you knew where to look.

Sam envisions his goblins as just generally amped up. Not angry, but murderous. Sam also has been playing it that Veth has been becoming a bit more goblin & less halfling over time just because she’s being overwhelmed by the physiology. It would have been different if she’d been in a different body. She’s very eager to get back, but she is also aware that her “perceived vehicle” who might be able to get her back to her original form is not quite ready yet. She’s anxious for that to get cooking.

Early in the campaign, when Caleb wakes up from a fight and screams, “Take them out!” he was talking about the crystals Trent put in his arms.

Fanart of the Week: @queddajaw​ with a gorgeous Nott drowning portrait.

Nott has a general tendency to want to see people connect (Astrid’s letter, Jester & Caleb). She knows time with a loved one is not eternal. It’s not really a projection of her own relationship. Augh.

Caleb didn’t give the whole truth because a) it’s too humiliating & heartbreaking to talk about and b) the first confession to Beau/Nott was only out of need, and he was just excruciatingly lonely. He’s gotten it out once and knows that it’s completely awful, and he doesn’t want to dump it on the rest of the group unnecessarily, such as “sunflower” Jester. Liam also didn’t feel it was all pertinent information in the moment since he didn’t want to trample on Nott after she’d just bared her soul to the group. Liam mimes opening a door over Sam’s face: “But alsooo myyy story is super tragic!”

Sam thinks VM was more familiar with each other at this point in their campaign, but not as vulnerable/connected. It’s a very different story.

What makes Sam keep picking goblins as backstory villains? “They’re gross.” Actually, it’s more coincidental this time as Liam was the one who picked his goblin race. Sam talks about how he’s gotten tweets wanting to know why goblins can’t be nice, is he racist against goblins? Sam: “Yes. In your campaign, you can do what you want. Veth might be horribly misguided!” but in his/Veth’s mind at the moment, there’s nothing redeemable about them. She is curious about the butler goblin, but didn’t really get a chance to talk to him.

Caleb is very relieved they’re not going to Rexxentrum.

Sam thinks it was a good time for Nott’s reveal. Caleb had thought it would take longer for him. Matt had asked Sam how long he wanted to play it out, if he wanted the reveal to be early or late game, and Sam told him it would be fine for him even if it never came out in the whole campaign. He’s excited to see how this will change the group dynamic for everyone. 

Liam comments that he always tries to make character decisions that feel true, even if it leads to things that are sad.

Sam did tell his kids how Nott became a goblin. As soon as he was done, his daughter asked him to tell them the story one more time. I have flashbacks to Travis saying “Let’s do it again” at the end of C1.

Sam hasn’t given up on the shirt gag, but he gave away 20 shirts for a donation prize. When he has the shirt, he will wear it. Sam also points out that he’s also tracking the facial hair from C1 too.

After Dark: Secret Secret Names Edition:

Everyone marvels again at how cool Quyen is. Sam tangents full circle into a discussion of Mr. Yuck. Brian tries to get us back on track talking about drinks, and I don’t even know what’s happening right now. Sam drinks a (I think!) Miller Lite on screen and almost throws it back up. You dramatic fool.

Quyen is a big wine nerd, just like Sam. “Now, we enjoy a burger and a beer once in a while, we’re not awful people.” Then he tells a story about how when people bring them wine bottles at their homes as gifts his wife has a terrible poker face if she doesn’t approve of the wine. Don’t buy her wine, is what I’m getting from this.

They discuss Mame Drop from today, which featured some laser discs and old games.

Nott’s favorite reality show would be whatever is the opposite of Hoarders, like maybe Storage Wars. Dani suggests Caleb might be into dating shows. Brian takes great offense at the word “smut” as a descriptor and talks about his 30-person Bachelor watching parties. Dani suggests he [Caleb] might be into the sordid melodrama of that and Real Housewives. Liam: “Tell me more about my character. You too, internet.”

This entire segment has devolved into an almost rabid discussion of reality shows and I legitimately cannot keep up with it. GBBO has come up, cat judging shows, documentaries about Scientology...

Liam & Sam try to have a man date once a year where they have a good dinner and glass of wine together and catch up on their years.

Travis apparently really got into David Blaine like eight years after he was relevant. Brian puts out a call to send him David Blaine gifs. “He’ll know exactly why.”

We end with an incredible moment of tiny Sam’s head being shopped live onto the cutout of his Emmy acceptance. “We go to the moon not because it is easy, but because it is hard, hard, hard.”

And we’re out! Have a lovely evening, everyone, and is it Thursday yet?

[whalohs]

SO THAT WAS AN EPISODE, HUH. but let’s talk about something else for a second because hooooooly fuck i need to sit down for a week to process what happened. i dug this up from my drafts: 

so i kept joking with my friends about how laura gave jester 16 strength because she didn’t ever want to play negative strength anymore, then i realized there’s actually a few key differences / parallels between jester and vex that i think are really fascinating. so, without further ado: 

i made this sound like a big deal but honestly? it comes down to one big thing: how much vex knew about the world before she started her adventures with VM, and how much jester didn’t know about the world before she started her adventures with the M9. so let’s get into that.

vex saw some ugly, ugly things. she experience the loss of her mother, abandonment from her father. the constant rejection of her identity from the people around her. she was able to move past all of that, which is important!! but it doesn’t change the fact that she was hurt, time and time again.

so naturally for the longest time, vex only really had vax in her life -- and wasn’t interested in bringing anyone else. again, given her background, that makes sense! 

ironically enough, having vax meant that she was never really alone. she always had someone with her, no matter where she went. someone that related heavily with her was really important to who vex ended up as a character, because she could then reject everyone else that came into her life. 

trinket, of course, is also included in this.

she’s also extremely good at knowing how people work! but she uses this to her advantage in almost every scenario. she makes people feel comfortable, flattered, then using that high to get what she wants. there’s a very good reason that she’s good at bartering.

never forget her insight. i’d kill for that kind of insight.

and of course, i can’t forget about her greed. i loved this as a character trait in her, but i’m not here to talk about why she was greedy. what’s important is that material goods were very important to vex, past the fact that they were material goods. 

then there’s jester. biggest parallel is that compared to vex? jester’s life was fantastic and sheltered. she experienced no loss, no rejection, but she didn’t grow up seeing the harsh realities like vex did. the first time she stepped out of nicodranas was out of excitement, rather than desperation ( though it was a little bit of desperation ).

but again, she was alone. the traveler was with her, yes, but the traveler couldn’t relate to jester like vex could relate to vax. her loneliness drove her to seek out the people she did, and accept strangers that vex would have never given the time of her day. 

i don’t think either things are good or bad, for the record.

that said, while jester is naive she’s not clueless! i’ve said this before. jester also knows how people work, and what’s important to them. she’s seen enough people around her mother, i think, to pick up on their emotions at the very least. 

what’s interesting about jester is that she uses this information in the completely different way. she’s here to poke, prod, and rock the boat. make people confused and uncomfortable and honestly? a little annoyed. she very rarely uses people to get she wants, but at the price of driving interactions in the way that she wants it to go. 

jester’s relationship with material goods is a little different, too. again, without going into the details of why, jester views material goods as ... just that. material goods. she likes having pretty rings and pastries and maybe a bit of money, but she’s not driven by this. she has yet to learn the... power? that material goods can have? in the way that vex knew right off the bat. 

then there are the smaller/more obvious things: the way they show their emotions, their physical strength, their maturity. the amount of confidence they project vs the amount of confidence they have. 

my list isn’t exhaustive by any means! come at me if you can think of more, and feel free to discuss ones you don’t necessarily agree with. c: 

that said: i don’t think all of this was intentional! i think it does a huge disservice to laura to say that she intentionally built a character different from vex, because jester is much more than a “parallel vex”. but i do love these parallels dearly, and i wanted to get them down before i forgot. hope you enjoyed them!!  

 i’m back to over thinking, happy new year. 

[critical-analysis]

I think I’m going to consider this week a wash as far as the essays I’ve already missed that I didn’t get written, and pick up with the weekend essay for last night’s episode. The week was just too busy. Thankfully my dad found out at his appointment today that he can drive again, so that will cut some of the business down.

I am going to make the schedule Mon/Tues, Thurs/Fri, Sat/Sun, just to make it a little more flexible. And that way I’ll have Wednesday in there is a bit of a grace period just in case something does happen and I need to move the first essay back a bit, or so I can use whatever extra time I might have on Wednesdays to write, just so I have it in case Thursday and Friday get busy and overwhelming.

I do plan on keeping the schedule the same as far as the week’s first essay being about campaign one, the second episode being about campaign two, and the weekend episode being about the most recent episode. But I am going to give myself a little more flexibility and allow both the first AND second essays of the week to also be general ttrpg related, or about any of the non-VM or M9 oneshots, or anything else that’s related to CR and D&D that might not be about the specific campaigns. This will let me have a little more freedom in case I’m blocked on ideas or I don’t feel inspired by any of the ideas I have in my list, which will hopefully help me keep to the schedule.

I know I need to update the tags pages to add some things and to fix some links. I’ve decided that what I’m going to do, instead of trying to remember to check whether or not I need to add new tags into the pages every time I post an essay, I’m just going to use Sunday evening/Monday morning as a time to g

o through all three essays I posted in the past week to see if I need to add any new tags to the posts, any new tags to the tags page, and to make sure all the links in the tags page are working.  I know it might not be the most convenient thing for anyone wanting to look through the tags, but for now I think it’s the best way to do things, because if the policy is just to try to remember it when I make the post, I will forget a lot of the time and then it just won’t get done for that post. As the amount of posts and essays I have up starts to get bigger and bigger I’ll probably need to go about it in a different way, but for now I think this is the best option.

So stay tuned for the weekend essay, which will be about last night’s episode! I haven’t decided on a topic (I usually don’t until I do at least a partial rewatch, because I’m far more able to notice the little details than I am on the first watch), so if you have any ideas or anything from the episode you’d like to see me talk about, let me know! You can send me an ask, or just reply to or reblog this post! And you can do the same if there’s anything you’d like to see me talk about, whether it’s for the first campaign, the second campaign, oneshots, D&D in general. I have a lot of experience in ttrpgs as both a player and a GM, so if you have any questions, would like any advice, etc., go ahead and ask. If it’s something that I think can be turned into an essay, I’ll do that. And if it’s something that would need a shorter answer, I’d be more than happy to do that in a quick post.