No, Bolaire's behavior around food is not a good metaphor for an eating disorder, or at least not one that centers Bolaire The Character. (I also don’t really think metaphor is quite the right word, but let’s ignore that for simplicity.) Anyway: Bolaire does not experience hunger. He does not experience metabolic physical nourishment from eating. He does not have an organic physical body at all. He does not personally experience health consequences for his eating patterns. It is his host who suffers, full stop. While some of his behaviors may—without context—echo irl disordered eating habits, such as restricting intake or buying more to disguise that restriction, the strength of comparison immediately collapses because he is not doing it to himself. A better actual metaphor would be starving a prisoner or not maintaining your car, externalizing your own feelings on someone or something else under your control.
And look, I'm not here to tell anyone they can't personally identify with a character for any reason, or that we can't use Bolaire's behavior as an analogy for disordered eating. Absolutely someone could watch Bolaire mechanically eating a shred of jerky and think, I have been like that, I have resented that my body needs nourishment, I have felt like my body is a thing I am separate from. But per above we can’t make a strong representative connection that honors this sentiment (Bolaire’s actions can sometimes emulate disordered eating) and the facts of the text (the one Bolaire is depriving is actually his host) unless we zoom out and treat host and mask as a symbolic connected unit, a single person, where Bolaire is the disordered mentality itself. Anyone can be affected by disordered eating; once the mentality (the mask of Bolaire, in this metaphor) is on, you feel out of control, your basic needs suppressed as inconvenient, undesirable, and deeply contemptible, and you neglect your own body even though you desperately need to eat, you are cruel to it, and you hide this from your friends and family, who you may also push away and become a stranger to. You might genuinely die this way. If only you could be free of these feelings, this mask you're wearing! With some external help, maybe you could take it off. Taliesin has said before that Bolaire is intended to portray themes of dissociation, and tbh this metaphor works really well for that too. An alienation from the self.
But if you read that and thought, hey, Bolaire doesn't represent a negative mentality! This isn't about the hosts, he's his own little guy on a journey with his own anxieties and behaviors, independently! Then congrats, we have determined that the disordered eating metaphor lives best above the story and maybe isn't the best fit for what's going on with him as a character in-game except as the most surface-level resemblance. And you can do both btw: enjoy the character in-story and also enjoy metaphors they inform above the text that may not, strictly speaking, be “complimentary” to the character themself. But I do think that if we try to make this about “Bolaire has a metaphorical eating disorder within the narrative”, we are ignoring his mechanics and airballing pretty egregiously on more incisive symbolism.
In the wake of Darktow I am once again thinking about the Dwendalian family, specifically with respect to Caleb. Rather than actually breaking free from Volstrucker conditioning, which frames family as an effectively Volstrucker-Empire concept, Caleb tries to reenact an idealized version of the family through the Brenattos. This leads to him being upset and uneasy whenever that structure is threatened - especially by his own potential inclusion and Veth’s attempts to not be defined solely in the “mother” role.
The rhetoric of the Volstrucker - and of Ikithon - is based around the Dwendalian nuclear family as the correct and integral unit of society, phrased most clearly by Astrid in c2e89:
But I also know the reason that we get to sleep, every night, in a comfortable inn bed, or in a manor, as do the many families and children just like we were, just like the families we once had that don't have to make the choices we did. They still get to live, happily and comfortably, because the few, the chosen few, made the hard choice, and do what few have the will to do.
The nuclear family is framed as the natural unit of society: mother, father, their children.* The Volstrucker, in order to become Volstrucker, must cut themselves out of their family units (quite literally) and become the "chosen few," forever isolated from those structures in order to protect them; and they do so specifically to protect and reify those structures.
They do it in order to serve Civil Influence - and we know that the role of Civil Influence is to stabilize Dwendalian society, keep down rebellion, and protect the Crown and Assembly from populist uprisings. They kill traitors, but they also enact this through the rhetoric of the nuclear family. "Do you have the strength to protect your homes? Your families? Your country?" (See Caleb's Origins comic.) Ikithon frames the Volstrucker as a barrier between "civilization and chaos" in the same breath that he invokes the family as the base unit of that civilization. It is their will that preserves the country through preserving the family: even as they destroy their own to better serve. They don't have their own nuclear families anymore, so they spend the rest of their lives enforcing that structure on the people of the Empire.
Their function is to reinforce the very unit that they are forbidden access to. It positions Volstrucker as individually worthless (because they cannot participate) but societally necessary for the continuation of the Empire - in its base unit formed around the nuclear family. The family is the Empire, in microcosm.
And yes, Caleb leaves, helps tear Ikithon down. But he never gets rid of that construct of society and of his role in it in his head. He's done something - he's part of a (damned) chosen few - who can and will never be able to participate in society because it is structured around family; and, having murdered his own, he acts as though he is obligated to protect the nuclear families of others.
Specifically? Veth Brenatto's.
I'm eliding a lot here. There's great meta on the topic. Suffice to say, Caleb is obviously and repeatedly torn between wanting Veth to stay with him and protecting her nuclear family of her, Yeza, and Luc throughout the campaign and post-campaign. Liam has said this is at least in part due to seeing Luc as like a younger Caleb/Bren ("that's me, that's a little boy in the Empire" - Talks Machina 157); he acts as though, by keeping Luc's family together, he can rehabilitate his own relationship with his broken, dead family.
So we come to the Brenattos in Darktow - and specifically, his automatic rejection of Veth including him as a parent, even jokingly, when speaking about her new son Bren-Bren. She jokes that he's like a first time parent, and then amends to STEP-parent. It's Caleb who cuts her off and offers godfather in exchange. A stepparent is a parent - having one would mean Bren-Bren has three parents, who are at the time of writing living together and sharing full-time care for a child. A godfather is a trusted outsider to the family unit - and the person a child would go to, if their parents were both to die.
Caleb rejects the label that would imply any kind of aberrant nuclear family structure: no additional parents, no marrying in, no significance beyond "teacher" or "godfather." Even if he is acting as a parent, he cannot be one - in the same way that, despite his clear desire to remain with Veth, he gives up and resolves to content himself with the "memory of being partners at a certain time of [his] life." (Beau, c2e68). But he also won't leave! He can't detach himself from the family, but he also can't allow himself to be a part of it. It remains incredibly significant to him, while being forever and definitionally beyond his reach - because to accept that label would mean both integration into a fold he believes he has lost the right to access, AND it would destroy the image of Veth's nuclear family (mama, papa, son, baby. No wizard; no third parent; no Volstrucker).** Even when she's the one who offers.
He also panics over the idea that Veth might disrupt the structure of her family herself. Veth struggles with this herself - her persistent desire to adventure, steal, and otherwise cause chaos is strongly at odds with the obligation she feels to her family.*** In the Darktow show, when she expresses a desire to adventure, he asks if she's sure, because "a boy needs his mother - Bren-Bren needs his mother in his life." He wants Veth with him; but he can't stop objecting to her joining him because of the danger it would put her in, and thus specifically her child at risk of growing up without her. The perceived risk is of the disruption of the family that he actively cares for and tries to protect just as much as it is to Veth's own life. Caleb regards her as a dear friend and a life partner, and respects her choices - but he also can't quite shake that her role in the nuclear family is "mother," and his own complicated beliefs tied up in that.
And to add to all that, Veth named the kid after the version of Caleb he believes in as an innocent child. Surely that won’t cause any more problems.
tl:dr: Caleb defines himself out of nuclear family structures (specifically: the Brenattos') while simultaneously holding them up as both meaningful and idealized due to the indoctrination around "family" he received as a youth equating it to the basic unit of societal good. Rather than break the conditioning, his guilt causes him to try and re-enact a "healthy" version of a structure that does not benefit the people who live within it.
I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with relating to characters, “they’re literally me” etc but if that’s the only way you engage with stories you’re kinda missing the whole point of Characters being vehicles through which we can see perspectives outside of our own. and also you’re going to get upset when the Character acts in a way that is not Personally Relatable to You
As always, I'm so here for Aabria and her attention to the world, both the small details and the larger implications, how grounded her character is in its histories and realities, using that character knowledge to put things together and move things forward so swiftly elegantly, cutting through confusion and argument.
"Wasn't Thjazi called Shadow?"
Tossing the Iron nail to Julien.
Quickly cutting through all the noise to reveal the truth.
While playing Thaisha, Aabria is so conscious of the world and Thaisha's worldview. As a woman whose religious culture has been persecuted nearly to extinction. As a person from a race that every other race of Aramán was happy to leave in subjugation; the suffering of the Rungjani was a fair price for their comfort.
You can viscerally feel this in her gentle but clear acknowledgement of Bolaire, her tone when she asked him why he was so angry.
"What exactly do you find to be foolishness, Bolaire?"
The calm, despite the fact that, when it comes down to it, he is angry that the actions Thjazi set in motion blew up his comfortable life. The same actions that liberated the Runjani afterlife. He doesn't think "a couple hundred" Rungjani souls are worth it.
"So you're not angry, you're afraid."
It reminded me of when Aranessa was breaking down and overwhelmed because her life was blown up and she has to make hard decisions to move forward. Thaisha used the same gentle, but firm tone then.
"You always had to make a choice and the world was always chaos. It's just touching you now."
There's such weight and truth behind the way Aabria carries Thaisha. I look forward to her Soldier table, but I feel for what the rest of the tables will be losing without her presence.
Some Julien sketches based on Matt's amazing facial features (and a bonus Occtis). This was equal parts fun and frustrating - it's a fun exercise, but dang if it isn't tricky. There was a lot more I wanted to do, but I just hit that point where everything starts to look bad, so I have to just call this sketch page done. So these are a bit all over the place, but hey, practice is practice.
I have to say, Lord Occtis Tachonis has an incredible aesthetic. This style is so new to me but I had the best time drawing it! (Round of applause for the 1-2-THREE RIBCAGES I HAVE LEARNED TO DRAW, pls 💀).
Part 1/14 of my @critical_role Campaign 4 series! Inspired by the Dragon Age tarot cards. Occtis has been an absolute delight this campaign I totally get why he’s a fan favorite. 🖤💜💚
Now, I’m not following the official tarot decks, but for funsies which Major Arcana do you reckon he’d be?
What is your thoughts on the whole “Thjazi is abusive” discussion/discourse going around?
This is a bit of a longer post, but the short answer is that I think it's entirely possible that Thjazi was cruel or apathetic towards certain people, including Bolaire, and that it wouldn't compromise the story in any way, but I am not convinced that Bolaire has told the whole story about that. However, I don't think the terms "abusive" or "abuser" are useful in this context.
Massive plot and character spoilers for Cloudward, Ho! under the cut.
For those less familiar with Brennan's prior DMing, Cloudward Ho! was one of the recent Dimension 20 seasons that Brennan DM'd on Dropout.tv. That season is particularly relevant to why I think Thjazi acting horribly is on the table.
Cloudward, Ho! was a season of a pulp adventure late-1800s-ish steampunk novel played in D&D. Decades back, Comfrey MacLeod became a world-famous adventurer and inventor. She created the first flying machine, then recruited a crew to explore the world, frequently saving it in the process, and one of the crew wrote novels based on them, making them all famous. Years later, the PCs are the core members of her old crew, now coming out of retirement because Comfrey's granddaughter and the grandson of her primary financier discovered a SOS message from Comfrey that she needed help and had found the fabled lost continent of Zood. The audience is essentially in the same boat as the two youngest PCs as we gradually learn the truth of Comfrey's adventures and her relationships with her old crew.
The PCs go on many adventures in their attempts to find Comfrey, eventually traveling to Zood and beyond. Comfrey is constantly one step ahead, having fled danger and leaving clues. As the PCs catch up, they find more and more information confirming that Comfrey has not changed: she legitimately does save the world as often as she can and at great risk to herself and her crew, but she also invites danger by making deals with nefarious organizations, taking their money, and running when they come to collect, often causing incredible collateral damage to others. One of those factions nearly ended the world, and she had no idea.
Brennan did a very gradual build of discordant information about Comfrey. All of the recordings and writings were full of energy, zest for life and adventure, and encouraged her granddaughter to follow in her footsteps. However, people who knew her had a wide variety of opinions. Comfrey's son was a recluse and obsessed with safety, and his daughter simply didn't understand why he wasn't interested in adventure like she was. Marya, Comfrey's protoge and former captain, was on a suicidal quest of revenge, believing that she had offended the spirits for taking to the skies because her own protoge had died, and she blamed Comfrey for saving her life in the accident when it happened. Daisuke, Comfrey's former husband, felt abandoned because Comfrey had treated him like a dog who needed to retire. Van, one of Comfrey's closest crewmates, lost her arm on a mission to find Zood and was left behind after Comfrey made her a mechanical arm. Monty, the author of the books, quietly resented Comfrey's irresponsibility and ego. The NPCs that met Comfrey were all treated as either useful or distractions, but her sheer charisma usually got her more help than not.
It's about halfway through the campaign before the granddaughter discovers one of Comfrey's notes where she rather cruelly criticizes her old crew in an explanation why she had not brought them with her to Zood. Until then, everything could have been disregarded as bitterness or jealousy that had fermented in the decades that passed. The truth was that Comfrey was not just a hero; she had put herself before everyone else, including her loved ones. She was egotistical to the point that she felt Monty had unfairly gotten rich and famous off of her adventures. Her son was a coward in her eyes and not worth visiting; Comfrey only went to visit her granddaughter in the hopes that she would take flight after her. Daisuke was past his prime. Comfrey had some regret towards what happened with Marya and Van, but didn't really care to give them closure or a chance to pursue it.
Comfrey wasn't a villain in the story. The PCs finally catch up, there is an explosion of emotion and dialogue, including some incredibly cruel statements by Comfrey--and they agree to work together. Comfrey is forced to face the harm she caused to everyone, and they have tough conversations about it, but don't really forgive and forget. While she dies in the final battle, it wasn't some grandiose heroic sacrifice. She just rolled badly and died. The PCs got their chance to reconcile, and the story was that the next generation learned from her mistakes.
That was the season that aired in 2025 during the gap between C3 and C4. Comfrey was not a good person, but she also wasn't evil. Calling her an abuser isn't a helpful label for addressing her themes. The horrid way she treated people who loved her didn't change that she literally saved the world numerous times. The fact that she loved them enough to reconcile didn't change that she had been too absorbed in her adventures to realize the threats she'd left in her wake.
So, having seen that season before C4, I am of the belief that Thjazi is yet another take on the complex hero. I would not be shocked in the least if Bolaire is being truthful about everything he's said about Thjazi.
I don't think that would take away from the story. I think it just means that it's a different story than what people expect of Brennan. As I've said a handful of times, Thjazi's story is that he failed. He died before he could achieve his goals, and the only reason he's still around is sheer chance. He doesn't have agency as Julien's shadow. He can't communicate. C4 is not a story that the PCs need to be like Thjazi because the opening scene showed us that being like Thjazi gets you killed too soon. I like this set up because Thjazi achieves narrative weight that is usually assigned to villains: he's an example of what not to do. The story is figuring out where he made the wrong choices.
That said, even if he did everything that Bolaire claims, calling Thjazi an "abuser" doesn't help interpret the story. When it comes to analysis, labels are useful when they have an agreed-upon definition. Using a word like abuser brings in a ton of baggage for anyone who reads it, and it becomes a discussion of, "Well, he's an abuser, so X must also be true." That drifts away from analyzing the story as is.
I don't think any of it makes Thjazi evil, even if Bolaire is 100% right. Bolaire is such a unique type of character that I cannot blame Thjazi for reacting poorly while still also allowing Bolaire his freedom. Bolaire still got to live the life he wanted. Whatever Thjazi's opinions or behaviors were, he didn't take away the things Bolaire wanted most. There was some level of trust there.
There's also the possibility that Bolaire and Thjazi deeply misunderstood each other to the point that they each thought the other was holding one over them. We don't know the details of how they actually worked together. Thimble does, but she hasn't been the type to blab about that sort of thing.
As for what I hope: I would really like it if Thjazi was that terrible to Bolaire. Brennan handled that wonderfully with Comfrey, and I'd like to see that come in again.
Much of C4 has been pointing out that every person, no matter how flawed or selfish or petty, can contribute to a revolution. Murray's a great example: she was so flabbergasted that Thjazi thought to ask Hal to help her because Murray thinks she's a shit person. She steals from the school she works at despite that it would obviously negatively impact the students whom she's so protective of. She's all three of those things and still making a huge difference in this rebellion. People don't need to be perfect to be heroes.
As a final note: I'm a whistleblower attorney. 95% of the people I work with are in it for (a) money, (b) revenge, or (c) avoiding consequences. Very few heroes are people who do it because they want to do the right thing. Moral purity doesn't really hold any ground in this business. People do the right thing because it's in their interest to do it, and that's great because that means the right thing gets done.
I hope Thjazi was a piece of shit in addition to doing all that good. It's the type of story a lot of people need right now.
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