critical swoles

nerdy-ass voice actors with muscles • and a place for my cr brainrot • main is autumninganymede

[sentrysvoid]

V for Vendetta dir. James McTeigue | 2005

[criticalswoles]

That wrap-up, especially its ending, was very sweet, and while I'm still iffy on how c3 shook out - these nerds truly have brought so much joy and wonder to my life. Here's to 10 more years!

[sethdomade]

For me, the problem with c3 was less 'no consequences' and more 'no conviction from the pcs'. The vibe felt like, "I guess we're releasing Predathos now."

[aeruthien]

So while I certainly have my problems with C3 and agree with a lot of criticism that have been discussed here on ol' tumblr dot com, I am really looking forward to what CR does next.

In an entertainment world where shows get easily cancelled, or dip in quality because funds are cut or big companies want an easy money grab, C3 never felt to me as a campaign that was unloved or created with bad intent.

While being loved does not make all the problems go away, it does give me faith that the people of CR will create new stories with their full attention and commitment. They have made great stuff before. They have done so even in part in C3. I am confident that they will do so again.

Here is to a wonderful past ten years, and hopefully many years to come!

[chandri]

"It was kind" and "everybody got a gift..." ring... kind of false? I think I'd have a lot of trouble viewing anything achieved through a threat of annihilation as kind, or a gift. Not to mention the trauma left behind for all the faithful. So weird.

[chandri]

So not only do the Exandrian gods not need mortal worship in order to survive, but in order for gods to grant mortals power and protection through the barrier they erected to protect mortals from themselves, there must, mechanically, be mutual love.

Fucking take that, Ludinus dickbag Da'leth, and go fuck yourself.

[kerosene-in-a-blender]

Regarding the idea that having the Betrayer Gods walking among mortals again is fine, because we can just kill them before they become a problem (which isn't just an idea in fandom, Opal and Dorian have this as a plan re: Lolth), my issues are twofold. The first is that it begs the question of exactly HOW one would determine whether or not some random person is a Betrayer God before killing them, and every option of traits available to even attempt to determine this is rife with opportunity for false positives (meaning you've just killed some random normal person), not to mention the HORRIFIC real world implications and historical precedent for: "This person is X/has X trait, which makes them Bad, so it is okay to kill them." The second is that, hunting people down and killing them for the way they were born is what all the fans claiming we can just do this to Betrayer Gods were hand-wringing about the gods/Vasselheim doing to Ruidusborn, and using this as evidence that the gods simply must be killed. Why is hunting people down and killing them for something they can't control fine when it's an incarnated Betrayer, but when it's a Ruidusborn, even the hypothetical idea is a crime worthy of death?

[villadiodatis]

Man, I am so tired of the class reductionism of D20 fans, and combining it with the CR fandom’s inability to recognize axes of oppression or themes that don’t directly apply to them (see this excellent post) is making me lose my mind. I’ve already seen people say that Divergence is a classic Brennan “capitalism is always the villain” story, which is such a gross misunderstanding.

Rybad-Kol is a fascist society filled with religious persecution and racism. (Capitalism and fascism aren't mutually exclusive, of course, but there is a difference and it does matter.) Marlath sold out his fellow Dragonborn to be rounded up and eaten/used for cannon fodder because of their race under the misguided belief he’d be rewarded and spared for being “one of the good ones.” That is the most blatant, explicit parallel to both the Holocaust and modern times I've ever seen. It’s not a class question.

It’s deeply reductive to say Brennan only/always includes themes of anticapitalism in his storytelling, and it’s dangerous to ignore racism when it’s shown directly to you.

[revvethasmythh]

listen. there are a number of aspects in which c3 and divergence are not comparable and fundamentally work differently (namely the difference in construction between a long-form campaign and 4-part mini-series), but thematically? not only are they comparable, they are designed to be. divergence is being aired directly after the conclusion of c3 in order to further explore concepts introduced in its conclusion. a world with less connection to the gods, the effect of that on the faithful, how the average exandrian approaches the concept of faith in general (in multiple aspects), the connection between the divine and their mortal children, burgeoning hope from post-war darkness, etc. these are concepts we're being asked to compare with the finale of c3. so if someone says that divergence's handling of faith and exploration of the gods blows c3's out of the water, that's valid. if we were meant to be avoiding comparisons, a) they wouldn't have aired this immediately after c3, b) there wouldn't be so many overlapping concepts, and c) they wouldn't be holding off on having the wrap-up until divergence is over. divergence is in conversation with c3, actively and intentionally, and it puts a stark contrast on how poorly faith was handled in c3, but also things like. understanding character motivation. which yes, is going to shine more strongly in short-form content because you have to get the information out quickly, but is a valid thing to discuss if you genuinely feel you understand a short-form campaign character's goals better than you do a character you spent 4 years watching. it's the difference between a woman who has never been shown to seriously engage with the gods at all stating "i don't know if i want to save gods that don't love me" and the moonweaver saying "if the love is true, it will pass through the barrier" and us knowing that divine magic will continue to be granted to mortals, by the sheer love the primes hold for their children, complex as that love might be. and, fundamentally, divergence is an exploration of consequences. the consequences of the calamity on mortals and the gods and the earth itself, decimated as it is. so when people compare it to c3, when a major complaint of the campaign was lack of follow-through and exploration of consequences, divergence shines for being about exactly what a lot of people felt c3 was missing.

[criticalswoles]

Suddenly seeing a lot of posts that imply people who didn't like c3 automatically hate the bells hells? Which is just...not the truth

I can enjoy some of the characters - hell, I loved a lot of them for quite a while - but I'm still disappointed in how the overall thing played out, and mainly how they ended with a savior complex when they didn't really...save anything. But it sure doesn't mean I hate them. Suggesting the two are intrinsically linked is a little much.

People can hold nuanced opinions, etc etc

[mareastrorum]

C3 discourse really suffers from people seeing the traits of a single member of a group and attributing them to the entire group.

Bell’s Hells are not punk. Ashton is punk. Ashton is one member only. If you can explain to me how Orym is punk in a way that doesn’t butcher his character, I might believe you, but good luck with that.

The gods did not smite Aeor. The Arch Heart did. Several gods planned to destroy the city, several more opposed the city’s destruction, and one single god made the decision in a split second when the other option was to let an unidentified god die. The gods (plural) did not destroy the city. That was the myth we saw debunked in Downfall.

No one group can be blamed for the Schism because we don’t actually know what triggered it. All we know is that the Primordials (who had assisted in creating mortals) decided they now wanted to kill mortals, and the gods split into two factions based on how much they wanted to participate. It very well could have been a Betrayer that lashed out, or maybe a Primordial did, or maybe a Prime intervened at the start of the culling. We don’t know who started it, only what sides each entity landed on.

The gods did not start the Calamity. At least two Betrayers launched plans that relied entirely on mortals cooperating to help them break out, and guess what, so many mortals were willing to do it that several Betrayers broke out on the exact same day. Some Betrayers (at least Asmodeus and Gruumsh) and mortals started it, not gods as a complete and solely responsible group.

The Hells did not save the world. They saved some of the gods from being eaten by Predathos, and we don’t even know which ones, because assuming otherwise requires us to accept that there was no world in which any of them could have simply fled in different directions and at least a few escaped. Not everyone went to the Prometheus School of Running Away From Things. Matt also decided that the rest of the world actually would have been fine, so unless you was to say the world is the same thing as the gods (and therefore the Hells threatened the world at gunpoint to agree with them), you’re out of luck.

The Hells didn’t save Reilorans or other Ruidus-based species from genocide. The Mighty Nein and Vox Machina fought the Weave Mind and the Imperium, and Evoroa pleaded for her people to the congregation of national leaders at Vasselheim. Taking part in an already-planned scouting/sabotage mission doesn’t elevate them to saving an entire group of people, especially when they skipped out on the assassination part. (This also goes back to the saving the world thing about the Hells because they didn’t stop any explicitly labeled colonizers from doing anything.)

Nuance is a thing guys. It’s okay to be nuanced. Stop making blanket statements and then using it to argue that your Blorbo is Good Actually.

[evilroachindustrial]

@triaelf9 I assure you, there's plenty of folks who are basically the same age as the cast that have problems with the end of CR3.

[kerosene-in-a-blender]

Part of the benefit of Calamity, Downfall, and now Divergence being miniseries with a set 3-4 episode runtime from the start is that they can use the level the PCs are playing at as a way to reflect the relationship they have with power.

The Ring of Brass was Level 14, well beyond the power level of the average Exandrian and even most adventurers, and kitted out with whatever magic items their players fancied. They were also persons in positions of privilege within one of the floating mage cites of the Age of Arcanum. They were both able to access the multiple magic items they carried on them and also were the sort of people who would amass the personal power to rise to prominent positions in a society were powerful mages in particular compose the upper classes. Over the course of the miniseries though, their magic items are largely stripped from them when the Tree of Names is sundered, signalling the end of the Age of Arcanum and the first moments of the Calamity. The PCs spend their (mostly) last moments using the power that they have to save as many people as possible. To paraphrase Laerryn: at the end they did their best for the world, finally.

The avatars of the gods in Downfall were all Level 20, the maximum possible for a player character in D&D, as is appropriate for the gods of this setting taking a mortal form, or in the case of the Emissary, a being specifically tasked by a god with this mission. And over the course of the miniseries the characters grow even more powerful, as the belief of Cassida and the patrons of the Ars Elysia allows Trist and SILAHA to enact miracles despite their mortal forms, and later, when the Latimus Princeps falls and the gods regain their full divinity and gain abilities and statblocks well beyond anything that can be achieved by mortals. But it also this power differential that causes the gods to resolve to step back from Exandria and create the Divine Gate, because as much as they love the world and their creations, they are too big for it and cannot help but hurt it.

And now with Divergence, while the series is still ongoing, it had the PCs all start as Level 0 commoners (with most having reached Level 1 by the end of episode 2). These are PCs who are ordinary people trying to survive in a world where there are powers far beyond them battling and effecting their lives by merely existing. The Stormlord's arrival at the end of Episode 1 saves them from dying of thirst, but puts them at risk of dying of exposure instead. When they go into battle against the soldiers of the Strife Emperor in Episode 2, it is as regular people who have decided they need to do something to try and improve the world around them. And it is this act of stepping up as regular people trying to create change that they (with the exception of Garen as of now) take their first step into being extraordinary as they gain a PC level.

[the-big-nope]

In light of ep1 of EXU: Divergence, RIP to all those people that are like “the Exandrian gods play favorites and only give power to people who worship the ground they walk on, they don’t REALLY care about mortals unless they’re getting something out of it” while the Stormlord’s out here crafting a whole Vestige of Divergence for the sad wet dragon boy he met on the side of the road who didn’t even know he was a god, let alone ever worshipped him, as a reward for being just a solid dude.

[captainofthetidesbreath]

it's funny people are still acting like every C3 critic hates the gods becoming mortal thing when, like, many of us very much like it as a resolution and think it's the single most interesting thing in the campaign

we just wish the landing there was less hurried through and tangled and undercooked and that we got to actually spend time with it within this campaign and got to watch these characters talk about it and how they felt about it over a longer period

like, many of us who are critical of C3 and have been critical of how the campaign has handled the gods, many of us do like the gods being mortal now, very much — we just feel the getting to that was narratively rushed

so, it's really funny seeing the concept of hating it brought up as if it's a uniform stance among people who were less than enamored by C3

[mareastrorum]

I love what Brennan is doing with faith in Divergence so far.

The skies of the Riftenmist peninsula in Gwessar (not yet Tal’dorei) have been choked with ash and smoke for decades. Most of the short lived races have never seen a clear sky.

Starmian saw the rain when he was younger. He knew it existed once, and his faith was that it would again. He told Nia about it and used it as encouragement that this struggle would be worth it. She watched him die moments before the rains finally came.

Luz was a Moonweaver worshiper in a land where any reverence for a Prime Deity was systematically crushed by the Strife Emperor. Even prisoners in a labor camp, the bottom rung of society, looked upon them with scorn—because if they were good, why did they let this happen? Why would any idiot worship the goddess of a moon that most living people had never even seen it through choked skies? For all they know, the Betrayers could have destroyed it, too, so what is she even the goddess of anymore? Even Sehanine’s epithet seemed like a fabrication. Perhaps it was true once, and in this barren wasteland, how could anyone say that it’s still true? Then Luz died fighting for people who did not share her faith and who thought she deserved scorn for her belief. After the fight ended, the skies parted and the moon shone down on those same people: a crescent, a sabre, and a smile all in one. Sehanine wasn’t with them anymore, but she still provided what help she could through those willing to forge a connection through the gate.

Their faith mattered both to them and to the world even when they didn’t live to see the result. The point of faith isn’t to see it proved true: it’s to bolster your resolve when all the world is against you. Faith is hope when you have no evidence in hand. Faith is vital to surviving a world fraught with danger. Whether it’s placed in a god, in other people, or in the mere idea that things will get better: faith matters.

It’s exactly the kind of story a lot of people need right now.

[essektheylyss]

Okay in Cooldown Brennan is circling back to the conversation wherein Garen went (direct quote from Brennan), "Well if it's not saving the people, then what the fuck are we doing?" and I literally will NEVER get over the fact that the Hells upon supposedly saving the world for the people who couldn't speak for themselves (having disparaged the political and religious leaders of the Accord, whom they have stated they do not trust to speak for the people at all) WHINED about having to walk back in there and advocate for the Ruidians. Like honestly, bar none, that is the thing that lost me the most. Any semblance of belief I might've had left that they held real convictions about what they'd stated as their goal, saving Exandria on behalf of the weak, went out the window. The work does not end because the battle is won. In fact the work for the people begins AFTER the battle is won.