you & I are friends of empty graves

dnd shows blog dot tumblr dot com. here for the female characters and riz gukgak + caleb widogast specifically. I follow from @treespeaking, icon is by @worry-for-naught. Lorical on ao3

[firespeaking]

Check out the Critical Role Aspecs community on Discord - hang out with 6 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.

hey! would you like to talk about Critical Role with other aromantic and asexual spectrum people? make and discuss fanworks involving canon and noncanon aspec characters?

here’s a server for that!

questioning people welcome :)

[felderwin]

*guy who hasnt watched projekt funball or 90% of the post-canon content yet* and another thing i think is interesting re: liam's distinction of "bren and caleb" "nott and veth" is that with nott i think caleb was able to feel more fully caleb and with veth i think there is a part of him that is always going to be bren. the initial unit of caleb and nott was two people who felt so fully divorced from the structures of society - they were both unhoused, starving, escaped from jail, with no institutional or familial ties they would speak of. both of them felt they would never be able to return to the rest of society. they could move from town to town and be the only real person in the other's world. it's the kind of partnership that is divorced from the structures of family, from the worlds they came from, that doesn't feel fully discernable to either of them and never can be because to name it would be to accept that both of them have something they don't feel like they deserve

with veth, with her clear family ties to a husband and a son, this changes. against the clear structures of the nuclear family unit, that crucial ambiguity is gone. their inability to name what they had suddenly threatens to render it meaningless. veth struggles to conceive how she can exist in both worlds as once (even worrying that finally reinhabiting her body as veth will change her feelings for caleb!) and caleb tries to find a clear role for himself alongside her family unit to justify his existence there, in the process constantly relitigating the family he once destroyed. caleb will never marry essek, he will never have children of his own. caleb's only future relationship to the nuclear family structure is his love for veth, is his idolization of the family unit he feels he will never deserve again and his desire to play a real role in her life. and in the process he will always be remaking and relitigating bren. he remade bren once when he asked to teach luc magic, trying to be the benevolent mentor figure that he wished that trent had been. and he remade bren again in the very literal form of bren brenatto, who will always be a reminder of who he was, but perhaps more importantly, what that past resurfacing, his own desires and anguish and loneliness, would lead him to do to yet another person he loves

[occidentalavian]

The Brenatto-Widogast dynamic after the Echoes of Exandria shows.

[fishmechs]

[free-my-girl-tourney]

Fandom Misogyny Victim Tournament

Round Three, Bracket 5

Veth Brenatto (Critical Role) vs. Vivienne de Fer (Dragon Age)

Veth Brenatto

Vivienne de Fer

Voting ended onJul 28

Veth Brenatto painted by Ari

Propaganda below the cut:

Veth Brenatto:

Treated as mom of fandom favourite male character (Caleb Widogast) without any kind of interiority or interests of her own. Also treated as a joke character with some transmisogynist overtones (she's played by a male actor (actual play, this is fairly standard) and people are very weird about it).

They hate to see an unconventionally attractive and eventually fat brown woman played by a man. Veth is routinely excluded from/minimized in fanworks (ex. art about "the girls" which includes every other main female character). She is rarely treated as a serious character in analysis or shipping. She is relegated to the role of mother for her closest friend despite being younger than him, and having a complex relationship with him which includes romantic feelings at least on her end.

Veth collects buttons despite getting bullied for it her whole childhood. She's power-hungry. She's torn between the life she wants and the one she thinks she should want. She's the dead mother trope. She's an alcoholic. She will flirt with anyone. She hates herself. She's codependent with a guy she met in jail. Everyone needs to rotate her in their minds now!!

Before it was revealed she was a mother, it was all super infantilizing - eeew she's just a little girl. Afterwards it became all "oh she's the team mom!" especially towards a character she has canonical feelings for. (bc he's a white boy they ship with other people so of course his closest relationship (with Veth) can't possibly have romantic undertones even when they are canonically stated). Also a whole lot of bullshit about calling her a shitty person and a shitty mother for continuing to travel with her adventuring party instead of going home to be a housewife.

She's badass af. Also she's hilarious. She's a master alchemist but doesn't believe there are other planets. She has a tragic backstory worthy of a thousand fics. She's an allegory for working mothers, and an allegory for weird girls, and an allegory for transness. She's short, fat, and sexy as hell. I love her.

she's one of the most complicated pcs they've ever had who is played with consistent biases and motivations who has the craziest fucking backstory reveal ever where [spoilers for the entire campaign!!!] after she's first introduced as a lovable 'little goblin girl' who the fandom had no problem shoving into the 'devious but ultimately well meaning girl who doesn't know better' archetype alongside her older, more world-weary 'father figure', it's slowly revealed that 1) she isn't a little girl at all and sees the 'older', 'sadder' man she's inseparable from not as a father but instead closer to a son 2) she's ridiculously horny all the time but also seemingly yearning for a boy from her past and a life lived in a different body 3) wait no she doesn't exactly see caleb as her son. i mean she does but its way more complicated and fucked than all that. she's using him as a stand in for both a son AND a husband, and he's using her a stand in for his own parents AND his former lovers 4) yeah so actually she was a fully grown halfling woman with a husband and son who got put into a body that isn't her own as a punishment after protecting both of them from goblins, which is why she's terrified of water (something previously played as a joke) AND why she hates goblins (something previously played as simple self-hatred). 5) once they turn her back into a halfling it's revealed that all the kleptomania and the weird voice and her general insanity actually had nothing to do with being a goblin and she was just like that even as a weird halfling child who presumably made mud soup and got bullied for being a freak. anyway as this character arc progressed the fandom started losing interest as soon as they couldn't portray her as disaster-daughter, and now that she's fat, grown, and a mother people fully do not care about her despite her dynamic with caleb remaining fucking crazy and fascinating til the very end. there are obvious parallels to being trans baked into the premise of her arc but people don't really have much to say about that. she's so far the only major pc that's an entirely different gender from the player and a lot of the praise people have is exclusively for the comedy of early goblin nott and not any of the more serious aspects of her arc later on. i would say she's by far the second most morally complicated member of the bunch (beat out only by her son-lover-brother-friend) but often she's reduced to either comedic relief or just 'mother' and so that aspect never really gets explored. i know there ARE veth fans out there i know but i just wish she was more widely appreciated in the same way as caleb is for her dramatic ass life and i wish people would focus more on their dynamic instead of just on the more romantic shippy caleb relationships. ALSO!! even while her goblin form was constantly described as off-putting and terrifying and disgusting people drew her almost exclusively as cutesy in a way im sure they wouldnt have done for a boy

man she's fucking awesome like idk what to say that i havent said above. she spends most of the story being physically GROSS she has big yellow teeth she eats like an animal she loves to kill people. then she gets back to her normal self of dark-skinned fat woman who's described as not particularly attractive and generally pretty weird. by which i mean she's hot as fuck. she never stops being outrageously horny all while she's got a full husband waiting for her back home. she justifies this to herself somewhat but it's clear this is a morally questionable action and she just dgaf lmfao. she's headstrong and completely insane and genuinely STRANGE like she is fucking weird!! in a way female characters dont tend to get to be. and of course her dynamic with caleb is something i could talk about for years and years. it's such a fun dissection of the 'sad father and feisty daughter' that doesn't ever contradict itself, just lets the audience (and other players!) make assumptions that later get disproved. a large part of her arc centers around choosing whether to settle down or not and she doesn't even end up settling down! arguably the one character who had the strongest foundation for going back to nurture a family by the end and she doesnt! or she does, but it's clear that everything she's gone through has given her a taste of something she isn't going to be able to live without, and it's simply not feasible for her to go back to her life of housewife anymore. she loves her husband but feels confined by her relationship with him and the story both of them with endless empathy. she CAN choose both by the end, it isn't family or career, it's both. she has love and adventure. she doesn't have to be there for her son 24/7. she literally gets the deadbeat father treatment where she's worried that she's gonna have to go back to raise her kid. she's literally a deadbeat mom. and the solution is not to become Just a mother but just to get like. a work-life balance. she gets to have both and she isn't a villain for wanting both. she's just a normal woman. who is completely insane for unrelated reasons. everyone talk more about veth brenatto

Veth is a character of s 141 episodes show, each episode at least 4 hours long. During the show she goes through several arcs, exploring themes of racism, gender presentation, body dysphoria, motherhood and more. But AT LARGE fandom STILL TO THIS DAY insist to base her whole characterisation on one misinterpreted scene in EPISODE 13! That scene only occurred because the group of adventures which she travelled with constantly infantilised her and was putting "parent and child" label on her relationship with her best friend - label that was REFUSED by both of them SEVERAL TIMES. So, in episode 13 group confronts Veth, insisting that she's naive child and Caleb is manipulating her. So she turned that statement around and said that if theirs relationship are of child and parent, then SHE IS THE PARENT. She's literally demanded respect from her teammates! But fandom turned it from being about her into being about her bestie and TO THIS DAY insisting that it was her saying that he(10 years older than her!) IS HER SON! Not only they ignore everything that came after episode 13(which includes her being EXPLICITLY IN LOVE with said best friend and that being part of her arc about choosing between duty and her desires),but even that moment get stolen from her to be about her male friend!!

Vivienne de Fer:

Vivienne is the one of the only Black women companions across all 4 games. Her race and gender inform both her writing and the fanbase's reaction to her. She is disliked for not kissing the player's ass, and saying things she never outright says because so few people actually talk to her and if they do they do not listen. There's one particular white man who has said and done far worse and he is babied and beloved as the fandom's adorable awkward husband character despite the reason people claim to dislike Viv being tied to the exact bullshit he has said whereas she has a far more nuanced take. Her writing is tinged with misogynoir, its clear the writers wanted fans to mistrust her on the basis of her being a Black woman because she gets villain iconography in her design and quest titles, despite her being completely honest and there being THREE MEN WHO LIE TO YOUR FACE AND WHO WILL BETRAY YOU which Viv never ever does. She has an ending that makes people hate her even when the white girlboss character does the same thing BUT WORSE. Fandom does what it does and brutalizes her in fanfiction, outright ignores her or just posts hate instead of appreciating that she is a fascinating character. THEY DONT EVEN KNOW HER NAME. "de Fer" IS NOT HER LAST NAME, ITS A CRUEL NICKNAME SHE RECLAIMED.

Vivienne is my favorite companion in the game. She is a nuanced and multifaceted female character who dares to not kiss the player's ass. She literally froze a racist with magic. If you play as a man romancing another man, she will defend you and tell a homophobe to fuck off. She gives you a platonic friendship ring if you manage to achieve high friendship with her, something that is deeply rewarding and sweet. Discussing the politics of the series is a lot but tldr she can become a religious leader in a theocracy without actually being religious at all. She has awesome lines like "I never worry, darling! A leash can be pulled from either end." and other characters describe her as being unapologetic. But this front she puts on belies her compassionate heart, and she deserves to be beloved for that instead of scorned by a racist fanbase that never gets to know her and never dares to criticize her racist misogynistic writing.

Typical "how dare this woman have an attitude and be confident in her skills and not bend to my character's whim" misogyny combined with regrettably equally typical fandom racism. One of the only things worse than a woman is a woman of color.

Personally I think we should love women who don't make themselves palpable. I also think politically it is worthy of admiration how she manages to elevate her position in society, whatever you think of her methods. I think it pays to remember the struggles she faced and the shaky position she is in during the events of the game. And as far as her being pro Chantry goes, well, that doesn't stop anyone from liking Cullen, does it? I may not agree with her stance, but it certainly does not deserve less respect than all others. As a mage, she certainly has a voice regarding the system of her own oppression, not to mention that she knows when to keep that voice low. Regardless of what she says to the Inquisitor (a head of a self-proclaimed religious movement), if she is made Divine you can clearly see her actual intentions are nothing but the best for the mages. She's clever, she's perceptive, she's a survivor of both the Circle and the Orlesian court. She's also a beautiful inspiring woman. Besides, if you actually become her friend, she's incredibly attentive and caring. Doubly so in Trespasser.

[lomakes]

🌼🌸

[kynzhyt]

idk

[isearainbow]

Aroace pride!

[free-my-girl-tourney]

Fandom Misogyny Victim Tournament

Round One, Bracket 5

Veth Brenatto (Critical Role) vs. Kali Prasad (Stranger Things)

Veth Brenatto

Kali Prasad

Voting ended onJun 29

Veth Brenatto painted by Ari

Propaganda below the cut:

Kali Prasad:

Got hated on for being a "bad influence" to El and not being supportive enough of her for the fandom's tastes. Also, her return in season 5 was met with suspicion and people assuming she would betray El and the others when that turned out not to be the case. The fact that she as a Brown girl has gotten more hate and less sympathy than the white villain, Henry Creel, is disappointing but not surprising.

Girl went through the same trauma as El with being experimented on and was then recaptured, saw her friends killed, and had her blood forcibly extracted out of her. I don't exactly blame her for wanting to die so the pain could end. Sure it's kinda messed up to try to convince El to do the same, but she never forces her to go through with ending herself and even dies trying to help out El with her plans. Even with her messiness and manipulative behavior, she really does care for El at the heart of it all. She deserved better from the show and the fandom.

Veth Brenatto:

Treated as mom of fandom favourite male character (Caleb Widogast) without any kind of interiority or interests of her own. Also treated as a joke character with some transmisogynist overtones (she's played by a male actor (actual play, this is fairly standard) and people are very weird about it).

They hate to see an unconventionally attractive and eventually fat brown woman played by a man. Veth is routinely excluded from/minimized in fanworks (ex. art about "the girls" which includes every other main female character). She is rarely treated as a serious character in analysis or shipping. She is relegated to the role of mother for her closest friend despite being younger than him, and having a complex relationship with him which includes romantic feelings at least on her end.

Veth collects buttons despite getting bullied for it her whole childhood. She's power-hungry. She's torn between the life she wants and the one she thinks she should want. She's the dead mother trope. She's an alcoholic. She will flirt with anyone. She hates herself. She's codependent with a guy she met in jail. Everyone needs to rotate her in their minds now!!

Before it was revealed she was a mother, it was all super infantilizing - eeew she's just a little girl. Afterwards it became all "oh she's the team mom!" especially towards a character she has canonical feelings for. (bc he's a white boy they ship with other people so of course his closest relationship (with Veth) can't possibly have romantic undertones even when they are canonically stated). Also a whole lot of bullshit about calling her a shitty person and a shitty mother for continuing to travel with her adventuring party instead of going home to be a housewife.

She's badass af. Also she's hilarious. She's a master alchemist but doesn't believe there are other planets. She has a tragic backstory worthy of a thousand fics. She's an allegory for working mothers, and an allegory for weird girls, and an allegory for transness. She's short, fat, and sexy as hell. I love her.

she's one of the most complicated pcs they've ever had who is played with consistent biases and motivations who has the craziest fucking backstory reveal ever where [spoilers for the entire campaign!!!] after she's first introduced as a lovable 'little goblin girl' who the fandom had no problem shoving into the 'devious but ultimately well meaning girl who doesn't know better' archetype alongside her older, more world-weary 'father figure', it's slowly revealed that 1) she isn't a little girl at all and sees the 'older', 'sadder' man she's inseparable from not as a father but instead closer to a son 2) she's ridiculously horny all the time but also seemingly yearning for a boy from her past and a life lived in a different body 3) wait no she doesn't exactly see caleb as her son. i mean she does but its way more complicated and fucked than all that. she's using him as a stand in for both a son AND a husband, and he's using her a stand in for his own parents AND his former lovers 4) yeah so actually she was a fully grown halfling woman with a husband and son who got put into a body that isn't her own as a punishment after protecting both of them from goblins, which is why she's terrified of water (something previously played as a joke) AND why she hates goblins (something previously played as simple self-hatred). 5) once they turn her back into a halfling it's revealed that all the kleptomania and the weird voice and her general insanity actually had nothing to do with being a goblin and she was just like that even as a weird halfling child who presumably made mud soup and got bullied for being a freak. anyway as this character arc progressed the fandom started losing interest as soon as they couldn't portray her as disaster-daughter, and now that she's fat, grown, and a mother people fully do not care about her despite her dynamic with caleb remaining fucking crazy and fascinating til the very end. there are obvious parallels to being trans baked into the premise of her arc but people don't really have much to say about that. she's so far the only major pc that's an entirely different gender from the player and a lot of the praise people have is exclusively for the comedy of early goblin nott and not any of the more serious aspects of her arc later on. i would say she's by far the second most morally complicated member of the bunch (beat out only by her son-lover-brother-friend) but often she's reduced to either comedic relief or just 'mother' and so that aspect never really gets explored. i know there ARE veth fans out there i know but i just wish she was more widely appreciated in the same way as caleb is for her dramatic ass life and i wish people would focus more on their dynamic instead of just on the more romantic shippy caleb relationships. ALSO!! even while her goblin form was constantly described as off-putting and terrifying and disgusting people drew her almost exclusively as cutesy in a way im sure they wouldnt have done for a boy

man she's fucking awesome like idk what to say that i havent said above. she spends most of the story being physically GROSS she has big yellow teeth she eats like an animal she loves to kill people. then she gets back to her normal self of dark-skinned fat woman who's described as not particularly attractive and generally pretty weird. by which i mean she's hot as fuck. she never stops being outrageously horny all while she's got a full husband waiting for her back home. she justifies this to herself somewhat but it's clear this is a morally questionable action and she just dgaf lmfao. she's headstrong and completely insane and genuinely STRANGE like she is fucking weird!! in a way female characters dont tend to get to be. and of course her dynamic with caleb is something i could talk about for years and years. it's such a fun dissection of the 'sad father and feisty daughter' that doesn't ever contradict itself, just lets the audience (and other players!) make assumptions that later get disproved. a large part of her arc centers around choosing whether to settle down or not and she doesn't even end up settling down! arguably the one character who had the strongest foundation for going back to nurture a family by the end and she doesnt! or she does, but it's clear that everything she's gone through has given her a taste of something she isn't going to be able to live without, and it's simply not feasible for her to go back to her life of housewife anymore. she loves her husband but feels confined by her relationship with him and the story both of them with endless empathy. she CAN choose both by the end, it isn't family or career, it's both. she has love and adventure. she doesn't have to be there for her son 24/7. she literally gets the deadbeat father treatment where she's worried that she's gonna have to go back to raise her kid. she's literally a deadbeat mom. and the solution is not to become Just a mother but just to get like. a work-life balance. she gets to have both and she isn't a villain for wanting both. she's just a normal woman. who is completely insane for unrelated reasons. everyone talk more about veth brenatto

[grakkie]

Ep 5 of campaign 2 I love them, my gremlins, they’re so supportive of each other

[firespeaking]

"secret third thing" kind of doesn't begin to cover it with caleb and veth. "all of the above + other" is more like it

[elleskinner-justart]

Draw Everything June: Day 14

The tiptoe double dagger pose was impossible for me to picture as anything other than a Rogue. So we have Veth sneaky sneaking with weapons in hand. What's she up to? Best not to ask.

(Challenge hosted by @adorkastock)

[brenatto-apothecary]

idk if exandria is homophobic enough for veth to spend much time in denial of her bisexuality but I think it would be sooooo funny if she was like. well that feeling I get with jester is just the thrill of mischief. and that feeling I get with beau is just the thrill of competition. and my vivid fantasies about yasha are. uh. its fine.

[free-my-girl-tourney]

Welcome to the free my girl tourney!

this is a tournament where we defend all our favorite characters who are also victims of fandom misogyny. this post contains a link to the submission form, but before that, here are some rules:

no real people (obviously there are lots of real life women who are victims of fandom misogyny, but i feel like having those women compete in a poll against each other and also against fictional characters would be kind of disrespectful to the actual real life shit they were put through)

no men!!!! idc if he's like a woman to you, this tournament isn't for him!!!!

obviously, misogyny does not have to be the only factor here, it just has to be one of the factors. if racism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, etc. are also part of the problem, do not hesitate to bring that up in your submission! it's highly relevant! the last thing i want is a tournament consisting of only cis straight white women, especially because so many of the hated/mistreated women of fandom are also marginalized in other ways that the fandom hates them for.

idk if this is a rule exactly, but just to clarify, this tournament is about which one of these characters is your favorite. it is emphatically not about trying to quantify which character is the biggest victim of fandom misogyny. that seems like an utterly exhausting and pointless thing to argue about, please don't subject me to that. i just want to see people defend their favorite overly maligned or mistreated girlies in my notes, i cannot stress this enough

characters don't have to be overtly hated to be victims of fandom misogyny. they can also be perpetually ignored in favor of men, or constantly characterized as the wise mom friend who the fandom has apparently decided has no desires or goals or needs besides being a sounding board for their favorite white boy, etc.

there's no time limit on this thing. even if the hatred/fandom mistreatment has died down and the character in question has been re-examined since, if there was ever a period in which they were subjected to fandom misogyny en masse, they count.

that said, don't choose characters who are generally universally beloved and always have been but you saw one person shit on them one time in a misogynistic way and got annoyed. i hate when that happens too, but it's does have to be a trend, not just one annoying guy, even if the guy in question is really annoying.

submit as many characters as you like!

you can submit a character here:

Victims of Fandom Misogyny Tournament -Submission Form

[moemai]

My sweet sweet girl ♥️♥️♥️

Print available in my shop !

[brenatto-apothecary]

okay crit recap rewatch finished heres the maximum amount of nott images im allowed to post

[skyqwest]

Just a girl being a little goblin