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 Runjani 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" Runjani 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.
poster I did for Critical Role's Berlin live show PROJEKT FUNBALL! Thank you Maxwell James and Adrienne Cho for the trust, this was such a fun project to work on!
why you should care about theresa even if you ship hansry: a fever-rant
I've been writing Hansry since April 2018. But my first KCD fic ever was about Theresa.
You know what drives me nuts about this girl?
It's because even though she loves him, cares for him, worries about him, and arguably even (emotionally) needs him alive: Henry isn't what she wants.
The Theresa we come to know in KCD, the one who exists in the aftermath of disaster, cares SO much for this lad. She shows it in her actions more than her words, which can be restrained and remote, emotionally unavailable. But that is a recent development.
Frankly: She lived her entire life in Skalitz with him as an afterthought.
To Tess, he wasn't a main character in anyone's story. He wasn't the object of her unflinching desire or her obsession. He was always just stupid old Hal under the castle hill. Martin & Jane's son from up at the smithy. Some passable, foolish, cute-enough dude who was fooling around with her bestie (blech!). As for many young adult women, it was not any boy or crush or marriage prospect, but her friends, especially BIANCA, who were the huge social presence in her life. Not Henry, and probably never Henry... except for what happened.
What drives me so nuts about this is that though Tess and Henry seem confused about their romantic connection, they have one clarity: each anchors the other in the past. But they do so from completely different angles, and to completely different ends.
Tess tries to run from the past, to reject it and to not think about it - to bury her old self with her family and friends.
She's not just brave because it's her nature. She's "not afraid of anything anymore" because she, a person who has lost everything that mattered to her, is no longer afraid to die.
Henry is her complete opposite here. He becomes unrecognizable to his former self because, thanks to nepotism and gender, he's able to start an entirely new lifestyle in a way denied to Theresa... which may at first glance appear to be what Henry wants.
But it's not! Again and again, we see that everything Henry does is about wanting to go back, to cling to home, to try and salvage the scraps of his old self. He wants so badly to be truly unafraid, like Theresa is, but despite everything, he doesn't have the maturity to understand that fearing death isn't cowardice and lack of fear isn't bravery: it is pure tragedy. It means you have nothing left to lose.
It means you are Theresa.
Theresa, who despite being annihilated by the slaughter of her old self and loved ones, WAS NOT HAPPY (!) in that old life. She wasn't happy taking care of men, something she started doing far too young after her mother's death. She never wanted to get married, to be a wife, to raise children (she tells Jane as much; it's not just Feyfar; she wants nothing to do with boys; she's so young and already sick of laundry and cooking and cleaning and caring). She wanted the freedom to be herself, to have her own desires, to chase fun, to dance with her girl friends, to have more than the earliest hour of morning to herself.
Henry merely thought he wasn't happy, and for such a childish reason: he was bored of peace and comfort and being doted on by his family and his sweetheart. He knows now his mistake and that he can't take it back. But his former happiness also cannot be destroyed, even though it is no longer accessible to him, because he was so babied and undeniably loved and spoiled and undeservingly adored.
Not so with Theresa.
Of course she doesn't want to marry Henry.
Of course she laughs at him when he so casually suggests it.
Henry truly loves her, in his way, and she has much tenderness and a sort of sad love for him too. But no matter how damaged he is, he's still got a big piece of that good-natured oaf from Skalitz inside him. And so he thinks she's still the Theresa he knew all these years, partially because it helps him feel closer to a home that doesn't exist. He doesn't understand, no matter how many times or how many ways she tells him, that Theresa of Skalitz is gone or what she's lost.
And, whether or not Tess & Henry's sort-of-romance remains alive or (as KCD1's ending seems to suggest) kindly loosens and lets go, there is a part of Henry -- the old Henry, before the fire -- that Hans Capon, no matter how madly he loves him, can never truly know, understand, or touch. Theresa can. In no small part because that piece of her has been destroyed.
It's just so honest and worthwhile and real.
Such a damn shame Warhorse has so little interest in writing women's stories 90% of the time, because when they do care, they can make these stories feel so authentic without any psuedo-feminist Cool Girlfriend gimmicks or othering or puerile Sorry Boys!ing.
Kattigan is so horribly awkward in all ways, i want to do mundane things to him just to see what the fuck goes wrong. i wanna send him to the grocery store.
I felt so much for Percy in the latest episodes of Critical Role. Ripley is just a brilliant villain. Really.. Love to hate her. Hang in there, Percy! :)
tangentwithtanner
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areudirty
annaxmalina
janainaart
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baratheonpilled
