underwater witches

caro | she/her | critical role sideblog Also Vampire the Masquerade: LA by Nightmain & ao3 sidebar credit

[doizy]

Comments about Aabria "inserting herself" and "taking too much attention" really brings to mind this study that used to go around, about how female students that were responsible for half of the discussion were perceived by men as talking a lot more than them, and when they were actually talking a lot less, they were perceived as speaking as much as the men.

The problem here is that a significant portion of the audience has a very low tolerance for a black woman to take any amount of space. Anything more than being a fly on the wall is going to feel intrusive to them. Aabria participating in roleplay is seen as disruptive by the same people who would never ne bot5hered by Sam derailing an entire scene with a joke on his flask (just an example)...

[tarydarrington]

"I know that dog." "What?"

[snailygoon]

Of course Laura Bailey already had me crying during the first episode of critical role campaign four. So I chose to further my pain by drawing the scene in question. what an incredible start to a campaign!!!🧵🪡🤎

[tarydarrington]

Critical Role Campaign 4, first lines of dialogue

[horse-immorality-deactivated202]

I miss Ashley and Travis sitting next to each other

[its-your-mind]

I am absolutely in love with Deanna’s penchant for just screaming at bad things to stop and go away. Absolute icon. Queen. Everyone should listen to her always.

[jumanjiicostco]

i am late to the party but i’ve been screaming FOREVER ABOUT THIS. 

MY BABIES MY BABIES MY BABIES MY BABIES I’D GIVE THEM EVERYTHING

[counterspelling]

Endless Bells Hells

[counterspelling]

Endless Bells Hells

[pawthorn]

I love what an asshole Ashton really is.

Because they look around at this group they’re in and say that no one in it knows loneliness like they do.

They say this to Laudna, who was alone for decades.

And in their party is Orym, a widower; Imogen, who pulled away from everyone because of her powers; Chetney, who we know had a lot of time wandering alone; Fearne, left behind by her parents; and FCG, unique among automatons and rejected by their creator.

And Ashton says, you don’t know what I know.

But then we get to the crux of it.

“What was it like for them to be there when you woke up?”

It’s that loneliness that the others don’t know.

To be in a group just like Bell’s Hells. A group that you love and trust. People who help shape your identity, because none of you had one, and at least you can be Nobodies together.

And you give everything for them, and they leave, and you spend years of your life making things right for them, and they never come back.

And that’s what Ashton thinks he knows. That the people in this group could leave him at any moment. That no matter how close they are or what they go through together, eventually they will choose to save themselves and leave him.

I think Ashton would like to trust the group. I think they long to feel that safety and connection again.

And so he’s jealous.

The rest of the group doesn’t know what Ashton knows.

That he will always be left behind. He will always end up alone.

[jumanjiicostco]

ashton greymoore is the taliesin character for me, i think. it’s been true for a while but after that chat with laudna... holy fuck. 

[revvethasmythh]

Looks like Sam/FCG is getting on peoples nerves (fandom wise) the last few episodes. Saw someone say that FCG was hypocritical, and putting others in danger, relying on the changebringer too much. Someone was also annoyed with the FCG’s insistence on going to Imogen’s hometown when she clearly didn’t want to. It seems like I only see criticism and hatred to FCG and not to Imogen or Laudna or any other character when their being annoying or assholes.

You know, anon, fantastic timing on sending this because I've been debating whether I wanted to write something about this exact topic for a little over a week. Because, at least imo, I agree that I've seen quite a bit of...disgruntlement? anger? mean-spiritedness? over FCG's more (intentionally! it's part of the bit! and, like, his character development!) annoying traits, most recently his turn to blind faith with the Changebringer coin, but it's certainly something I've seen pop up other times in general. And I think it's interesting that FCG seems to exists within the confines of a sort of....conditional tolerance by a lot of people? And that condition seems be to whether he's supporting their favorite character (or, god forbid I talk about this, favorite ships) in a way that they like to see. It's like, as along as he's supporting who the viewers want him to be supporting in a way they see fit, he's fine. Hell, you even get the "fcg/sam riegel supremacy" comments sometimes if they do something the viewer particularly approves of. But the second FCG deviates from that and does something solely to further their own story, or even just, well, doesn't cast guidance on Imogen, it's like we're backtracking to this really strong point of negativity regarding them that really just seems to culminate in the idea that their behavior is plain on old annoying and could they stop, please?

It's an interesting dichotomy. And, like, this isn't really about whether people actually like or dislike FCG as a character (a person's opinions about him as a character is actually not the point here!), it's the fluctuation of the opinion that stands out to me. The loud approval if he does something the audience deems as "good" and the loud dismissal if he does something the audience deems as "bad" or "annoying." Hence "conditional tolerance" is sort of the phrase I've landed on to describe the phenomena. This is something I think has shown up in shades with other Sam Riegel PCs as well, though to be fair I wasn't active in the fandom pre-90s in the M9 campaign. But I feel like something similar did happen with Veth in parts of the M9, as memory serves. I feel like it has to have something to do with people's inability to look past the "bit" and see the deeper character work that seeded into those bits. If the audience member is assessing the character's actions as nothing more than a silly bit that's getting in the way, perhaps they become quite aggravated by it? (Also, I'm not going to get into the specifics of how people's christian-centric view of religion is absolutely affecting the way they're responding to the "blind faith" thing, but. You know). Like, there is something to be said here about people not wanting to actually delve deeply into the character work happening in Sam's PCs, I'm sure. It's a...unique way of engaging with his characters that is simultaneously so annoying to me as fan of Sam's PCs and also, like, weirdly fascinating as someone who did reception studies in grad school? Like, it is genuinely a unique, if irritating, aspect of the fandom discourse.

[revvethasmythh]

#Sam also i think tends to have polarizing characters cuz he is NOT shy about leaning into some ugly behaviors#and it's fine if that is unfortunate for you. but the point is asking WHY someone would do things that are uncomfortable.#why is scanlan such an obnoxious flirt. why does tary come across so condescending.#why does veth lean in hard to drinking even when it cancels out her need to keep the others safe!#why does fcg jump into blind belief SO strongly and almost desperately!#Sam's characters do require you to approach uncomfortable behaviors with neutrality if not compassion#which means you CANNOT take it purely as a joke. @essektheylyss

Reblogging with these tags because YES, I feel like Sam's desire to play with flaws and consequences (fuck Halfling Luck, am I right?) really do cause this polarizing reaction in people. Like, personally, I love it because, like Sam, I love playing with flaws and consequences and the ugly sides of characters. But a lot of people also really don't like that, and it sort of breeds that conditional tolerance because as long as Sam's "bits" help the group, he's fine. But if his "bits" have consequences.......well, that's when people start to lose tolerance, such as flipping an actual, irl coin to make an in-game decision or drinking to the point of intoxication despite knowing it puts you at a mechanical disadvantage. A lot of people must see the bit as nothing more than fun and games on Sam's part that could fuck the party and don't engage with the bits as serious aspects of character exploration that are super telling about what's going on with the character's inner life (I mean.......Do You Spice?)

[revvethasmythh]

Not to make another addition to this post, but this all can really be summed up in the fact that the line of discourse is almost always going to resemble: "Imogen is so uncomfortable with FCG pushing her to go to Gelvaan, he shouldn't do that" and not "WHY is FCG pushing Imogen to go to Gelvaan so much? What is prompting them to focus in on her issues so strongly at this moment?" and I think as long as the discourse fails to consider FCG's POV of the situation (or any Sam PCs POVs), this problem will be persistent

[luckthebard]

My girlfriend, who has only seen LoVM and not the campaign, just commented that “Grog’s story has a weird amount in common with Hamlet” and now I can’t stop thinking about.

[aliseeart]

Twins!!

[nikoniko808]

“…like my mother before me…”

patreon | twitter

[kingcael]

Bell’s Hells

[the-big-nope]

One of my personal hopes for whenever Mighty Nein Animated comes out is that, similar to how they cranked up the dial on Vox Machina being kind of underestimated loser mercenaries at the beginning to make their rise to legendary status more satisfying, I hope they really place notable emphasis on just how fucking shady the Nein are. Like, Vox Machina are crass dumbasses who aren’t above a little pickpocketing or B&E on occasion, but the Nein are on a whole other level. They will have done absolutely nothing wrong and they still act like they’re hiding a body under their floorboards. One of their first adventures together was framing a political figure for sedition and attempted murder. They stole a beacon just because they felt like it. Beau casually committed mail fraud in like episode 4. They have worked for the mob and have committed piracy. These guys are straight up criminals and I would like that to be made very clear.