Batman, Van Saiyan

Janaina Medeiros

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ellievsbear

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Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
Jules of Nature
Sweet Seals For You, Always
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
almost home
styofa doing anything
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pixel skylines

Product Placement

if i look back, i am lost
tumblr dot com
i don't do bad sauce passes

#extradirty
Stranger Things
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@ohnohelpitsagain
Batman, Van Saiyan
this, but make it Robert and Invisigal
a lot of people are like “invisigal and invisible woman reference OBVIOUSLY” and like
i see you. i hear you.
but i raise you, jason todd.
like. please, someone else has to see this.
TO ME IT WORKS. TO ME IT IS TRUE. I WANNA DRAW IT NOW.
So much wrong with her I’m infatuated
Thinking about it Bolaire only exists because of Thaisha's family. If the sword that killed the first god was never made, the masks of the fatal play would have never been crafted.
Thaisha wants to fix the world and the damage done. In part because she's fallen in love with the world through the love of her life's work, and in part because of the damage her people and her family very specifically did to the world in freeing themselves from tyranny.
Bolaire grew from this same desire. The same spark. No more war, self determination. He wants to livez be a person in this world because of the beauty Hal and his family have shown him.
To live in this world he needs to cause damage.
I want them to have a conversation so bad.
"Thaisha wants to fix the world and the damage done. In part because she's fallen in love with the world through the love of her life's work, and in part because of the damage her people and her family very specifically did to the world in freeing themselves from tyranny."
Do not entertain for even a second that the oppressed would or should feel an iota of guilt for the manner by which their liberation was attained.
As I mentioned, I have a longer response regarding this post because I think the claim I'm responding to is broader than this specific issue. It's certainly far from the only time someone in the fandom has said it even about this campaign; it's been a consistent line across Dimension 20 campaigns and Critical Role miniseries, and it is no less untrue for several reasons.
In short, we need to take "capitalism is the BBEG" out back and shoot it.
I have discussed before that capitalism is a specific system that may have its earliest roots about 700 years ago, but would not become a dominant economic force in any meaningful sense until roughly the mid-1700s. In other words, capitalism and modern industry are less than 300 years old. By comparison, the unified Roman Empire lasted for 422 years from 27 BC to 395 AD, raping and slaughtering its way through the Mediterranean and taking its conquered peoples as slaves while taxing the hell out of its provinces. The Byzantine Empire, lasting for 1000 years longer, continued Rome's use of slavery before gradually transitioning to the slightly-less-exploitive feudalism. The Holy Roman Empire, lasting from roughly 800-1806, also had a long period of feudalism, which was the dominant economic and political structure throughout Europe for about 600 years (and existed in other forms in India, China, Pakistan, and Japan). The Catholic Church has existed for over 2000 years and prosecuted multiple Crusades while selling indulgences, halting scientific advancements, oppressing women, and taking advantage of laypeople's illiteracy; Protestantism also predates capitalism and would continue this legacy. Ancient Egypt was an empire that lasted over 3000 years, most of which predate the Roman Empire, and rather famously employed slave labor, using the spoils of the many wars they waged to build lavish monuments to their rulers.
This is simultaneously long-winded and an incredibly abridged version of history, but my point is this: capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and used to make a profit. Exploitation has existed in many forms throughout history prior to and apart from capitalism, because human beings and civilizations have historically sought ways to obtain power and wealth at any cost. To observe any form of exploitation and attempt to map capitalism onto it is to be historically myopic.
In the case of House Halovar, Yanessa is abusing a celestial in order to preserve access to divine power while lying about its origins and doing whatever she can to perpetuate her house's authority and control. (She is not, to our knowledge, responsible for depriving this being of a voice; we learn from Murray's arcana check earlier in the episode that the celestials went mad when the gods died in the Shapers' War.) It is not necessary to torture this into a critique of capitalism when we have, as aforementioned, millennia of history to make a much more incisive, accurate, and useful comparison. We can instead see in the Candescent Creed the American evangelical Protestant church, treating various groups of people as second-class citizens (at best) while entwining themselves with the Republican party for their own political gain. We can see the Catholic church, crowning Holy Roman Emperors and violently opposing the Reformation to maintain control. There are many other examples of religious abuse and exploitation that predate and exclude Christianity, and they are no less applicable.
Brennan is, among many other things, a student of history—he is well aware of all this. He is certainly a critic of modern capitalism because it is a current problem, but it is not the only thing he recognizes as a problem and he is not limiting his range to it. I'm reminded of what Asmodeus says to Cassida in Downfall: "You perceive a world in which the brightest, sharpest line is drawn between good and evil. The line actually exists between those who matter and those who don't". That is the root of evil, that is the core philosophy of exploitation and cruelty, and that is the theme of much of what Brennan explores in his work, and it cannot and should not be distilled so easily into a meme.
Critical Role Campaign 4 is doing a lot of complicated and poignant work already addressing a variety of political and social concepts in different ways. To reduce this story into a thought-terminating cliche about Capitalism Bad is to misrepresent the text, to be ignorant of history, and to do Brennan Lee Mulligan a great deal of disservice.
julien is the perfect kind of character that makes me want to maliciously bite them. like yes. show me your development but someone needs to bite you expeditiously. this is solely due to his clear relationship with his standing.
we see julien’s lack of respect for those “beneath” him socially, or at the very least a willingness to use his standing as leverage or threat.
“i would ask you kindly to reconsider your tone in the face of your betters” and the action of physically restraining thimble and directly saying “society works in certain ways.” the entirety of his action in that scene, even if he wasn’t being confrontational, is acknowledging the inherent violence of this system.
whether or not julien planned to remain civil or not, his reaction digs to the core of the issue. power and hierarchy exist in the production of common sense. power thrives when the powerful can convince others that their way is simply best. “i am better than you” and “by nature of your existence you are meant to be less than me” are statements that may carry the same sentiment but hold different weights. in the first, the powerful party has placed themselves into that position. in the second, there was never a question as to who that power belongs to.
when discussing his motivation with thaisha in the first episode, amidst his hostility, he admits that his family name has been “thrown into the mud” and he’s the one who has had to pull them back up. that is why he says he did what he did.
the interaction julien has in this episode is so perfectly aligned to what he is clearly trying to be. he desires the inherent respect of his station back. he has had to, as he says, pull his family back out of the mud, but to admit he ever lost that guise of untouchability would be to admit the system that gives the houses power isn’t infallible. it’s to admit that his power can be diminished and his pride can be wounded.
anyways, all this yap to say? hate this guy. intrigued. really biteable dude. curious to see how his dad’s mortal kombat ko changes this up.
my favorite sad pixie and her emotional support dweeb :')
siblings of sadness and melancholy fr
thaisha funeral agenda: see baby daddy, do some rites, get drunk as hell and really hit it off with the demon lady, be filled with the desperate desire to beat the shit out of The Worst Guy, touch a mask and pass tf out and hallucinate birds, tell everyone her surrogate son is a virgin
i think there’s a lesson here for everyone about optimism and utilizing our circumstances or something.
thjazi being scared as hell because his wife just gave him a tiny, awkward living being as a WEDDING GIFT??
no wonder he rebelled against her house/the sundered houses because WHAT do you MEAN she’s a gift??
she’s only small and braids hair and kills mice??? horrifying.
like, love them! horrifying origin.
Ah! The whimsy i feel with this one. I'm sure Laura Bailey is goin to be my favorite once again!
8/13
a good kid and her best friend who she found in the sewer
this is crazy. halandil has exes and is a theatre nerd. julien is the fucking worst so much that thaisha wants to murder for the first time in her life and it's him. kattigan cannot speak up for the life of him. travis is leaning into the furry of it all. THIMBLE IS HAUNTED. sam is not playing a rascal for once. tyranny is a NUISANCE TO SOCIETY. bolaire IS AN ANTIQUE MUSEUM OWNER and is also the worst. vaelus has a whip. murray is a boisterous milf. azune has sunset eyes. OCCTIS IS A DWEEB. this campaign is insane.
ROBBIES PC HAS A BIG PUPPY
Feeling normal about this.
(If Brennan lets anything happen to the dog their may be crimes)
brennan…i KNOW your game leave that puppy alone
…now why’d they kill her whimsy like that? like what could have POSSIBLY happened? she’s been here for ten minutes let her BREATHE
everyone asking “oh who will aabria romance” but no one is asking “oh HOW will aabria romance twelve different pcs and an npc?” and i think THAT’S more important?
why would you make a sweet and kind person choose?
y’all think zombie adelia got sleepy in skreev’s arms at the end because even though she was all undead and feral she somehow realized she was safe and he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to her?
yeah no me neither haha….