im catching up on critical role (am partway through C3 E120) and im struck by some differences between C2 and C3.
C2, for me, was a narrative that was endlessly about coming home. every character is searching for home, or a feeling of home (be that each other). Home in C2 is the nestled nook, the leaky tap, the dome, the lavish chateau, the mistake, the ball eater, felderwin, the xhorhaus, the blooming grove, the nein heroez, the tower, and more. the nein find a home in every town, in each other. they spend their cameos throwing in talks of home, of marriage, of future.
At the start of C3, the hells can't even pick a tavern to be loyal to. they come with two brief senses of home - Madam Zhudanna's and the Krook House (later Ligament Manor). but they are soon left behind. the hells never settle anywhere that feels like home, and they are all running from their memories of home and trying not to look back.
Caleb dreams of raising his home from the ashes, whilst Imogen runs from the storm that consumes hers. Home is something that is lost for the hells. they do not stop. they do not settle. laudna and Imogen's dream cottage feels more like a pipe dream than a promise.
it's this difference, I think, that makes the difference between the two parties. The Nein know their homes and stand steady and grounded with the philosophy of 'leave each place better than you found it'. This culminates in their final battle - a fight against a tortured city with its avatar wearing the face of a dead friend. Their final fight is deeply personal and deeply resonant to their story. They lay tortured memory to rest to save the world, freeing the long trapped souls of aeor, driven by the love of one. They are fighting for the homes that they have made and saved and loved.
The hells, on the other hand, come to us largely untethered from a sense of home. they are people from places that do not define them. Jrusar is just a temporary stop for people who never stop moving. Whitestone is no longer home to Laudna. Even brief visits to Ligament Manor are on a timeline, and come with a cost in later favours. They have no motto other than 'smiley day to you,' and 'what the fuck is up with that?' platitudes and questions get them nowhere.
It makes sense that their villain is philosophy. the nein fight corruption and tyranny. the hells ponder the notion of the divine right of gods. they find no fixed point of agreement other than the fact that they disagree with the methods that others use (and then kill them about it). in the end, their closest friend is their first enemy, Ira, whose morals that they once disagreed with but they have now overlooked. the hells are inconstant, changing.
when the nein were playing, the world was set dressing to their story, enhancing it, and serving as a tool to let us know them. the hells are the opposite. to me, they are set dressing to the story of the world, giving us a viewpoint to see people and places that once felt like home through the eyes of strangers. the hells are without constancy, without clear mission, without regular income, without a grounding in the world.
whilst their final battle is deeply personal to the hells, it still feels impersonal. it feels like the connections were all made off stage, in the wings, rather than at the roadside, at dawn, with a glaive. without a home, or a mission, the hells feel more hollow than the nein. they are defined mainly by their connections to other people - Keyleth's saviour blade, Lord Zathuda and the Fatestitcher's child, Delilah's puppet, Liliana Temult's daughter, Ashton of the Hishari. I cannot tell you stories of their heroism. They robbed a museum once, they raced in a speeder race, they went to the moon. They have been cogs in a larger story until they stumbled into the end of it, still feeling like strangers to me
I'm interested to hear how this story ends, when I get there
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