no mercy, only frogs

squirrel • 22 • they/them critical role liveblog on thursdays • spoilers are tagged until tuesday

[stormsbourne]

one day it'll happen to you. you will stay up a bit too late playing a video game and not get to bed on time. I've done it before, you'll think. I'll be fine. but no. you will make it through most of the next day and then at about 2pm you will feel like a reanimated corpse whose sim meters are all completely fucked and nothing hurts exactly but everything does feel very bad. and you'll think oh yeah. I'm not twenty anymore

[justynarerak]

[S]

[calciumcryptid]

I feel like a lot of people get "All Art is Political" confused with "All Art is made with Political Intentions" which is not the same.

[oldowlshollow]

can't sleep so played around with style, brushes & color

commission / kofi

[lesbianpraetor]

You know the last few episodes of Critical Role have been good when it's monday and you are already vibrating in your seat about "Is it thursday yet". This next episode is going to be such a culmination of so much buildup and I genuinely haven't felt this excited about any new piece of media in ages. 14 people and 7 months of actual play and it does feel like they are going to land something incredible

[undead-knick-knack]

Happy Pride Month 🌈

[utilitycaster]

I'm not sorry for saying this but the whole "um, Bolaire isn't running various important scenes because this campaign is SO fast-paced" argument is absolute bullshit given that the complaint is specifically "Sam and Whitney set up for a scene with Taliesin, and Brennan called him to the table, and Taliesin said 'no, I'll just text you what happened.'" Like, you could not more clearly have shown that everyone involved set up space and time for a scene for Wick and Tyranny to find out about Bolaire. The problem is not "there's no time." They explicitly made time. The problem is that Taliesin wants them to find out about Bolaire and his requests via reading a book instead of roleplaying a scene in the roleplaying a scene game. Instead of a back-and-forth it's a "do this for me" which, as I stated, is fundamentally not collaborative. You cannot in good faith pin this on anyone else. Everyone else said "hey! let's run a scene with Bolaire!" and Taliesin said "no" and it's in the fucking transcript.

Also, even if it was the pacing, this is not a problem for anyone else. I don't feel like this for, eg, Kattigan, who is mostly bouncing around during the Convergence helping where needed and cracking open cold ones; or Teor or Vaelus, who have each had one absolutely incredible scene with a meaningful NPC, but have otherwise been quiet and mostly served as muscle because they're relative outsiders to the city. It's not about the plot not tying into the character. The complaint is that Bolaire's been given an absolute cornucopia of plot hooks and hasn't followed any of them to a conclusion, and everyone else has been doing great with what they've been given.

At absolute best it means that Taliesin is struggling to adapt in a way no one else is, for which you can extend good faith to him as a player (though I am personally not inclined to do after this episode in which people clearly made a space for him which he turned down) but you are still are in no way obligated to feel the character is working. I mean, while we're at it, I also had this feeling in Campaign 3: I don't blame most of the cast for Bells Hells feeling undercooked because there, I do think it was on Matt as DM and I do think it was a pacing problem; but it still means I'm not like, attached to them as characters in the way I am attached to Vox Machina and the Mighty Nein or even the other twelve characters of Campaign 4. I have zero respect for someone pleading at me to like a fictional character because of extenuating circumstances, and even less when the extenuating circumstances aren't even true. This is at this point a Doylist complaint and requires Doylist answers.

[magemance]

Two sides of the same coin

[samcarter34]

The thing about 'would Thjazi sacrifice 5,000 people to save many more' or 'would Thjazi do a ritual that would turn him into a god (absolutely insane thing to accuse him of considering the Orcs' relationship to divinity btw) to stop another ritual' is that we haven't seen any evidence that he'd do any of that.

Accuse him of being the kind of person to tell someone to implant themselves somewhere for an uncertain future date? Sure, we've seen him do that to Casamir, Cyd and Azune.

Accuse him being the kind of person to keep secrets and tell people to do something without telling them why? Sure, he's done that to everyone at the table and we literally saw a flashback of him explaining why.

But the rest of it, it really seems like the only defence any one could come up with was 'vibes,' and then acted like that was solid enough to keep the idea on the table.

[emily-axford]

CRITICAL ROLE: CAMPAIGN 4 Episode 28: Chasing Shadows

[ariadne-mouse]

wild that Nott envisioned Caleb killing her with fire, specifically, as a precursor to changing her back into her original body - maybe to contrast the drowning from her first transformation, maybe simply because fire is observably Caleb's thing, maybe a little above table for the phoenix imagery - but with his particular history it's such a Caleb-tailored horror show idea. "I don't want to burn you." I sure as fuck bet you don't my guy. Caleb didn't seem outwardly affected much, and it's not unreasonable for Nott to assume death would have to be involved again, or that it would be most easily done with fire from a fire wizard. But woof what a relief for everyone that it's no death and some nice earthen clay in a bath instead

[saveugoodmadam]

*leaves theatre* wow what a great show my favourite bit was how it fundamentally changed me as a person forever

[bannertanks]

[ghosthierophant]

[squirrel-stowaway]

why is 8pm the peak time for being tired? do I have to just choose between having the sleep schedule of a grandma and not getting enough sleep because I’m wide awake at 3am??

[darikbelochka]

Thaisha smithing🔥🔥🔥

[vyvilha]

love when werewolf transformation is shown as painful. hell yeah baby i want to become my true self and i want it to hurt

[stormsbourne]

one day it'll happen to you. you will stay up a bit too late playing a video game and not get to bed on time. I've done it before, you'll think. I'll be fine. but no. you will make it through most of the next day and then at about 2pm you will feel like a reanimated corpse whose sim meters are all completely fucked and nothing hurts exactly but everything does feel very bad. and you'll think oh yeah. I'm not twenty anymore