Not gonna lie, I think a big part of this might be a Vax issue?
Like. Stream Vax is great and complicated and flawed! And meshes with Keyleth beautifully because of their respective strengths and weaknesses and hangups! Part of why they have so much time between the kiss and getting together is because as the situation changes their respective reservations/concerns do too, and it takes a while to align and that's Interesting!
Vax in TLOVM feels a lot like the fandom caricature of Vax. A brooding black hole who is sad and mopey and sometimes says something Deep or Hilarious, but only sometimes because he is Brooding and Tragic, and has given 1000% of his life to the Raven Queen. When that's... really not who he is (and I don't think Keyleth would be in love with that version of Vax either).
I'd hoped that after Season 2 'the Vax and Scanlan season', Season 3 would balance things better. Especially after Vex and Keyleth's arcs each getting shunted into single episodes, and Vax cannibalized the acquisition of Trinket. But... well.
If this is how they're juggling Vax and Vaxleth now (by just holding Keyleth's ball in one hand and yeeting Vax's comically high over and over), I'm worried about how they'll do in a hypothetical season 4 or 5 when things get *very* delicate.
(To be clear I don't think this is a Liam issue, I think it's a writing/pacing issue, and them trying to keep the Raven Queen angle very much at the forefront. When, I dunno, Vax could have gotten visions about Percy or Scanlan or both to fuss over at some other point, or about all the deaths Raishan caused. Matron why did you cockblock them with a vision like that, seriously. rude!)
to be totally honest i don't know if i've spent enough minutes of my life thinking about vax to give a good answer to this, but i totally agree that there's no way to know how they're gonna do future vaxleth scenes when they're approaching it quite differently here. i was already Very surprised by how different these first three eps are from the events of the stream so it kinda feels like we're just rewriting the campaign at this point, and the jury's still out on whether or not that's overall a good or bad thing, i think
I'm such a huge fan of the actor AU, you have no idea how delighted I am to see it back! Any ideas tied to the recent episodes? I had the thought of Vex's actress refusing to give back the Percy coat because it's so warm vjvjvjvj or someone on all fours doing the dragon mocap like how Benedict Cucumbr did Smaug. I'm sure the costume designers had fun with Kiki and Vax's new fits too
Everyone steals the coat at some point. It's just so dramatic it's hard not to
I'm sure the costume designers had fun with the new outfits, particularly Vax's.
Keyleth is going to change her outfit again at some point, but Vax's armor is a vestige and greatly effects his character and the plot. It's gonna be around for the rest of the show so they had a lot of talks with Matt and Liam about how it should look
OMG I DIDNT SEE YOU RBD THUS GAME!! 2 5 12 for ZAHRA!!!
MISS ZAHRA HYDRIS LOVE OF MY LIFE??? (campaign version)
character ask game!
2. Favorite canon thing about this character?
HER PATRON IS JUST. THE MOON. NOT THE MOONWEAVER, BUT THE FUCKIN MOON. idk if that’s just a lore mix-up with her being a guest character, but i don’t care, i think it’s dope as fuck. i think it also makes sense with her being a warlock and not a cleric, bc it’s odd for someone to be a warlock of a god. i dunno, i think being a warlock of the moon is just really cool, especially with exandria’s weird moon lore. i assume she’s a warlock of catha, does she deal with ruidus at all? does its whole not-really-a-moon deal mean she’s not connected to it at all, or is the pact more based off vibes and lore? i wanna know everything. also the letter to vex with the dragon slaying arrow don’t fucking talk to me
5. What’s the first song that comes to mind when you think about them?
okay for obvious reasons i first thought of “the moon will sing” by the crane wives, but i don’t know if that actually fits her? hold on
hmmmm okay technically it could work for her and her father but it doesn’t fit well enough for me and my meticulously curated playlists. BUT SPEAKING OF THE CRANE WIVES!! i think their song “ribs” really works well for her :) something something feminine rage but also feminine connection and using your past to guide others, something something “the dark doesn’t frighten me / i chose to close my eyes / it is mine, it is mine / the night doesn’t frighten me / i chose to let it thrive”
12. What’s a headcanon you have about this character?
she’s a little in love with vex’ahlia hmmmm i haven’t actually thought about giving her a little headcanon list!! lemme try and think of a couple since none of the ones i currently have are in depth. i think she’s a very tactile person, specifically with her tail, just because we see that in her few appearances - she smacks vex with it to tease ofc, but i also think she likes to use it in hugs, or to poke people to get their attention, and probably some [REDACTED] stuff bc of course. look at her. i also think she likes to spar!! not just magic, but hand to hand stuff. i think because of her time in that cage, and then finding her way after, she’s learned she has to make do with what she has and so she tries not to lean to heavily on any form of combat. also she’s gotta keep up her strength and fitness to work in the forge, and those muscles also help her with combat, and vice versa!!
YEAHH there we go! Vaxleth kiddo with number 17! :D
#17 is I Can Do It With A Broken Heart by Taylor Swift.
Wow, really hard on The Tortured Poets Department!
I'm going to go with little Wren here from my Nos Volant series (Nos Volant - Dragon_Princess - Critical Role (Web Series) [Archive of Our Own]). If you are unfamiliar, Wren is born right smack in the middle of Vox Machina's adventures as a total and complete surprise and she's about two when The Year Off starts and about three for the Vecna fight. It hugs canon besides her existence. And yes, it does hurt.
(Wren has cerebral palsy that primarily affects her legs due to a lack of oxygen at birth)
I'm A Real Tough Kid, I Can Handle My Shit
Wren all but threw her crutches to the side and collapsed against the base of the Raven Tree. She scrubbed at her face with the back of her hand before pulling her knees up to her chest (her left leg went all on its own, but she did need to actually grab and pull her right leg up the rest of the way).
She hated it when people brought up her dad and expected her to be brave about it. She was supposed to be proud of him, of what he had done. But she couldn't find it in herself to be proud of him when every time she thought about him too hard, an ache settled so deeply in her chest that she thought she might be stuck forever. He had left them, left her, even though he promised.
And he had left so long ago that her memories of him were starting to fade. All she had left were vague feeling of years-old hugs, how he smelled like oiled leather and lavender when she fell asleep against him, the sound of his laugh- happy and carefree- bouncing around in her brain, and how he called her his little bird. She couldn't remember his voice any more, or his face.
She had lived far longer without her father than with him. And she was only thirteen years old.
She sniffled miserably and leaned her head back, resting her head against the snarled trunk, looking up through the branches to the sky. A single raven was sitting in the tree, looking down at her, almost curiously.
“Go away!” she shouted at the bird. “Get out of here!”
The bird hopped to a lower branch.
She growled in frustration and put her head in her hands. The only thing worse than the stupid bird sticking around would be it leaving. And the ravens were one of the few things she had left.
At least one raven was always near her and her mother. They weren't her dad, but her dad sent the birds to watch over them. Aunt Vex had ravens looking after her too, but Wren and her mom seemed to have more.
“Birdie?”
Wren looked up from her hands. Her mother was standing a little ways away, staff held tightly in her hands.
“I thought I might find you here,” Keyleth continued with a gentle smile. “Can I sit with you?”
Wren hesitated for a second before she nodded.
Keyleth carefully rested her staff against a nearby tree, took the mantle off her shoulders and laid it nearby, and rested her circlet on top before joining Wren at the base of the tree. She reached for Wren's hands and Wren took it.
Neither of them said anything for a long while.
“How do you do it, Mom?” Wren asked finally, voice breaking.
“Do what, sweetheart?” Keyleth asked.
“I miss Daddy so much and I… I didn't even know him as long as you did.”
“He was your dad, Wren. You're allowed to miss him.”
“How do you… keep being brave? How do you talk about him? Every time I even think about him, it hurts. Like actually hurts me.”
Keyleth rubbed the back of her daughter’s hand in little circles with her thumb and she looked down. “It… hurts me too. A lot. There are some days where I just want to stay in bed and cry, but I know he wouldn't want me to do that. I know he wants us to be happy, to keep going, and that keeps me going. You deserve a mom who is in the present and doesn't spend her whole life missing what used to be. I try to be that mom for you, be that person for the Ashari. But it's hard.”
Wren dropped her head to her mother's shoulder. Keyleth rested her head on top. “I hardly remember him. That scares me.”
“We won't let you forget him, baby. He loved you so, so much. He still does.” Keyleth smiled wetly. “Why do you think there's always ravens everywhere?”
Wren giggled softly. Keyleth picked her head up off her daughter’s and kissed the girl's temple.
Wren turned her head, bright green eyes matching another set, long black hair cascading down her back in soft curls. “Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“Does your heart feel like it's broken too?”
“Yeah,” Keyleth cleared her throat. “Yeah, it does. It's… it's been broken for eleven years.”
Sending this hoping to get it in before break/you go to bed, BUT!
The contrast between Laudna demanding power and support of Delilah, vs the 'I didn't choose this' is intriguing. I don't know about you but this is the increased Oomf to Delilah I've been waiting for, as well as potentially forcing Laudna to reckon with these feuding interests of hers. And Laudna being interested in potentially powering Delilah enough to get her out of her head too.
Sorry if these aren't organized, just curious as to what you're thinking!
I think I'll have to sit with it for a while because there's some issues that I feel fall on Marisha, some that fall on Matt, and without knowing how much Marisha did in the character development and how much she left to the DM it feels presumptive to criticize since I can't quite tell where the breakdown is. With that said, it kind of sets up a conflict? But it also kind of doesn't, and that's actually a pretty massive problem for me that underscores how this really needed to come up much sooner.
Here's the crux of it: Laudna has been a hollow one, presumably living only because she is bound to Delilah, for 30-ish years. She has not been working towards Delilah's goals in a meaningful fashion during that time, and has only incidentally provided her with strength (the gnarlrock, Bor'Dor). Delilah was effectively dormant for a time and Laudna was still fine. Delilah has also not made these goals clear to her until now, at least to our knowledge.
What are the consequences, meaningfully, if Laudna doesn't do anything to help Delilah resurrect Sylas? She's been leveling up in sorcerer, which is unrelated to Delilah; losing three warlock levels isn't fun but it's not devastating if she's still a L8 sorcerer without them. Delilah doesn't seem to need to be active to keep Laudna alive; she just can't be removed. To that point, Delilah is unlikely to simply kill Laudna for disobedience, since I don't think she has any other options, so they really are trapped in a standoff, with neither able to kill the other without killing themselves. At best Delilah can try to make Laudna kill the people she cares about, and to be clear that's a good source of conflict, but at this point the party knows that then they put Laudna down so it makes it either a suicide mission for Delilah, or a TPK, or a postponement of the inevitable.
This isn't to say it's not a potential good hook, particularly if Laudna decides she refuses to be a permanent vessel for Delilah. I think that while the points above are still pretty significant...not plot holes, but certainly plot points that demand more explanation than we've gotten, Laudna refusing to comply with Delilah would be a great step forward. I also think it has opened up some great new avenues for Imogen; her scene in the Dawnfather temple was intriguing. But this lack of stakes remains, and that's what ultimately needs to be addressed, even though this is a big step forward in terms of having some engagement with the core concepts of the character.
Hiya! For the spotify (not-wrapped?) song prompt game, would you be up for giving Dorym a go? I don't believe you're using a song list, but if you need a number how about 43! ;3
Thank you for making this game and letting it be passed around! I'm sorry it took so long to get to this, but the muse got kinda smothered during the holidays. (I was using Wrapped, I just don't post abt music much 😅) Song 43 is From Eden by Hozier. It reminded me of Dorym Confession Night. The cast themselves being confused about the setting did befuddle me for a little whilte (lol) but I went with like. They had the heroes' feast at a shared table and then the room they all shared for the night was somewhere else in the tower.
Babe, there's something wretched about this
Something so precious about this, where to begin?
Out of the corner of his eye, Dorian sees Orym slink upstairs, the first to turn in for the night. Should he follow? This is it, right? Last-night-alive sort of deal?
Sitting at the dinner table, he taps his fingers on his goblet, trying to appear like he’s following the conversation around him.
–º•–
Orym’s hyperventilating in the stairwell. This is it. Tonight or never. They plunge directly into the jaws of death first thing tomorrow.
Can we talk. That’s it, just three words. Break it down into pieces, just the first step: three words.
Even if it’s rejection, he’ll know. Deep inhale. Right. He’ll know. Exhale.
Hi! I've been listening to Epic: The Musical lately and it's got me thinking about your mythology AU (namely Orym - Warrior of the Mind with him and Kiki is *so* good. Some of the songs might jive with your OCs too, if you wanna give it a listen!).
So! Any thoughts on the AU you haven't had a chance to share? Especially for Orym, Ashton and Chetney, I'm really curious to hear more!
I really gotta listen to Epic, keep holding it off.
I'll be honest, I haven't thought too much on the others. The bare minimum that I can confirm is Ashton and Imogen being alongside each other for their duties. Since their domain are more or less the same.
For Chetney, some mortals considers him the Patron of Craftmanship while others Patron of the Wild.
I don't have any idea for Orym (IM SORRY ORYM). I'm open to suggestion
24. "Sit still. Let me sign your cast."
ig i'm gonna set this in grow with the flow bc that's my modern au?
The waiting room smells like blood and bleach. The cracked plastic seats are uncomfortable as hell, and Scanlan's ass is too old to be sitting like this. Seriously, how long can it take to put a cast on?
(Alright, Scanlan actually has no idea how long it takes to put a cast on, because he wasn't there when Kaylie broke her arm falling from the monkey bars in the third grade. He takes a deep breath. Patience.)
Every ninety seconds, his phone buzzes with a new questioning text from his friends, but he doesn't read them. What's he going to say? He doesn't know how Kaylie is feeling, because she didn't want him in there while she got her X-rays done, and he doesn't know how he's feeling, because he doesn't know how he's allowed to be feeling. Does it make him a bad dad if he's grateful that Sybil is away on business at the moment, leaving him as the available emergency contact? (There are so many things that make him a bad dad.) He just stares at the muted TV up in the corner, watching some daytime host mediate manufactured drama between family members—a little too on-the-nose for the moment, but it's not like he picked it.
Finally, there's movement in the hall to the right, and Scanlan slides painfully from the chair to see his daughter, pink-haired and scowling, being wheeled in his direction, a haggard nurse pushing the chair from behind. Kaylie's expression doesn't change when she comes into earshot. "You didn't need to come."
Scanlan raises an eyebrow at the thick cast encompassing her leg from ankle to knee. "You broke your leg. Were you going to drive yourself home?"
"They invented these newfangled things called buses—"
"Mr. Shorthalt," the nurse interrupts, clearly exhausted, "if I could just get you to sign the release paperwork..."
"Right." Scanlan takes a clipboard from her, doesn't read it, and signs where it seems appropriate. "C'mon, Kaylie, let's get you home."
Kaylie opens her mouth to issue what Scanlan is sure to be a scathing retort, but then the nurse swears low under her breath. "I forgot her medication. Give me two minutes." And then she scurries back down the hall, leaving Scanlan and his daughter to each other's company.
Scanlan wheels her out of the way, sitting in another ass-punishing chair beside her. There is horrifically awkward silence between them for a few moments, then Scanlan says, "You know I broke my toe once kicking an amp?"
Kaylie side-eyes him. "Really?"
He shrugs. "Couldn't get the sound I wanted. Thought beating the amp into submission would help. The amp won that fight."
And he can see it, though she's clearly trying to hide it: the ghost of a smile on the corner of her mouth. "Better than falling off a stage in an attempt to knee-slide like a rock god."
"At least you did it in rehearsal and not during an actual show. I was playing this dive bar once and thought I could chug an entire pint during the bridge of this one song. Ended up puking on the front row."
There's a choked-off laugh in the back of Kaylie's throat that feels like the greatest victory Scanlan's ever managed. "Okay, that's...that's bad."
"You're telling me." He stands up, goes over to the front desk, and steals a Sharpie someone abandoned. When he returns to Kaylie, who's eying him skeptically, he says, "Sit still. Let me sign your cast."
He's expecting her to move just to fuck with him, but as he starts to scrawl over the hot pink plaster, she surprises him (always surprising him, this one) by keeping her leg still. When he's done, he straightens up. "There."
She twists her leg and her torso to get a better angle on what he's signed just below her knee. Nothing broken that isn't worth fixing. —Your #1 fan. There's a begrudging smile on her face as she looks at him. "Your handwriting is shit."
"So is your knee-sliding."
She gapes in offense, but before she can say anything, the nurse is back, orange bottle in hand and clearly eager to be rid of them both. Kaylie is helped into the back of Scanlan's car, and then they're off toward his place, where they're going to have to figure out together how to deal with a broken leg and all the years he's missed. He watches her in the rearview, falling asleep against the door with her leg stretched out across the seat, and yeah, okay, he's a bad dad, but fuck is he grateful for the chance to fix what he broke, one bone at a time.
