beau: *goes to give an npc 15 platinum*

laura: BEAU WHAT ARE YOU–

laura: i mean go for it i'm jester! ha ha ha :)

beau: *splits up the leftovers so everyone gets 5 platinum*

laura: OH.

laura: i mean, thank you!

marisha: your vex is showing

laura: *grumbles about it*

Ngl something I’d love to pick Taliesin’s brain about is why he was so focused on Molly’s variant tiefling abilities in combat (DC 10). I just want to (and will never) know what the thought process was there.

I'm not sure if is because I'm in the middle of my covid sickness, or said sickness has made my depression worse.

But I'm getting real tired of watching critical role week by week with the reactions of the fandom.

Don't get me wrong. I'm Having a great time with the story and still want to watch the show.

But with every take I see since this new arc started is getting on my nerves.

Even more that with a lot of the big jerk reactions people have are solved and answered in the next episode.

-The fight was railroad and orym and Fearne dying was bad: They were able to revivify them. At the end the consequences came from a roll(like it is supposed to be as a dnd game) when Laudna roll a nat 1.

-They don't care about Laudna and that's why they choose her instead of Orym. Actually if that's the case, they would bury her and move on. Marisha would came back as a new character and we would have the table full. No, they change trajectory and are doing everything to bring her back.

-Death don't have consequences if is not permadeaths. The main story of the arc that is Rudius and Ottohan was put on literal hold, even knowing that they have a deadline of a month to go resurrect Laudna. We move from another continent and are making deals not of them can't hold with a group of people that we(and Orym) knows are good people but could be easily bad.

-Percy was a jerk for not wanting to help Laudna. Percy was wrong but is not out of his character to react the way he did. We know Laudna because we have see her for more than 33 episodes. We learned to love her. Until the moment he learned that Delilah could come back, he back off of the deal and decided to protect his family and his place. He was ready to help them until that moment. Which was a very obvious possibility(Did anyone notice that none of the bell hells mentioned that Delilah was still in Laudna's head? they knew that if they mentioned it the possibility of help could be denied). And at the end he told them to informed him if they find another way serving the connection between his long time abuser to Laudna(because yeah Laudna wasn't the only one that was abuse by Delilah).

-Vox Machina coming back mess up the story of the campaign because they are just gonna get stuff fixed. No. Pike found a spell and Bell Hells are gonna have to go to Laudna's trauma hell world to somehow defeat Delilah and bring Laudna back. If the "Vox Machina was gonna solved all the problems" was gonna be real, Pike would made two spells and that's all. But no. Bell Hells are going and fighting(and losing a lot, Chetney is hurt a lot) TO SAVE LAUDNA.

Like I already step aside a little but I'm going to put myself in a chamber now only watching and keeping my stuff in my brain until the story is done.

Half-elf and Changeling? Given I know you just started C2, I'm curious!

half-elf: who is your favorite guest player? Hmmm... I really enjoyed  Darin De Paul, Patrick Rothfuss, Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, and Khary Payton

*Please note I have not seen the guest episodes of CR3 yet :)

changeling: who is your favorite campaign 2 character? Jester is probably my favorite. I feel like Molly would probably be up there too, but I'm intentionally keeping myself from getting too attached. Caleb is also growing on me! *Jester just really stuck out to me from the very first minute. So... :)

BAFTA Award winner Laura Bailey loves a dramatic, perfectly-timed gay pause

meanwhile, at the home of exandria's most eligible paladin—

this is an appreciation post for the Nein and their crow's feet

do NOT start commentary about their ages, this is a crow's feet appreciation post

“i’m afraid i’m a bad person—imogen—“

“—you’re not a bad person”

i kiss her again

When you're chilling in the tiki bar and the idiots you're gonna send to the moon gives the nightmare-cautionary-children's-tale a nuke.

"Will you hold me?"

"Always."

where's that post about how you can tell how badly a cr fight is going by how much it looks like a renaissance painting

I've been thinking about Mollymauk, as I'm periodically wont to do, and the fandom discussion about him as a moral compass. Because the interesting thing here is, Molly wasn’t a very moral character. He was an unrepentant scammer. He had no respect for interpersonal boundaries and would deliberately push and break them. Generally, he was an asshole. As far as actually having a strong moral stance I would say Fjord was the standout of early m9, and to some extent Beau.

But here’s the thing: almost all of early m9 thought of themselves as horrible people. Fjord had been bullied so bad growing up that he still dealt with self-hate from it, and now suffered from survivor's guilt to boot. Caleb had killed his own parents. Beau, while she hated her dad, also had internalized self-hate and on some level thought she’d been such a shitty daughter she deserved his treatment. Nott was stuck in a body she considered monstrous. Yasha had survivor's guilt and knew she’d done bad things in her blank spots. Even when they did good, they didn’t think of themselves as good. Most of them were suspicious and asocial and faced the world with the same kind of distrust they expected to be (and were experienced in being) met with. (Jester was an exception, an agent of neither good nor bad but of amoral chaos)

But Molly was different. He was outspoken about loving life and people. He wanted to spread joy, even to people he didnt know or had even met: he slipped coin into people's pockets, hid a silver in a tree just so some stranger would one day be happy to find it. He openly cared for the party early on; was one of the first to step in and help Caleb when he went catatonic in battle. Above all, Molly had rules: where everyone else would agonize over what was the right or wrong or smart thing to do, Molly loudly proclaimed we don't leave people behind, and we leave every place better than we found it.

But the thing about Molly’s rules was, they were largely a cover. While the rest of the m9 thought they were bad even as they did good, Molly thought of himself as good even as he did bad. He scammed people, but made it a good and memorable experience, therefore thinking he gave more than he took. He charmed Nott and Fjord without consent, and when confronted would claim it was to help them. Out of the group, Beau saw through this, not because she was a better person but because she was a cynic. She saw that he caused harm, just as she did, and was personally affronted that he still thought of himself as good and tried to leave people happy, whereas she deliberately left every place worse than she found it.

I see Molly as a moral compass of the group not because he was actually any more moral than them, but because they made him their template. He was joy and brightness and he died trying to save them because it was the right thing to do, and they all chose to honor him by emulating his rules more than Molly himself ever did, because to them it was more than just a cover, backed up by genuine moral thought and discussion rather than small gestures. He taught them that it was possible to be kind of a shit person and still be good, to still love yourself and others. The idealized Molly they created never existed, and finally died for good when they resurrected him in the end and were met with a stranger, who they welcomed with the same love and care they would've expected Molly to show them.

the guests looking at imogen/laudna at any point in this entire arc

Monk and druid for the ask game? :D

monk: what is your favorite canon relationship? perc'ahlia :) Don't get me wrong there are other ones I like a lot, but perc'ahlia is just... they live in my brain.

druid: what is your favorite non-canon ship? hmmm... that's a bit harder.. I honestly don't think I have one. Although, technically it could be argued that Imodna (at least in a romantic sense) isn't canon yet. So, I think that one comes the closest.

Thank you for the question! :)

moment of appreciation again for what is possibly my favourite later game percy quote that everyone always forgets about

(said to vex, of course)