#rsellos | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

eponymous-rose · 4 years

Text

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E98 (March 10, 2020)

Be warned: there are spoilers for the most recent episode below!

Tonight’s guests are Ashley Johnson and Travis Willingham!

Announcements: On Monday at 7 PM Pacific, there will be a special Doom: Eternal one-shot! VOD will be on YouTube on Wednesday. We’re one week away from the release of the new campaign book, Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount!

Episode 98: Dark Waters

Stats! 124 days passed between the Nein’s voyages at sea. It’s been 77 days since Fjord’s pact was broken. Fjord took 40% of the damage taken by the Nein and the crew (Yasha took second-most at 21%).

What’s it like RPing dream sequences with Matt? Ashley: “It gives me the fear.” They both agree it’s a panic feeling first, and then you get excited to see where he’ll go. Travis: “All cognizant thought goes out the window.” Ashley feels like she rushes it sometimes to avoid keeping the attention on her too long, and Travis dreads the open-ended questions: “What do you do?”

This is the first time Travis has had to wait a week to find out if his character will be revived. “Aside from analyzing the fight, it’s been okay, just because we’ve got two dope-ass clerics who feel pretty strongly about Fjord, so I hope we’re in a good place.” He’s mostly concerned about the intangibles and what they don’t know. He didn’t know the orb was still in him---he thought it was destroyed or reset when he threw away the sword. He’s worried that if they try “the normal cleric stuff”, it’s not going to work. He does almost prefer fights that are just dropped on them out of nowhere, because the anticipation is often the most stressful part.

Ashley’s still not sure if she has the feathers or not, since that was in a dream. “Building the character, I didn’t know that would be a possibility for that to change.” It’ll have to come out in the game. “Outside of that, I think-- obviously there’s a lot of healing with the group, but I think in terms of Yasha’s relationship with the Storm Lord, she’s still figuring that out. It’s very tough love, which she’s getting the tough love from the Storm Lord and the familial and kindness and love from the Mighty Nein. So that combo is going to be really good for her to turn things around. I don’t think she’s ever really had a feeling of worthiness outside of maybe being loved by Zuala. So I don’t know what that looks like for her yet, but we’ll see. I think she doesn’t fully know what her purpose is yet.”

Did Travis anticipate a confrontation with Uk’otoa back on the sea? “No, I’m a fucking moron. I didn’t think of that at all! I don’t have anything the ol’ snea snake wants anymore.” Brian: “Yes you do!” Travis: “I didn’t know that!” Dani: “The dark seed of power in you the Wildmother saw?” Travis: “I thought it was metaphorical! Well, now that you say it like that...” He wasn’t upset at all. “More than anything I was just trying to plan my branch narrative for what was going to happen next. More than anything, it became clear that they had just massive intent to come and kill me. I mean, Matt played it beautifully, so even in moments where I was disappointed in myself, like forgetting that enemy characters can hold their turns.”

Cosplay of the Week: a dramatic cape-flaring Fjord! (Ming.of.mings, photo by Rsellos, makeup by Omglobnunu, all on Instagram)

Travis: “The thing that hit me the most was when it came over and it grabs Fjord’s body and starts to walk him off the side of the ship, I was like, Mercer, what the fuck, man! I’m already dead! Give me a second!” He notes that they haven’t done a resurrection ritual yet in this campaign, only revivifies. Losing the two death saves when getting stabbed while unconscious was the moment when he realized how significant the intent was here. Everyone notes how clutch the Counterspell was.

On Jester and Beau showing concern for Yasha’s wellbeing: “I think for a lot of people, sometimes accepting compliments makes you uncomfortable. I’m one of those people. It’s a weird thing for Yasha to hear, because even in her tribe it’s not like that was a normal way of communicating with each other. Only compliments she would have gotten about how she looks or her character as a person were from Zuala. I think, especially with Jester, she’s such an open character that has so much love to give, just bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, just refreshing to be around, they’re all teaching Yasha very, very positive ways to feel and accept that.”

They talk about the way the improvisation can lead to poetic parallels like Yasha and Fjord falling/rising. Ashley: “I feel like so much of that is Matt, and he’s such a masterful storytelling.” Travis: “It’s such a gift, too. He’s giving you something new in the story that you created, and so you have instant ownership of this thing he made just for you.” Ashley: “You just hope you can meet him where he’s at.”

On Yasha’s harp: “Music is a very huge part of my life. I’m using the harp as, yes, for self-care for her, but also I think music can be a form of therapy. There was a moment where I was like, man, it would be so fun to multiclass as a bard, but then I remembered my wisdom is so low... it wouldn’t work. And I actually had talked to Matt about it. There’s more that I want to explore with that, and I don’t quite know what it is yet. I think where it sits right now, it’s a form of therapy for her. I’d been wanting to give her positive things to do to try to pull her out of this place that she’s in, and I think it’s really helpful.”

Seeing the sword again: “I think more than anything, it just unsettled Fjord. There was nothing about that that was easy to adapt to: seeing the sword, and then seeing multiples of the sword, just wondering who is this, what do they have, do they have abilities, what am I missing, how much do I not know about it?” He was initially worried that it was Avantika come back to life.

Fan Art of the Week: Caleb, Caduceus, and Fjord during the fight! (CreativeBleu on Twitter)

On Yasha having a lot of run-ins with creepy people: “I think a lot of that is because of the way I rolled the character, I rolled really low for Yasha’s stats, which is a bummer. She’s very susceptible because of that to being swayed, as we have noticed with Obann and things that have happened in her past. That’s maybe something that she puts out there, where people pick up on that. There’s obviously still and probably will always be a bit of darkness in her. I think people like Icky-thong and Lord Sharpe and people like that can pick up on it. I wanted to play a character like that anyway, I wanted to play somebody with a little darkness in there. I do think it is a source of frustration for her, and that’s where a lot of the guilt comes from.”

Has piecing together Caleb’s past changed Fjord’s opinion of him? “No, not at all. Maybe it’s just me, but seeing how much pain Caleb carries with himself from his past-- if he was flippant about it, that might give him pause, but he’s so fucking tortured about it. He can’t harbor any ill-will or confusion about where his heart lies. He’s full of regret, there’s a real person in there. I think also Fjord is like, I don’t want to be defined by my past, it really, really sucked. Every day since Fjord started with the M9 has been continually the best days of his life, and I think the same is probably true of Caleb. There’s no judgment because that doesn’t help anything. He just want to observe, absorb, acknowledge. You’re making positive changes, and that’s everything. That’s heroic, despite what you think is monstrous. That’s not who I see.” Brian talks about how life can end “when you choose to be defined by your worst moment”. Travis: “People that chain themselves to their past obviously haven’t moved beyond that past, and that process looks different for everyone.” But he believes you should get to define who you are after you’ve moved past that.

On the few new lighthearted moments with Yasha: “I think it’s the comfortability of the people around her. I think it’s just getting more comfortable with everybody, and also it’s just... I don’t know. If I think of something that I think would be funny, I’ll probably say it, but try to keep it in whatever Yasha’s sense of humor would be.” She notes some similarities to Grog. “She’s absolutely a teddy bear on the inside. She sees so much beauty in the world. I love playing those contradictions. She’s always had a sense of humor.”

How does Fjord define being a “good man” now as opposed to the start of the campaign? Initially, it was Vandren: “tough love, not overly emotional, not really available in that way, but conveyed a strong sense of leadership, knows what he wants, is focused, driven, stalwart, dependable, a lot of those bullshit male ideas. Some have value and some are just misplaced. If you try to live up to the idea of somebody else, you’re often going to find yourself going down a path that doesn’t look very familiar. Fuck it, I’m going to be me and see what that is. He’s got the agency. Maybe you just try and be you and hope that’s a good man.”

#critical role #critical role spoilers #talks machina #talks machina spoilers #long text post

592 notes · View notes