Personal Take Incoming (Critical Role)

Consider this a diary entry explaining some of my thoughts on a few Critical Role characters. Avoid reading this post if you don't want my takes on Keyleth, Fjord, Ashton, Orym, Imogen, Percy, and Caleb.

So, I've noticed a common trend with my favourite characters across a variety of fandoms. I personally am an individual who gravitates towards characters with integrity, and rules for themselves that they follow. Characters that have lines in the sand that they can draw and then defend. It doesn't necessarily have to be rules put in place by society, it can be ones they made up for themselves. These characters oftentimes end up becoming the moral centre of their party, which adds another fascinating angle as they try to navigate maintaining their morals with a wider group filled with diverse opinions.

I suppose that is why Keyleth was my favourite Vox Machina character from pretty much the get-go! Her integrity was what endeared me to her throughout the entire campaign. She had opinions of what she thought was right and wrong, and she tried her hardest to enforce that view. Were there times when she learned she was wrong, yes. But she kept what she learned in mind and adjusted her internal monologue to see fit. Keyleth's integrity and unwillingness to engage in the overly amoral actions of Vox Machina created a lot of interesting dynamics.

In campaign two, Fjord quickly became my favourite for very similar reasons. He was the one to ask Beau to apologise to Toya and insist that the party help the Schuster kids so that they wouldn't be put in an orphanage. He also maintained a certain level of honesty with the rest of the party about his history and his mysterious dreams. In this case, Fjord wasn't necessarily 'good' (as he was comfortable with doing some pretty shitty stuff), but he still had expectations of himself and rules that he would not break.

I guess that is why Asthon and Orym are currently my favourite members of Bells Hells too. They both have convictions that they will not stray from and a certain level of integrity that the party honestly needs. Now, whether or not they are right is another discussion entirely, but the point is that they have the courage to stick to their guns even when the group is leaning in another direction.

People have been complaining that the takes on Imogen Temult are unfair, and some of those takes are unfair! But I won't shy away from the fact that Imogen is my least favourite member of Bells Hells (I still think they're all fantastic - including Imogen herself). She is my least favourite for exactly the reasons above. Imogen supposedly has internal rules, but we've seen her be more than happy to break them when they don't suit her at a given moment. She's said that she hates to pry into people's minds and that she avoids it wherever possible - but we see her willingly dive into the minds of people like Dorian without their consent. Imogen has stated that Laudna is the most important person in the world to her and that she loves her more than anything - but Imogen cannot look Laudna in the eyes and tell her that she won't side with Laudna's murderer. That doesn't make the character any less interesting, but it definitely makes it harder for me personally to like her.

I've seen a handful people across socials imply that if you like Percy or Caleb, but not Imogen - it's because she's a woman. This is where I wholeheartedly disagree. While the overly negative opinions of Imogen are harsh and unwarranted, Imogen is the first character whose allegiances I am genuinely uncertain about. Percy and Caleb have said and done truly awful things; I think we can all agree on that. And while they have considered leaving the group, it was under very different circumstances. For the longest time, Percy had nothing waiting for him outside Vox Machina, so the only time I feared he would leave the group was when he died (since Tal confirmed he would've been happy to stay dead). Caleb too, had very little beyond the Mighty Nein and he considered leaving them on multiple occasions. But never once did he consider leaving them to join their enemy. Now, had the M9 faced the Cerberus Assembly earlier in the campaign, that might have been different - but I never feared that Caleb would switch sides in the campaign we did get.

The thing is, Imogen does have something waiting for her: Lilliana and Predathos. I'm not sure about her allegiance, and that's where Imogen, Percy, and Caleb are different. While what Imogen has said/done has been tame compared to what Percy and Caleb have said/done - I know that the line Imogen is toeing is one neither of the others had dared to cross. Percy would never have considered joining forces with the Briarwoods, Thordak, or the Whispered One. Caleb would never have dared to join sides with Avantika, Obann, or Trent. But Imogen might.

That is fascinating. And dangerous. The future isn't set in stone, and all I can do now is bite my tongue and wait for episode 50.

The girls are here!!!

ANONYMOUS SUBMITTED

I love, love, LOVE your speedrun comic, expecially the parts with Ace losing his mind and ASL reuniting. I am VERY curious as to how, exactly, this gremlin crew of half-feral children managed to negotiate an alliance with Whitebeard. My bet is Luffy just went “rearranges reality until it’s more to his liking and everybody is left wobbling dazedly”. Also, the Whitebeard Pirates thinking “this explains SO MUCH about Ace”.

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hahah you got the “everybody is left wobbling dazedly” part right XD. here’s my answer to ur curious musings!!!

An alliance implies equal footing, and to have equal footing with the greatest pirate alive is not something to scoff at. So good job Whitebeard for scoring an ETERNAL friendship with the pirate king 👍!!!!

Time travel/Speedrun AU masterlist

Lackadaisy Enrichment

For the Laicion nation (aka, me and three other people)

I had this illustration commissioned (a big thank you to @lunehowls) for my werewolf AU Laicion fic (still a WIP).

The general pitch is as follows :

AU in which Laios never got to meet his sister again, putting his life on a whole other path, a more desperate one. A military deserter with barely a coin to his name, Laios hitches a ride on a boat to one of the elven continents, where he learns about magical tattoos that binds one’s soul to a wolf’s, effectively making them artificial werewolves. Illegal magic be damned, this feels like the answer to… everything.

In the process, he learns about the existence of an illegal fighting ring in one of the elven cities, where beastmen gladiators gather. Freshly tattooed and without anywhere else to go to, Laios decides to head there, where he meets Lycion, an elf and artificial werewolf gladiator. If they first bond over a simple shared meal, by spending time together (sharing the same room in the barracks, maybe the same bed? gasp) they find that they have a lot in common, notably a shared distaste for the body they were born in, a dysphoria partially remedied by becoming a werewolf.

They bond :)

Maybe the problem with Christian fiction is that it's non-denominational. People are just "Christian", with no effort put into showing what practicing that religion looks like for them specifically. No indication that there are other Christians who could have different beliefs. No wrestling with differing ideas and the struggle of how one should live out their Christian faith. And that makes it unrealistic and unrelatable.

it's pretty wild to me that people don't see that aang running off to save katara in CoD is his luke in empire strikes back moment, where he runs headlong into his want and attachment and he's narratively punished for doing so and not learning his lesson - aang runs after katara despite guru pathik's warning, like luke runs after leia and han from yoda on dagobah despite yoda's warning; similarly, as a result, things go to hell in ba sing se like they do on bespin - aang enters the avatar state before he's ready and gets killed, and ba sing se falls to the fire nation, luke fights vader before he's ready, loses a hand, and symbolically commits suicide after vader tells him he's luke's father.

the difference between their character arcs is that george lucas and co. actually went thru with luke's hero's journey and understood the fundamental difference between attachment and love, whereas I don't think bryke understood this difference and then dropped this from aang's arc pretty much completely and replaced it with aang digging in his heels into his want and attachment and he gets rewarded with energy bending from a lion turtle, the avatar state from a random pointy rock, and his forever girl from the self-indulgent white men that couldn't bring themselves to give their hero a compelling character arc that meant he might not have gotten everything he wanted at the end.

hey! do you consider yourself a furry? if so, do you enjoy being in the community? if not, what label do you use, and why? (been wanting to ask this for a while:))

Sure, I don't mind being called a furry. My art certainly qualifies as furry art and my characters are furry characters. But I've never been that connected or active in the furry fandom in general. There's a lot of core experiences that I'm missing: I don't have a fursona, I don't own a fursuit and I've never been to a furry con. My online circles are very furry-centric but I don't think any of my irl friends consider themselves furries, despite our shared tastes and interests.

Hello, sorry to bother you, I really love your oc and au, so I drew these drawings!

Because I was shadowbanned a while ago, so I’m not sure if you’ve seen these before.

Please let me know if this bothers you! Have a nice day!

Robbie is really cute and cool, he’s giving a vibe like “Chaos? I called it FUN!!!”

And of course, Mob! au, I can imagine that Robbie throw Rubee to speed her up and help her change the direction!

And the besties went to jail together, I love relationship between mob Julie and mob Sally, so cute!

AWEEEE ROBBIEEBBBBB SO MUCH LIL GUY CONTENTTTTT

misty quigley is death. she is the one that controls who lives and who dies. she is the nurse who can heal and who can harm. sometimes she lets other people be the executioner - a girl with a knife acting as a butcher, a man with a gun acting as a detective. sometimes she lets nature take its course - a snowfall, a slippery cliff, a fractured lake. but she always she has a hand in death. sometimes she does not have full control over it: sometimes she kills and it kills her too.

The characters in C3 are so deeply complex and flawed. They are three dimensional, uniquely broken, and trying to pull themselves together. However, I've seen a few people who can't help but simplify the thoughts, feelings, and actions of party members. For the sake of brevity, I'm only going to use a few examples here.

FCG is in the midst of an identity crisis. They're choosing to place all responsibility on a god in order to avoid the burden of free will. That is so, so complex - but it's been viewed as annoying and unfunny.

Fearne is grappling with all of these new human experiences like love, life, and death! These are things she pretty much never had while growing up with her semi-immortal grandmother. Nevertheless, she's often simplified into kleptomaniac Fearne, with the skin curtains and corpse bushes!

Ashton has been abandoned by his parents, then by the society that shoved him in an orphanage, and then by the family he built in spite of that society. They lost their body, life, and memory. And they cannot fathom that someone who can genuinely smile could have experienced similar loss. This has led to a misconception that Ashton was entirely dismissing Laudna's trauma, instead of them trying to understand what it is that makes her so happy.

Now Imogen is a strange case. A lot of people see her as a morally ambiguous bad bitch (which she is), but they also 'uwu-ify' her into a sad baby girl who is desperately in love with Laudna. People ignore her slip up suggesting the moon death cult are the good guys and fixate on her codependent relationship with Laudna. And much like Laudna, her fans will support her without acknowledging the really disturbing aspects of her character. The truth is, she has consistently forgotten that the people they are going to face murdered Laudna, Fearne, Orym, Orym's family, and countless Grim Verity members. Her guilt is apparent but simplifying her into a sad lesbian is a disservice to the character. Imogen is a young woman drifting in the grey space between Ruidus, Liliana, Otohan, and the Hells.

Hi. First, I wanted to let you know that you're a huge inspiration to me :)

Second, as a fellow fanartist I wanted to ask: how do you get over the fear of people perceiving your artwork as too unfinished (if you have that fear at all?) How do you tell yourself "okay stop. This is as much as I'm gonna work on this page" and then hit the post button? I have this thing where I start a piece and then never post it cause "it's not completed yet".

Thank you in advance!

Ah thank you:3

Honestly, I just prefer speed over finality. My goal is not to create perfectly beautiful art. My goal is to tell a story. To convey information. To convert my train of thought into something that can be perceived with the eyes.

I can do smooth linework, detailed renderings, correct anatomy and all that. But I don't really need that, as the sketch is enough to convey the story. And it's very quick too~

For me, an artwork is considered complete when it says everything I want to say through it. And sometimes that means making the hands look like two blotches. Simply because for my story, the hands aren't important at that point. I'll draw them well in the moment when I want to tell something through them:)

So, usually I just make sure that the most important elements look clear. The facial expressions, the curves of the cape, the position of the hands, whatever. The things I really want people to see and process. Everything else serves solely as a backdrop.

If people think my work is unfinished, that's their problem. I don't have to adjust to their understanding of "completeness." If they want to see my work "finished" according to their value system, they can finish it themselves and then happily look at its perfection lmao

________

Just as a funny addition and proof of my words.

Important Hands:

Not important hands:

And still, for me, they are all - finished:)

"I think this is the most inhuman; and human, that I've ever felt.." MUCH CAN HAPPEN IN A YEAR. IN FIVE YEARS. A DECADE. imagine how much can happen in a century. just ONE (1). How will you grow? what phases do you find? even in 5 years, you will find patterns.

I personally like Thunder's prosthetic. Explained it to my friend (who does use a mobility device, a cane and wheelchair, and listens to me rant and infodump about BB) and they agreed, it's important to know that not every person needs what someone wants to give them. It's another example of "bad ableist person does a thing that hurts a disabled person because they are bad and ableist".

Clear Sky got Jagged Peak killed and would have killed Sunlit Frost! He would absolutely force his disabled son to be "normal" and present it like a privilege. "I wouldn't do this for anyone else, it's special, why don't you want to be helped?"

Thunder Storm should toss it in Clear Sky's face. (I would say toss it into the river but we do not pollute waterways in this house)

Thank you for telling me this, and tell your friend I'm thanking them too! If they have anything else to add please forward what they have to say

Since BB!DOTC tackles some of the heaviest topics in the entire series because its canon equivalent is so dark, I think very carefully about what I do here and how I show it. I take feedback on its sensitive aspects very seriously. If I'm understanding the criticism properly, it's that I should avoid stigmatizing prosthetics by making sure Thunder Storm's not the only one with it-- which he's not! And I'll add even more.

I don't want to avoid something only because it's uncomfortable if the topic is important, and my portrayal is respectful. Ableism IS uncomfortable! There are some situations where a prosthetic is not wanted! I think the rejection of this particular one is both a good opportunity to show a type of ableism and ALSO is very fitting for the characters.

In BB!Clear Sky's mind, the villain, he's fixing an old mistake. He can't admit that he got Jagged Peak killed or take REAL accountability for it (though he will, occasionally, apologize insincerely), but deep in his bones, he knows what he did was cruel. He'll never tell anyone this because he doesn't really cognate it himself, but Thunder Storm NEEDS to take his gift.

If Thunder doesn't take it, it blows a hole in his newest story. You see, throwing Jagged Peak out was All That Could Have Been Done back then. It was a Tragedy and he simply Made A Hard Choice. He regrets it very much, But You Have To Understand.

But now? Now? Well, behold. Look at what he's accomplished since the tragic death of his little brother. His cats are well-fed, cared for, and stable enough to make such incredible advancements. If only Jagged Peak had been able to hold on longer, if only he could be here now, I could fix him.

Just like I can (MAKE YOU JUST LIKE ME) fix you.

"Everything I've ever done is for Jagged Peak. For Fluttering Wing. For you." Thunder Sky is SPECIAL, but if he rejects any gift, tries to turn down the "privileges" offered to him, in an instant that becomes ungratefulness and arrogance. He both forces him to be special, and then leverages it against him if it's rejected. "Spoiled brat, doesn't appreciate what I've worked so hard to give him."

It all goes back to him and his own guilt. He can NEVER be wrong. He can't accept his family doesn't have to be "normal" or reflect his own ability. He won't see himself as a bully, let alone a murderer. It was never about his son's comfort or finding out what Thunder Storm wants or needs, it was about his own ego.

...All that said I'm still taking feedback if there's anything else I should keep in mind, or if anyone has a counter point, especially if you also have experience here.

(In the interest of having a link trail for posterity, here's the critique/call for feedback this is in response to)

haven't been able to watch the new bad batch episode yet but it would be really funny if they get to tantiss and run into cody. he's not a prisoner, he's just breaking someone else out for entirely different reasons.

I love angst but this qbad arc doesnt feel tragic at all. like yes of course it is because He Fucking Forgot His Kids and they have to listen to him call them roomie over and over again and casually risk their lives and beat them over the head with cookies but. But.

he isn’t sick anymore. He isn’t going to forget them again. all that he’s learned of them he is going to keep remembering and then, later, he’s going to remember more. I love angst a lot because i like to dig into how it changes characters, but fuck i am just as obsessed with recovery arcs, which is what this feels like. Yeah there’ll be bumps and twists and turns. recoveries arent always smooth, and he’s got to deal with the grief of missing skeppy and being trapped and fearing wardens and oceans, whatever thats all about, but he isnt sick anymore. He isnt hurting or dying.

he was working so hard to make sure his kids would be okay, and he fuckinf succeeded. People kept checking up on them and offering to feed them when he went missing, and they have one (1) nice bedroom to sleep safely in, and they have all these tools and toys and farms and food. and then he chose to go back to them. and now he can learn to love them all over again.