Captain's SPN Anon

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
oryms-shield
nanierose

Addiny my whole two cents to whether Orym is wrong to keep bringing up his murdered loved ones, and my view is no he isn't. Like it doesn't fucking matter if the Vanguard has a point about the gods, that's never been the issue here. The issue is that they have enacted murder throughout Exandria, are supporting an oppressive regime on Ruidis, and have no regard whether releasing an entity that even the gods are afraid of will destroy Exandria. They are not the good guys. Your argument doesn't matter if your actions are so deeply awful. And a man who has been directly affected by this has every right to remind his friends of the actual consequences of this group's actions.

Yes many of the Vanguard have been hurt by religion, and you can empathise with that. You know who else has been hurt? Fucking Orym. Why is the Vanguard allowed to discuss their pain when justifying their arguments but Orym isn't? The reality is you can't have a nuanced conversation when you're arguing that the death cult might be right, because at that point you're basically excusing the countless deaths that have happened in front of a person who is a victim of the death cult. And that is just gross. Orym is a stronger person than me for all the times he's had to listen to it.

utilitycaster
utilitycaster

You know what's interesting to me? For all people keep claiming at every juncture that perhaps Bells Hells will come around on the gods and see the harm they do (which, as discussed extensively, is, half the time, simply not intervening) not only have they never done so, but also they never quite cross the line into saying the party should join the Ruby Vanguard or aid them - and indeed, they defend against it - so what does this achieve? It feels like they're asking for a story in which the party stands idly by, which isn't much of a story nor, if I may connect this briefly to the real world, a political stance anyone should be proud of.

That's honestly the frustration with the gods and the "what if the Vanguard has a point" conversations in-game. What do we do then? Do we allow the organization that will murder anyone for pretty much any reason that loosely ties into their goals run rampant? The group that (perhaps unwittingly, but then again, Otohan's blades had that poison) disrupted magic world-wide, and caused people who had the misfortune to live at nexus points to be teleported (most, as commoners, without means of return). While also fomenting worldwide unrest?

Those were the arguments before the trip to Ruidus; with the reveal of the Vanguard's goals to invade Exandria, the situation becomes even more dire. Do you let the Imperium take over the planet?

And do the arguments against the gods even hold up? If Ludinus is so angry at them for the Calamity, what does it say that he destroyed Western Wildemount's first post-Calamity society for entirely selfish means? (What does it say about the validity of vengeance as a motivator?) What does it say that Laudna told Imogen she could always just live in a cottage quietly without issue before the solstice even happened? (Would this still be true if the Imperium controls the world?) What does it say that when faced with a furious, grieving party and the daughter she keeps telling herself was her reason for all of this, Liliana can't provide an answer to the question of what the gods have done other than that their followers will retaliate...for, you know, the Vanguard's endless list of murders. (That is how the Vanguard and Imperium tend to think, huh? "How dare your face get in the way of my boot; how dare you hit me back when I strike you.") She can't even provide a positive answer - why is Predathos better - other than "I feel it", even though Imogen and Fearne know firsthand that Predathos can provide artificial feelings of elation. Given all the harm Ludinus has done in pursuit, why isn't the conclusion "the gods should have crashed Aeor in such a way that the tech was unrecoverable?"

Even as early as the first real discussion on what the party should do, the fandom always stopped short of saying "no, Imogen's right, they should join up with the people who killed half the party," it was always "no, she didn't really mean it, she just was trying to connect with her mother." Well, she's connected with her mother, and at this point the party doesn't even care about the gods particularly (their only divinely-connected party member having died to prevent the Vanguard from killing all of them). So they will stop the Vanguard; as Ashton says, the means are unforgiveable. As Laudna says, it's not safe to bet on Predathos's apathy. As Imogen says, she's done running; the voice that she used to think of as a lifeline belongs to someone she doesn't trust. So I guess my question is: if they're stopping the people who are trying to kill the gods (and defense of the gods isn't remotely their personal motivation)...do you think the next phase of the campaign is Bells Hells personally killing the gods? Reconstructing the Aeor tech and hoping none of their allies notice? How does this end? Does your ideology ever get enacted? Or is this entirely moot and pointless and the story ends with Bells Hells saying "well, I'm really glad we stopped the people who [insert list of Vanguard atrocities from above]; none of us follow the gods or plan to, but honestly, the status quo we return to is preferable to whatever nightmare Ludinus had concocted in his violent quest for power and revenge"?

cr spoilers
oryms-shield
caeslxys

I’ve mentioned this elsewhere but it feels relevant again in light of the most recent episode. Something that’s really fascinating to me about Orym’s grief in comparison to the rest of the hells’ grief is that his is the youngest/most fresh and because of that tends to be the most volatile when it is triggered (aside from FCG, who was two and obviously The Most volatile when triggered.)

As in: prior to the attack on Zephrah, Orym was leading a normal, happy, casual life! with family who loved him and still do! Grief was something that was inflicted upon him via Ludinus’ machinations, whereas with characters like Imogen or Ashton, grief has been the background tapestry of their entire lives. And I think that shows in how the rest of them are largely able to, if not see past completely (Imogen/Laudna/Chetney) then at least temper/direct their vitriol or grief (Ashton/Fearne/Chetney again) to where it is most effective. (There is a glaring reason, for example, that Imogen scolded Orym for the way he reacted to Liliana and not Ashton. Because Ashton’s anger was directed in a way that was ultimately protective of Imogen—most effective—and Orym’s was founded solely in his personal grief.)

He wants Imogen to have her mom and he wants Lilliana to be salvageable for Imogen because he loves Imogen. But his love for the people in his present actively and consistently tend to conflict with the love he has for the people in his past. They are in a constant battle and Orym—he cannot fathom losing either of them.

(Or, to that point, recognize that allowing empathy to take root in him for the enemy isn't losing one of them.)

It is deeply poignant, then, that Orym’s grief is symbolized by both a sword and shield. It is something he wields as a blade when he feels his philosophy being threatened by certain conversational threads (as he believes it is one of the only things he has left of Will and Derrig, and is therefore desperately clinging onto with both bloody hands even if it makes him, occasionally, a hypocrite), but also something he can use in defense of the people he presently loves—if that provocative, blade-grief side of him does not push them—or himself—away first.

(it won’t—he is as loved by the hells as he loves them. he just needs to—as laudna so beautifully said—say and hear it more often.)

cr spoilers
oryms-shield
penandinkprincess

HI WHO WOULD LIKE TO SEE A BABY GOOSE

penandinkprincess

SCRATCH THAT IT WAS A PINECONE

APOLOGIES FOR THE FALSE ADVERTISING

NO ONE IS MORE DISAPPOINTED THAN ME

penandinkprincess

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NO

penandinkprincess

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I DON'T THINK YOU ARE

penandinkprincess

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OH MY GOD

penandinkprincess

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OKAY, Y'KNOW-

penandinkprincess

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I DON'T NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORISTS

thequeenofsastiel

THERE IS NO PINECONE IS THERE

kandradiction

WE TRUSTED YOU. GOOSEGATE 2024

penandinkprincess

I AM GOING TO SET THE PINECONE ON FIRE

quinloki

oh no the -

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kandradiction

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kandradiction

it's time to take the power back from Big Pinecone and give it to the people

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penandinkprincess

YOU DID NOT MAKE FUCKING FANART FOR THIS GODDAMN POST

OH MY GOD

utilitycaster

Anonymous asked:

You described C3 as frequently feeling like it's accelerating only to pump the breaks, and that really perfectly articulates some of the mixed feelings I have about this campaign. There have been a couple of times now when I've been really excited and invested in where the story is going (Laudna's death, the party split, Ashton blowing up, now with FCG's death, etc.), and then it's felt like that momentum has been either derailed or softened (either immediately or after an episode or two). It's all moments on the darker end of the emotional spectrum, so I wonder if it's folks wanting to pull back from it, but it feels like it's been a theme in this campaign in a way it wasn't in C1 and C2. Maybe there's something else going on that I'm not thinking of though?

utilitycaster answered:

So I think this post about pacing I made earlier this week covers this indirectly. I think it’s a mix of the early groundwork for the party developing a culture of checking in with each other, working through conflict, and deciding what to do being constantly interrupted; and the fact that this is a more heavily railroaded campaign. I want to be clear - I don’t think the railroading is bad at all! But I think that the prep for a campaign that had a more defined plot, especially starting quite early on, needed to be more extensive. I think it should have probably had a session zero that was a tradition one - not a playtest of two or three characters who knew each other, but the main cast members sitting down and saying “oh, huh, no one here has a high INT score” - or a heavier hand from Matt.

I think, for example, Ashton exploding was great and the choices afterwards were sound, it’s just that the party doesn’t have the tools to resolve this sort of conflict and so they shy from it. I also think some of the players who tend to embrace difficult choices and conflict that ultimately lead to those darker places and, in my opinion, better story, have chosen to take a back seat; and some of the players in the position to make those bold decisions have declined to make them, which is their right in terms of agency but is less of the story I personally wish to see.

I do want to note that like…they have interrupted the story but they have not yet been proven to have pumped the brakes now; it is possible the cast will pick up seamlessly with the next episode. It’s really just that like…as you said, it feels like a pattern.

I suppose the next thing I’m going to say is going to be unpopular, but let’s be honest, that has never once stopped me. I think a lot of Campaign 3’s more passionate defenders are people who prefer what I’d consider quick, easy, feel-good highs, with a trade-off of a deeper narrative since that requires effort. The people who unironically said “must a story have conflict?” The people who just want weeks on end of downtime after this moon plot (and look this campaign has surprised me many times, and as this question indicates, not all were positive nor narratively satisfying, so I absolutely could be wrong here but I’m just increasingly like…what will they do after this moon plot. Name a significant plot hook that isn’t part of the moon plot.) The people who are like “why would the party attack Bor'Dor simply because they tried to kill them? Why would Orym contact the person he clearly has a massive crush on when he’s upset when other people are right there? Why would the people of Gelvaan have reservations about mind readers? Why doesn’t Ross, the largest friend, simply eat all the other friends?”

But getting back to the original point I really do think that because of the different nature of this campaign - and it is different, structurally, and I don’t think that’s the root cause - more intense prepwork needed to be done both leading in (character creation) and in the early stages, and I think because it was going to be so tightly plotted later on I think it needed looser plotting earlier to allow the party to mesh and be easier to guide.

cr spoilers
utilitycaster
kerosene-in-a-blender

It's interesting that the member of Bells Hells most vocally sympathetic to Liliana last episode wasn't Imogen, but Laudna. Imogen of course loves her mother and wants to believe the best of her, but her repeat experiences of reaching out to her and getting nothing but cult rhetoric and vague reassurances have left her jaded to the idea that her mother could ever truly change even if she helps them

But Laudna extends sympathy to Liliana, saying she understands what it's like to be a person designed by a force outside oneself and at the mercy of their designs and whims. And I do think Laudna understands what that feels like! It's a pretty apt description of her relationship with Delilah as she perceives it. But I'm doubtful of how accurately it describes Liliana and the other Ruidusborn's relationship with Predathos, especially since we know from Imogen's role in the story that they can resist, they can fight back, and they can choose not to follow the siren's song of Ruidus. But I think Laudna sees enough of her own story in Liliana, and is lacking enough in emotional maturity, that she's drawing a one-to-one comparison where it doesn't really exist

What makes this especially interesting/odd is that there are characters in all this that do have a fairly equivalent experience to Laudna: Derrig and Will. The people killed for convenience as part of a larger plot that they were in no way involved in; murdered as a simple means to an end. But it's a woman that's part of the group that perpetrated that violence that Laudna chooses to relate to

cr spoilers
utilitycaster

Anonymous asked:

I just want to say, that I agree with almost all of your Critical Role takes and you have 1000% better and more nuanced takes than all of Twitter and I greatly appreciate it! The takes over there regarding Liliana and the gods are just wild and you bring some much needed sanity to the content I see

utilitycaster answered:

Thanks! I hope you don’t mind because I’ve been thinking about this re: the Twitter takes but the thing about Twitter and Liliana specifically that I’ve seen is that there’s this really bizarre fetishization of like, the fact that she is a (white) southerner (this also weirdly happened for Birdie though to a much lesser extent, and the person who spearheaded that wasn’t even American so I have to assume this is a specific corner of Twitter Culture At Large). And like, here’s the thing. It’s true that fantasy tends to be very British in its accents, and it’s also true that accents in a fantasy world are used to convey the same things we’d assume in our world - RP British for educated, southern American for rural, Cockney for rougher types, etc.

It’s also true that laying the exact socioeconomic parallels from our world onto, say, Liliana and Orym (who reads to me as non-regional but I, like Liam, am from the Northeast originally) is a recipe for disaster. Or rather, it’s not, but it is going to reaffirm your own biases, some of which are dangerous to reaffirm.

There was a popular post on Tumblr a while back, probably not long after Trump was elected, of someone talking about how they were convincing a relative with the confederate flag towards socialism by appealing to the idea of “isn’t in unfair how uneven wealth distribution is and how a small group has so much control” and a number of people were rightfully like “uh, maybe you should focus on the racism” or “hey OP ask your relative who they think that small group in control is because I’m getting a really bad feeling they’re going to say it’s The Jews.” And I feel that a lot of the empathy for Liliana from those spaces feels like that OP. Or in other words: I get that you see your relatives in Liliana. Unfortunately, I cannot help but see me and mine in Orym.

You see someone trapped by circumstance and desperation in a dangerous ideology. I see the fact that I haven’t gone to a synagogue in easily 6-7 years without there being a security guard present and usually, the doors locked with someone looking through the window to let you in, and then in the sanctuary there’s been an installation so that you can quickly bar all the doors in case an alarm goes off or you hear shots in the lobby.

I think there’s a great case for seeing yourself in Imogen, who is in a painful struggle with the fact that her mother does love her very much but is in dangerously deep and has done a number of incredibly terrible and harmful things. That latter point is important, incidentally; I get that cult members sometimes rise through the ranks but all but the leader are being manipulated. But the fact remains that a brainwashed person can still commit atrocities, and in this story, they have, many times over. It’s especially true because like…sure, plenty of people are like “I lost my relative to a cult and I just want them back and I couldn’t harm them,” but also, as we’ve seen, this cult can and will harm Imogen! Plenty of people are also like “yeah I gotta cut them off, it hurts but unfortunately my horribly bigoted and violent relative, while a victim of brainwashing, is a threat to me too.” It’s not even the full picture of the Temult side of things, let alone the picture that includes the Vanguard’s victims.

I also think the Southern gatekeeping is unhinged because it’s like. guys there’s QAnon members and other cults across the country; the Confederate flag example above was actually notable in that OP wasn’t even Southern so you couldn’t even write the flag off as deeply misguided heritage but rather was explicitly being used as a hate symbol. It’s awfully presumptive to assume all southerners have the same experience (especially since the Temults are portrayed, physically and in accents, as white southerners, not that the experiences of white southerners aren’t also incredibly varied). It’s awfully presumptive to assume that people find Liliana threatening because they have no personal experience with people like her; often, it’s because they have all too real experience with people like her, and it says something even worse about you if you can say “but you guys, I see me and my family in Liliana” when people are telling you that they see them and their families in Orym. I would not, personally, publicly admit that one’s empathy extends to the people who remind you of your family but runs out before it reaches their victims. Nor would I publicly admit that I assume everyone who disagrees with me clearly has never had personal experience with this topic.

I should also note that, as I’ve noted a number of times before, that these are fictional characters and not real people. Twitter seems to be really fucking bad at grasping that. Like, yes, this is the other thing; I do not think that OP should kill their Confederate flag-toting relative, whereas if Imogen did so to Liliana I’d be like “hell yeah.” The former is a real person who I do hope gets deprogrammed, just, you know, maybe adjust those priorities; the latter is a fictional character in a story.

cr spoilers