Critical Role! D&D With Nerdy-Ass Voice Actors

Spoiler: 38

I was NOT emotionally prepared for Scanlan having a secret daughter. *wibble*

 

...I can totally watch 31 episodes by 10:30 pm EST Jan 6 right? riiiiiight?

 

You're certainly welcome to try

 

OK MATT

 

Here, have my episode 43 reactions that I skyped @Nochi despite her being at her parents' and not on Skype so I'm posting them here and obnoxiously tweeting at her to CHECK KINTSUGI

Spoiler: brb claiming everyone as kins

yeeee Mary's back!
I was hoping she'd come back. She seemed like she had a lot of fun her first time playing
aw friend-greet hugs for laura and travis
Vax sinking my incest ship lol
I see Travis is indulging his kink and killing Liam in the process
I love Vex haggling
Everyone REALLY wants Percy to go buy blackpowder
(go buy blackpowder Percy)
Kashaw: "These guys bring death wherever they go!"
Kashaw: -intimidates the merchant with violent threats for the first time-

Vox Machina is a good influence on people
Percy: The two poor decision makers
Vax: What's that, smoke-man?
Matt is so fucking offended by Marisha and Laura insulting healing potions
It says a lot that Matt gets a standing ovation for Viktor and yet he's only the second favorite shopkeeper in the game
Internet: Thank you Taliesin!
"I literally never even had the experience in high school" FINALLY, someone less experienced in girl things than me!
Vax brooding in a closet: me
Keyleth being clueless about romance: also me
I am both of these dorks
Matt doesn't even need to DM. These nerds are entertaining themselves
"My god, I love other people's problems" PERCY IS ALSO ME
"I go taco not hotdog" this is sandwich phobia
"We need to get the rogue out of the closet" He's been out for a while now or did you miss everything with Gilmore
"You not...useless" rude matt
I fucking love Kima
Kima is also me
KIMA IS ME
ofc Grog chooses is kismesis
also I love that his two choices are people whose skillsets are nothing like Grog's
Vax is all stealth and striking at opportune moments and Scanlan is all words and trickery
And Grog is all smash it in the face
although Pike and Vax would've been cool for this too

 

Spoiler: 52

Laura: "Look at that face!"
Travis: "That is the shadow of a man who wishes he could have butchered someone and didn't quite get to."
Taliesin: "That is the face of the fucking devil."
Travis: "The shadow of Craven Edge lives behind those eyes..."

#goals honestly

 

Spoiler: 52, only barely a spoiler

Matt: The high noonday sun, bouncing off of his pale gnomish skin...
Me, immediately: IT'S HIGH MOON

 

Spoiler: through 56

I really like Percy and Keyleth’s friendship, but 56 “Hope” is particularly interesting to me because it highlights a disagreement they have -- over the fate of Westrun -- and ultimately a similarity between the two.

Neither of them have much to do with the gods. Keyleth isn’t even sure there’s an afterlife -- see her awkward conversation with Vax before taking on Umbrasyl. She reveres nature, and reveres life above all -- hence her horrible guilt complex and sense of responsibility. This episode shows Percy’s outlook a bit more. He's not the fervent anti-theist Keyleth is, as far as we know, but he’s a tinkerer, almost the stereotypical agnostic scientist/engineer, and his only interaction with the supernatural was deeply traumatic and left scars on him. He's neutral towards gods at best. He values cities, and noble lines (for all his blinkered privilege), and all of civilization as the ways that short-lived human beings can find a measure of immortality. Art and achievement and inspiration.

In short, both of them find holiness in the material world, not in gods. Which ultimately makes them more similar than different. Grog and Scanlan value the material world, but they just live in it: they don’t have the self-conscious, rather intellectualized reverence for it that Percy and Keyleth do. (Haven’t nailed down Vex yet -- I think if she finds holiness anywhere she finds it in people.)

Anyway I don’t really write fanfiction much or publish it but I kind of want to see Keyleth interacting with a series of De Rolos over the thousands of years of her life as Headmaster of the Ashari.

Edit:

Spoiler: 57

WELP consider that confirmation. He's treating the Raven Queen exactly the way he treated Orthax. "What do I have to pay to fix this?" "I don't understand how these things work." Immediately responds to "have faith" with bitter laughter :')

 

so we get gameinformer, and the critical role interview was in there this month! D scanned it in for me so I could share.

Spoiler: they link to my photobucket, where you should be able to fullsize and read a little better

 

Spoiler: I finally caved and made a gif, 54

sam, as scanlan is trapped in the dragon's gut: I'm gonna cast thunder wave at level 6
matt:


(I could make an entire blog for gifs of matt's You're Doing What DM faces)

 

the good thing about constantly marathoning this show is that I'm getting close to being caught up with everyone else in this thread. Except for the folks who are all the way caught up

 

I am so happy more people are watching this awesome show. When everyone is all caught up, remind me to make a discord server or something for live-watching shenanigans if peeps would be interested in that C:

 

Pike: "Just have fun!"
Keyleth: (pained Tina Belcher noise)

Marisha Gets It

 

http://kathygaelepersonal.tumblr.com/post/155193053414/relatablepicturesofmatthewmercer-source-for

 

is that One Winged Angel on a plastic recorder

 

YOU KNOW IT FRIEND

 

Spoiler: Episode 55: gore warning

Vax going into the dragon and squeezing out through a hole in its flesh a paladin of the Raven Queen could be some great symbolic rebirth type thing but we also have Scanlan fisting a wound so all I can think is that this is surely someone on Kintsugi's kink

 

Spoiler: 60

I'm really impressed with the way Matt has handled the twins' father so far.

In a lot of dysfunctional families there is genuine love and pride and respect -- but if someone is unable to admit their own faults or work to change what hurts their loved ones, it just makes the rift more painful. I can't tell which way this arc is going to break yet, but I think I trust him and Laura and Liam to do it well.

EDIT: Much like Merle Highchurch, Percival de Rolo advances by flirting with vegetation.

 

Mood: Matt as Garmili shrieking NO THEATER so loudly that the microphone peaks and stops working for a second

 

Spoiler: 63, opening of 64

Man, the fandom reaction to Saundor -- "fuckboy in a tree" meme -- did not prepare me for how genuinely disturbing he was. One of the show's best villains so far. I saw someone on Tumblr refer to Matt's forte as "fey horrorterror shit," which... definitely isn't wrong. That's where his aesthetic imagination really shines. The scene inside the tree had such great atmosphere. But I think the reason Saundor, Orthax, and the Briarwoods are such memorable villains goes beyond that. Critical Role is not at all subtle about its themes of love and found family (you really can't be subtle in a collaborative, improvised medium), and Vox Machina's greatest adversaries are those in which love becomes the impetus for something terrible -- revenge, resentment, obsession. The Chroma Conclave are scary because they're big flying sacks of hit points. The Briarwoods are scary because I broke the world for us. Would any member of Vox Machina not break the world for any other, at this point?

On a much lighter note: God, I love the memory-loss shenanigans and I love how excited Taliesin is about it. He really does love suffering, doesn't he.