#C2E127

[vethbrenatto]

can you message or can you “message”?

#critical role #mighty nein #bells hells #fearne calloway #yasha nydoorin #imogen temult #nott the brave #veth brenatto #creations #c3e45 #parallel #cr spoilers #c2e127

[sea-buns]

Thinking about how the infamous m9 heist was essentially detonation + infiltration, and how beautifully chaotic the cuts back and forth between both teams will likely be

#critical role #cr spoilers #cr lb #c3e89 #bells hells #cr3 #cr2 #the mighty nein #tm9 #c2e127

[marvelousbelladonna]

Campaign 1, Keyleth pushes a creature into a pool of lava while whispering "shhhh go to sleep go to sleep go to sleep...

Campaign 2, Beauregard unintentionally commits probably one of the most brutal kills by putting a guard (bad guy) in a sleeper hold and forcing two vials of acid down his throat quietly muttering "go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep...

Now we just need Laudna to complete the cycle

#critical role #cr spoilers #marisha ray #campaign 1 #c1e06 #keyleth #keyleth of the air ashari #campaign 2 #c2e127 #beauregard lionett #laudna #campaign 3 #go to sleep

[foldybikes]

episode titles are a ride this point in the campaign.

c2e122 Ice and Fire: oh this one sounds like it's going to be some epic showdown between opposing forces, maybe caleb is fighting someone with ice powers, maybe it's a cool metaphor for some strong dichotomy between characters and goals. but nope it's mostly talking and crossing a lava river in fantasy antarctica.

c2e127 Sarsaparilla, Licorice and Red Hot: this is a shopping episode for sure. SIKE it's an insane acid-and-gravity-murder-filled robbery of the vergessen sanatorium culminating in a showdown with ikithon. normal and chill.

#critical role #critical role spoilers #cr2 #m9 #mighty nein #c2e122 #c2e127 #foldycr #its has been a RIDE holy shit #loving the break from the snow filled barren landscape of eiselcross to hop around exandria and visit friends #it's a really welcome change of pace #just finished ep 129 and holy fucking shit goddamn wow fuck #I need a BREATHER #so parent trapping jester's parents seems excellent rn

[ashleyinwondrland]

Yasha having no idea how message works and thinking it’s just like a connection she and Veth have is so pure. I love her.

#critical role #yasha nydoorin #c2e127 #c2e128

[lessattitudemorealtitude]

Finally reached Sarsaparilla, Liquorice, and Red Hot, the beginning of my favorite mini-arc, and it is gold watching everyone’s repeated looks of horror... It is horrifying but I’m cackling with glee.

#critical role #critical role rewatch #cr c2e127 #I've been waiting so long for this #it's such a deliciously angsty arc #sasparilla liquorice and red hot

[casukaga]

pew pew, baby, that’s friendship

always count on me to draw the m9 as the cast during the stream rather than actual art pertaining to the story.

this week: another rendition of sam’s ad, because i couldn’t pass up the opportunity to draw caleb / yasha shooting veth with nerf guns.

🌟 Instagram | Twitter | Youtube 🌟

+ an alternative format:

#though the alternative is sorta better bc you can see caleb / yasha shooting veth — #i stuck with the original than the alternative bc people told me it was easier to read (which i understand bc it’s the typical cr format) #// #i spent 4 hours on the border #it was hell #in general i just spent more time on this than intended #*now* i shuffle back to finishing the beauyasha date art #critical role #c2e127 #crit role #cr2 #campaign 2 #critical role fanart #the mighty nein #mighty nein #fjord stone #jester lavorre #caleb widogast #veth brenatto #yasha nydoorin #caduceus clay #beauregard lionett #digital art #fanart #mighty nein but make it the cr cast 😎 #casu art #my shtuff

[rolledbadinitiative]

#critical role #cr2 #c2e127 #critical role spoilers #caleb widogast #darth caleb

[jinxknight]

Matt sure loves cliffhangers, doesn’t he?

#critical role #cr spoilers #critteredit #criticalroleedit #my gifs #creations #the mighty nein #matt mercer #travis willingham #laura bailey #liam o'brien #sam riegel #ashley johnson #talisen jaffe #marisha ray #ep: 2x127 #c2e127

[oshagley]

Guess who just got laaaaid~! Ashley fucking killed me this episode, I had to gif this.

#critical role #beauyasha #beau x yasha #cr yasha #cr beauregard #C2E127 #my art #gif #beauregard lionett #yasha nydoorin #Ashley Johnson #marisha ray #CriticalRoleFanArt #critical role fan art

[your-turn-to-role]

"oh i woke up with it" is my FAVOURITE way to describe how warlocks get new spells

#i love the implication he just knows he can do this now without ever testing it #cr2 #cr spoilers #cr liveblog #c2e127 #fjord

[vethbrenatto]

#critical role #mighty nein #nott the brave #veth brenatto #caleb widogast #cr spoilers #c2e127 #miss ma'am???? you suggest murder every second. #i know some of these are just sam jokes but veth LEGITIMATELY suggests murder quite often #and we love her for it #creations

[sea-buns]

I was rewatching the marisharaygun highlight vid of the m9's flawless heist (y'know for old times sake) and the moment I saw Travis' face when the first gravity sinkhole gets cast, I had to pause to fully process the realization that THISSS WILL BE ANIMATED!

IN ALL ITS DISASTEROUS GLORY!!!

he's so real for this reaction and I'll be using it at every opportunity

#like can u imagine the cuts from beau lying flush against a roof slowly pulling out two acid viles and MAYBE a dagger #to yasha weaving flower crowns inside fjords god-forsaken marine layer #to SEVERAL guys getting flung and CRONCHED into the ceiling #before caleb gives the very calm and collected and totally sane 'sarsaparilla'?? #shits a fucking masterpiece in the making i tell ya #also the chapter notes on that vid are so fucking funny. Beau Becomes Dexter. Travis only speaks in nouns. Hot Pockets! #every instance of 'Dear [blank]: What the fuck man?' spoiler there are many instances #any my all time favorite: Caleb is Here to... Save... the Day...? #thats not even half of them. everyone go watch the marisharaygun highlight vids on yt they are perfection #critical role #cr2 #the mighty nein #mighty nein #tm9 #m9 #yknow sometimes im so very comprehensive with my tagging system and sometimes im so indecisive and so forgetful #the mighty nein animated #c2e127 #kinda wanna go and just rewatch the arc of them running for their lives from ikithon #its got big scooby doo running through so many doors that dont make sense energy #travis willingham #he is the peoples champion in reacting to insanity. he and ashley just get us fr

[talkshitgetcrit]

Just watched the crit role episode where m9 are running from the sanatorium and Ikithon and just like Liam said: “we have been playing this for years…it’s make-believe…I’m so scared” and like..me too, buddy! It’s been hundreds of hours, it’s make-believe, and i am JUST WATCHING AND EVEN I AM SCARED OF TRENT

#Eodwulf and Astrid are love though #they went through hell and back they have to ANSWER to Trent for their failure #and yet #and yet they risk it all for caleb #blumentrio #crit role #critical role #caleb widogast #trent ikithon #the mighty nein #m9 #c2e127

[theregoesmylurkerstatus]

Caleb has, verbally, shown so little bloodthirst regarding the people who wronged him. He doesn’t know how he feels. He doesn’t know what he wants. He wants them to change, he wants the pain to stop. He wants to rehabilitate all these murderers under Ikithon because he was one of them and he wants to believe he’s not alone in this, he wants them to get better.

He also takes three steps into the place where he was sealed away like some kind of animal, full of simple (if skilled) guards who are so much lower on the food chain than the assassins Caleb knows... and for the first time ever he starts crushing people to death. Gone is the soft talk and hesitant hope. He asserts that they knew what they were doing. That they were not innocents.

He spent eleven years there. He can’t remember it. He also can’t think of the people who did that to him as people, whether they were actually the ones that guarded him or not.

I think Caleb’s trauma and his ability to react with extreme prejudice when confronted with it often gets underestimated both by the audience and Caleb himself. There’s a really interesting dichotomy that seems to go on with him, in that we’re constantly taken somewhat aback by these breathtaking displays of violence of his, even though they keep happening.

I realised it when we first met Astrid, actually. I don't know about anyone else, but the revelation that Caleb’s reaction to watching his parents die wasn’t running in to help them, or screaming himself, or even dissociating, but was instead attacking his peers? It surprised the heck out of me.

I don’t think anyone thought that would have been his reaction. All the pieces of fiction or art or meta about that moment that I saw assumed he had a much more passive or help oriented reaction. Even the cast themselves animated that moment as Astrid and Eodwulf stoically walking away from a silent Caleb on his knees in their own animated title sequence.

The fact that we all accepted the image of Caleb, on his knees, silently watching his family burn, is interesting to me. Because I do get why.

When Caleb is forcefully reminded of that moment of extreme grief, he dissociates. He doesn’t react violently when lost in his trauma in that particular way. Add to that that Caleb brushes over the immediate aftermath of his parent’s deaths, which makes it seem like his foggy, clouded state in the Asylum was the instant result of his trauma, and the idea that Caleb reacted passively to his parent’s deaths is a very easy assumption to make.

At this point I believe it’s also indicative of how Caleb sees himself. Caleb hates (hated?) himself, yes, but he doesn’t actually seem to see himself as a violent person. When asked to impress a high level mage from an alien culture, he chose the versatile reskinned Bigby’s Hand, Cat’s Ire. When trying to be intimidating, he uses his words, or points to his friends as threats, or uses Frumpkin as a prop.

He doesn’t seem to give his ease with violence much thought or weight in his own view of himself. I think he assumed he was passive during his years at the Sanitarium, and so therefore assumed that his “breaking” was similar. And if that’s what Caleb thought of himself, why would we think any different?

People don’t tend to think of Caleb as a fighter, least of all Caleb himself. The common view of him is that he’s a hesitant support character. He’s not someone who fans or other characters alike would easily call “bloodthirsty,” especially with him confronting and discussing the man who ruined his life and refusing to commit to killing him.

Everything about how Caleb verbally approaches these traumas shows that he’s not vengeance driven. Revenge has never been part of his game plan, never been something he cared enough to pursue. And because of that palpable lack of bloodthirsty vengeance, because of his soft spoken, cautious demeanor, Caleb is not someone who would generally be picked as having extreme, unrelenting violence as his knee-jerk reaction.

Except that’s exactly what Caleb does when backed into a corner. That’s like his biggest move. Wall of Fire and Fireballing Avantika and her crew on a hair trigger? Bleeding, on the verge of unconsciousness, out of spells, and still managing to deal the killing blow on Lorenzo because he chose violence over any other action? Opening the final fight against Obann by smashing through the window and burning half the cultists to death, because they were that desperate to get Yasha back after two failed attempts?

He woke up after eleven years of being addled, confused and not himself, and immediately killed a guard and broke out of the Assembly’s own Saitarium in the heart of Rexxentrum. He unexpectedly got stabbed by a full-fledged Scourger, and his instant reaction was to beat her over the head with a rock. 

And now, he’s infiltrated that same Sanitarium where he was kept only to flip from his desire to redeem those under the Assembly’s thumb to murdering half the people he came across in there with extreme prejudice.

His lack of interest in long-term vengeance is interestingly balanced by his frequent choices to pursue short-term retribution. It’s both his way of protecting his friends and himself, removing the threat and discouraging other threats, but it’s also, in my view, frequently an outlet for his heavily suppressed anger at the people who hurt him and his friends.

Caleb can be a good diplomat, but Caleb rarely chooses to be a diplomat. Caleb can be charming, but Caleb doesn’t like being charming. Caleb can be a good support caster, and Caleb is a support caster! But when he’s too compromised for strategy, when he stops thinking, he starts burning everything in his way. Because Caleb? He likes the way fire feels.

Caleb spent his formative years training to respond to conflict, physical or political, with lethality, and on a much more fundamental level, he is and always has been a man of action. 

He took action to get out of the Sanitarium as soon as he was capable. He took action in the Bright Queen’s throne room, made a risky ploy instead of letting them be arrested. He wanted to take action retroactively against his parent’s deaths the second he regained coherency.

Despite what we all assumed, doing nothing in the face of his parent’s deaths was never an option for Caleb, and he wasn’t taught anything that was going to help his parents once the house was on fire and the screams started. So what else was he going to do, after two years of growing into the Scourger mould? When he loses his mind, his ability to think, two of his reasons to care?

Of course it was violence. Of course it was lashing out at the people he must have thought, on some level, as being in his way. Of course it was fire. What else would it be?

And though these circumstances here aren’t the same... there are enough similarities. He’s once again in those familiar halls (in that familiar mindset) where he was treated as a weapon, nothing more. He’s with the people he loves and he knows they’re in danger, again. In fact, they’re in danger from the same people he spent eleven years feeling threatened by, that he viewed as obstacles, whether consciously or not.

He doesn’t want his loved ones to be in danger. He doesn’t want to be surrounded by the guards who he associates with his own helplessness. He especially doesn’t want those two things to go together. And he has never been able to sit idly by when he can act. But what kind of actions can he take? What can he do to get these guards away, away from him, away from his friends, out of his way, right now?

The tried and true method. Not burning, not here, not now, let’s not set a building on fire with his loved ones in it again (though it happened anyway). But no matter. He’s learned a lot of tricks in the last few months.

And hey, don’t worry, Caleb’s not angry. He’s not still working through his own pain and rage at these people. He really does want to heal, not hurt.

It’s just that these ones deserved it.

#critical role #cr spoilers #c2e127 #c2e89 #ramblings #caleb #speculation #its interesting because he has such a good hold on his temper and he tries to think through most situations #which means he DOESNT get pushed to that breaking point a lot #and its usually only that breaking point that showcases how easily he wields violence #which is another factor in why he doesnt get regarded as a violent character #because he isnt! he really doesnt get violent often! its just something thats instinctive for him #his instinctive reactions though are not often seen bc he usually has a pretty good control over himself and situations around him #and i think its really really telling when he gets pushed into that mindset when theyre NOT at deaths door #hey caleb i dont think you're as ready for forgiveness and moving on as you think #theres a lot of buried rage in caleb and you can quote me on that #ive been saying it for months (years?) and ive only grown more confident in that assertion since then #sorry if this is an incoherent mess #does this make sense? i dont knoooow im sick of looking at it

[beauregardlionett]

caleb: i cast gravity sinkhole

travis:

#yes i know i'm a million years late #c2e127 #cr #travis willingham