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loquaciousquark · 5 years

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Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E56 (March 26, 2019)

Gooooood evening, everyone. @eponymous-rose is taking a well-deserved break, so I’m stepping in to ruin reputations and botch direct quotations all over the place. Here to give us the appropriate gravitas and fear for the evening is the Chamber of Chairs:

Tonight’s guests: Liam O’Brien & Marisha Ray. Dani flips Liam off to start the show and it’s pretty funny. “What did I doooo?”

Tonight’s announcements: Last night was the season finale of Between the Sheets, featuring Ashly Burch, who is shockingly short in person. The VOD’s up for subscribers now, and it’ll be posted on YT tomorrow for everyone else. The Ashley Johnson episode will be up soon! Yay! Remember, no new episode of CR this week, and no new episode of TM next Tuesday as a result. Normal CR broadcasting resumes April 4. The Kickstarter hit $8 million today. Liam: “Oh boy oh boy oh boy it’s fine it’s fine IT’S FINE.” The final goal is $8.8m with 23 days to go, and a behind-the-scenes filming of the theme song was posted today on the KS. The video’s actually pretty cool & features Ashley in a feather boa!

Anyway! Episode 56: The Favor

CR Stats! This was the shortest episode of this campaign at 2h19m15s of gameplay. Only Shopping and Shipping from C1 was shorter. This episode tied for the fewest spells cast in one episode (six) and all were cast by Caleb. Over the 44 episodes & 136 days the M9 had the dodecahedron, they gained 25 fragments of possibility and actually utilized 13.

Liam and Marisha talk about having a timer in the office: “It has been 27 days since the last Holy Fuck ending.”

None of them thought Matt was going to cut it off at that point, but when he explained he wanted Taliesin there for the next part, it made sense to all of them & they all agreed it was for the best.

Beau has four thousand thoughts racing through her head right now. One of them is excitement about getting to learn the Kryn more, but she’s also terrified. Henry interrupts with the most adorable baying howl and he walks offstage. What a good pupper.

Liam describes the moment as everyone frozen in amber as they wait for the next episode. Beau will figure out something to her advantage between now and then.

Marisha likens this moment to the Emon attack and the Lorenzo fight with Molly in terms of emotional shock. Brian remembers Sam was in a tux that night; Marisha: “I knew it was going to be a funeral tux.”

There’s another question about how Marisha/Beau feels about the dodeca handoff, and both Liam and Marisha start laughing about how this entire TM episode is just going to be about the ramifications of Caleb’s decision. Liam: “No regrets,” but he understands there’s going to be a lot of fallout. They talk about how the ramifications will depend on how public the Krynn make their gift: will it be parades in the streets, a handshake and dismissal from a private room, etc? What if there was a Dairon-type spy in the room who’ll tell people they don’t want to know about their actions? They’re eager and afraid to see the fallout.

Brian points out everyone could see on Travis’s face he would rather have gone to jail, but further discussion is derailed by questions.

The group had discussed the possibility of handing off the dodecahedron in the past, but he hadn’t considered ever handing it off until the last sixty seconds when “everything was going to shit. It was more mathematical than anything. It felt a lot like Avantika. We’ve got a plan, the plan’s broken, but we can get away, no, we can’t get away, now this is changing--I don’t want someone outside our group to control the situation if I can act first, if I can punch first. Everyone’s trying to negotiate and it’s failing, I don’t want to give up this thing either, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, here’s--this.” Caleb wanted to save the group. He wouldn’t have taken the gamble even two minutes earlier. Then, suddenly as it began to work, he & Caleb began realizing that not only did it work, but it worked very well and now his brain had split into two: “oh, thank God, I care about these people, I can save them,” and “how do I use this to my advantage.”

Caleb was quiet through most of this episode because he really wanted to discuss several things in private with other group members--that’s what he was thinking about for most of this.

Dani points out everyone expected physical travel between this fight & the audience with the queen where there would be downtime to discuss things. None of them expected immediate teleportation.

If Beau had been in a position to stop Caleb from giving up the beacon, she would not have stopped him.

Beau was wincing as Nott & Jester asked questions they should have already known the answers to. Liam points out it’s the war room in Dr. Strangelove--only the most powerful people would have been there. Beau dislikes authority but doesn’t think she’s stupid enough to have gotten herself seen as an obvious traitor.

Everyone revels in Matt’s Caduceus impression.

GIF of the Week: Liam pulling the dodeca out of the haversack by Will D. Brian singsongs “Travis is tilted~, Travis is tilted, look at his face~” over the GIF playing. Haaaaaahaha, poor Travis.

Liam: “I think I’m just in the shithouse.” Marisha: “You blew the shit whistle.”

Brief hilarious aside where they discuss Tetanus Terry (ft. on Travis Willingham’s YeeHaw Game Ranch) & Caleb Widogast getting fully replaced by Terry as a backup character if he gets assassinated.

On a scale of 1-10, Beau is following Dairon’s advice to a 7. She’s trying not to get attached, not to die, to listen, to not get impatient, to not be biased. She’s probably going to get closer to people than Dairon would suggest, but thinks she’s trying pretty hard.

It wasn’t cathartic for Caleb to renounce the Empire like this. His parents were very pro-Empire, and now that he’s on this journey to atone for his parents’ deaths, he’s done exactly the last thing his parents ever, ever wanted him to do--walked into the heart of the enemy and gave them everything they wanted. (Brian, Liam, & Dani briefly rag on Tumblr still having faint life somewhere. “Female-presenting nipples” comes up. It’s funny and also very sad.)

Brian discusses how it’s a big moment, but it’s not a victory for the group. Caleb was just shooting for a short-term immediate solution. Marisha: “It feels like a sitcom bait-and-switch. Nah, it’s cool, guys, we’re gonna pretend to be waiters and we’ll sneak into the kitchen,” but then they sneak into the kitchen and the cook laughs that the sous-chef is out today, and “now we’re in over our heads!”

Brian reveals dramatically that last night he came out as a supporter of Liam for President of D&D Beyond. Liam: “Beneath all the chicanery & hair product, there is common sense."

Liam & Marisha talk about the difference between Nott/Caleb’s original first podunk jail and this potential maximum security prison.

Caleb imagined the BDSM straps over his shirt and coat. Apparently most of the fanart generated this week has failed to include them.

Both Marisha & Liam VEHEMENTLY agree they hated not being able to be main parts of the Brightqueen talks. They also talk about how they both are far better at CHA than Nott & Jester, though they point out in fairness that Matt’s told them he always adjusts the social DCs based on the arguments they make.

As far as the slavery part of the disguise, Marisha: “Marisha has laughed at every piece of fanart. Beau was surprised. Beau’s gonna have a talk.” She (Beau) felt they had discussed the costumes, the pretense--but not the bullying & active degradation her group put her through. It was huge, an eye-opening moment for Beau in a way she (Beau & Marisha) absolutely did not expect. She never thought they would abuse their status over her in that way.

They discuss how on a meta sense, they all knew that the scene was just Travis and Laura trolling them and having fun at their expense, but at the same time it’s still happening in game and will have in-game consequences. Marisha: “It’s like at a party where your good friend starts getting a little too drunk and starts making fun of you a little too much--it’s a little too real.”

That said, one of Marisha’s favorite fanarts from this week was Beau (as a table) swearing under her breath at Jester with her feet up. It’s an interesting juxtaposition.

Fanart of the Week: The Brightqueen by Nikki Dawes.

Beau does not feel she’s betrayed anyone by being present at this event. She knows where her allegiances lie, so just because this happened doesn’t mean it’s changed anything about what she believes. That said, she has no love for the Empire. She’s very personal with whom she cares about. She doesn’t have as much obvious disdain as Caleb does--she’s just more indifferent.

Caleb has a high CHA that he just doesn’t use anymore, because the people he knew with high CHA that used it did so to do bad things. Liam thinks when Caleb was young he was very gifted, charming, and attracted people to him; now it’s all gone. He can hold it together like a sandcastle by the tide for an hour, but in the end it always washes away.

On Nott speaking for the group: Marisha always likes hearing Sam talk. In some ways Marisha felt it was the same thing she used to get for Keyleth-- "why are you talking? You shouldn’t be talking. You shouldn’t be the talker.” Everyone should have their own voice, regardless of the scores on the page. “Your stats are there to influence the effects of what happens; they’re not the Bible. They’re not law.” She reminds us Vex once entered an arm-wrestling contest with a strength of 7.

How does Beau feel now that Caleb’s made another huge decision without consulting the rest of the M9 (i.e. Bowlgate)? It’ll play out in game. It’s a big deal. Liam admits he loves it. “The whole point is conflict resolution, so you need conflict.” He loves things like this, like the Astrid letter, because it opens opportunities to explore characters. In some ways it’s the same thing: they were in an impossible situation and Caleb sees it as protecting his friends, but that’s not how it read to anyone else. Marisha points out that once again he made himself the authority to make this huge decision without discussing it with anyone else in the group.

Marisha and Liam start talking about the decision more, decide it should wait for the game, but then keep talking despite themselves. Marisha points out that on top of his (once-again) unilateral decision, his speech was also framed selfishly (”I did this thing, I brought this back to you,”). To her, it still feels like the same thing with Caleb deciding things with major consequences for the rest of the group without their input, though she admits it’s colored by their (Beau’s & Caleb’s) history. Liam talks about how in the moment he was scared of deception checks, so he just tried to be as truthful as possible--nothing he said was false because he was only speaking for himself. He could not have spoken for the group & still been truthful. It’s a really interesting dichotomous discussion, both of them talking about what they felt in the moment versus how it came across to everyone else.

Liam feels it’s more like seeing someone dying in front of them & wasting time discussing whether they should do CPR or not, rather than him making decisions for the whole group. Marisha’s face obviously disagrees (so do I, ahaha). Liam also thought they were going to continue the episode & talk more, which would have kept it from being as much about him. This is gonna be super interesting when it actually plays out, for sure.

Once again, no new CR this Thursday or TM next Tuesday. Most of the rest of the programming will stay the same. This Tuesday’s Mame Drop will feature Max James of CR production fame.

We end on this eldritch horror:

"Weuuuh, Caleb knows best! Caleb will make the decisions for all of us in this D&D game!”

Aaand we’re out. Stay turnt.

#critical role #critical role spoilers #talks machina #talks machina spoilers #long post for ts

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lovelife2487-blog · 7 years

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Video Gone Wrong (sam and Colby)

I tied my light blue hoodie around my waist as me and my roommates had made it to the most 'Supposed' to be haunted abandoned mall. I do not believe in ghosts. But Elton had said after this night that I will, which I simply just rolled my eyes after that comment. I pulled my chocolate brown hair into a messy bun as we began to climb the gates that lead up to the only entrance of this massive building that Elton had somehow convinced me to come along to stay Over Night in. I leveled my dark green eyes at Elton who was now two feet down from me and waved slightly as I finally realized he had powered on. Instantly gripping onto the unsteady ladder once I felt myself slip, I braced myself before continuing to climb once more. When I found myself at the entrance, I thanked my brother Sam as he and Colby gently pulled me in. I stood up and stretched with a yawn as we three waited for everyone else to climb in here as well. "Alrighty tired Jess?" Sam quizzed aiming his vlog camera at me. I nodded yawning once more. "Hey, That was a ruff climb. Don't judge." I Sassed putting my hand up to the camera lenses for more of a dramatic scene. Sam chuckled and Colby laughed as he removed my hand away from the camera. Sam then Pointed the camera in Corey's direction as he breathed heavily finally managing to fit through the somewhat small window which Elton soon followed behind. Elton smirked now having the big professional big ass camera that has a microphone and flashlight out causing Sam to sigh in defeat and place his own small cheap camera back into his pocket. "Wow Corey, I can't believe you actually fit through that small window. You know with all of that 200 pounds of yours." Elton playfully joked with a smirk that was now painted across his mouth which was hidden with a beard that Colby had apparently cut off in a stupid prank. But to admit it...it was kinda funny. Corey looked at Elton with a fake hurt expression. Colby and I began to chuckle. "185!" Corey reminded shouting slightly. I put my pointer finger to my lips to sush him causing everybody to look at me in curiosity. "If there was anybody in this building with us, they would have just heard you." I pointed out walking ahead holding in a laugh that attempted to escape my throat and turned on my flashlight as it began to get dark around me. "What do you mean by that?!" Corey began which I just ignored. It's fun to scare people. *Insert evil laughter* "Alright guys, so we are going to camp out here, and Sam had just dared Kaylee and Colby to go in the room that is right across from us for twenty seconds. If they succeed without running away, they both get this huge bag of candy!" Elton explained to our viewers with a gigantic smirk that ran across his face once more. "I'm only doing this for the candy." Colby ran in place causing me to chuckle slightly and nod in agreement. I braced myself handing Sam our flashlights and followed Colby hesitantly into the pitch black room, which we were both going to be in for twenty seconds. At least it wasn't a minuet...Right? I shut my eyes as I heard Colby shut the door before us but couldn't for long as we both began to hear footsteps echoing quietly behind us. Panic swept through me as I couldn't feel for Colby anywhere. "Kaylee!? Kaylee I'm right here." Colby assured placing his hand on my left shoulder. I sighed in relief and before I could stop myself, I felt myself hug him tightly. But what surprised me was, he hugged me back in return even tighter. I smiled in his embrace, I felt like we were the only two human beings on earth and that nothing could hurt us if he was protecting me in the warmth of his arms. My smile faded as Colby let me go, and began towards the door and I instantly followed behind wanting to get out of this room as soon as possible. Colby turned on his phone flashlight and attempted to open the door but my heart began to beat faster as the door would not budge no matter how hard we tried. I shoved him gently and tried to open the door for myself, but panic swelled up inside of my chest as it wouldn't budge no matter how hard I tried. "C-Colby..." I shakily breathed out with tears whelming in my eyes out of fear. Colby banged on the door but had gotten no response. "GUYS, IT"S BEEN TWENTY SECONDS YOU CAN COME OUT NOW!" Sam had shouted from the other side of the door almost in a panicked tone. "We can't open it!" Colby responded as I paced around the room feeling as if it got harder to breath every second. This has to be a prank. Please let this be a prank. My eye's widened as Elton and Corey both tried to open the door and even bang their sides onto it...but nothing worked... I allowed my vision to scan the area for any way out of this stupid room. Finding nothing, I let out a sigh and fiddled with my hoodie strings. I stared over at Colby, letting a dark thought swarm around my mind. What if we never got out? I felt a huge wave of emotions crash over me, swallowing hard, i slammed my eyes shut as if the walls were gliding onto me. Hearing Colby questioning my name frantically. I had never told anyone about the panic attacks that I've been having recently, not even Sam but now that secret is probably going to slip out of me. Keep it together Kaylee, You have to find a way out... I thought trying to find my breath. I crouched down, reciting the alphabet in my mind attempting to find something else to focus on. The yells from my friends faded out as I fell to my knees, trying not to cry. Colby noticed and sat next to me, with concern and worry painted over his normally relaxed and happy almond brown eyes. He sent me an assuring smile and brought me into a hug. I finally managed to allow myself let the tears that have been swarming in my eyes and hug Colby tightly as I sobbed into his chest. He rubbed my back in a circle motion calming me down. We both plopped ourselves against a random corner nearby and cling onto each other. Hoping that this would be over. "Why did this have to happen?" I question feeling myself stare into his eyes that I've never thought were so beautiful in my life. Colby shrugged and fixed his position trying to make the corner that we were in to be more comfortable. "I don't know, Kaylee but things--" Just before he could finish, we both stood alarmed as we began to hear flapping of some sort on the other side of the room. "what-what was--" "FUCK!" I screamed as a random bird came out of nowhere and flew straight at us. Colby and I both ducked and got away in time. Our friends who were stuck on the other side seemed as well alarmed. "Are you guys okay in there?" Corey questioned with a wired high pitched voice. Colby nodded in reply and bent down to catch his breath. "FUCK FUCK FUCK!" Colby began hiding behind me as the bird came at us again. "WE ARE ALRIGHT GUYS! IT's JUST A REALLY SCARY BIRD!" He finished. But when all of the sudden, the door slammed down onto the ground revealing Sam who was out of breath and his blonde hair was a mess. Corey and Elton both stood about three feet away from him with their hands up in defense. Colby ran out of the room screaming alleluia and kissed the floor. I smirked and crossed my arms as Corey and Elton were still both standing there in complete shock. "When did my brother become the halk!?" I said with some sass. Corey smirked grabbing out two BIG bags of candy causing both Colby and mine eye's to widen in excitement, OH MY FUCKING GOD! i thought he was lying about that part! But just before he could hand it to me, Corey and mine eye's widened as the bird flew out of the room and tried to attack us once more. Corey screamed Like a girl causing me to laugh but then at the end when it finally stopped chasing us, I held my middle finger up at the bird as Corey did the same and began to talk like Kim from Kim and Khloe. "FUCK you birdy! You almost ruined my hair." Corey then said before walking over to his car's trunk and grabbing out two HUGE bags of Colby and my favorite kind of candy. "Who wants candy!?" "I DOOOO!" I screamed happily running up to Corey grabbing both of the bags and sprinting away laughing hard as Colby bolted behind me. Corey smirked as he grabbed a hidden piece that he had taken out of the bag and began to unwrap it. Elton, who was filming the whole thing, attempted to grab at his piece but he pulled back with a sassy look. "Nuh uh boi! You didn't earn anything." Corey sassed flipping his pretend hair and rolled his eyes. Sam laughed as I hid behind Corey, when he wasn't paying attention, and grabbed the unraveled piece of candy for myself and plopped into my mouth. Elton's mouth dropped as Corey faked a cry. "Remember, sharing is caring." Elton pointed out. "But I don't care."

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