#its very interesting. and laudna i feel is a very decisive person. when she feels some way about something shes very firm on it

[sea-buns]

I understand not wanting your party members to walk into a lake and drown themselves but also Laudna has the fuckin WORST bedside manner lol. Yes, your much-needed long rest was just interrupted in a creepy abandoned town where you know weird charm-shit happened and the LAST thing you need right now is for anyone to lose focus. But also "Can you not wait? You can wait 5 minutes." talking to someone who has waited months and doesn't know if their loved one is even ALIVE and has confessed to you how much he misses them and how much it hurts and they could be outside breathing alive right now—

And on the surface, it looks like Chet is enabling a bad decision when he says "You probably heard Dorian. He's probably outside." and yeahh, okay, maybe he is a little bit. But right after that he's about to protest with something about Orym and it's like yeah. ORYM said he heard something. When has there been a time when ORYM heard something, and it wasn't real? How many times has Orym heard something and it's saved our asses? Before Chet is being hit with his own need to check out the lake, he's giving Orym the benefit of the doubt. And while he is an enabler by nature, he's keeping his voice soft rather than his usual, over-the-top "let's fuck around and find out" energy that he brings to dangerous situations like this.

You can't have everyone in the group treating a dilemma with the same amount of sympathy and care. What makes the BH so fascinating to watch is the variation in responses and different ways they interact with each other. You need a balance of someone who will take the cold, unyielding stance against something that is so obviously a trap, and someone that is aware of the risks but willing to speak up for that person and humor them when they're so clearly struggling.

I have a lot of feelings about Laudna and Chetney's instinctual responses and I think both stances are fascinating and they've both shattered my heart to pieces

#chet is very observant with orym and everyone else tbh #and i feel like he always takes care when it counts #im very soft for the father-son bond there #and i feel like when laudna and orym agree and clash flips on a dime sooo often #its very interesting. and laudna i feel is a very decisive person. when she feels some way about something shes very firm on it #and i think orym is too. but most times shes much quicker to be loud and vocal and insistent about it than he is #its fun to watch her oppose him and he have to be like 'ok i guess i have to push this' #and half the time they are ON THE SAME PAGE but its either like one line off or they just totally misunderstanding each other #orym is my boy i spin him in my brain and anyone who interacts with him makes me spin even faster #critical role #c3e86 #orym of the air ashari #chetney pock o'pea #laudna #bells hells #not even done with the ep yet but taking advantage of the fact that i can pause and make posts like this lol #during the live its like i save long posts for the end IF i can remember what i wanted to say #if i do it during i do not process the show and miss everything

[captainofthetidesbreath]

I didn't want to say it in the tags bc it's off-topic, but the prev. post about Caleb, Jester, and Veth really hits a lot of the same stuff I think about wrt the way Imogen really puts so much incredible weight on the phrase "you're a good person" and on this concept that certain people are good people, and how she constantly uses it in an of itself (without further dissection of what that means) as a refutation to their doubts or when they feel uncertain about decisions they've made, and how she keeps keeps telling people that over and over and clings to it when people say it to her.

there is the way that she responds to Laudna's doubts about Bor'Dor with insisting she's a good person, thus declining to really unpack and move through those complex feelings, or when she prior sought to find justifications for Liliana bc she wanted to believe that because her motivations were "good" thus she should be a "good" person. at times, Imogen equates not thinking bad thoughts as being good, and that translates to a categorical morality that makes it complicated for her to grapple with the idea that "good" people can think ill thoughts and that "bad" people can have decent intentions—or conversely, that people who have hurt you can still be decent people who've made mistakes and that people who have been kind to you are awful people who seek harm.

it's interesting, because I think she is trying to be and working toward being a better person, to become a kinder and more compassionate person, and to grow out of this kind of thinking, but there's this way she has historically and at times even now clung to the idea of being "good", and to assurances of "you are a good person" both for herself and others, and that as a ontological category doesn't always seem to allow for shades of gray or more complex grappling with what it MEANS to do good in the world or how complex and at times faltering that process can be.

in its way, it's a morality that is very similar to that sort that Jester was working with and through as discussed in the previous post, and in a sense, Imogen is coming at the same overall core struggle from the opposite end as Caleb.

#Critical Role things #CR #non-rebloggable bc I continue to not trust a certain roving individual in this fandom #and bc a lot of people get so weird whenever one discusses Imogen as not having a perfect morality and outlook