#this is me vague blogging at the ask that's in the cr discourse tag

[broodygaming]

Hey, I love women, I'm a lesbian, Beau and Yasha are my fav couple to exist in fiction, I adore Laudna and Imogen.

I'm ALSO super stoked that Dorian is back and that Orym is getting a cool moment to have some comfort and care, the lad needs it.

We really need to lift each other up. One person getting spotlight is not taking away from anyone else. It'll be okay.

There's a LOT of sexism and violence and hate towards women in "nerd spaces". With this being true, it seems super super unhelpful and in fact, willfully hurtful, to try and twist scenarios into being "misogynistic" when they're not. Call it out when it's really happening and let go of the rest. Just because YOU don't like what character is getting attention it does not mean that that plot happening is a direct attack on YOU or your gender.

Enjoy fiction, stand up for those who can't advocate for themselves and support queer people. Cmon. Celebrate a story about love and friendship and connections. It's a long long ass story, there will be PLENTY of wlw content to come.

SUPPORT each other!! We're all we have.

#it really icks me out tbh and like ? i dont want to be lumped in with that kind of wlw fan #HEY! I love laudna and imogen AND orym we do exist 🙃 #critical role #this is me vague blogging at the ask that's in the cr discourse tag #i dont want to tag them that seems aggressive but i also dont want to beat around the bush about it #it's actually harmful to imply that mlm relationships are somehow actively taking away from wlw #support each other fam we're all we have #wild to think that a reunion that's been building for multiple irl years has ppl excited #so hurtful to put people down for that or imply they're misogynistic for being excited when #when imodna became canon CR trended on twitter for like a full day #people care!! jeez!!! it's not that deep!!! you can like both things it'll be okay!!!

[utilitycaster]

35 and 41 for the campaign 2 ask meme!

35. Vilya, both because I actually picked up on that one and like, I don't think endings should be uniformly sunshine and rainbows but Keyleth deserves that win. Also it just fit together so well with Vokodo and the leadup to the Somnovem/Astral Plane and what we knew about Vilya and it managed to make her still alive yet missing for so long without it seeming force; it was very, very satisfying and intricate storytelling and also Vilya was a great NPC.

41. oh god, first bless you for this and second, so many things but I think I'll elaborate on the one from this morning about lifespan angst because as we all know driving for 7+ hours through the Great Northeastern Megalopolis on the first major beach weekend is very fun and definitely improves your mood, and also because I think I can shoehorn in most other rants into this.

I very much love grief narratives and I think actual play is uniquely suited to explore death and grief precisely because of its randomness; I've made some vague posts about this in the past regarding Molly's death, which absolutely was abrupt and sudden and felt unfair (not mechanically, I should note, just like...the way death sometimes does in life, where you understand what happened and even kind of why and yet that doesn't actually help). I actually felt CR handled that death so thoughtfully and well both initially and over the course of the campaign that I was actively very nervous about the events of episode 140 and how that aftermath may play out. (I was then very pleasantly surprised with Taliesin's choices in 141).

The thing is, I've found I need to sort of pull away from fandom when it comes to death tropes specifically, because a lot of people are understandably uncomfortable with death. My attitude is like "hello I love this in fiction, and I get you don't like it but stop trying to make it okay or happy or even more overwrought or a blame game, just let it happen and be messy. Every day I read the TAZ quote and the Richard Siken quote and every day I'm like it would be cool if anyone actually processed what those mean".

This isn't limited to CR, I should note, nor lifespan angst within CR as indicated above; the only time Dimension 20 discourse has ever irritated me (usually it is both minimal and delightful) is in A Crown of Candy surrounding one character's death in particular. But that's another rant. I have multitudes.

Actually speaking of Keyleth above, that's maybe one of the only cases where lifespan angst actually was really good, because it was indicated to be very important to the character (and notably the character who is living a very long time), said character really did have a ridiculous lifespan, and also she was hesitant about Vax when she thought they'd "only" have 150 years together, and then they had two, and I think she deserves to feel all kinds of ways about that.

But for Campaign 2, which was very specifically left quite open, it just feels off? It's a little less off for Caleb in that Liam did bring it up, but also Essek's the one who will experience it, and he didn't seem to take issue (and I would imagine the Dynasty, and a person from a race that generally lives quite long compared to many others would probably take a different view).

And as for Fjord and Beau having shorter life expectations than Jester or Yasha, I mean...yeah, they do but also, and I know people might not love to hear this, the idea of someone outliving their partner by 20-30 years, vs. over 500, happens every day. Sometimes they remarry. Sometimes they never do. It doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, but this is just such a fundamental part of life that it isn't even fun to angst about for me because like...one of my grandmothers did outlive my grandfather by over 20 years. It feels really fucking weird to bring up a Mitch Hedberg line, that was using to justify drinking a shitload of red wine, in response to an ask meme I wrote that I'm now using to talk about the inevitability of death but he made the joke of "why eat an apple? eventually it will become a core". He also said "the first and the middle parts are amazing!"

I don't want to full-on armchair psychologize but I kind of am, which is I think people are mourning the campaign but talking about character death instead, even though the ending was very much "these people are still out here and have much to do, they have just parted ways with each other and with us, the audience, but they live on". And like, do what you need in your mourning process, but as this is pretty impossible to filter out from the tags, I am going to be grumbling on my own gotdamn blog.

Oh also if you think all of the Mighty Nein are going to get buried in the Blooming Grove, or that Caduceus and the Clays would in fact want that specifically over them instead having thoughtful and personalized plans for their funerals, you were not paying attention to the episode in which the Clays got unpetrified.

#ALL YOUR OPINIONS ON DEATH ARE WRONG: A BLOG BY M HIT-IT-OR-CRIT-IT #critical role #critical role spoilers #finale ask meme #long post

[youvegot-timetogrow]

v. cool of you to ask for receipts and then have replies turned off in your post, unless you didn’t actually want receipts and just wanted to look self righteous in the fjorester tag. unfortunately for you, I’m stuck in a broken down bus and your post is just right there, waiting for me to be petty. but yeah, on Twitter, the worst of the discourse has been from widowjest & beaujester accounts, as well as people who don’t even watch CR but hate the fandom who are repeating hearsay to prove we’re all toxic rabid shippers who aged up Jester, who was formerly a toddler, for the sole purpose of making her a sex object (/s). the age gap/aging Jester discourse has been pushed by all three camps, and there’s been some shitty hypocrisy from widowjest shippers on Twitter. I blocked one person who repeatedly tweeted “you can be uncomfortable with the fjorester age gap and still ship widowjest” which,,, the fuck kind of logic is that statement based on? and several people @‘ed Matt this weekend for supposedly calling out widowjest shippers with his Twitter thread even though 1. he didn’t name any names and 2. as mentioned, there are several camps of people pushing this discourse, so why on earth would Matt have the impression that just widowjest shippers are the cause of it? Anyway, this is all to say that over the past few days, some widowjest shippers have been shitheads and other have really been displaying some victim complexes, so your post in the fjorester tag reallllly seems to follow that second trend. you really just look like a bonehead when you cleary know enough about the current discourse to know that it exists, but don’t have anything to offer than a “not all widowjest shippers, just Twitter widowjest shippers” post in the main fjorester tag. Have you instead considered calling out the people who have made the handful of “this is how Caleb can still win Jester” posts in the main fjorester tag, which *do not even try* to hide the fact that they view Jester as a prize that can be won, shrouding their misogyny and infantilization of Jester with cries of “wouldn’t it be so angsty and romantic”??? There are obnoxious widowjest shippers, just as there are obnoxious fjorester shippers, just as there are for literally every ship in every fandom. either own that fact or stay out of fandom arguments

Hi anon, hope you got off the bus fine and home safe.

Ima start off by saying i... Genuinely did not realize the replies were closed (i just checked and they were set to followers/mutuals only. I hope that's fixed now). You're free not to believe this but I'm not exactly big on Tumblr and i am also not on Twitter (virtually; i do have an account but it hasnt been used in years, and having a vague idea of what goes on there i tend to steer clear).

Having said this...while it wasn't in my intentions, I see now how that post comes off as self-righteous, victimistic and defensive, and I should probably have known better than to post it in the f/j tag (I'll probably remove that tag). While as I said it did not come from a place of hatred, either for the ship or the shippers, it really doesn't add anything to the conversation.

I understand your frustration and I'm sorry that my post only contributed to fuel that sentiment; it was born out of my own frustration to see the community and content creators I love constantly under fire, but I realize that your community is right now under a similar fire and I should have been lifting you up, not trying to shift the blame to someone else.

From what you're describing of the Twitter discourse, the age gap argument does come off as extremely hypocritical, especially from the w/j side; so much so that I genuinely did not conceive there could be people actually making that argument. I haven't seen any on tumblr, but that might just mean i did not look hard enough/scroll down enough in either tag. I did see some negativity on the w/j part, but it mainly boiled down to sadness/disappointment/taking some time off fandom, but the same posts came with congratulations to f/j shippers, so I kind of assumed that was all there was to it. That was my mistake as all my years watching fandom from the sidelines should have taught me that the well of toxicity in fandom is a bottomless pit and can hide on any side.

(same goes for your plead to call out the toxic part of the fandom rather than pointing fingers elsewhere: believe it or not, I haven't come across any of the examples you made. That is on me for not looking thoroughly enough I guess, but still)

Finally, I think I will take your suggestion and avoid fandom discourse altogether from now on, probably even going so far as to unfollow a couple of my favourite meta blogs or creators who discuss such topics. Might go the extra mile and avoid fandom alltogether and just enjoy the show.

Stay safe out there!

#whew this was exhausting

[beetlemancy]

Just to clarify, lb was a trigger for me because of the lesbiphobic things he used to say earlier in the fandom. Obviously you’re allowed to post whatever you want, it’s your blog. That’s why I asked and understood if you didn’t want to. You don’t have to publish this, I just want you to know that I was never an LB supporter or lacking self control or whatever, he was a trigger for lesbophobia that runs deep enough that even vague mentions of him make me uncomfortable.

thats absolutely valid and i really wish you’d said just this before, instead of what seemed like you trying to use my also context-less pain as a buffer for whatever you were saying. it was kind of hard to see past all the emoji’s too, ngl. 

i had no idea CR would address the situation, thus making it useful to tag it as ‘cr discourse’ because before then it was something i did not want people coming to me over. 

for the posts from now on, it will be tagged with cr discourse on reblogs AND/OR ‘lb discourse’ if i make posts I don’t want showing up in the crd tag. 

you caught me at a supremely shitty time, anon, and that accounted for my tone and for the response in the replies i’m sure - but i still think its up to each of us to state what we need, not to expect others to come up with it themselves.

#lb discourse #Anonymous