The Coven System
There is something fascinating about the Coven System as a story mechanic. Specifically, this post will talk about how they are introduced in Covention. There's some nuance here.
Let me explain.
SPOILERS AHEAD
First up, let's establish some themes. The owl house is about freedom of expression. This should be pretty obvious. This episode goes out of its way to explicitly state this pretty early on, so you have that in the back of your mind.
"I get it Eda. Covens bad, individualism good. But I'm still figuring this world out. So, I'm going to go in there and make up my own mind."
There's a pervading attitude in specifically media analysis of "I'm going to throw a collection of big words at you to show how I am right" and the people that say this could be right, but they don't dwell on why. Knowing what something is called doesn't really do anything in something like this and reducing things to "Good" and "Bad" without explaining what that means is unhelpful.
To be clear, I'm not disagreeing with Eda here, the coven system is bad. And I'm not against big words (Half of my personality is an obnoxiously obscure vocabulary). But good and bad have no inherent, quantifiable definition. You have to define the parameters you are using. That's what this episode as a whole does. It explains, and it demonstrates.
Enough waffle. What are the covens?
Put simply, they are boxes to exist in. You align yourself with one idea and have to embody that idea for the rest of your life. It's restrictive, but that's not the selling point. The selling point is:
"Acceptance? Comradery? A sense of belonging? Covens sound incredible."
"Watch closely, Luz."
The coven system works on social rules. You want acceptance? You need to conform. And even the existence of the Tiniest Cat Coven backs this up. The Boiling isles don't care how you conform, they just care that you can be easily defined. Hence why they add labels to everything, including those outside of the covens. Eda is a "wild witch". Lus is "the human".
The sigil system is a pretty decent metaphor for this, in order to be accepted, you have to lose some of your magic, some of what makes you you.
But there is one exception to this rule. The Emperor's coven. The best of the best can keep all of their magic. If you are good enough, you can keep some of your identity. But in exchange, you must wear a mask, disguise your face. It's conditional acceptance, and it's not acceptance of you, its acceptance of your abilities. Even Lilith is introduced wearing a mask.
Now, one thing that struck me during this episode was how it makes a concerted effort to show how similar the Emperor's coven and the wild witches are. That way their differences are shown more dramatically. These begin superficial. Both can cast all kinds of magic, both have a Clawthorn as their leader, both back a child in what could probably be a life-or-death event. But then the similarities become more underlying. Both are impulsive and cheat their way to victory.
I said impulsive there, and I meant it. But you might be confused. Lilith doesn't strike most people as impulsive. But that is an act, a mask, you might say. She makes a concerted effort to be the holier than thou character, but it literally only takes a handful of rhymes to get her to act how Eda wants her to act. And remember the beginning of the episode? How does Luz convince Eda to let her go to the covention? With flowery language. There are some parallels here that are starting to get obnoxious.
So, what point am I getting at here? What are the differences between the wild witches and the Emperor's coven? The coven would lead you to believe that they are the only place where you can be accepted. But the wild witches provide that for each other, and they don't have to earn it. The answer, when you look closer, is freedom. In the Emperor's Coven, you are not free to be yourself, you give up your individuality, and your autonomy, which in my opinion, are not the kinds of things you want to relinquish.
Ok, I need to talk about this scene, because it's really cool. The key word here is acceptance. The reason Luz starts to break down Amity's walls is because she is kind. She doesn't call Amity to change her ways in some big monologue, she is just nice to her, and accepting. And that acceptance comes from a place Amity wasn't expecting it to. Amity has been raised to think that acceptance came from skill, that if you were good enough, people would be kind to you. That's why she's so hell bent on joining the Emperor's Coven. And yet here is Luz, after Amity had cheated, showing her dignity and respect.
Luz doesn't begin antagonistic towards the Covens, but the rivalry begins here. Luz is the opposite of the emperor, and by extension, the antithesis of the covens themselves.
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Critical Role's Previous Cameraman
I put up a post the other day about critical role's new animated introduction and I couldn't help but notice a sudden spike in the analytical stuff that I don't really understand. A more tech orientated friend of mine informed me that this was a good thing, actually. So, I thought I might capitalise on that and examine the previous campaign's opening sequence through the same lens and do some more analysis.
Let me explain.
SPOILERS AHEAD
One notable thing about this song is when it starts. Exactly eleven seconds in. That's eleven seconds of wait before the final payoff. You catch glimpses of what's happening above, but nothing else.
And that is a key theme of this campaign. The unseen. The Mighty Nein was a party characterised by trauma, and a lot of the time, you don't see that, you only see glimpses. A flash of a fight they told you about, and the sensation of drowning.
But then we meet Fjord.
He's falling, and I'd like to point out the direction in which he is falling. You will notice the scars on his back, signifying he was probably in the process of running away, or was betrayed by someone, and he is falling towards those scars. Backwards. There is also a neat thing of falling away from the light, into the darkness, into the unknown. THis is someone out of control, leaning into the pain. And what is it that sees that?
There is a reason Uk'otoa's design looks so much like a leach. The creature is a parasite, it doesn't find someone strong to break down, it found someone weak, and at its mercy, and brought him under its control. What this shot does is highlight that creature's opportunistic nature, but it also associates it very clearly with the visual of that eye.
And it's that eye that carries through. When Fjord washes up on the beach, when he is finally safe, he carries with him a little piece of Uk'otoa, a little piece of that trauma.
It's also notable of that it is an eye. It's obvious, but it colours his vision, and changes how he views the world. Its effects aren't physical, but mental.
Beaureguard Lionet is a fighter. Not in the sense of class, because she isn't but in the sense of personality. Beau is a fighter in the sense that her first reaction to any problem is to punch it.
This transition is a wipe transition, but its important because of what it uses. It uses the opportunity to show off the uniforms of Beau's attackers, because otherwise the shadows of the rest of the shot make them hard to make out. These are wearing the same robes as her. Whoever they are, they are part of a team of some kind with her, they are people she should be able to trust, but look at how much damage they have done to her. Look at how heavily she is breathing. And look at what Beau does in response.
She fights back. This is how the animation gets across this character. She isn't complex, she doesn't need a great explanation, she doesn't have different sides to her, she just hits things until they stop being a problem.
I will also point out her eyes again. They are blue, not an unnatural eye colour, but they are the same blue as her robes, and the robes of those who are attacking her. Once again, the has warped the vision of its recipient, and in this case, it's creating a cycle of violence as all she knows how to do, is hit things.
We don't see Nott The Brave for a while in this animatic. We instead see, once again, the eyes. But I also want to point out that this was made before we knew about Veth. So we were just seeing the scared goblin.
This is as close as we get in this scene, and its Nott actively hiding from the light. The warmth scares her, and for good reason, its the same heat that we see emanating from her eyes. Once again, the trauma that has contaminated a character's vision is changing their reactions to the world.
And with that, I would like to talk about Jester, and I would like to do that in context.
The term "foil" in the context of a character was actually popularised by William Shakespear, who handily explained the metaphor for us.
"And like bright metal on a sullen ground,
My reformation, glitt'ring o'er my fault,
Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes
Than that which hath no foil to set it off."
Put in English, I shine brighter when you have something to compare me to. And this is what a foil character is, a character who brings about elements in other characters that can easily be missed, or who shows off by contrast their personalities.
Jester is one of the two characters in the Mighty Nein who is not a child of trauma, and her introduction shows that. She reacts to her life by laughing, and contrast that with everyone else. Fjord reaches for a sword, the item of his trauma; Beau tries to fight her trauma despite that approach clearly not working; and Nott hides from it, unable to reach out for help.
And it is notable that the first time we see an adult Jester, she looks normal (if a bit over cheerful), then is immediately contrasted with the rest of the Nein.
This not only shows just how different her demeanour is from the rest of the crew, but it shows her effect on them. She makes them all smile. Jester and Caduceus are very much support characters in the truest sense of the word. They support others. Jester shows genuine kindness towards everybody else, and it reflects onto them.
This shot is neat but not too special. Its a tracking shot on the hat of all things, because thats what important here, and it shows the traveling dynamic of the group. It's a tiny bit of tension in an otherwise calm scene, so the camera is steady, but speeds up slightly to match the movement of the object, then comes to a stop when it is caught. There is very little stress, but there is a sense of comradery.
Similarly, this shot establishes some stakes with a rising pan to show the scale of the threat and to show some more information, but it is hardly a monster, so the camera isn't really in a hurry.
Enter Caleb Widogast, born in fire. I don't think they could write a more thematic entrance if they tried. An abrupt cut shows the night, then it is entirely consumed by fire, only to reveal Caleb.
There is no motion here. The camera is stock still. This is the exact same thing with Ashton and FCG in the Bell's Hells. Caleb is disassociating from the heat in front of him, and there is a fascinating reason behind that. Caleb has two characters that need to be introduced to better understand him, the man, and Bren, the boy.
The flames consume the screen again, and then part to show a boy, staring at the screen, in horror. This is what you need to know about this character, this is a character forged in flames, born from the Ashes. Bren is dead, Caleb Widogast remains.
And this shot, with Caleb, Astrid and Eadwulf silhouetted against the fire, shows what kind of trauma we are talking about, and what effect it has. This is guilt, and in contrast with the rest of his party, this guilt is paralysing.
Yasha, however, is introduced in a calm way, in contrast to everything around her. The camera shows you a woman, meditating, and then pans backwards to reveal this:
This is a woman surrounded by bloodshed, who has made a concerted effort to look away from it, and to look to the Storm Lord for guidance. This is a woman looking for healing, in comparison to everyone else, but that looking doesn't change the fact that that trauma is still there.
The next few scenes are cool, but don't really add anything to this analysis and I only have a few more images I can show here, so I'm going to skip to Taliesin's characters.
Caduceus has two introductions. One is this shot, which is a cool action shot of him casting an epic spell and vanquishing a crowd of enemies. But instead of the incredibly animated (in the sense of exaggerated poses) nature of his companions, Caduceus clay is calm and collected. He is unquestionably the anchor of the group, and where Jester contrasts them emotionally, Caduceus does so on a philosophical level. Caduceus is a gardener of fungus.
Mushrooms and other fungi are recyclers, they grow on dead trees and creatures and give a forest new life. They clear out the debris and make way for new things to take hold. That's what Caduceus does for the Nein, he helps them get through their trauma so that Jester can help them improve and become better.
Caduceus's actual introduction is muted, and there's a point to that. He's not trying to be the main character, you don't need to understand his family life to understand him. You need to understand that can stand in a graveyard and see the light, that he is at peace with what has gone before him and helps people to get past it, and that his entire mission, to regrow the grove, isn't to bring back what is lost, but to help regrow something new in its place instead of the blight that lingers there.
Mollymauk is introduced as a weapon transformed into a grave. That is what this transition is and I think that's really important. Mollymauk is, very clearly, a repurposed soul. He isn't the first person to inhabit that shell, and he isn't the last. I also want to point out how this character is represented here, not with a heroic memory, but with a quiet moment or remenicing on times gone by. He is a shadow that haunts the Nein.
This is by far the simplest shot in the entire video, and that's because it isn't telling you anything. You bring your own emotions to the table here, you bring the memories to the grave, that's how grieving works.
Once again, there is more to this video, but I'm only allowed to put 30 images in a single post. So I leave you with a quote from Niel Gaiman.
"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."
DnD likewise, and all TTRPGs for that matter, are powerful because in them, with a little bit of help from friends, any monster, no matter how personal, can be defeated.
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