#chetney meta

[sparring-spirals]

I'm so enamoured with how Chetney interrogates and threatens people. Its this balanced blend between terrifying and understanding, with a very, very clean understanding of what to use to scare and to tempt people. All those years of experience shine through in these moments.

[ludinusdaleth]

a brilliant setup in campaign 3 that will finally begin to come to fruition next chronological episode is that ludinus is staring into the faces of people who pretty much all directly represent his sins and how they've hurt people. imogen is the manipulation & abuse of ruidisborn (specifically liliana). fearne is also representative of ruidisborn but also the way ludinus has hunted & slaughtered fae to extend his own life, how he has manipulated their courts. laudna is the wanton unchecked cruelty of the cerberus assembly. fcg (there in spirit) is the idolization of aeor and choosing to bring what brought it down back for all of exandria to bear. ashton (and while this post is about the bells, it does extend directly to essek) is the experimentation on the luxon that started an entire war because he wouldn't turn the beacons over to a culture he despised & oppressed. orym is the decimation of the ashari for a mere test run. chetney is the corruption in the greying wildlands, the destruction of molaesmyr simply to contact predathos.

[thisisnotthenerd]

the fact that orym, chetney, and imogen primarily guided the communication exercise gives so much insight into the leadership structure of bell’s hells. even the ways that each of them did it—orym giving rapid fire instruction and adjusting the direction based on response. chetney sticking to one mode (clock system) and being direct and methodical. imogen holding pace with thought and encouraging with every step—keeping emotions calm. granted that’s also the players’ communication styles coming through, but still.

at this point, i would say that they form the base that bell’s hells revolves around. orym as the lookout, as the one on alert both in and out of the party. chetney observing and learning about the environment physically and personally. and imogen guiding decisions by calming emotions.

[that-ari-blogger]

Critical Role's Cameraman

So, Critical Role (@criticalrole) just released their newest opening title sequence, an animated sequence in the same style of Your Turn To Roll and I would be remis as a film nerd to not pick apart every detail.

What fascinates me about this introduction, however, is the camera movement and shot composition. Allow me to explain.

I DONT THINK THERE ARE SPOILERS AHEAD, BUT JUST TO BE SAFE

So, we open with a hand, this is a close up, I don't think that is unobvious.

But this stops being a close up rather quickly, before it starts moving away. The shot just gives the hand context, and suddenly you aren't in an extreme close up of a hand, you are in a medium shot of a very large person. Then the camera pans backwards, and you can see villains and places spring up, although the perspective on Matt remains weird. Is he a few metres from you, or a hundred? How big is the Game Master here? There's a sense of mystery, of incomprehension. This is setting up some cosmic horror shenaniganry.

Then, we get Fearne. This is a wide camera motion, swivelling around her in a tracking shot that focuses on her face, and those eyes. It is like a reverse panorama, where Fearne is taking in the world, the world is observing Fearne.

But I want you to take note of the leaves here, because they are used to form a connection between her and Orym. The transition uses them, while it isn't a direct wipe transition (the leaf just flies close to mask an abrupt cut), it is framed as one. The name of that isn't important, though, what's important is the leaves. By being in both shots, they emphasise the relationship between the two characters. But where for Fearn they show off her sense of wonder, for Orym, they take on a very different meaning.

Notice, however, how still this shot is. There is no sense of danger here. This is a scene of a warrior with a sword and two people passing on from this world. But it's calm. Because this is a memory. Orym might not be at peace with the death, but the memory isn't a violent one, it's a memory of his family's lives.

Cut to a close up. Orym creates a gust of wind.

And cut to the next shot.

I will not lie, Bertrand is my favourite character across all of Critical Role, so this shot of him made me smile, but it isn't the point here. The point is Imogen's introduction.

Although is Bertrand not actually the point? Because take a look at how Imogen is shown here. Do you notice anything?

She's shown in the exact same way. Imogen is shown doing the exact same thing that those who have died have done. And she can see them ahead of her. The camera panning back shows a wider perspective here, showing her as she tries to run, tries to get away from the same path as Bertrand.

The wind from Orym's blade that came to this scene gets across a consistent element: Memory. This is a dream. But dreams can become nightmares.

As Imogen loses her footing, the camera gives some of its wildest movements yet. It tumbles around her, then looks up.

The camera stops moving when it sees the red moon, because now the viewer has something to orientate themselves around. There is a constant point, and we can see Imogen falling down. And getting closer, and closer, and closer, until.

These are the three frames in order, there is nothing in between.

Imogen crashes into the screen, and we get an abrupt impact frame (that's the black and white one) then Ashton. This is so cool to watch, in my opinion, but it is quite possibly the opposite of smooth in camera work. So why is it so cool? Motion.

The motion is in towards Imogen and out away from Ashton. They are both falling, just in different directions. And the impact frame both helps smooth over and accentuate the abrupt transition.

The camera around Ashton is a tracking shot. They are falling, but they remain the exact same in the screen (shrinking slightly). The rest of the world moves. And when Ashton lands, the screen cracks. The tracking shot is used to show Ashton's disassociation with their surroundings. Not in a "I feel nothing" type of way, but in a "it's me vs the world" type of way.

Then, there is an abrupt cut away. Nothing hides or smooths this at all, because Ashton's memory isn't smooth, and neither is Ashton. Remember the disassociating thing I mentioned, now it changes again to someone who gets lost in his thoughts. Medium.com calls this an "anxiety stare" and as someone who does that on the regular, I can attest to this abruptness being exactly what that feels like.

I'm not going to talk too much about the ship, but just be aware that there is a Dutch angle (the horison is diagonal) here to heighten the stress of it.

Likewise with this shot, there isn't much to talk about. The slow outward zoom and triangular composition are neat, and the tiered reactions (bottom row reacts, then middle, then Fearne) are amusing, but other than that, not much.

Then we meet Laudna, playing with Pate and giving him life. That's a neat little shot, I wonder if there's a metaphor there.

Oh.

This is a super cool visual because it establishes exactly who this character is in two seconds. But I also want to point out the symmetry of this. The hair becomes the blood which becomes the hair again, and then the tree.

Laudna is introduced as big and scary and imposing, and that is very intentionally undercut by making her look small.

Being small means you are less likely to be the focal character, so shrinking Laudna takes away her agency. Only to give it back through Imogen, and when the camera pans back outwards, Laudna is the same size, but the colours and the surroundings make her feel less alone, and as a weird result of that, less small.

And last but not least in this moment, there is the delayed drop of the hands. Laudna finally feels safe and finally breathes a sigh of relief.

That, however, imediately match cuts to this. FCG's vision. The red tinting has obvious implications that I don't need to explain, but the match cut heavily implies a connection between this group and the Bells Hells. There is a fear that this might happen again made clear by a single transition.

Here's something else. FCG doesn't move. At least, the camera doesn't treat them as moving. It's a slow panning out as if nothing is happening. It's the disassociation vibe that you get from Ashton's falling shots now repurposed to someone who isn't in control of their own actions. This is what FCG is afraid of, this is the important pieces of his character. This is FCG.

And just like Laudna, FCG finally gains agency when surrounded by their friends who hug them, and FCG finally moves.

Chetney Pock O'Pea, outlaw of the RTA, alpha of his own heart. A fundamentally chaotic character who takes rules as suggestions to be intentionally ignored. A man who's first instinct upon meeting you is to consider how you could be killed. And he is introduced whittling, with a steady camera and warm light illuminating his face. This is a peaceful side of Chetney, there is a duality to him.

Speaking of which, notice how Chetney draws back from the light as he transforms. His eyes begin to glow, but they don't illuminate him, until this:

Chetney is now backlit by the cold light of the moon itself (There's a neat reveal of Ruidus caused by the pan, but that's only tangentially relevant). Notice how much further you are from him here than in his first shot. But notice how much of him is visible, and how much of the screen he takes up. It's the same, this is still the same character. It's a true Doctor Jeckyl and Mr Hyde character. This isn't split personality, but a character who can be a different person in each form, while still remaining Chetney at all times.

There is more in this video. I encourage you to watch it, but unfortunately, Tumblr has a limit on how many images I can include, so I will leave you with this final shot. A group of heroes looking up at a threat that is so much bigger than them, a threat that is literally controlling the light. But the Bells Hells are closer to the camera, they take up more of the screen. The battle isn't lost, instead, it is just starting.

[somewhatsentientspellbook]

I want Imogen to go the absolute fuck OFF at Liliana the next time they meet. I want her to show her mother what Otohan did to Orym, to Fearne, to Laudna, to Chetney, and to FCG.

I want Liliana to grovel because Imogen has grieved more for relationships that have existed for a few months (a few years in Laudna's case) than she has for her own mother.

I want her to finally choose which side she's on.

And I want them to end it once and for all if she chooses wrong.

[captainofthetidesbreath]

in light of the clarifications about Chet's family, I'm thinking about Travis saying Fjord told Jester he had feelings for her when he realized she could have died "in the same way that he would have wished that he told Vandran maybe what he meant to him when he still had the chance" (Talks 2.125)

and I'm thinking about Chet talking about having found his family left and that "I meant to go back earlier and I just didn't" (3.27)

and I'm thinking about grief and loss in all their forms and how much of that is bearing the weight of all the things you meant to do and say but took too long and lost the chance to ever again

[essektheylyss]

I keep lingering on the fact that Chetney says that the only thing left when he came home was toys, because on its face it's such a strange detail.

He says it as though he feels like it was an indication that his family left the one thing that was associated with him, that he cared about, that he has essentially crafted his whole identity around, which indicated to him that they were left there because the family didn't want them—and by extension, didn't want him.

But what if there was something else? What if he'd misinterpreted? What if they were trying to leave them as a point of connection, like a coded note that they were thinking about him as they fled? What if a misunderstanding left Chetney alone for his entire life, and it was entirely his fault?

It's like, god, his confession feels so concrete (in a way that Travis is very good at when talking around backstory) such that it really starkly outlines what he doesn't say. And gnomes live such long lives that, yes, you could have relatives walk in and out of your life with some regularity and spend a lot of time independent and distant without ever severing the connection, and it doesn't feel like the circumstances in the family were so bitter that the family cared so little as to simply abandon him entirely, at least not without extenuating circumstances.

I just keep thinking about it and the more I think about it the more I want to know what happened, because there's something else there—but the thing is, a large part of Chetney as a character is that sometimes you do feel such resentment for so long that by the time you even think to reconsider, things (or people) have changed or passed, and there isn't always a satisfying answer to be had.

[deramin2]

The thing is, Chetney barely brought to life using his turn to scramble across the battle field to give Imogen his healing potion could have been every bit as suicidal in that fight as FCG blowing himself up. He was dropped to 0 in one turn.

If he was attacked he would have been dead dead. Maybe a smear on the pavement. Chet knew that. Travis knew that. But he took a big gamble on his own life to keep his friends alive. And it worked and was clutch. Imogen turned the tide getting the backpack off.

Ashton was being suicidally reckless taking the shard and was lucky to get away with a worse disability than he started with (by doing something equally reckless). FCG was pissed at Ashton but did not learn from that himself.

Imogen could have also exploded. Laudna could have surrendered control to Delilah. Ashton could have smashed himself up. Orym could have reached for some greater power, bargained more, or been reckless. Fearne did explode but it was controlled. They were all ticking tomb bombs.

This campaign even more than the others is about very reckless outmatched people gambling their lives to protect their friends and the world and pushing past all their reservations. Something like this was so inevitable.

[dumbass-rogue]

Can we please talk about how Chetney was talking to Delilah. Like the way he was calling her out. How he saw through her bullshit and was the one that was controlling the conversation. I think i'm starting to understand how he works when dealing with antagonists. He is always trying to get people to show their hand first - to slip up on the details like how he was trying with Yu. He approaches like an ally but he isn't. He doesn't trust immediately. He tells you what he thinks you want to hear.

[bloodyshadow1]

The thing Chetney says to laudna about orym suffering more than her is bullshit. Now, before anyone gets pissy, this is by no means an attack on Chetney or Travis. It's just that the sentiment has always bothered me, even when I see it in other media. This is also not me defending laudna. I don't think orym was right, but I feel like he was more right and laudna threw away any leg she had ti stand on when she attacked him. I just want to clear the air because this fandom never hesitates to attack someone for having differing opinions and I want to make my point clear.

The thing with suffering is both orym and laudna have suffered, but I don't think anyone has the right to judge on whose suffering is worse, especially when it's so big like what the two of them are carrying around. Sure, with small examples, x broke a finger while y broke their hand, you can easily tell y suffered more, or in situations with huge discrepancies; x stubbed a toe while y's house burned down, again it's clear that y is suffering more.

But life isn't easy or simple, neither is laudna and orym's conflict. Like what if x lost their husband, y lost their child, and z lost their parents, who do you say suffered more. You're allowed to pick the one you empathize with more, that's what most people do, but people aren't wrong if you pick x and they pick y or z.

The thing with what Chet said, is that it isn't helpful to measure suffering when it gets big. And I am well aware that Chetney probably meant specifically in regards to the sword, but even then I think it's more complicated than people think. You can't just weigh how characters suffered like they're on a scale and whoever is heavier is the one who suffered more and is therefore right. Sure you can say on Orym's side, the blade killed him, his father figure, and his husband while on Laudna's side she was killed by the blade, but that's still 1 person to 3 so Orym suffered more and is right in their conflict.

What if someone says, well I don't care about Will and Derrig, Will was just an npc who died in Orym's backstory that we never met while Derrig was just Liam's character for a one shot, to them it's not actually 3 deaths vs 1 it's the equivalent of 1 vs 1 again or 1.2 vs 1. I don't like this idea but I have seen this, or at least something like it in other arguments when the CR fandom broke so I am bringing it up. The same people might say Orym and Laudna both died to Otahan and that sword, but Orym was dead for less than a minute and brought back. But Laudna was dead for days and trapped in her worst memories by Delilah, she knows that if Delilah is around even death won't be a release from her suffering. Therefore Laudna suffered more and is right.

People can keep going back and forth forever and a day with bringing up examples of why the character they feel has suffered more and are therefore right. It doesn't change that everyone has Biases and will chose the character they can defend more. In truth, both Laudna and Orym suffered at the hands of the sword and it's something they needed to talk about but they both decided they were right and made the choice for everyone else. Because they're both incredibly broken, they've hidden it away from the party so they took the worst way to do things instead of talking. When they spoke they didn't talk to each other, they talked at each other which didn't help.

Chetney was wrong to say that Orym suffered more than Laudna, he was wrong to say that to Laudna of all people. It doesn't make him a bad person by any means, it doesn't mean he's wrong either, just he believes that. But it didn't help, and actually hindered the two of them because they both can only focus on their own pain and even if it's just in their own heads turns it into a suffering dick measuring contest.

All this ranting is a long, round about way to say, suffering is complicated and you can't just measure it empirically because you want to. People are complex and suffering is incredibly complex, you can't just compare and contrast two traumas and act like one is better than the other. I'm just getting this out there because every time there's character conflict the fandom breaks down and picks sides instead of accepting that both characters could be in the wrong. It's interesting in universe as a rp moment and I can't wait to see where it's going personally.

[keyleth-clay]

Circling back around to this meta of mine from last year, and this recent meta from @the-relvin-temult:

But I find it fascinating that with the Chetney/Deanna moodboard that I posted today (over here), several of the reactions and responses from people in the tags are lols and keysmashes and otherwise laughing at it. They're wheezing, it's sending them, in all caps asking WHO DID THIS, like the whole thing is some big joke -

But it's not funny? I didn't make this to be humorous. I didn't treat a single second of making this fanwork as a joke, nor did I include any specific pictures for the purpose of making people laugh. In fact, I was deliberately very earnest about it! Choosing a quote that suggested longing and lingering feelings well after a relationship had run its course. Choosing images that highlighted where Chetney and Deanna used to be in their lives when they first got together, and where they are now; one of them having lived so much life, the other having been abruptly taken from it and just as abruptly returned much too late.

And it's that same thread running through this fandom of (some) people absolutely refusing to take Chetney seriously as a character. He can't do anything without it being joke. He can't say anything without it being ridiculous. He can't possibly be a genuine target of romantic or sexual attraction, because have you seen him? It's exhausting that the same few people are actually looking at how complex of a character he is and how much genuine wisdom and sadness there is in his character alongside the humour, while the majority of the fandom plugs their ears and laughs.

Hell, one of my absolute favourite moments in this campaign so far is from episode 27 - the Chetney and Fearne watch scene. And everyone treated it as a funny moment, even the cast! But I saw it as very genuine and very sweet and considerate - yes, including the "tone-deaf" bit at the end.

(For the record, I'm not writing this to shame anybody for their initial reactions to the moodboard I posted - how you react is how you react and you can't control that. And, even with everything I said above, Chetney does have a lot of comedy in his character and it's not wrong to enjoy that. From my perspective, it's just frustrating and even more than that, honestly perplexing, how anyone saw that post and thought it was funny.)

[sparring-spirals]

I do really like the progression of Chetney's reactions though- a fascinating blend of regret, and apology, and flirting, and downplaying, and concern for others poorly disguised as flirting, using flirting poorly disguised as concern as its own cover. Asking, apologizing, saying he'll tend to his own wounds-

still bleeding, still guilty, asking, hey, should we check on Imogen?

[ludinusdaleth]

thinking a lot about how the vast majority of the people who are central pillars to what has shaped imogen - laudna, liliana, ludinus, even orym - are people who, by justifying themselves saying they are saving others (saving her), have given in to chasing power and throwing away a chance for a life of peace (often with her), when she has had to be insurmountably selfless and not give in to the calling in her soul, to prop most of them up, to give them chances.

laudna gives in to delilah to save the world, to save imogen, not realizing shes throwing away being herself with imogen, living together in a cottage; on the flip side, liliana is doing all of this to live on that temult ranch again with her daughter & husband, not realizing she has pushed her daughter away and to become a vessel is something she cannot walk away from. ludinus thinks hes saving the next generation, saving liliana's kin, not realizing he has slaughtered futures like the gods he hates, and is the reason imogen has had to become a soldier like her mother, dressed like him, like an archmage of war. orym takes a fae pact with flowers in his veins and has become almost entirely a vessel for stopping ludinus, struggling with the burden of taking down imogen if she steps out of line, not realizing she respects him like no other and has been put in a position where she cannot give in in large part because he as the other "leader" of the bells has.

she has to pull laudna back from the edge and then listen to liliana say she has to pull ludinus back from his. she has to stop orym's fury at liliana when she has her own heartbreak at own mother, and she is the first to follow ludinus to bear empathy to him when he is the reason her mother & friends & partner are ripping at their seams. she watches fearne & ashton fit into power with their titan shards, she watches folk accept chetneys lycanthropy, she watches everyone she loves or hates struggle with power and the grief & desperation that led them to it-

and she cannot give in.

she cannot give in. she has to be the last sane one left.

how long can she be the most selfless person alive as everyone near her is ready to explode, and all she wants is a shred of kindness from the universe?

is this the curse of the moon of ill omen? or is it the threads of fate around her that she has chosen to love or fight or try to forgive, choking her alive?

[druidposting]

I feel like Imogen really popped off this episode. She got to show in spades just how much shes matured over the course of the campaign. She, Chet, and FCG were unironically the most level headed and direct in their reaction Ashton's actions, and they all had something meaningful to give for them to reflect on.

Alternatively, i have a feeling that this conflict may crack Orym's conciliatory facade enough to have it finally shatter.

[shellem15]

Expanding upon my previous Graz'tchar post:

It's so funny how little effort graz'tchar was putting into lying to chetney. Like, it was lying so blatantly and obviously, and escalated it's "the council of taldorei is corrupt" bs so quickly. 0-100 real fucking quick

And it's not like the sword is a terrible liar. It contains the essence of the demon lord Graz'zt in it, the literal prince of indulgence and seduction. The sexiest demon lord out there. It has a charisma of 18, insight checks made against it have a dc of 26. This sword knows how to lie good. And still it put the least amount of effort possible into lying to chetney, presumably because it thought it was funny, and that's amazing

[bone--faerie]

I just realized why Chetney likes Fearne so much, beyond her rockin bod, it makes so much sense now!! Chet often talks about why he likes making toys for kids in specific because of how pure their smiles are when playing and how they have fun, he likes the purity of the childlike wonder. Fearne is so extremely fae, everything she feels is so pure and unbridled, she's just like a fountain of childlike whimsy, I mean like she plays with Chet's toys so much, it's like she's everything he's ever wanted. also she's super hot, but like duh.