#critical role exu spoilers

[loserwithanartacc]

I’m so happy with this one

Drawing sunlight thru trees is actually so fun I do recommend (it’s not as hard as you think it is probably)

Anyway I’m insane about her and very exited for ep 2 tonight

[smilelikeawolf]

The Betrayers turned to their siblings and said, "Your creations are flawed and broken, they disappoint you, they hurt you. We have to destroy them."

And the Prime Deities replied, "No, they are our children. We won't destroy them. We love them too much."

The faithful of Aeor turned to their gods and said, "We believe in you. Let us help you. The Betrayer Gods are cruel and evil. We will use the Factorum Malleus to kill them all to end this war and make the world better."

And the Prime Deities replied, "No, they are our siblings. We won't kill them. We love them too much."

There's nothing like a tragedy born from love.

[floweroflaurelin]

Opal, Twice-Crowned Champion of Lolth 🕷️🕸️🕷️

—

(Billie Eilish’s “you should see me in a crown” playing in the distance)

[seanflnnerty]

Downfall: Part Two

[loreruinedme]

aabria. i need to know your thoughts on the following.

I have just done my third calamity rewatch, in Modern Exandria there are now two mortals walking with shards of Raushan and Ka’Mort and Laerryn abandoned her life’s work. her dream. what she almost lost her marriage over to stop those primordials rising at the calamity. If Laerryn knew in some twist of weird afterlife vision that the shards were active, what would she think.

@quiddie

[little-trash-mammal]

Somewhere in the astral sea Laerryn Coramar-Seelie is laughing her ass off rn

[shellem15]

Can I just say, I really appreciate how Critical Role plays the Devil trope straight. There's been this phenomena in a lot of modern media (I'm not going to mention specifics but I'm sure a few examples pop up in people's minds) where Hell and the Devil aren't scary or malevolent forces. Hell is portrayed as being basically the same as our world just "edgier", and the Devil is a pretty decent guy actually. Heaven are secretly the real bad guys!

But Critical Role doesn't do that. In Exandria, Asmodeus *feels* like the Devil. He's malevolent and manipulative and terrifyingly powerful and he hates you, personally. We never see that type of portrayal anymore! And it's amazing! And he still manages to be sympathetic and tragic without losing his edge!

And the "Good Gods" are portrayed as flawed without being secretly evil or something! Like, actual nuance? In my Heaven/Hell dichotomy? What!?

It's just such a breath of fresh air after so many "The Devil was right, actually" stories. So props to Matt and Brennan and the cast.

[soath]

biting and gnashing my teeth over the vampiric sterility of the gods in Downfall. they are flash-frozen at the moment they came into this world, the moment all their infinity congealed into singularity. asmodeus is always enraged and burning, obsessed with family. sarenae cannot be anything but a soothing comfort, pelor a guiding light. melora is the yearning, hungry wild, forever eating itself, forever innovating. erathis is the laws of physics that keep her limited, and the laws of reciprocity that keep the scales equal. corellon is the beauty and kord is the storm and torog is the weeping flesh. they can’t be anything else! imagine being stuck forever in the moment of your greatest grief—no wonder pelor believes their brother wanted to die. death was all he could think about for thousands of years.

it captures so perfectly my favorite implicit horror of godhood; the nightmare of being two dimensional. gods are born a perfect epitome of their domain and they die the same way. they can be people too but it’s a flat kind of personhood, the personhood of clowns, of archetypes, of monsters.

[undead-knick-knack]

I think Ludinus might have inadvertently converted all of Bells Hells to worshipping the Arch Heart

[somewhatsentientspellbook]

There's just something so fascinating about the way the Exandrian pantheon has decided to handle the Aeor Situation™ - by electing a few of their kind to be born as mortals in order to infiltrate the city.

The first to bring herself low was Ioun, and I can only imagine how lonely that must have been for her. To feel infinite wisdom creeping into her adolescent mind? To rise through Aeor's ranks knowing what they'd do to her if the authorities discovered the truth of her existence? Waiting, hoping, perhaps even praying that the other gods would follow through with the plan.

Sarenrae has a husband and children as Trist. I can't help but consider the parallels to Liliana Temult, with a 'higher calling' pulling a mother away from her family. The conversations in the temple suggest that she would have been aware of what she was by the time she started her family. Yet she loves them, cherishes them, even knowing that she might not see them again. Will Amaris, Haylie, and Topher learn that Trist is a goddess? Or will that only be discovered when they find their way to her realm in Elysium?

The Matron was once mortal, and she willingly returned to that form in order to help her newfound siblings dismantle the Aeorian threat. Her steward since childhood was Purvan, helping raise and guide her despite his old age. Imagine being a little girl, guarded by the Champion of Ravens himself and his wolven companion, completely unaware of your own divinity until later in life. Imagine the night she woke up, remembering her ascendency, seeing Purvan and recognising him.

And what of the families that gave birth to and raised the four Betrayer Gods? What of the halfling family who watched their precocious daughter scale a fence with far too much ease than it should be? The day the tortle's parents found him crying in pain and tearing at his skin to distract himself from a memory so distant and yet so real? Or Milo, who became a priest, not to follow in the light of the Dawnfather (like his parents may have thought), but to mock his brother even as a mortal?

These gods spent entire childhoods with families and friends, taking refuge from the skirmishes caused by their other siblings. Who, despite those similarities, have very different opinions of humanity, of Aeor, and themselves.

[ariadne-mouse]

Asmodeus putting on a show as a "priest of the Dawnfather":

The Dawnfather, right next to him:

[loserwithanartacc]

Them :3

I think her immediately going and sulking in a corner after her wife didn’t show up was funny af

I’m picturing her just side eyeing the emissary the whole time tbh

[pi-seas]

Fey Scion of the Ancient Flame

[iwilltryalittlearter]

Apples 🍎

[seanflnnerty]

[nickmarini]

Tell the Bolo fans. I want them to know it was me.