#dalen’s closet

[talesandfluff]

team effort

[towards-toramunda]

Watching Dalen’s Closet

Perc’ahlia feels 🤝 Vaxleth feels 🤝 Orym feels

[rashenditrash]

The thought of Essek Thelyss animated in his full hot boi glory honestly has me foaming at the mouth.

Also - the deal includes film? Might we get a Dalen’d Closet MOVIE????

[little-miss-doe]

Percy’s vows from Dalen's Closet read like someone that’s finally starting to make progress in therapy.

And that’s very sexy of him.

[psychicdamaged]

liam “hail to the tempest” obrien

[ashleyinwondrland]

Idk why I rewatched the end of Dalen’s Closet knowing it would make me cry

But unless Matt says different, I firmly believe Vax will be able to talk at his little sister Velora’s wedding someday because of how Scanlan worded the wish

And I believe he did that on purpose

[twinklestarss]

“I wish that Vax'ildan can say a few words at his sister's wedding.”-Scanlan Shorthalt

Scanlan’s Last Wish Dalen's Closet

[samuraiko]

Was rewatching Dalen’s Closet last night...

And whenever I re-watch CR, I will sometimes pick one player and just focus on them for a while because I’m often trying to take in everything at once and I miss little things.

This time, I was watching Liam, and while almost everyone else at the table is talking after Vax has disappeared, I managed to catch the exact moment that Liam makes his own final farewell to Vax... and it utterly broke my heart.

[strolling-through-emon]

"slick. you've earned it."

[sky-scribbles]

Cannot stop thinking about Liam saying that he created Derrig specifically to set up Orym... he showed up to Dalen’s Closet and we were all like ‘oh, a gentle, low-key guy who’s here to protect the love interest of Liam’s former character, that’s nice :)’

And all the time Liam was sitting there thinking, ‘This guy’s tiny son-in-law is going to make you cry so hard.’

[your-turn-to-role]

so, was rewatching s1 of lovm, got to episode three again. and i'm thinking about percy's backstory. and also because of sylas briarwood, thinking about dalen's closet

and percy's got a real interesting relationship with the concept of drowning, huh

i mean first of all he's almost drowned (or actually drowned) three major times in the story. and all of those had similar themes, though different outcomes

so to explain what i mean, let's look at these in chronological order

1) the river. one of the worst days of his life, if not the actual worst. watching your entire family murdered, being locked up and tortured, your siblings bodies dumped in the cells next to you, just to rub it in. after weeks of this, you learn your youngest sister is alive, and she helps you escape, it's the first tiny bit of hope you've had. and then they kill her. you realise you're on your own all over again. you're hurt and you're lost and you don't know what to do, you run because you can't do anything else. and then you trip and before you know it you're in water and it's freezing and you can't breathe or move and you're so scared and so tired- and you don't remember much after that

when that fishing boat finds percy, he's basically in a fugue state, he has no idea what's going on and is barely responding to anything, his mind just couldn't take it anymore and left. and it doesn't get any better when he comes back to himself, because he survived, but for what. they're all gone. he couldn't do anything about it. he couldn't even save his sister like she saved him

and yes, they eventually save whitestone, and get cass back, but that experience stays with him

because then we get 2) duskmeadow.

percy's just learned that ripley bought up near industrial amounts of gunpowder, and he's terrified. he doesn't know what she's planning, but he knows what she will do with his weapons will change the world for the worse. it'll get countless people killed. and he made the decision to let her go, because at the time his personal revenge mattered more to him. he's feeling that "i survived for what" more than ever, because now not only did he survive when his family didn't, he didn't deserve to be the one that survived. none of the others would have caused destruction on this scale. he's not just alive for no reason, him being alive made things worse. (this is kinda explicitly his most suicidal point in the campaign, to the point of he literally wrote a goodbye letter that evening, and then just kept it on his person knowing vox machina would find it when his mistakes inevitably got him killed)

and so he goes to ask the raven queen for help. he's not yet reached the point where he's stopped trusting in gods (this meeting is about to be what sparks that), and he knows she's helped vax, so maybe she can help him, tell him how to fix this, he'll do anything

but there's only one way to talk to the raven queen. and that's to willingly let yourself drown in the communion pool.

and he tries, he tries so hard. he's putting every bit of trust he has in the raven queen right now, that this will be okay. but it's freezing and he can't breathe and he's so scared and so tired and all he can think about is how he survived and he shouldn't have, and then he has a panic attack. the only reason it eventually works is because he hits his head on the stone of the pool and then he's too confused and hurt to fight it

and when he finally talks to her, she tells him he can't fix it. that he was a broken person right from the start.

so far his two experiences with drowning have not only caused him lasting trauma around the whole experience, but continually affirmed that he's not only incapable of saving anyone he cares about, he actually makes the situation worse just by getting involved. and drowning honestly in itself makes a pretty good metaphor for how overwhelming and out of his control all of this is

but 3) dalen's closet. god, this was so good for percy and vex in so many ways, you can keep meta-ing about this episode for years. and in this case, sylas' attempt to murder vex and percy? chain them up and drop them from a cliff into the ocean

they're both drowning. there's no easy way out, and no one around who could rescue them

their attempts to free themselves, while clever, don't work

vex loses consciousness

it's just percy, alone, about to lose the person he loves most in the world, again. to a man who only knew vex even existed because percy got her involved

and percy doesn't panic

by all rights he should have, he's certainly got more than enough reason to. but he manages to stay calm enough to figure out a way to get his head above water, and to yell for help, because his fault or no he is not losing anyone else

and because of that, their friends can find them in time. he didn't get vex killed, he saved her

he's not helpless underwater anymore. and he's certainly not broken beyond repair. and it's only now that he's come far enough to realise that

[vethbrenatto]

[psychicdamaged]

no cause my own tag on my own post about dalen’s closet is actually the funniest fucking thing

[sapphicstacks]

Okay so this may be nothing but you know Matt Mercer so…

I was just rewatching the Dalen’s Closet one-shot and the shadows that attacked during the rehearsal dinner were described as “a humanoid about [Derrig’s] size, wrapped in dark gray and black clothing, face obscured,” (at 1:25:47). Then when killed by Grog, “the figure falls to the ground, turns to mist,” (at 1:28:48).

Those assassins attacked in relation to an attack by one Sylas Briarwood and there is one very active Briarwood in campaign 3. Matt seems to have masterfully tied several members backstories together so far but Laudna’s story didn’t seem to have any obvious connection to the current storyline. BUT! What if the grey assassins are tied to the Briarwoods!?!?? What if?!?!

[mruschdraws]

Critical Role - Old Vax & Vex Art

Dalen's Closet ONE-SHOT Spoilers! Campaign 1 Spoilers.

Some late 2019 art to celebrate the wedding & Scanlan's present. I was the giddiest soul to have lived watching the one-shot live.

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Dalen's Closet by Kent Davis