#despite Orym's very reasonable pushes to do so

[masterqwertster]

Shaking Bells Hells by the shoulders again: You had a very good recon mission just seeing the other side of the Bloody Bridge and extracting basic info in a small town. Take a moment to report back to people in power all the useful things you already learned. Get more spells/supplies from them. Then continue to the heart of the enemy. Time is short, but probably not so short that you can't take an extra hour or two to do that. Keyleth can tree teleport and she knows where you were. She just couldn't immediately jump to you because she had things to do/settle first. It's a war, powerful people can't come to your aid at the drop of a hat.

[kerosene-in-a-blender]

Imogen and Dorian have a really interesting parallel going on where they're both playing with the themes of reluctant leadership (Imogen is struggling with being pushed into leadership of Bells Hells by Orym, and Robbie stated on the first 4 sided dive episode that he specifically built Dorian to play in that narrative space) and are often indecisive as a result, but the specifics of how exactly they're indecisive are slightly different. Dorian tends to resist making decisions at all until his hand is forced, while Imogen often makes big decisions that she rapidly walks back.

Imogen has, multiple times now, chosen to walk into the storm/connect with Predathos in her Ruidusborn nightmares only to become spooked by what she encounters and go to back to running from the storm/Predathos the next time she dreams, and as such, she's spent much of the narrative waffling about if or how much she should embrace the storm and the powers it gives her. Another example is her removing the Circlet of the Hidden Eye after Ashton's disastrous attempt to absorb the shard of Rau'shan. She stated she did this because she felt that if she'd been able to know what Ashton was planning she could have stopped them, as "one of [her] strengths is knowing". But this never came into play, she never used her abilities to try and know what the rest of the party was doing to try and prevent them from making bad choices, and she ended up putting back on and reattuning the circlet on Ruidus after the party narrowly avoided Otohan Thull to try and prevent her from tracking them. It should be noted that avoiding being tracked by the Vanguard is the reason she bought the circlet in the first place, and so it was a benefit she knowingly discarded by taking it off.

Dorian, in contrast, often puts off making decisions until he is absolutely forced to by the circumstances, but will stick to them once he's made them. Back in the very early days of the campaign, after Cyrus had revealed himself to be in Jrusar with a massive bounty on his head, Dorian spent a lot of time mentally struggling with whether to stay with the Hells or to try and help Cyrus somehow. Robbie noted during the party's encounter with Artana Voe in the back of the Soot and Swill that Dorian wanted to coerce information about Cyrus' situation out of her after the party had gotten the information they needed on Gurge, but he ultimately chose to follow his friends, albeit very worried about Cyrus. But when Cyrus was being arrested by the Green Seekers at the ball Dorian instinctively intervened, and forced them both to have to flee the continent, he showed no regret about this despite being saddened to part with the Hells. During the recent Crownkeeper's interlude, while Dorian's lack of effectiveness in the combat with Opal was driven by Robbie just not rolling well that whole fight, he flavoured it as Dorian being overwhelmed by the situation and not sure what the the right course of action was and so not really doing anything even as the rest of the group were all making hard choices. But after he was forced to leave by Opal's Mass Suggestion and Cyrus was killed, Dorian committed himself to going to find Orym and participate in whatever fight he'd gotten himself into, to the point that when he asks Keyleth if the Hells are ready to go to Aeor (as they're sorting through a truly staggering number of random body parts), he very specifically asks about THEM; he already knows he's committed to this.

Both of these characters second guess their own choices a lot, Dorian before and Imogen after making them, and I'm fascinated to see where this goes for the both of them since they're both in a place at this point where taking a leadership role is something they will have to do at some point. Imogen has been solidly presented as the leader of the group to the Volition, who are looking to be a major allied force for the Hells going forward, and with Cyrus dead, Dorian's first in line to the throne of the Silken Squall. Despite their doubts they both going to have make the kind of choices they have historically avoided or walked back.

[how-queerious]

been seein lot of posts calling the cast weird for the way they/their characters are being with the whole "destined" aspect of callowmoore but like consider who does and does not seem to outwardly ship it that way.

maybe there are things and dynamics i've been missing but to me there is a clear division between which characters (not actors) are pushing it and which are not; The main people seeming to push for it are FCG, Imogen, Laudna, and Fearne. The main people just watching and not really swaying either way are Orym, Chet, and Ash. Here's my thoughts on the possible motivations for that from a character perspective. With that in mind, I have focused on the PCs here; I have all the love in the world for matt as a DM, but to untangle the intricacies of his character work in literally even just one episode at a time is a whole other post. Accidental essay below the cut y'all.

broad strokes are that the camps are divided primarily* by who has and hasn't had extensive adult romantic relationships. Laudna, Imogen, and FCG are all experiencing what seem to be their first real adult relationships, and have had notably, explicitly little experience with romance at all beyond that. Fearne herself, despite her age, also seems to have had very little experience with romance and love (remembering that casual or platonic sex is not romance). They have all been starry-eyed and naive about love in prior episodes, and Laudna in particular has a childlike view of it. To compound this, Fearne has been lonely the vast majority of her life, just her, her nana, and their companions of questionable sentience and willingness. Exhibited in some of the darker episodes, and stated by ashley (at some point), she is literally just learning how to feel as mortals do in the prime material plane. Many of us as young shippers were drawn to the allure of the "Soulmate AU" for a lot of the same reasons.

On the other side of the coin, we have the three opposed or neutral. Chet and Orym, unlike any of the others, have both experienced long-term mature romantic relationships. Though Chet often focuses on the sex, and Orym tends not to focus on anything if he can help it, both have shown in their character choices and interactions with people from their past that they have the understanding of mature and healthy(ish) romance. As a contrast to their knowledgability, Ashton has only ever been burned by what should have been love in the past, and has not experienced romance. They have spent their whole life fighting fate, and will continue to do so for at least the time being. He is just learning to let themself love platonically, of course they don't want to follow "fate" to a romantic relationship with someone as chaotic and beautiful and terrifying as Fearne. They'll do the cool combos with her, and he'll flirt and tease, but anything else is unknown territory in a field already littered with the casualties of their past attempts to trust.

Though they may seem to be pushing for this fated dynamic in a way that feels very off for CR, there are genuine and realistic character motivations for them to do so. Perhaps I'm putting too much thought and faith behind it, but I think the specificity of who is or isn't pushing speaks great volumes to the fact that these are all people who have a wealth of theatric and improvisation experience and knowledge behind them. They are all actors with more than my lifetime of hard work behind this "silly game" they play, and I think we ought to consider that.