#like i get that essek fans are loud but he's a GOOD character

[justalittlebluetiefling]

As a stats person, I think it would be so funny if I could compare the number of people hating on Essek to the number of people I've seen in my tags alone say that they're trying to catch up on C3 just because they heard Essek is here now.

[lazylyz]

For the ship ask, obviously fg, but also I'd like to hear your thoughts about shadowgast! (if that's the right name? The Essek x Caleb ship)

yaaass both my bois. I of course ship them. Here's the ask game in question, if anyone else wanted it.

What made you ship it?

fg: Qrow tied up on the ground with a cocky asshole gloating above him. That's all it took really. and then Clover was so nice and they had a good open and honest convo in the truck with so much implied and nothing explained because that's how that show operates. 🙄get the fans to fill in the gaps

shadowgast: this was on sight too. When they first met, Essek was talking about his skills with magic and the look Caleb had *chefs kiss. so good 10/10 instant pining. i was feral waiting for essek to show up again. he's my blorbo. my little guy. my skrunky little fellow. peak obsession i made a doc full of timestamps so i could go back and watch those moments. now people have blessedly made comp vids so i can rewatch those.

What are your favorite things about the ship?

fg: They both struggle with their fates being dictated either by their semblances or those in command. There's a lot of common ground for them to build an understanding of each other more so than anyone else. Also hot.

shadowgast: It's about the narrative foils. It's about the magic and the showboating and keeping each other in check but also breaking the universe together.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

fg: a lot of people have the headcanon that their semblances cancel each other out, but I don't really care for that. also when people make Qrow too mild-mannered which v7 did not help with. i want antagonism and some light angst. a feisty qrow if you will.

shadowgast: I thought their ending in the campaign was perfect. A lot of people wanted outright declarations or a kiss but i don't think that fit their relationship at the time. The aphobes were particularly loud to the point where the cast had to say something and then people have the gall to claim they were retconning things to make essek and caleb together. Relationships shouldn't have to be in your face in order to exist. Characters shouldn't have to do overtly affectionate things to know they like each other or that they're in a relationship.

also people woobify essek a lot. like too much. it's just not for me.

[c-is-for-circinate]

One of the major issues with the M9 refusing to ever take or maintain a nemesis for any amount of time is that defining arcs the way we did in Campaign 1--based on the enemy Vox Machina was fighting--doesn’t quite work the same way.  Y’all know how I love me some arcs, though, and I think I’ve got a pretty strong sense for how I’d split them up given the chance, at least from where we’re standing now, so hey, why not write it down so I can reference back to it in thirty episodes when I’ve been proven wrong about where the story’s going all over again?

Arc 1: Getting to know you (OR: Okay, I’m with these assholes.  Why am I with these assholes?)  Episodes 1-25. 

Once upon a time when I was young and very cocky, I wrote an enormous overview of this particular arc, and I think most or all of what I said still stands.  ‘Nuff said.

Arc 2:  Things fall apart (OR: Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.  What am I willing to lose?)  Episodes 26-30.

It is barely four episodes, it is barely an arc, and if I were trying to divide up the series to talk about it in an end-of-campaign episode I’d include these in the previous set, but narratively, this is its own story.

Arc 3:  The cure for everything is salt water (OR: I love them and we’re not talking about it or anything else that matters.  What is required of me?)  Episodes 31-48, give or take.

I very much consider the pirates arc to be the emotional avoidance and recovery arc.  After just barely surviving Shady Creek Run, the team flees the empire entirely and puts to sea.  Plot-wise the story is about U’kotoa and snake cults and piracy, but emotionally it’s all about the characters figuring out, individually and collectively, how to try to be okay and how to begin to step away from the people they thought they were in order to take care of each other.  I do want to rewatch and write an analysis for this one day, about Jester learning the difference between romance novels and real life and Nott spending two months at sea and Beau learning to wait, and Fjord for maybe the first time in his life learning to say no.

(Interestingly, the arc is where the group really starts to resolve the questions from Arc 1.  They’re together because of friendship, and loyalty, and love.  Friendship and loyalty and love are worth a lot.)

Arc 4:  Xhorhas (OR: Now that the shit has hit the fan it’s time to step up and deal.  What do I actually want?)  I call this episodes 49-69, again give or take, because there is such a sharp break when they lose Yasha.

These are the episodes when they stop avoiding the world that was going to shit behind them, and discover they have to actually make decisions about it.  They confront the idea that Xhorhas might be okay and war is complicated.  For the very first time the Mighty Nein has to consider taking sides.  This arc starts with the group alone and helpless in Felderwin, moves through their ascendancy as heroes of the Dynasty, and ends with the Nein using their strength and power just carelessly enough to free something horrific.  Episode 56 in the Bright Queen’s throne room neither begins nor ends this arc, but it does define it: the entire story here is about the M9 coming face to face with the fact that they actually do have power in the world, and they can do something with it--and maybe they have to.

(Again--they haven’t quite settled anything lingering from Arc 3, but they’re starting to make a pretty good dent on answering the questions of Arc 2.  They always knew they weren’t willing to lose each other, but now they’re finding out, for sure, what they are and are not willing to sacrifice on behalf of the rest of the world.  They don’t know for sure what their yeses are, but they’re figuring out their nos)

Arc 5: The aasimar in irons (OR: We are desperate and we cannot stop but we have to be stronger now.  What can we actually do?)  Episodes 70-86. 

Just like the Iron Shepherds, this is a desperation arc, but these episodes specifically weren’t about the M9 coming to terms with just how desperate they could get.  They already know just how desperate they can get.  This arc, following on the discovery in Arc 4 that they have power, is now all about dealing with the consequences and limits of it.  They cannot defeat Obann in open battle but they can complete a step in Caduceus’s personal quest, they can face dragons, they can rescue an archmage.  Beau is an Expositor and Fjord is a paladin, and they are not always strong but they are not slaves, and at the very very end, Yasha isn’t either.

(I’m the weakest on this one because, following the pattern of the story finally resolving major questions about two arcs after they’re first really essential, we haven’t answered this one yet.  It is very, very good at bringing back the question ‘what is required of me?’, though, and presenting us with a team that knows how to take care of each other, that will bury Fjord in magical items and hunt Yasha to the ends of Exandria, that no longer needs to ask what their responsibilities are before they set forth to stop the Angel of Irons.  They already know.)

Arc 6:  How we live now (OR: So this is who we are, after all that.  How do we move forward with ourselves?)  Episodes 87-present.  (My guess: this arc ends between episode 105 and 110.  They’re averaging just under 20 episodes each, so we’ll see.  I suspect episode 97 may have been the climax of a lot of things.)

We’re still in the middle of this arc, but here’s what I’m seeing: an entire party confronting the fact that they have changed so very much in the past 90-odd episodes, and now somehow have to figure out who these new selves are and how to keep going.  Nott is Veth and desperate to leave, to stay, both and neither.  Beau is terrified and self-sabotaging.  Caduceus’s family is going home, but he isn’t, not yet.  Jester is a devoted acolyte and the founder of a cult and so utterly torn.  Fjord still isn’t sure what being a paladin quite means.  Yasha is throwing pit fights and eating seafood and struggling through the aftermath of the entire last arc.  Caleb has admitted to love.   The question here is, has to be, what have I become and what do I even do about it?

(They haven’t entirely resolved what do I want yet, but on the other hand--yes, they have, haven’t they?  They want peace, and they’re going to fucking get it.  They want each other so badly.  They want Essek alive and redeemed and they want Trent Ikithon dead.  They want so many, sometimes-contradictory things, but--they know what those things are, now.  They’re admitting to them out loud.  They just don’t know how to get them yet.)

I don’t think there’s any predicting what major arc might come next, or what big questions it will ask of the characters, but I do think we can start to guess at what questions it might answer.  I expect the next five or ten episodes to be full of characters wanting things and not sure what to do about them.  I expect the twenty or so episodes after that to be a marathon of outward competence as the party struggles in some brand new direction I can’t even imagine just yet.  I expect arc 8 to have real plans for whatever the future actually looks like when all the adventuring is done.  I expect to be dead wrong about all of it.