#team issylra

[sparring-spirals]

team wildemount: getting fucked by someone they've grown close to ;)

team issylra: getting fucked by someone they've grown close to :(

[sunflowervc]

ok remember when i said i have impeccable posting time bc i posted a drawing abt laudna, ashton, and orym being missing the night they came back??

well i think i really do bc i just finished this drawing of the issylra guests and of where they were before they got teleported… and guess what happened??? guess what just got revealed to be different???

[elahogn]

why not just find your friends and leave?....

as broken and hurt as they are, i’m glad Ashton is there to ground the team

[its-your-mind]

caster emily axford at the table with martial liam o'brien is SUCH A GOOD ENERGY and then adding utkarsh/bor'dor's "I'm just excited to be here" energy, AND taliesin and aimee's "HERE TO CAUSE PROBLEMS ON PURPOSE" energy, and then ROUNDING IT OUT with marisha/laudna "how terrifying can I make my descriptions of my actions challenge" is just So Specific and So Good 11/10

[salsie]

screencap redraw (somewhat) to cope!

[C3E63] spoilers - part 2 below the cut :')

he beat the allegations but at what cost 😭

[undead-knick-knack]

Hell doesn't even begin to cover it honestly

[mshades01]

Aimee did a LOT in that Critical Role episode, but it was this line that really jumped out at me.

[sea-buns]

Oh my god, the parallels that we are walking into the Bells Hells reunion with.

Team Wildemount went shopping. They formed close bonds to each other. They saved an ancient mystical creature and an entire city with the power of friendship and kindness and mercy. They all survived. They’re all committed to seeing this fight through. The people of this group who started a threesome and a robomance have no middle ground in that venn diagram. They are a literal pyramid built out of love and trust.

Team Issylra clothed themselves in the remains of a betrayal. They destroyed a temple of the gods. They saved a town through death and violence. No two people walked out of that fight feeling the same about its outcome. They had stressful debates questioning what could possibly be worth all this, nightly. They had an enemy in their midst the entire time. They’re returning to their family with one temporary companion.

We’re looking at a group who’s spent their entire time getting to know a living miracle of the Dawnfather, learning about Ludinus’ connection to the Matron of Ravens, the long list of horrors he’s committed. All who are about to reconvene with the people who helped tear down a temple of the Dawnfather, who killed his followers, who watched one of his angels turn to dust, who are returning with a believer of the Matron.

One group will be bubbly, and clean, and hopeful. And the other will arrive looking worse than they did at the end of the world. Dirty, and clouded, and sad.

Both of them have come to the conclusion that this is war. They’ve resolved to do anything to return to their people and keep it that way. To finish what they started. But the paths they went down to get here are on two wildly differing ends of the spectrum. Ethics and principles that will no doubt clash many times the further down this road they go.

[scriptmyworld]

I love how fucking dark this all is. Orym, the guard, the eternal watchdog, just watching and doing NOTHING. giving Laudna the okay to brutally kill this man who betrayed them.

[bloodsoaked-rainbows]

After Taliesin mentioned it, I just had to make it

[plantskiddo]

angelslayer

[sparring-spirals]

any time ashton orym or laudna ask each other "are you okay" and get back a terse "i'm fine" im kind of pleased by it. like. obviously none of them are fine. we all know. they know. they know each other knows. they're almost past the point where the facade is critical, for each other, but they still keep it up. out of- maybe respect, in some form. preserving dignity. At this point its more like a "are you okay as in. functional. the same level of 'not okay' as normal." and the "im fine" response, or even a "just tired" is the admittance of, of course not okay! but regular not-okay. still functional, still workable.

and then they all respect it! In the midst of the conversations, in the heat of the moment- they believe each other. and if they're very worried, they circle back later- in private, in quiet, away from prying eyes and ears.

its a. very interesting display of communication and respect and cageyness. neat.

[sunflowervc]

bor’dor, be at peace, be with your family, rest now + fuck you for betraying the team also

[shorthaltsjester]

sometimes people will say “going dark” and then what they’re actually talking about is just people no longer presenting a carefully constructed version of their emotions and experiences.

like. emotional turmoil is not the same as darkness. laudna in this Fictional Universe that has tangibly different stakes wrt to death and killing than our own, is at best like . morally neutral for what she just did like. man has been secretly trying to kill you, and then just tried to do so again, killing him back is a fair choice. and even if i was someone who is excited by delilah’s inability to escape from the narrative, this shit isn’t about delilah. laudna made a choice. if delilah is back or whatever it’s a choice that laudna made because something in that grants her more control than her existing conditions did. this isn’t some Delilah Takes Over, it’s Laudna Expressly Makes The Choice To Call Forth Something within Herself to remedy the lack of control that’s been thrust upon her. if y’all want to Continue to limit Laudna’s agency (as the cr fandom is so, so want to do when a female character makes a choice that isn’t Good according to some weird system of virtue ethics) go ahead.

likewise with orym. little guy is not “going dark” because he has finally made direct action about his emotional turmoil in dealing with a situation which has similarly left him without control and has also placed him in a position where his stalwart conviction towards protecting and honouring those he loves and has lost alike is constantly met with other people he cares for going well.. what if they had a point/we are killing other peoples loved ones/etc. which like . yeah that might be frustrating and in fact might lead him to go, actually, i can’t afford to try and maintain some abject morality where I carry a locket that will literally only provide guilt. orym is completely committed to his beliefs, the locket and what it represents has never been a limit to what he will do, only a reminder of the consequences of what he might cause in those actions. but they Are at war and orym has a billion things on his plate. he can put down the locket. especially when bor’dor is the explicit manifestation of that locket’s symbolism. the subtext rapidly became the text and orym doesn’t need a reminder. it’s there in the fact that team issylra is walking away with two friends, not three.

these are character who have at every turn denied their own emotions in various forms while still being acutely aware of what they deny, whether that awareness was/is fully realized or not. many of laudna’s early convos with ashton show us that there is some awareness to the lighthearted spooky goth girl and how that persona fades when she thinks too much about what has led her and maintained that reality. likewise the entirety of orym’s story thus far is defined by his grief in a very literal sense, it Has extended from that grief to also the commitment he had to the purpose of figuring out the assassination attempt on keyleth but as we have seen, that purpose has fallen apart. paired with the quasi-reopening of his grief that was getting to see will again only to have to turn away, i don’t think there’s a lack of awareness in orym of how much he hurts. but between his actions and 4SD, that hurt tends to get buried under guilt or Responsibility.

and now, finally, both of them have admitted to that Not in the safety of small introspection or one-on-one conversations but with actions that they cannot shy away from or deny. laudna killed bor’dor and orym encouraged her to. and it Is a complex situation but truly I don’t really think it’s a “going dark” one. because they’re not giving into some overhanging Darkness of Morality™, they’re admitting that they are hurt and have long been hurting.

or, y’know, tldr for those who continue to deny laudna and orym agency or fully villainise them for whatever weird reasons . you could listen to laudna and ashton’s conversation that pretty much lays it out explicitly. laudna claims she’s weak for having chosen to kill bor’dor. ashton denies that and affirms instead that, no, she’s hurt.

[its-your-mind]

this group of chaotic fools: okay now we're in this small town. look there's a temple. looks real nice. this place is absolutely a theocracy and the people are being silenced. we should plan a heist to steal spells from the clerics up at the temple cuz they're clearly corrupt. we cannot trust a single thing any town guard says to us. we have to approach the citizens of this town with extreme caution. we should not all go into a store all together because it will draw attention to us. keep your head on a FUCKING swivel. trust no one.

orym, quietly but with feeling: we really are people who are lost and needing help. that is not a clever ruse. what if we just tried asking for help. would that really be so bad.

[theotherrobin]

A lil goth ray of sunshine

~I like Prism a lot. Can’t wait to see more of her!~