the-matron-of-ravens2

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This is something I can't stop, so I need you to hold on.

Crokas to Fiedra, begging her not to die.

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There's something poetic about Zero Level characters rolling out of their ass in the first Divergence episode and completing near impossible feats.

How many normal, regular humans defy the impossible in a moment of crisis? How many cars lifted? How many doors pried off by hand?

How many miracles have been wrought not by the G-d/gods but by regular people who had no other choice?

I think we see this in the dice rolls from Divergence Episode 1. We see characters who by all logic should be dead, but they are not because fate has other plans and they have the will to enact it. Yes, godly miracles happen around our main 5 but together they too are able to complete miracles, even the simple ones of escape, rescue, and survival.

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im so glad we graduated from the problem of "gods are behind the divine gate and no one really cares" to "the betrayer gods are walking the earth and will be actively trying to create the most evil and cruel dictatorships of all time"

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Matt's Fireside Chat reveal that killing Predathos was possible, if only the party had looked into it, is incredibly frustrating in hindsight for the campaign.

Now, I don't think adequate breadcrumbs were left for the players to identify that there was a way to kill Predathos. In fact, they were told explicitly at least once that the gods (the most powerful force) they know couldn't touch it without being given an indication that other beings like the Luxon could. The players attempted to find out more regarding this with Prism, FRIDA, and Deanna being sent to research potential killing methods -- why did nothing ever come of this? If this was an option that could be pursued, and we're in the business of rewarding character and player engagement, then why wasn't this rewarded?

It makes sense then, that the players stopped following up on that. Their attempt at finding a killing option was unrewarded, while power and knowledge lay as the promise or going along with Predathos (for Imogen in particular but most to an extent).

Combine that with the lack of any curiosity as to why it would be a good thing to keep the status quo (as opposed to the reactionary response Bells Hells have to break first and fix later without any idea how to fix it) and this is what you get. A campaign where the ending was to an extent predetermined through lack of comprehensive character/world preparations, a lack of curisoity, and a lack of follow up.

Which really - for as interesting ending as 'the gods become mortal' is - it's quite a disappointing and frustrating way to reach it.

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They bought into his propaganda and never really seriously questioned it. Instead, they took him as truthful (wild) and found a way to *checks notes* kill him and complete his task - effectively letting him come back to life as a ghost free of consequences and with his goals accomplished.

Honestly, the more we learn the worse Bells Hells looks in the aftermath of this campaign.

Honestly, learning that there was, in fact, a way to destroy Predathos that the Bells Hells just missed confirms to me even more that Ludinus was victorious in his conspiracy.

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what ultimately gets me about learning that there was a way to destroy Predathos with a Luxon beacon is not necessarily that I would have preferred that as a narrative option. it's that learning that the Catatheosis option was chosen in complete ignorance of that option means that we completely missed out on any meaningful significance in which Bells Hells actively chose an option where nobody, not even Predathos, has to die

if Bells Hells knew that they could kill Predathos, just as much as they could kill the gods, but still chose Catatheosis out of empathy for both the gods and Predathos, it would have been a FAR SUPERIOR narrative and would have been the best, most meaningful, and most effective framing of the final narrative outcome.

the narrative we do have does not actually weigh handling Predathos with an eye as to what is just or fair for Predathos because, at the moment of the decision, the narrative and characters imagine that "destroy it" and "continue to contain it" are impossibilities. the idea that Predathos is hungry or that it's lonely or that it doesn't necessarily choose to behave this way end up non-factors in weighing the dilemma because it's believed that Predathos is going to be free in all cases. it actually takes any focus or weight on empathy or compassion for it AWAY because the characters and narrative don't believe there is any way to meaningfully act against Predathos. therefore, they don't need to weigh whether they are acting fairly to it. they simply believe they cannot meaningfully act unfairly against it because it's only a matter of time before it gets what it wants: freedom and a bite to eat. so, the dilemma is weighed entirely on what to do about the gods, and ultimately whether it is just or compassionate to allow them to be eaten or to chase them away or to find a way for their survival.

the fact that "there is a way to destroy Predathos" is never introduced in the narrative actually WEAKENS any idea that Bells Hells is choosing a radical and broad compassion and empathy for all life. they aren't choosing NOT to kill Predathos, they aren't choosing for Predathos to ALSO live. they simply don't know that the contrary is an option. you can't choose what you aren't aware of is on the table. so, we will never know if they would have still chosen Catatheosis if they'd have known that they could've destroyed Predathos this entire time.

it brings up a wild paradox for me in that, knowing that destroying Predathos was a real possibility and fully available if the right levers were pulled does not actually impart on the narrative as performed any meaningful thematic implications of mercy and compassion while simultaneously that knowledge weakens the narrative in my estimation because I am suddenly aware of how much that element would've vastly improved and added to the thematic arc, even if the outcomes remained the same and Bells Hells still chose Catatheosis, and given greater and more significant weight to the choice to pursue Catatheosis because it would've imbued it with a sense of active choosing to uphold particular values or ideals — but not enough work was done on Matt's end to ensure that it was part of the narrative, the available options, and its thematic fabric.

so, we don't get any of that. we just get a narrative outcome that is billed to us as, not out of any pursuit of ideological ideals (no matter what anyone else says), "Well, we didn't have any other choice, and I don't really want the gods to get eaten."

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listen, now that everything is said and done i'm going to say something i've been thinking but not outright saying for the past nearly four years. frankly, imogen and laudna's relationship is a pale shadow of caleb and veth's and if you really sit and think about it, it's outright embarrassing for the former party. it's like if you saw a beautiful piece of art and tried to emulate it and then the only thing you managed to jot down that was the same was the basic shape and you never added any color when the color was the most important part. imogen and laudna's relationship is formed out of almost the exact same origins (troubled mage who needs to keep a distance from regular society joins up with monstrous misfit with a traumatic backstory and become each other's most important person while traveling place-to-place because they keep getting into trouble in cities). the difference is, genuinely, how much more colorful and lived in caleb and veth's story feels. they met in a podunk county jail and worked together to break out of the place, stayed together for practical reasons (straight-up survival) and then out of genuine friendship. they were hobos in the woods together. they cuddled on the side of the roads on cold nights together. they were genuinely each other's sole lifeline because they were the type of people no one in the world cared about in a very real, visceral way. they were also con artists, and sam and liam worked together to come up with an entire booklet of different cons they used to survive, which come into play surprisingly often during the campaign (Modern Literature, famously, but also Mother's Love and Money Pot featured).

comparatively, we know next to nothing about what imogen and laudna's lives looked like after leaving gelvaan, and the Incident™️ that sent them running in the first place remains amorphous and random no matter how many times the story is told or whatever extra details get added. the people of gelvaan found laudna to be a generically threatening presence (because of her fun-scary appearance and/or kooky-fun-scary behavior) and picked up their torches and pitchforks to run her out of town. imogen heard her thoughts and found them so beautiful she nearly killed two of the townspeople she grew up with the defend her and then they fled into the night together. and that's it. what did they do for two entire years after that? i don't know! neither do you. they don't appear to have struggled for money like caleb and veth did, there's no reference to hard-living, no real reference to what jobs they took to stay afloat, no mention of the practical realities of living as homeless nomads, no mention of towns and cities they'd visited and how those places impacted them. nothing. empty. no color. how did their relationship develop? also don't know! they seem to have slotted together perfectly as friends with no conflict for years before slotting together perfectly as lovers while batting aside all attempts at conflict later. done and dusted, that's the relationship, and people have the gall to call caleb and veth's successor relationship 'soulmatism' when it doesn't hold a candle to what the original offered.

which was, to be clear, endless complexity. i can't tell you how to define it, and i don't think the character's themselves could define it if they tried. sam went into the campaign intending to lean into a familial relationship and quickly realized that wasn't the vibe, course-corrected into veth having a crush on caleb--something sam has said developed fairly early in the campaign.* liam went into the relationship not intending to care about her nearly as much as he ended up doing, then spent the early campaign eps grappling with just how suddenly important she was to him, to the point that, in the face of her potentially dying in episode 20, liam says to sam, "do you want to make my character turn evil already?"** both were surprised at how tightly their characters clung to each other, and developed a deeply caring, highly insular dynamic where they were suspicious of outsiders and desperately guarded each other. with full retrospect, both went into the relationship intending to use each other (caleb for general usefulness/protection and veth, obviously, hoping caleb could change her back one day), then found such deep and tender care that they became each other's worlds. for a time. until nott became veth and veth had a husband and it sent their relationship into a tailspin because no matter how you frame the relationship, caleb clearly felt his feelings for her and the way they behaved together stepped over the line of how one should act with a married woman. after that, he is terrified of the idea that he might not have a place in her life and works so hard to create opportunities to insinuate himself into her present and future (teleportation spells so she can travel home quickly and still return to the group, making room for her family in the tower so she can stay with him, offering to tutor luc in magic to stay in her life, etc). veth gets her body and her life back but fears returning home will be lackluster compared to what she's experienced with the group, starts falling out of love with her husband, and has intense extra-martial feelings for caleb that are canonical. their relationship morphs and changes constantly throughout the campaign, and the one thing about their dynamic that never changes is how deeply and truly they love each other. you want to talk about soulmatism? them being the two party members with fake names who's real names share aspects of each other ("Bren" and "Brenatto") both from small-town dwendalian empire who's lives have been deeply impacted by meddling of the cerberus assembly (veth's in adulthood, caleb's in childhood) and who's deepest traumas are respectively fire and water does the trick for me.

so why is one so popular and the other, particularly as a romantic ship, very much is not? it would be obtuse of me not to immediately point to the fact that imogen and laudna are two pretty, skinny white women who claim to have deliciously little agency in their own stories and provide a blank enough canvas that the relationship can be whatever you want it to be. there's a reason there's so many AU fics for them, after all. caleb and veth on the other hand would center first a relationship between the handsome white fandom-popular sadboi and *checks notes* a self-described ugly, unfeminine goblin with deep neuroses and later a short, fat brown woman who also happens to be a young mother from a small country town. popular fandom, tragically, will almost always turn away from dealing with complexity of the latter for the empty calories of the former regardless of the quality gap between the two. if anything, watching the popularity of imogen and laudna's relationship has cemented my opinion that if veth had been different (either a man or a generically attractive white woman or someone more conventionally pretty just in general), widobrave would have been a massively popular ship, and i think it would have been regardless of veth's marriage. people can forgive a lot to write about their two generically attractive favorites getting together. they're a lot less forgiving for an ugly goblin or a fat, brown young mother, though.

tldr: reject modernity, embrace tradition. ship widobrave

*Talks Machina for C2E88, VOD no longer available, but a paraphrase of the quote can be found here **(2:09:30 on the YouTube VOD).

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"did people see any interactions between Bells Hells and divine factions" you mean how they were welcomed into multiple temples in Jrusar and Whitestone, aided by them to reach the Bloody Bridge for their scouting mission, supported by them in the three-pronged attack on the Vanguard and Imperium, and given like five magic items? literally the worst thing a divine faction did is not immediately trust a group of complete strangers and frankly in this case that includes Hearthdell, since Bells Hells' attack was not unjustified but like they did start it. and then when they had the audience of Vasselheim they didn't even bring up the living people of Hearthdell and instead kept focusing on the titans. You guys would burst into tears if someone looked at you sideways huh.

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NEW BLOG. PLEASE SHARE.

Hi Friends!

I am devastated to share that my previous blog @the-matron-of-ravens has been shadowbanned. I have tried for weeks to reach Tumblr Support, but I haven't heard anything back.

I've spent years building up a community and loving Critical Role, and I'm gutted to have to start over. I would love to find former mutuals again on this new blog and get back to loving Critical Role instead of begging Tumblr Support to listen to me.

If you'd like to keep following me please follow my new blog! And if you're willing, I would really appreciate you resharing this to other Critters to help!

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I am VERY intrigued by Laudna's potential path with the Matron and the Duskmeadow/Lieve'tel. I think there's a lot of growth for BOTH parties.

How can Laudna look past what was done to her and see 1) she's not damned and 2) can live a beautiful life that she feels she deserves

How can the Duskmeadow and The Matron's followers be more kind, empathetic, and devoted in their service to the victims of necromancy? How can they adjust their perspectives of undeath to be more kind and compassionate while still upholding the faith and their values? How can they be in service to the Undead while preserving the sanctity of death?

These are genuinely complex considerations that would be delicious to explore.

There is so much growth that could be gained from them working together. Unlikely bedfellows to earned allies. That is what I hope for them.