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ittybittyremy · 13 days

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imagine how dorian felt during that whole kerfuffle

Two days ago, his brother died and the Crown Keepers separated, all because of the Spider Queen.

A couple of hours ago, he and Orym reminisced about how Orym put a blade to his chest and told him not to put the crown on his head. Something that Dorian is clearly grateful for now. ("Otherwise, I wouldn't be here right now")

Now, he woke up to two of his friends fighting. Then, Laudna claims that the blade on Orym's back will corrupt him "just like it corrupted Otohan." He's still catching up on everything, but he knows that's the name of the person who killed Orym's husband and father. To put it simply, he just heard that Orym may become corrupt like his family's killer was because of a sword.

And here's the thing: He's seen a real cursed item before. He's felt the lure of one and has seen/experienced the consequences of holding onto one. His brother's death was one of those consequences 2 days ago! And now there's apparently another cursed item that's on his "very good friend's" back. The same "very good friend" who he just talked about the crown with. The same "very good friend" who put a blade to his chest so long ago.

Then later, it turns out that the item Laudna was so insistent on being cursed (to the point of injuring another party member [be it unintentional]) is actually not cursed.

Now he's listening to Laudna talk about how she wants to take the blade in energy while belittling Orym for taking it in hand. (Yes, I am aware that this is very simplified)

After all this, Dorian finally gives his opinion.

I think [Orym] should keep it. It's just a thing. I'm so tired of things having control over us. You two are friends. It was his to possess and you tried to steal it from him... It is just a thing. Its history doesn't shape us. Our actions do. [Laudna's] actions tell me that [she did] not have enough trust in [her] friends... What would it have mattered if [Otohon] cut him down with a handaxe or a stick from the street? It was not the thing that did the action. It was the person. It does not matter.

I believe that there are two routes to Dorian's mindset

Gilmore's Wisdom: When the Crown Keepers discuss the circlet with Gilmore, he says something very interesting. "The Spider Queen herself is dark, is evil, but the vestige is simply power, and it is whatever you make it into. Power simply is." (E1x03).

Orym's Threat: Orym confronted him when he saw that he could hold the circlet without issue. He put a sword to his chest and told him to put it down. Dorian did so, saying, "I care about you more than this" (E1x05).

Dorian's point is a combination of those two things. To put it simply, Dorian's point was that friends are more important than objects because objects are just things.

And before I see anyone else blabbering about how Dorian is a hypocrite because of how Cyrus died, Opal didn't kill him, and neither did the circlet itself. It was the Spider Queen that killed him.

During all this, he discovered that Orym, Fearne, Laudna, and Chetney had died due to the blade. He also discovered that Orym made a deal with Fearne's grandmother "to help [them] do the things that [they] have to do. Hopefully in the next episode, Dorian is able to fully process all that information

Side Note: In between those words, Dorian admits that he doesn't fully understand the situation ("You do not know what you speak." "I do not"). Apparently, this is a hot take, but I think that him being the outsider of the situation made him the most clear-headed of the group. He wasn't hurt by Ottahan like the rest of Bells Hells had been. So, he has the least biased view of the bunch (still biased but not as biased as the others).

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk!

#while i'm reading the transcript #i noticed that the party uses the term “cursed” in two way #laudna initially uses the term in the literal sense #she describes the sword as an evil presence that could corrupt orym #that is why the party initially wanted him to put the sword down #but the party also used cursed in the non-literal way #laudna and the rest of the party used the term cursed as in many bad things have been done using the sword #also mandatory reminder that dorian knows nothing about delilah #dorian storm #orym #orym of the air ashari #critical role #c3e95 #laudna #critical role spoilers #cr spoilers #cr meta #sorry for any grammar errors #you can tell i did ap english lmao

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avalencias · 2 years

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come back, come back,

*whatever hours later* god what a trip huh,

#critical role #cr spoilers #critical role art #imogen temult #laudna #southerngothic #imodna #my things #I entered a fugue state and finished this #anyway that’s my angst for this ep done….remains to be seen how i’ll feel this week but uh. happy to have finished 🥲#i’d have used direct quotes but the transcripts not up and I absolutely don’t have the bandwidth to rewatch those parts 🥰#so instead you get two half remembered quotes you’re welcome!

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genspiel · 7 months

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MARISHA: How did you do it? LAURA: Do what? MARISHA: Forgive your dad so quickly. LAURA: Well, I mean, he seemed pretty earnest, and there's not a lot to be gained from holding grudges. You know, it feels like poison inside of you. How much better would it feel if you could just be clean? MARISHA: But I'm so good at holding grudges. LAURA: I know, you're really good at it. MARISHA: You make an interesting point, though. I walk back over.

#cr2 spoilers #tre watches #critical role #cr2 #beauregard lionett #jester lavorre #quotes #i'm reading the transcript of when they go to kamordah and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

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revvethasmythh · 16 days

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It actually feels very meaningful when Laudna tells Orym, "You wield a blade gifted by the Voice of the Tempest, why would want this wretched thing?" and Orym pauses for a long second before saying, "The blade's from my family, first."

Whether this was intentional or a slip of memory, Laudna does not know the origin of Orym's sword. She connected it to a gift from a powerful political figure, not from Orym's husband, who gave it to him and is the reason he still carries it as a poignant connection to a lost loved one and also a reminder of what the Vanguard has taken from him and countless others. Paired with her asking him, "Why do you care so much?" and Orym turning to the others to answer for him because he's made it very clear for a very long time why, exactly, he cares so much, it feels telling that Laudna is not actually considering and/or aware of the place he's coming from in this conversation.

She doesn't even know where Seedling came from.

#*shrek voice* she doesn't even know where seedling came from #i suppose you could argue that he's never directly told her in canon that it was from his husband but at this point i would #consider it general knowledge the party should have tbh. I've not combed through the transcripts but I feel like he's made it clear #cr spoilers #critical role #bells hells

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blorbologist · 1 month

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dorian, morrighan, and dariax - freedom, longing, devotion

[I'm sorry there's no Morrighan and uh very little longing in this. Three characters is a Lot and I had very specific Thoughts I wanted to explore after yesterday's episode. Because I'm a biologist and spiders are really cool. Will edit once I get access to transcripts to clean things up! Also available on AO3.]

[TW for a lot, a lot of mention of spiders.]

Do you remember the first time you saw, oh, a butterfly? Or a mouse, or a grasshopper, anything as benign as that? Probably not. They’re parts of the periphery of life that stop really standing out once you’ve seen them once or twice. Maybe once they were subject of stories - omens of change, or a brave needle-wielding warrior, sage little advisors - but now just swift movement in a busy world.

Dorian remembers the first time he saw a spider, because it was so - it was just - well, it went a little like this:

He was outside and quite small, made all the smaller by the big wide sky around him. The endless (at the time) tends were constricting, and all he remembers about the why is that he had to be out there. For some reason that left him red-eyed and stormy-haired.

And while staring at the white clouds and white-blue beyond and white glare of the sun, and really getting a bit cross-eyed, something very little drifted by. Even smaller than him, if you can believe it.

It was a grain of rice, or two, with delicate hairs - or, nope, those were legs - holding onto a cloud just its size. Drifting in the sky without a worry. Dorian would have been very worried, if he was this thing, because it was really being thrown into loops and dives and almost hanging, still, when the wind got tired of playing with it.

So little Dorian held out his hand and caught it.

It, you might have guessed, was a tiny spider. Slowly moving over his hand, like it was dizzy. Or maybe just tired.

Being a child - no, more than that, being Brontë - had immediately forgotten whatever had him in a state to find Cyrus. That’s when he learned this was a spider, a baby spider tossed around on the breeze to find a new home.

He’d decided this would be its home. Put it in a little jar with what twigs and leaves could be tossed to this altitude.

Dorian never did find out if it escaped. Or if it died, perfect little legs curled into a fist.

It’s weird, how many stories have spiders as the villains. Terrible glutted things guarding secret passages, or lying to brave adventurers, or pulling silk-strings of their puppets to make them dance. Dorian thought it unfair - it’s not like spiders were that bad. They were fragile, and quite pretty, and with talent matching the finest weavers he’d seen. Maybe it was artistic envy, to paint them as the worst in every story?

Sorry - it was weird, back then. Dorian knows better now. There’s a little grain of truth in every tale, after all. It turns out this one is not a grain of rice, but the girth of a god.

Dariax was staring at him. Or, well - he couldn’t be sure of that. Because his eyes were still inky black, the shiny abdomen of a bloated specimen. But Dorian definitely felt stared at. Angling his handheld mirror revealed not even the littlest blemish.

He still tasted black ooze at the back of his teeth. It reminded him of when a fly launches itself at the back of your throat at mock-fuckyou and gives you both a bad time. Except he wanted to enjoy the flavor.

That tang was in his mouth as he matched the lullaby. On his tongue during the nightmare, too.

Dorian glances away. The Circlet is still in the center of their camp. With all the spindly thorns, he can’t decide if it looks like its legs are folded neatly beneath it, or if they’re thrown up in the air.

Dorian notices spiders more, now. He’s not sure if it’s true for anyone else. He definitely doesn’t ask Opal about it.

But the dainty little creatures are a lot less innocent to him. Noticing them more means seeing their habits too: how they’ll sit motionless in their webs. Or methodically repair their tapestries. He’s seen them hunt now, too. They never seem to fail: the fly or butterfly or mayfly or dragonfly tangles in the web and then it’s over. And then everything goes still again.

Others watch him, scrambling away when he moves. Those have the biggest eyes, he finds, and almost fly from perch to perch. Light little windwalkers, just like him.

All of this should scare him, it really fucking should. Something deep in the back of his head shivers and recoils. This is dangerous, the stories say. We taught you to fear this. Please do, please do.

Dorian’s tongue pokes, just behind the rightmost molar, and he tastes the bile again. And he can’t do anything but admire them, and what they have, and what they do.

Opal sits a little more still, now. But not quite still enough, he thinks. And she moves erratically, like four limbs are four too few, and - gods, it’s awful. He has to dust out his mind to keep it free of cobwebs.

He catches himself each time. Or most of the time. And he always turns to Cyrus, and nudges him into a conversation, and studiously ignores the eight eyes watching them both.

Spiders don’t eat like this, he knows it, he knows it, he knows it, he’s seen it.

They restrain and wrap and pierce and and and they leave something whole behind. A little husk you can pretend is a beetle or a moth if you don’t look closely enough. He’s seen it a dozen times.

He can’t stop seeing his brother in two pieces. He can’t really pretend otherwise. The little bugs, they don't scream. They didn't. He did. He did, his brother did.

And the spiders, the spiders - spider in the purest sense of the word, unhindered by what the world demands of them to survive, uniform. With no place but as villains.

What does that make Opal? Royalty, probably, outfitted in a bombastic black carapace like a ballgown, skittering legs like a train. The spiders around her like attendants; Fy’ra at her side, making her and the gems gleam with sick light from her hair. A Champion. If there’s one thing villains have going for them, it’s being the star of every fable they show up in.

It could have been him.

No, not really. Male spiders are disposable - they’re tentative little things looking for love, and then dying quite happily if they get it right or in really, really awful ways if they get it wrong. And maybe that’s not necessarily all that different to him (go to Orym).

He got the sense Lolth wanted something a little more effective. She’d have eaten him alive. Or Dariax. Or -

(He can’t say Or Cyrus. Can’t when he’s half-sure that’s what’s happening now.)

Everything hurts. Dorian isn’t sure if it’s from the running or the fighting or the pain in his heart that stretches outward with every breath. Pooling in his temples, the back of his throat, his stomach, his lungs. He wants to cry, but he’s half-sure that if he does webs will pour out.

So he chokes on the feeling, swallows it whole, and keeps moving. Dorian imagines it burning, lit on fire and shriveling.

And yet Dariax has no idea what to do. No idea? Like vengeance isn’t the answer, like Cyrus’ body and Opal’s everything weren’t played with by this thing. Like if he doesn’t keep twisting and billowing he’ll be still, and that feeling will come back.

The strings of his lute feel like web, pulled taut. Wonderful. The tapestry a quiet beauty no longer, given a voice by his hand. What had he thought, about spiders and artists? "Let's put the question in a song," Dorian says, and places it in Dariax's lap.

Last Dorian tried - tried getting the answer in the form of a tune - it had been the eerie Undercommon lullaby that draped the inside of his head.

The Spider Queen did have designs on Dariax too, once upon a time. Made his cheerful eyes blank and black, made him wake and sleep back to back with Dorian. But apparently he was still blind, still deaf to the worst of it. Deaf to more than that, actually - Dorian winces at the first painful strum of his poor, poor instrument. But Dariax does not echo that lullaby.

"I don't know if I'm in a place right now to be fighting gods and monsters," Dariax says, and Dorian smiles and laughs and looks away and anything to not reply we're not in a place to do otherwise. We're already caught in their web. Don't you see?

He feels venomous. Maybe that's what the bile was all along: a deadly little bite of his own. If they're in a web, they'll need a sharp blade to cut it.

Go to Orym, she said (who is she anymore?). Find the Tempest. And he will, he will, this little windwalker will bring the wrath of the storms on these gods and monsters and monsters who are gods. A fitting bookend, given how all this started.

His hand curls into a fist, a delicate and useless little fist, and he turns invisible.

#critical role #cr spoilers #critical role spoilers #dorian storm #cr3e93 #cr fanfic #fic prompt #tw spiders #spiders #i'll clean this up once transcripts are up #this is your biologist speaking: spiders are actually really cool! and they dont tear people apart! its just uh sorry he has spider trauma #EDIT: Updated now that transcripts are up!

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myryathedreamer · 5 months

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Quotes about the strange nature of Taliesin's existence - Day 73

everyone is introducing their Halloween costumes Taliesin: "I am a party alien. I am an alien who's here to party." Liam: "Yeah, but what are you dressed asfor Halloween though, Taliesin?"

(Night of the Living Bits | 4-Sided Dive | Episode 17: Discussing Up To C3E73)

#guess who's back #i'm once again trying to catch up with c3 #turns out listening to it while doing transcripts for school is a surprisingly good way to keep me focused #taliesin jaffe #liam o'brien #critical role #4 sided dive #eldritch taliesin

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hello-eeveev · 10 months

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Okay okay I’ve seen some takes regarding Orym on twitter (specifically about his relationship to Laudna) that I feel the need to refute but I have a lot of thoughts and also I don’t want to get into fights so hi tumblr! rant below the cut 😊

(tl;dr I think the bell’s hells are doing the best they can in a series of complicated situations, but people are expecting a kind of inter-party conflict to come from it that doesn’t line up with the text and I don’t get it, so I guess I must become Orym’s #1 defender, feat. a defense of the c3e63 decision, Ludinus Da’leth hate, and big big feelings about Keyleth and Vax)

Take: Orym is uncomfortable with Laudna’s weirdness/creepiness, as evidenced by him always bringing it up and trying to hide and obscure her undead presence.

My opinion: Laudna loves the fact that she’s creepy. She revels in it. Orym/Liam pointing it out in narration is part flavor text, part acknowledging an important aspect of Laudna. It’s like how he always makes sure everyone knows that Orym is Small. Not to mention, Marisha brings it up in her narration as much as Liam does.

During Laudna’s resurrection ritual, Orym says, “I don’t know what Bell’s Hells will be without your darkness, Laudna. Or your light.” He values both sides of her!

Regarding Orym’s disguises for Laudna (i.e. dressing her in white in bassuras, adding flowers to her hair to give her more color in hearthdell), again I don’t think this is a sign of Orym’s discomfort with her. Remember, Orym is a bodyguard. His job is to protect others, protect the group. Yes, several members of Bell’s Hells will draw eyes, but notably, Laudna—being undead-ish, with the Unsettling Presence feature and a canonically scary physical appearance—might strike fear into others. And fear makes people more willing to resort to violence than, say, being surprised by the presence of a robot or a faun. It’s not about making her palatable, it’s about keeping all of them safe. It’s bodyguard behavior.

Also, Orym only does this when they are actively avoiding drawing attention to themselves, and as far as I know, Laudna has only had a problem with it once.

Take: Laudna looked to Ashton and Orym for what to do during the scuffle with Bor’Dor, and Orym encouraged her to let Delilah back in, all because he’s hell-bent on revenge and thinks he can use Delilah’s power to get it. He actively disregarded Laudna’s well-being to further his own goals.

My opinion: No, she wasn’t looking to them for what to do. Marisha said it herself: Laudna was barely present. She couldn’t even hear Deni$e suggest keeping Bor’Dor alive; what makes you think she’s going to see a singular nod from Orym 15 feet away? She had already done Hunger of the Shadow, was already cloaked in the “purple-ish glowing hue that hasn’t been seen in a while,” and Matt had mentioned the heartbeat long before Liam ever said anything. Laudna had already let Delilah back in before Orym nodded and before she killed Bor’Dor. It was a horrible situation all around, but Orym did not convince Laudna to let Delilah back in for his own purposes. It is not his fault that Laudna embraced Delilah’s power or that Bor’Dor died. Laudna made her choice, as heartbreaking and conflicting as it may be, so let her live with it.

And for the record, I think they were justified in killing Bor’Dor. He attacked them with a pretty powerful spell (he did Vitriolic Sphere at its baseline 4th level, which is the second highest level spell he had) and nearly killed Prism in the process. Yes, Bor’Dor did a bit of waffling back and forth between “I’m gonna kill you!” and “just let me die,” but him being a pathetic mess is nothing new. He still tried to kill them all. If they let him live, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t try it again.

I don’t know how to impress this upon people who haven’t already gotten it from just watching the show, but the Ruby Vanguard is a bad group. Ludinus Da’leth is a bad person. He may have convinced some members that his goals are noble, but they aren’t. He is misleading people for his own gain, because guess what? The concept of free will exists even with the existence of the gods! People are allowed to worship them or not, and the gods aren’t smiting people down for refusing to worship them (otherwise Keyleth would be long dead, y’all. she said out loud to the champion of the raven queen that they should use her power while it benefitted them and then find a loophole to get Vax out of her service. and she is so valid for that. 15/10 would do the same).

We had a PC, a dozen or so NPCs, and an entire arc last campaign—and then a whole 4-part series!—that dealt with wizard hubris and its unfortunate consequences. Ludinus was one of those NPCs! What makes you think that Mr. “let’s steal a holy artifact and instigate a war” “should try friends sometime” “Essek looks forward to never seeing his face again” “Trent Ikithon can keep abusing children it’s not my problem” Da’leth suddenly has people’s best interests in mind?

He and the Ruby Vanguard need to be stopped, and Orym, being a person whose driving motivation is “to protect,” is willing to do what needs to be done, even when it sucks.

Take: ooohoohoo Orym’s alignment might be shifting! We need Dorian to get him back on track!

My opinion: No? To both these statements? Firstly, Orym’s alignment isn’t shifting, at least I don’t think so. I’m not an expert on D&D alignments (I think they should be more descriptive than prescriptive/ultimately they matter less than character choices, arcs, and narratives), but I would guess that fighting to maintain the balance of nature and to stop those that would harm others for their own gain is still pretty in line with neutral good? I could maybe see an argument for that being more lawful good, but it didn’t seem like those people were talking about a shift along the horizontal axis.

Secondly, I think Dorian would do the exact same thing Orym is doing. Was that not the whole draw of the Spider Queen’s crown during ExU Prime? Power to protect and save his friends? So I don’t think Dorian would see anything wrong with how Orym is acting, much less take him to task over it.

Take: Look! Orym told Keyleth about Imogen’s mom and said “I don’t care” when Imogen complained! Bad! Mean! Selfish!

My opinion: idk that felt more like Liam being a brat to Laura than anything else.

Like, yes Liam/Orym had his own goals in that convo which were unexpected and uncomfortable, but I don’t think he was wrong to point that out. The moment Keyleth swore to take down Liliana, you could feel everyone in Bell’s Hells get really tense, and I am certain that Keyleth, who has 20 wisdom and ~30 years of experience leading her people and politicking, clocked that instantly. And Orym would have clocked that immediately, and in an effort to make sure that their group had the confidence of a very powerful druid and world leader, decided that full transparency was the way to go.

And I don’t know, this is largely speculation, but Keyleth having that information might mean that she will make sure Imogen doesn’t have to be the one to take down Liliana? Or it might make her more sympathetic and willing to show some mercy to her?

Leaning more fully into speculation bc this relies mostly on inference and assumption: while I do think that Keyleth deserves to know what’s going on with Vax, withholding that information at this juncture might have been another tactical decision from Orym. We don’t know how Keyleth has mourned over the last 30 years, but we know that she’s been angry and we know that losing Vax was and is devastating. I feel like finding out that the love of your life (“forever and ever and ever and always” “I’ll never get over you”) is suffering extreme torment such that the followers of his god are in a period of mourning, basically implying that you’ve lost him all over again, that potentially the one reassurance that you would see him again has been ripped from you, etc., etc. would cause anyone to break down on a good day. Add on the fact that Keyleth is gravely, gravely injured, and you’re basically asking for her to be completely out of commission, because 1) holy moly talk about new trauma, old trauma, grief, longing, guilt, etc. bro I’m an emotional wreck just thinking about Vax and I’m not the one living through it, and 2) that would be a lot of stress on her already extremely stressed body, the consequences of which could be very bad.

It’s a tough decision to make, and while I’m not sure I 100% agree with Orym’s, I think it’s a defensible position.

Anyway thanks for reading this far, I hope you enjoyed my analysis. Again, I don’t want to fight or get into arguments, but I’m down for some brief discussions! Emphasis on brief because I can fall into a rabbit hole very easily, which means this will be the only thing I can think of and I have other things I want to do, shadowgast to write, fearnechetney to draw, and this post already took several hours over two days to write after weeks of mental build up.

#eve talks #I am a consistent liam and marisha character lover #so I am not enjoying the way the fandom is pitting two of my favs against each other #the struggles of loving imogen and laudna and imodna #but being scared of searching up stuff for them #bc I don’t want to see ppl ragging on my boy :(#why do people want them to scream at each other #they love each other #not every conflict has a villain #and orym is not laudna’s #cr spoilers #c3e66 spoilers #critical role #orym #cr meta #long post #ftr I referenced the transcripts for the laudna resurrection and e63 while writing this #so I feel pretty confident about my framing of those

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