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vaxxy-the-raven · 1 year

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(The Legend Of Vox Machina - Season 1 Episode 3 - The Feast Of Realms)

Episode Rating - 5 out of 5

"They were so cruel with this opening and I love it.

Am I a bit peeved over the family tree rewrite? A little, I admit.

Cassandra should be younger than the twins and we're missing both Vesper and Ludwig.

Also Percy being too depressed to appreciate Vex looking like that is not as funny as the memes about it are, but is it still pretty funny.

Keyleth being her usual Disney Princess self is lovely! But her reaction to Vax's greeting is annoying, he has food in his mouth Keyleth, what did you expect? Vax singing good morning? Come on, girl, give him a break lmao.

Then Grog ruining Vax's day before he even has breakfast is such a brother thing to do. A+ sibling representation there.

Then Allura!! The door!! Vax getting revenge!! Scanlan flirting with Pike!! This scene is so good, poor Percy trying to save face with an unimpressed Allura always cracks me up.

Then the dinner!

There's a slight animation error that has Vax looking a little depry when they first arrive, but the curtsey more than makes up for it - also, he looks so pretty!

("No thoughts, just pretty boy" is the biggest mood of the season.)

Also petition for Vax to have a ponytail in season 3 if we don't get the beads and braids. So much nicer than whatever he has going on normally.

Also everyone looks great here, Vex especially so. Hooo boy. Her and Percy having matching necklaces and chokers is so cute, I fucking love them.

Pike and her fancy shots, then her telling off the audience.

Scanlan flirting with Reginald. My new favourite otp.

The Briarwoods' entrance, tho.

Sylas walks like a man who knows he's the sexiest man alive and that his wife is the hottest woman alive. Love that for him.

Also Vax immediately wanting to help Percy? Asking what he needs? Offering to snoop?

Love him. Love him. Love him.

The safeword bit is funny, but it doesn't make sense without the earrings??? Like, what???

Then Scanlan failing that charisma check so bad was funny, Allura totally knew he was lying through his teeth.

The dinner scenes are a bit grating, but still kinda funny.

Vax and his stealth roll is beautiful, love that sneaky boy!

Then we get to see Simon! Yes!

I hope we see more Simon next season! I adore him!

Also the long shot on Vax's crotch while he picked that lock was so fucking rude. 10/10 thank you

Then the scene where Delilah has Sylas charm Uriel to stop him from drawing suspicion on the pair and Whitestone?

Sylas touching the sovereign and nobody stopping him?

I do think he should have said "You don't need to do that, Friend." rather than just "You don't need to do that.", but maybe that's just me?

Still hot though!

And only Keyleth seeing it? Does she realise what's happening or ???? Baby girl, what do your (Half) Elf eyes see? What do you know?

Also the tension when Delilah finally addresses Percy, everyone panicking - thankfully Vex is there, they'd be lost without her sometimes.

Syals saying "Charmed" like that, though, and right after charming Uriel? Perfect. Beautiful. Amazing.

The beads joke is a bit… eh.

When Delilah tells her little story in a passive aggressive attack on Percy? Percy's reaction?

Fuck me. That was good.

The Briarwoods feigning offence as they leave? They know.

I bet Delilah's things had some sort-of alarm spell on them.

There's another animation error in this scene - as the scene opens we see a servant giving Sylas dessert, but as the Briarwoods leave he has his dinner in front of him again.

(Not mad about this! Genuinely find it really funny.)

Then of course, Vax having his attention stolen by the fire - he had plenty of time, surely.

Then we see the Briarwoods' walking past the mirror to their room and Syals has no reflection while Delilah does? Finally confirming that Delilah wasn't a Vampire while Sylas is one? Because that did confuse people during the campaign. Love it.

And the confrontation! Vax panic-flirting! Then, foolishly, running into the couple instead of to the side and away???

That fucking staredown???

Percy telling the others about what happened to his family, the group rushing to help Vax.

Sylas caressing Vax's face and talking about him being curious while Delilah watches from the bed, the vibes suggesting so many different possibilities???

"You look delicious."????

The bite???? Ahhh????

The ensuing fight, Delilah's spell hitting Pike in the back and looking like when Pike hit her back off the wall in Episode 2???

Keyleth's clutch thorn wall???

No Mercy Percy? Poor Desmond? Scanlan coming out in the end and realising his party fucked up big time?

When I say this is my favourite episode of any show ever...

That being said, Vex'ahlia was robbed of two nat 20s in this fight! She should have hit Delilah!! Twice!!! Ahhhhhhhh-"

Vax Suffering Rating - 5 out of 5

"My boy is paralysed and then felt up by a (very sexy) Vampire?

He gets bitten by said Vampire?

He throws himself out a window?

He hits a flagpole during his fall and lands on concrete?

He gets torn up by Vampire claws after grabbing a broken shard of glass and cutting his hand trying to protect himself?

Then he nearly gets choked out?

Before being hard yeeted onto concrete again?

And he still looks so pretty?

Baby Boy, Baby Boy-"

(masterpost)

#can you tell that i like this episode?#tlovm spoilers #tlovm review #tlovm s1 e3 #the legend of vox machina #tlovm #lynias watches tlovm #stop being gay on main lynias

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thessalian · 1 year

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Thess vs TLOVM Reviews

The other day, I decided I’d go looking at the reviews for Legend of Vox Machina S2. Just ‘cos. I mean, I knew I liked it, but it’s nice to see what other people think, because I won’t say it’s perfect and it’s sometimes interesting to look at what other people think works (or doesn’t work, depending).

I gleefully noted that 97% of the reviews given in the UK were 5-stars. Lots of good commentary, both from people who’d watched the campaign and those who hadn’t. I also noted, with some interest, the five or so that gave it 1- or 2-star reviews. So I thought I’d have a look and see what they were saying.

I mean, first thing I noticed was that the things were very short and badly spelled with zero grammar and couldn’t even be bothered with capitalising the beginning of sentences. I mean, okay, if that’s how you write, go ahead, but I’m going to side-eye you a little if you’re offering critique that way. And then I read them. Obviously it did not take long.

My sheer disbelief over what I saw, however, engendered a lot of thinking of the angry, “Why do people review shit when they obviously did not actually watch the damn thing?” variety. So now I’m putting my thoughts on virtual paper.

The one that came up a lot was, “No plot”. Um. Okay, there’s a two-pronged answer to that one. I mean, S1 was “Oh fuck dragon infiltration” plus “vampire and necromancer infiltration and oh yeah they murdered one character’s entire fucking family“ plus “And now we have to deal with the demon said character allowed into his soul when he was clawing for survival and revenge after barely escaping with his life”. And when we get to S2, we get, “Oh fuck dragon infiltration was the step in a larger plan!” plus “We need serious weapons to deal with this” plus “What I Will Do To Save My Sister’s Life: A Compendium” plus “When people tell you that your sword is being an asshole, maybe LISTEN” plus “Let’s touch on the pain and tragedy of everyone’s backstory for giggles” with a topping of, “Could strange bedfellows not roofie our known allies, please? I mean-- wait; BBEG is doing what?!?” All of this sounds like plot to me, both of the personal development variety and of the “completing a mission” variety. Soooooo ... not sure where that one came from but at least four people said it. Also apparently focused more on the “sex-starved gnome” (ignoring Scanlan’s character development entirely) and “the alpha male beard guy” (and never mind that Grog has never been the dominant figure in the group and spent a whole lot of S2 showing his soft side and weaknesses - ‘alpha male’ my entire ass; it doesn’t just mean ‘big strong muscular person’ even to the assholes who believe in the term).

And then there was, “They always win; the things that they need always just appear and there’s never any feeling that they might lose”. Which is the point where I start asking, “What the fuck show did you watch?” Focusing entirely on S2 for a moment, we have:

Ep 1: Vox Machina and the entire city of Emon get their collective ass handed to them by the Chroma Conclave; Vox Machina specifically barely escape with their lives twice - once from the city itself, once from the Keep into Whitestone.

Ep 2: Mighty heroes go to Vasselheim for help, basically get told to go fuck themselves, eventually manage to get a tiny shred of information to go on after having their asses handed to them on the emotional level by a couple of spiritual know-alls.

Ep 3: Vex. Fucking. Dies. And that’s leaving out nearly getting drowned by fish people.

Ep 4: Vex is revived through her brother throwing himself into an open-ended deal with a death god, and then they all more or less get their asses handed to them on one level or another; only get out because Vax took self-sacrifice to its greatest heights.

Ep 5: “I AM VERY FLAMMABLE!” That one only gets resolved when Keyleth finally lets go of her anxieties (and if we’re talking about ‘the things we need just appearing’, if she’d figured that out when it was needed, a lot of things would have been a lot easier over the last season or so).

Ep 6: Vox Machina get their asses handed to them again, this time by sphinx. Saved again by character development and someone finally realising that not all wounds are physical ... only to get their asses handed to them yet again by black dragon asshole who takes everything they managed to earn in that entire fight - ally and Vestige. Oh, yeah, and buddy-on-buddy stabbing because of fucking evil sword, and splitting the party.

Ep 7: Both halves of the team end up crippled - Team Gnome And Goliath because weapon (and the shit Grog goes through trying to shake the curse ... and it doesn’t even really work), Team Half-Elf And Know-All because half the party ends up tripping balls. The latter has the worst of it because the two guys get their asses largely kicked by Jell-O.

Ep 8: If people got what they needed exactly when they needed it, Vex would have had even the tiniest bit of support when she was soloing an archfey - one with a fucking Vestige, no less. (The twins have shit luck and worse resistance when it comes to powerful beings making passes at them, I swear.)

Ep 9: Team Gnome and Goliath have to more or less resort to sneaking, gain some allies ... kind of, but since most of them are terrified, that’s not really a lot of help. Beyond that, the only reason they don’t get their asses kicked is because they know they’re going to get their asses kicked. ...And then Grog goes anyway because fuck that, apparently.

Ep 10: What some might call ‘convenient’ breaking of curse is honestly about the only self-reflection someone with an INT of 6 and no real WIS modifier is going to get without flash cards. Then Vox Machina throws everything they have at the enemy and it still isn’t enough. Grog had to more or less kill himself to win that one, so shut up with your “It never feels like they’ll lose”.

Ep 11: Fancy trap? Nope. Get literally inside the dragon and pin it in place from the inside? Nope. Umbrasyl kicks their entire collective ass, even with Herd of Storms and three fucking Vestiges on side.

Ep 12: I found how this one ended interesting because it’s almost a callback to how they beat Brimscythe - distract by clearly being unable to fight, then hit with whatever you’ve got left. The only reason Vox Machina defeated Umbrasyl is because most of the team got their asses kicked so hard that they bowed to what they saw as the inevitable and Scanlan used Umbrasyl’s very draconic gloating (seriously - black dragons get off on people’s pain and misery) to ... let’s think how this would work because we couldn’t see it: get close to Umbrasyl while the dragon’s distracted, climb Umbrasyl’s right front leg, undo the straps tying Mythcarver to Umbrasyl without dropping Mythcarver, take up Mythcarver so it ended up more gnome-sized, get off Umbrasyl without him noticing, climb a bit of rock debris without making enough noise to wake the dead for the sheer momentum he’d need to pull that off, and then get Umbrasyl’s attention enough so that his strike would hit the weakest point on Umbrasyl - the eye, because he had no idea if Mythcarver would cut dragon hide without a lot of weight behind it and Scanlan is a fucking gnome and thus does not have that kind of weight.

I have seen the campaign - in fact, campaign 1 is the only one I’ve seen in full. I knew they were going to come out okay up to this point. But I was still on the edge of my fucking seat on these. So anyone who’s all about “They get what they need when they need it and they never lose” ... really has not been watching this show. Vox Machina has got its collective ass kicked so many times - Brimscythe, the Briarwoods on multiple occasions, Raishan, Vorugal, half the Feywild, the Herd of Storms, Umbrasyl at least three times... They win out eventually, but honestly that makes as much sense as anything else. It’s that “It’s always in the last place you look” thing - once you’ve found it, you stop looking so it’s obviously in the ‘last’ place you look. They fight until they win or everybody’s dead. If everybody died, that is the end of the damn show. The fact that they keep repeatedly fucking up until something works is actually pretty true to life. Sometimes you need to think more; sometimes you need to think less and act on instinct. They just do the thing until something works. But that’s not instantly “getting exactly what you need when you need it”. That’s trial and error.

Honestly, the main reason everybody loves Vox Machina so much is because they remind us of ... well, ourselves. We, too, are just flailing around the place until something works. Fine, we don’t have physical dragons to deal with, but our problems feel just as big and terrifying. It’s comforting to know that if you keep at it, reaching for help wherever you can find it at a price you’re willing to pay and just never giving up, you’ll survive this.

Oh, and don’t even get me started on the ones who call Vox Machina “horrible role models” and complain about the “debauchery and crude behaviour”. It’s rated minimum 15 and maximum 18 for a fucking reason. Your kids should not be watching this, and if you’re offended by a few four-letter words and some carousing? You probably shouldn’t be watching it either. You were warned. There were warnings out the ass. Just because it’s animation doesn’t mean it’s for kids, doesn’t mean it’s going to be everyone shiny and happy and wholesome at the end talking about the power of friendship or how knowing is half the battle. We left that behind in the 80s, when cartoons were half morality play, half toy commercial. Respect the art of animation ... or at least please check the parental guidance on these things. This is like giving your kids Neon Genesis Evangelion to watch because that’s animation.

It would have been nice if the bad reviews were even remotely worthwhile? But this is ... this is just “people who didn’t actually watch the show but hate it when people have nice things”. It has to be. That or people with the situational awareness of a whelk.

#tlovm season 2 #tlovm spoilers #Thess gets aerated #Thess watches Critical Role

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i-ve-been-to-hell · 1 year

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I posted 1,849 times in 2022

21 posts created (1%)

1,828 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@freshcutgrasss

@nothingwithdignity

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@i-see-7-cats

@slayerscake

I tagged 1,845 of my posts in 2022

#critical role - 934 posts

#c3 - 337 posts

#cr: spoilers - 222 posts

#mighty nein - 202 posts

#exu calamity - 170 posts

#vox machina - 137 posts

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#cr: fan art - 118 posts

#tlovm - 116 posts

#cr: cast reactions - 112 posts

Longest Tag: 138 characters

#says the guy who in s1 was angry that his siblings went on the diplomatic mission when that was his job & who eventually became inquisitor

My Top Posts in 2022:

Love the realisation going around the table that Laudna was indeed one of the people they hung on the Sun Tree

29 notes - Posted March 18, 2022

Orym, *looking at the moons*: maybe running isn't the solution

You're talking about Imogen or yourself?

34 notes - Posted April 8, 2022

Well. This breaks the streak of the only one to be able to kill Marishas PC to be Marisha

39 notes - Posted September 16, 2022

If you had never seen c1, in any different setting, Laudna's backstory would be somewhat met with comments of going too hard on the Tragic Backstory.

Knowing the Sun Tree scene, we all - while still deeply unsettled - just go: ah yes, the Sun Tree scene, we've all seen it

42 notes - Posted March 18, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

And Fearne had to break the "we can't heal her because we revivified you" to the guy already dealing with survivor's guilt.

64 notes - Posted September 16, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#year in review

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aspiringsophrosyne · 1 year

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Episode 12: The Darkness Within

Ooh, no intro?

This episode not having an intro was an interesting choice; very attention-getting.

Get in your seats folks, the lights are going down. And don't mind that smell of smoke in the air. I'm sure it's nothing to worry about.

The Good

Right off the bat, I have to give kudos to whoever came up with those black veins crawling up Keyleth's face and body; they provide a visual cue for how bad she's doing and whether it's getting better or worse.

While they were still growing, we knew the potion in the last episode didn't work, and when they started fading away, even though Keyleth wasn't up yet, we knew that Vax and Scanlan's druid magic helped; this was another beautiful example of show-not-tell.

~~~

It's hard to talk about this now, but Vax helping Keyleth with her druid magic earlier and using it to heal her now with Scanlan's help is a brilliant little nod to....well, something that's coming up down the road. So it was lovely to see it....even if what it's setting up is probably going to break my heart.

~~~

Percy being so dismissive of Keyleth was a nice touch, as when he pointed the gun at Vax, it showed that his vengeance curse was not just going to hurt the names on his list; it had potential to do collateral damage to the people around him.

I'll also give points to Vex for calling him out on that and Cass for dragging Delilah out by her hair.

~~~

That smile on Percy's face as he pulls down the mask is incredible. I said it before, but there's something deeply cathartic about Orthax not being subtle anymore. This line: "And we are better for it." is dreadful, but now VM knows what's up and can do something about it. Even though they've taken what went down in the original campaign and made it even more dramatic, I still got that same satisfaction out of Percy merely stopping and starting to ask questions in the stream.

Because, yes, please acknowledge how fucked up this is!!

~~~

"Darling, take off the mask."

And oh, god bless Laura Bailey.

In the original, this line came a little earlier, leaving those of us who watched it wondering when it was coming in.

But watching this for the first time and seeing Vex walk up to him, my brain suddenly went: oh, is this where they're putting it; is this where she says it!?

Needless to say, that choice was flawless.

~~~

I will forever adore the contrast between Percy's terrible smile when the mask went on, the mask's impassive stare, and the absolutely broken crying Vex reveals when she removes it: God, it's devastating.

(There's also the fact that until this, we didn't get any indication that Percy was fighting this thing or that he was even capable of trying, and there's some fridge horror here; every time Percy was in the mask before now, could he have been fighting Orthax, and both VM and the audience had no way to know?)

The teleport spam adds a nail-biter of an attribute to this fight; while the rest of Vox Machina is fighting with a handicap in not wanting to hurt Percy, the demon not only isn't but has a lot of extra tricks up its sleeves.

The multiple new names popping up on the gun was another stunning use of show-don't-tell storytelling. Matt revealed in the campaign wrap up that if Percy had killed everyone on the list and hung on to the pepperbox, more names would've shown up on the barrels. And it just would've kept going like that forever.

This was a fantastic portrayal of that; and using only seconds of animation.

~~~

Perhaps I'm just slow, but it wasn't until now that I understood why Orthax was a smoke monster; Orthax's design was delightfully ephemeral and bird-like, and in incorporating smoke and fire, it brings to mind the pepperbox, hellfire and the deal Percy made with a devil.

The design pulls it all together, is what I'm saying.

There really is no end to the good I could espouse about the visuals of this episode: the hallucination sequence is a hundred different kinds of haunting and beautiful, Neal's score is, as always, fantastic, and while everyone does well, Taliesin's and Matt's performances stand out in particular here; the two are sublime. There's absolutely no hesitancy; no holding back. And I love it.

~~~

Small note: in the stream, before the squad set off for Whitestone, they spoke with poor Desmond: he told them about the Briarwoods, what Percy's home had become, and various bits of information. After this, Vox Machina took pity on the guy and had Pike eventually heal his hand; she rolled a natural twenty on it too! This is, so far, not how things go down in the animated series, so Percy shooting out his own hand provides a satisfying symmetry.

~~~

Vague spoilers for the end of the first campaign and likely the end of this series, but I appreciated how thick they poured it on with Delilah's demands to be ended because if you know where this story is going, you know that she has a reason to goad them with such insistence.

~~~

Scanlan throwing the gun away was more of a tense moment than a funny one in the stream, but I liked how they did it here. He's acting as the audience, and it's great to see a character thinking what we're thinking.

~~~

Keyleth's moment with each of the twins here is sweet. She leaves Vax in a good, if awkward, place, and Vex finally allows herself to acknowledge that she likes Keyleth, which makes things better for both of them.

And then....dragons.

The Bad (or at least not great)

I know that ending the season with the entry of the Chroma Conclave was something they probably had to do; that it's a fine hook for the next season, and Vox Machina really had to prove themselves these first two seasons, because if they didn't, they might not have gotten a third.

Still...I'm a little bummed VM, the audience, and Exandria didn't get more time to breathe; it would've been nice to see maybe an episode or two of fucking around before the dragons attacked.

But this is just a personal preference that I wanted to get off my chest. I don't consider it a mark against the series, considering everything it had to do.

~~~

Looking back on this episode, I think the one thing that bugs me in everything that was good about it is the lack of nuance; the series plays Percy's journey out as one of rage and revenge, and while it's true that Stream!Percy was full of rage (there's a reason titmouse kept some lines verbatim from the original) to make that the whole story was to mistakenly take the original at face value.

Percy was horrifically traumatized as a teenager; what he went through would've been bad enough even with a support system, but not only was he tortured and barely escaped with his life, he also lost anything that could have eased his recovery: Percy couldn't go back to the city that he grew up in, his entire family (as far as Percy knew) was gone, and if the Briarwoods were hunting him, he couldn't be sure anywhere was safe.

I would also posit that there was some survivor's guilt there. Percy said he wasn't the kid who was meant to rule; that was Julius, one of his deceased siblings. He was never going to be really important; why did he survive?

Trauma is, among other things, the terrifying loss of control. It's being put in a position where you can't protect yourself. Percy needed something to latch on to. Something that could make him feel in control: something that could allow him to earn the survival he felt he didn't deserve and thus his safety.

And Orthax obliged.

Percy was angry, as he had a right to be. But he also chose anger because anger was power, and with power, there was less fear and less feeling out of control. Anger is only the first layer; underneath was confusion, terror in general, survivor's guilt, and the terror that he would never escape being that helpless teenager who could do nothing to defend himself or his family from the Briarwoods, Ripley, and their co-conspirators.

And it would've been nice to see some of that.

Now look, the show didn't have the time to go into all that, but it didn't have to. It's a question of framing. Even if you don't have time to spend on every element I listed, you can still frame Percy's state of mind as being fueled by more than mere rage and vengeance. Just the people in his dream posing questions like: "Was it really rage that pushed you? Or the certainty that no matter how hard you tried, you'd never be anything more than that scared little boy who couldn't do anything? Who should've been the one to die instead of all the others: the more worthy de Rolos?" could've done wonders.

Nitpick

I would've liked to see the hallucination bring in Cassandra around the same time she starts talking to him, so she could break through it and reach him without Vex telling her to in the real world, surprising both Percy and the audience. Have that scene at the dinner table with his family, and have young!Cassandra make eye contact and tell him: "Percy, you've got to stop. Whatever you're seeing isn't real. I'm alive. I'm okay. I'm free. Because of you. And you have to stop." could've been pretty effective.

Whoo! So that's it. That's the post mortem and season one! For those who are reading, wasn't that fun?

..On to Season Two.

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aspiringsophrosyne · 1 year

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Episode 11: Whispers at The Ziggurat

The beginning of the end....in more ways than one.

We have soda, snacks, and popcorn with so much greasy butter you gotta wipe your hand on your jeans, and that shit never comes out.

Curtain's rising.

Why don't we find our seats?

There are a few neat little easter eggs in Delilah's chanting; they're even more noticeable with the subtitles on.

Looking back after Campaign Two, everything the Briarwoods do makes even more sense as, during the second campaign, we met quite a few of their contemporaries: wizards of privilege and power who were heavily afflicted with self-serving tunnel vision.

They're together.

They got what they wanted: they achieved their goal.

As they deserved to.

Why should they care if the rest of the world burns?

There are parallels between some of C1's and C2's villains is what I'm saying; it's neat.

The Good.

They had to dance around copywrites here, but they managed well.

Vagueries honestly serve the narrative in some ways, as it makes sense that little would be known about the Whispered One; secrets are his thing, after all.

Bad Influences

God, when the manipulative monsters of Critical Role stop playing nice by their standards, they really stop playing nice.

Orthax throwing away every pretense of subtlety is dread-inducing, but it's also strangely cathartic.

There's no more bluffing; the time has come to call.

There aren't words for how much I love that awful little moment between Cass, Sylas, and Delilah before Percy storms up.

Cass, knowing what Delilah wants, her immediate acquiescence, the older, healed bite marks on her neck...In just a few seconds, a complete, agonizing story is told.

Just Cassandra addressing Delilah as "Mother" is enough to trigger your gag reflex.

I adore how much just these couple of seconds does with so little.

This kind of subtle show-rather-than-tell storytelling rings every one of my bells.

The Fights

On multiple Q&As, the CRew has talked about how they had to find ways around doing too much work for what wouldn't have merited the price, effort, or time.

It's a sad fact that animating is difficult.

It's time-consuming.

It's expensive: especially when you've got seven characters to animate.

At once.

So they've split up the party here and there over the seasons to alleviate the burden, and frankly, even if they could do a prolonged fight with every character on screen, I'm not sure it'd be worth it. It would be easy to confuse the audience's focus. Or let the choreography become disorganized.

All that is to say, I appreciate how they broke up the Ziggurat fight.

Not only is this way more convenient for the crew, but it also gives us multiple unique dynamics between combatants.

Delilah silences Scanlan and then repeatedly tries to blast him.

The two sibling pairs square off. The twins use only their physical prowess against each other, while there's more at play than just the blows the de Rolos trade, as not one but both of them are fighting the influences that push them against each other.

Pike and Sylas do battle.

(This fight in particular was incredible, by the way. Richly dynamic; it's a joy to watch every time. Ashely couldn't be there for this fight on stream, so everyone went out of their way to show off how badass Pike is here.

Also, Cleric vs. Undead is a classic.)

Delilah and Pike have a beam fight and Scanlan plays his Uno reverse card.

Grog shakes off Sylas' charm, which is a nice nod to the campaign. (Raging Berserker Barbarians can't be charmed at that level.) Likewise, Sylas' influence fading from Vax and Cassandra as he gets more and more hurt (failing that concentration check) as Keyleth's and the Sun Tree's power builds alongside Neal Acree's beautiful score was also a nice touch.

All these fights and none of them overstay their welcome.

As I've said and will say again, titmouse makes a damn good action sequence.

(And baby de Rolos. Taliesin said in the commentary that was the nicest they ever were to each other and I believe it. Siblings.)

The woman who broke

Grey does a fantastic job here, as usual. You feel her pain and frustration. If she ever cared, she obviously does not anymore, but Delilah got hooked when she was in undeniably desperate straights. Now, this is all she has.

She broke the world for her husband: she can't turn back; she has to collect the Whispered One's debt. So the more setbacks she suffers, the more Grey lets Delilah's composure falter. Until her veneer of confidence and upper crustiness is completely burned away in that final confrontation with Vox Machina.

If nothing else, she put on one hell of a light show for Whitestone. It'll be fine, I'm sure.

The timing of Pike's fading out here is, as it was in the campaign, impeccable.

And that is the end of the Briarwoods.

For now, anyway.

The Bad. (Or at least, not so great.)

Magic:

Before Ripley makes her escape, there's more of her acting like she knows Percy when based on season one, she shouldn't.

This moment was why I pointed out the magic options available to Vox Machina in episode five; yes, Percy can't attack without alerting the Briarwoods, but Keyleth absolutely can.

All she needs is her standard: grasping vine. She doesn't even try to use that to grab Ripley?

Trying to snag Ripley and failing could've made Keyleth's big moment later even more powerful. She loses Ripley, Sylas punches her into a wall, and then she's out of a lot of the fight. Awkward, dirpy Keyleth messed up again.

So you take that and let it fuel her fire. This time she's determined not to fuck up. To put all that considerable power of hers into ending the threat to her friends.

And then she does.

It would've been cool to see.

Grog

And Grog's out of the fight again; I brought this up at the top of the season for this. It gets a little exasperating at this point. For a half-giant, the boy is strangely more prone to unconsciousness than his other, less hardy teammates.

A potentially better, funnier option would've been to have Grog awake the whole time but trying to get to the fight. Sylas and Pike were jumping around a lot. Maybe there could've been a background gag where he kept trying to run up the stairs before Delilah blasts him back down? Or Grog yelling in the background of Sylas and Pike's face-off that he'll be there soon; just a minute now, almost there. Plus, that would've been another fun nod to the campaign, where Grog's mobility was his Achilles' heal, and Matt used it multiple times to keep him out of the fight for as long as possible; so that there would be a fight.

Nitpick:

In hindsight, the "Be the light" thing is unnaturally on the nose, especially without a moment pre-episode three where Pike provides light for the team, or somebody calls her Vox Machina's light or both. Establishing that light is specifically Pike's thing before she loses that ability and passes the mantle on to Keyleth would've tied things together better and made that feel like a less contrived setup for this scene.

Writing like this will come up again in season 2, so I'm pointing it out now, even though it's not a huge deal here.

But that's about it.

This episode was fantastic, and it was hard to imagine they'd be able to top the action and emotion of episode eleven. But then they did.

That's coming up next.

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aspiringsophrosyne · 1 year

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Episode 10: The Depths of Deceit

The final episode before the two-part grand finale.

Before things pop off.

Let's get that projector going and get into it.

The Good

Right off the bat, excellent use of flashback. We knew bad things happened to Percy in the stream, but he was never incredibly specific. All he said when he was telling Vox Machina about it was:

Stream!Percy: "It was a long time ago, and I was not equipped for torture. I don't remember much."

So seeing Ripley go at a teenaged Percy with a meat hook was....ugh. And I mean that in the best possible way. I still look away when that scene comes up; and I honestly have to fight not to cover my ears, too.

Plus it was a quick and economical way of establishing how much of a bitch this woman is.

Kelly Hu is incredible as Ripley. There are future scenes that I am so excited to see because I know she's going to nail them. Her Ripley has this menacing yet hateable quality that makes you want to see something awful happen to her.

What Pike sees when she makes an insight check is striking and terrible. We knew something bad was going on there, but hitting us with some kind of wicked jack o' lantern bonfire of the soul shit out of nowhere was positively jarring.

The scale of this show never ceases to bring me joy. The sheer size of the tunnels under Whitestone. The refinement chamber. And the Ziggurat itself is horrifying. It's like finding a wing of the Paris catacombs in your basement.

It's interesting to note how the reveal of the new name on the Pepperbox is different in the show. In the stream, Cassandra's betrayal came first. Then her name appeared on the gun. Both versions denote shrewd manipulation on the part of Orthax, but in two different ways. The stream version plays on Percy's hurt and confusion in the wake of Cass's actions. Offering a course of action in the wake of betrayal. The show primes Percy's rage before he's even aware of what's happened. Points him in a direction before he starts running. Different. But both are, as I said, interesting. I might be unpacking that later.

Should also mention that Esmé Creed-Miles killed it dead. She's great throughout, but I wanted to wait to point it out until she had a moment where she got to really sink her teeth in. You can feel the genuine angry pain and despair in her voice when she berates Percy through the barrier.

The glint in her eyes is also a nice touch. It blurs the line between magic and plain old Stockholm syndrome.

I like the parallel drawn between Percy and Vex in both of them losing a sibling (if temporarily) to the Briarwoods.

The acid sequence was pretty cool. (Seeing that rat crawl by with its back half gone....*shudder*) Neal Acree, the composer for the show, described a pitch from Sam in which Scanlan's lute would play a heavy metal solo. So I was immediately like "Oh, that's where that's from."

This will not be the last time.

And of course. Of course Grog dived into the acid naked. Of course he did.

The Bad (or at least, not so great)

Time to talk about the plot and Anna Ripley.

I mentioned this previously, but: in the stream, the boys (sans Grog) found a note. Unfortunately it was too damaged for them to identify the author. However, in hindsight it was clearly Anna. And also in hindsight, it became clear that she'd been spying on Percy before he returned to Whitestone. And on his work. This lead to her trying to copy it, and eventually she managed a rudimentary pistol.

Not before losing her hand to her experiments, though.

In this episode, Ripley is revealed to have made a weapon that vaguely mirrors the Pepperbox. However, there is no evidence that she was ever spying on Percy prior to this episode.

If this Exandria is like the stream's, Percy's guns are the first in the world. At least since, possibly, pre-Calamity. So if Ripley wasn't spying on Percy, how in the hells did she make her weapon?

Percy makes it clear in episode 7 that he didn't start building guns until after he escaped. So she couldn't have rifled through his old room and found blueprints. It's possible a little smokey bird whispered in her ear too, but there's been no evidence of that so far.

On top of that, Ripley tries to get Percy to join up with her. Tries to flatter him, says she thought he was the intelligent one. Says they're both engineers and tries to peak his curiosity. She could maybe have made that leap of logic upon seeing the gun....like, seconds before, but it would've been a hell of a leap. (For all she knew, it was commissioned or bought.)

Anna talks like she knows Percy, but in this continuity there's no shown reason that she should. We'll have to see if there's something coming down the road that'll make that make sense....but right now it doesn't.

Nitpick: Percy cocks his gun way too much in the first couple minutes of the episode.

Nitpick: I'm sad we didn't get this line from the stream.

Stream!Percy: Anna, I am going to assume, against all evidence, that you are a smart woman.

Nitpick: Wouldn't it have been better to tie her arms at the elbows? She's missing a hand, she can slip right out.

Overall, pretty solid episode and setup for what's to come.

On to the two part finale!

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aspiringsophrosyne · 1 year

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Episode 9: The Tide of Bone

Zombie invasion! Bar the doors and fortify the mall, because all they wanna do is eat your brains.

The Good

Right off the bat, I loved the extra story we got for the Briarwoods. This is something Matt talked about at the wrap up, but we didn't get to see in the Campaign.

Plus, this justifies Delilah not letting her husband help with the fight in Whitestone, which could've turned the tides. She's too desperate to hold on to him. So much so, that it could've ultimately cost them their victory.

And not only does this flashback establish character and motivation for the couple, but also.....as bad as the Briarwoods are, the thing they serve has the potential to be so, so much worse. That scene with Delilah drawing her own blood is honestly still hard to watch.

Hey, I never noticed that poor family wriggling on the tree in that wide shot. Ew.

The fights were fun. The jokes weren't bad. Seeing Bad News used in to take down a giant was damn good. Seeing Kiki flex with some truly impressive magic was another hell yes moment, and good set up for the Sunbeam spell later.

Nice use of Percy's full name. I'd honestly started to wonder if they were going to leave that on the cutting room floor, but they picked a very good moment to use it.

I liked how they handled Vax and Keyleth here. While you get why Vax is doing it (he's liked her for a while and he doesn't want to die without her knowing it) you also get why Keyleth reacts the way she does (she does not need the distraction when they're fighting a hoard of zombies). It's surprisingly cute. And leaves the door open for further romantic development down the road.

Of course the lady of the episode is one Ms. Pike Trickfoot, swooping in at the last second to take out a shit ton of zombies, mirroring what went down in the campaign. It was such a cool moment in the original (especially since this was the first time Ashley could be back in a while) and they did it justice. Thank your Clerics, everybody! Her giving the common folk of the town some holy weapons was a nice touch.

I also just have to point out Vax repeatedly exclaiming "Ew!" or "Gross!" over the course of the episode because....mood.

The Bad

This...is another episode where the pacing does it no favors. There are multiple points in the episode where staying attached at the hip to our protagonists was unneeded and actually hurt the story.

For instance, while they were catching their breath in the safe house, we could've cut to outside. Where a bigger and bigger group of undead was accumulating out there. Then they attack. This breeds suspense and "The zombies are coming, get out of there!" type reactions. Which are always fun.

Meanwhile, the action doesn't grow; just stays constant throughout. That might sound like something you want. But you don't.

What you want is for the action to ebb, flow, and build. You want slower, safer moments that give a false sense of hope. You want the characters to think they're safe while the audience is shown that they absolutely are not. But you want every subsequent lull to be shorter, every new attack to be longer or more brutal. You want a feeling of escalation. And since we don't have that, Pike's entrance doesn't feel like the relief it should. It just feels like more action. It's great, but not as great as it could and should be.

As for Archie....not a fan of fridging. It just feels cheap. I know both Dominic Monaghan and Rory Mccan were not going to be sticking around. But they could've done something more interesting with Archie's exit.

Thinking about it now, I actually wouldn't have minded mixing Father Reynal with this version of Archie. Have him be a posthumous character, (which justifies Dominic not sticking around) but let VM find his notes. They could be read in Archie's voice and include flashbacks to resistance efforts he was up to before he died. Have the last note be specifically addressed to Percy, telling him not to give up, expressing complete faith that he was still alive and would eventually come back to oppose the Briarwoods. And that's what inspires Percy to use his full name and lead the rest of the town into battle.

Or, you know, something else. Not saying that's the best thing that could've happened, but it was another option.

Whelp, were winding up for the endgame now. See you in the next episode.

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vaxxy-the-raven · 1 year

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(The Legend Of Vox Machina - Season 1 Episode 2 - The Terror of Tal'Dorei pt.2)

Episode Rating - 4 out of 5

"The start of this episode was great. Those poor guards.

Very violent. Loved it.

Also Vox Machina showing up as Fince (Finch?) tries to suggest they're dead lmao.

Then Vex teasing Vax about his relationship with Gilmore, sending Pike to babysit Vax while hoping Gilmore's fondness of Vax will get them something to help them fight the dragon.

Scanlan trying to step up as leader, Vex scaring him off using Trinket. Hilarious.

And Vax and Gilmore? Ahhh. I love these dumbasses. The sexual tension between them is so heavy and Gilmore just bleeds flirtatious banter.

Poor Pike did not sign up for this, though the reading material does pique her interest.

Also Gilmore joking about not being a dragon. Okay sir. 👀

Then of course, the Grog and Scanlan shenanigans as they chase Fince around Emon is so entertaining. It was brilliant.

Ass ale anyone?

The sandwich bit is really endearing, while the door bit had me cackling when I first saw it.

Vax really likes to act like he's so smooth and sauve, fucking love this cocky dumbass.

My favourite olive theif ever.

The confrontation in the basement, the Krieg reveal? Very tense, very fun.

Not Vax low-key flirting with Krieg and wondering about his armour and sneaking technique.

(Relatable.)

Then poor Vex figuring it out?

The room investigation feels a bit dragging in my opinion, though it does give us a lovely Vax'leth moment with some jealous Vex angst.

The lair reveal was amazing, then the dragon transformation?

The fight? The detail of the gold melting after being struck by lightning? The d20 effect when Scanlan's Hand throws Vax??

I loved this fight so much and David Tennant sounded amazing! He was brilliant!

I am disappointed by the end though, knowing that in the original campaign Vax killed Brimscythe but seeing Grog get the kill in the show.

I hope this doesn't become a pattern, but I trust Critical Role.

Also, Vax's reaction to them getting the keep breaks my heart every time. I love him????

Then that Briarwood teaser? That scene has no right being so fucking sexy. My Gods."

Vax Suffering Rating - 3 out of 5

"Vax gets beat to fuck and its hot as fuck. Not as much emotional damage, though."

(masterpost)

#tlovm spoilers #tlovm review #tlovm s1 e2 #the legend of vox machina #lynias watches tlovm

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