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juushikaCritical Role Campaign One, Raven Queen Edition
I’ve been keeping a log of all my liveblogging (normally in a Missy-ward direction) re: Vax and the Raven Queen in the hopes that I will refine it into something resembling an essay, but I’ve broken 2k words of shouting into a void and it’s so personal and I’m not sure how make it cogent.
This is not that theoretical cogency.
I’ve mentioned before that I love faith in fantasy settings because I’ve attempted and failed at real world faith, and fantasy settings with evident divinity provide catharsis and wish-fulfillment. Vax’s journey beings at my starting place: seeing Pike’s faith, he tried—and failed—to emulate it: there was something there for someone else, but he couldn’t access it. And then the Raven Queen is forced upon him—her presence and his belief. He begs and bargains and hedges, but she’s unremitting. Taking communion provides clarity without losing the sense of the numinous—rather, it depends on the numinous, the uncertain and transcendent and larger-than-me: her answers only birth more questions, there’s no obvious path, but she inspires a commitment, a certainty. “You have me.”
Because of my mental illness and constant suicidal ideation, I have strong feelings re: death as a lawful neutral: it is universal, inevitable, and without connotation; we may fear it because of its finality but the event itself is not evil, is in fact productive, is certainly inescapable. The Raven Queen chose Vax for his death drive; mine is as strong, albeit different, and I wish it were also validated.
I like that it’s the men, Percy and Vax and Grog, who have taken questionable deals with shady figures; offered her own; Vex turned it down immediately. I especially admire the way Vax and the Raven Queen are gendered: rogue assassin paladin, death’s avatar, this position of increasing power over literal life and death—subjugated by a female divinity, his power coming at her blessing and for her service.
If I wrote Vax’s experience with the Raven Queen myself it still couldn’t be More Me, more tailored to my particular tropes and desires and wish-fulfillment, sparking a stronger feeling of loss and longing, or doing more to make wonder “wait do I want to be hers or be her???”. I love it in the wider narrative, too; I have a lot of feels re: Vax as death-avatar both benefiting and endangering Vox Machina & the opposition of the Raven Queen and Sarenrae & Keyleth the Doubting vs. Percy wishing he were the one given pseudo-answers vs. Pike and her fragile faith. But the heart of my investment is personal, to a degree I’m not used to: not just id-media, not just pinging kinks (but those things, too), but appealing to an internal narrative which I long for and which it hurts, in a good way, to witness.
I’m looking to catch up on Critical Role (pray for me & my feelings), but first I want to memorialize my Vax and the Raven Queen feels (specifically from ep. 44-58 and the 58b Q&A). I’ve written about them before, sort of? But I have no better way to summarize them all than by vaguely editing my chronological liveblogs to Missy [NB: Missy Sparkles = Teja], unfortunate victim of my yelling, and presenting them for public consumption.
So that’s what this is! It’s really long! Editing it forced me to relive all my feels!
this is my second favorite relationship dynamic
“me and my possessing demon/dark artifact/god spouse”
people in relationships with these vast untouchable things that cause fundamental change & a loss of sense of self; sacrificing agency and independence in order to gain strength or achieve goals
it’s one of my favorite tropes and Critical Role!! has done it! three times!!!
SO FAR*
i could count on one hand the number of INDEPENDENT stories I’ve encountered up ‘til now that have done it
(and i want everyone that cares about Critical Role to read the Hexslinger books and Maledicte because it’s such a saaaaaame in this regard)
but damn these corrupted tainted powerful men
no power over themselves or their wills, but granted power over others through questionable bonds with the divine or evil spirits or sexy shadow demons
i saw this fic that paralleled Vax/Raven Queen with Percy/Orthax the Vengeful Shadow Demon and i knew!!! i would love this arc and I was right
Missy Sparkles: you have just oddly specific fetishes, I find this amuse
yes that is basically my entire life
i love fantasy religions because i find obvious divine presence really cathartic/engaging and i love faustian bargains that aren’t obvious moral messages like Evil Is Bad
the two colliding is, just
OH BLACK BUTLER TOO (as another example of this trope)
it’s happened elsewhere but so much in such succession i just
everything i care about is a unique combination of power dynamics/intimacy/specific expressions of intimacy
and this is a distinct version of that
* Orthax, Vesh, the skull from “Desperate Measures” is a partial but sadly unfulfilled example, the Raven Queen, then Craven Edge, I may be missing some? this world & cast love this trope, bless them
Liam does a fantastic job of never breaking character/perpetual sad or angry face AND being really difficult to live with
“i start an intimate conversation with her, but as soon as it gets confrontational i literally run out of the room”
“i knock on my sister’s door, change my mind, and stealth outie because talking about my fears is hard”
“i am generally a dick to everyone”
“i punch Percy in the face but to be fair he got my sister killed so he deserved it”
it’s so easy to want to make everyone happy in roleplay as in life; this is much more dynamic
Missy Sparkles: wait what? one twin dead?
she got better
Percy triggered a trap
she didn’t even go KO she outright died
they immediately attempted a resurrection and luckily had a priest in party but
it was a death goddess that killed her
her avatar showed up and boy twin offered his life
she accepted
but I know he’s still alive in like ep 60 so he’s not trading his life
more like “have fun being death queen’s bitch, forever”
Missy Sparkles: so basically girl twin better but boy twin now champion of death, like.. Deadpool?
Raven Queen is so intelligently written as a goddess btw, i have an acquaintance who does a lot of work with the Morrigan and the inspiration is STRONG and also accurate and respectful
and, i just, Vax “i throw myself into danger because yolo” 'ildan is now literally death’s bitch
how’s that death drive feeling now eh Vax?
all i really care about in this universe is men without power for any reason
and “my patron, the goddess of death, who literally own my soul, oopsie” TOTALLY COUNTS
(male victims aside the VERY BEST THING about the sequence of events is that female twin was totally on the other side of the room initially but went over because the trapped location was covered in shinies; her greed LITERALLY killed her)
Vex gave Vax the armor that was trapped & is for the Raven Queen’s champion so okay
he doesn’t want her to have it because it could be bad news bears; it’s a legendary item, super powerful, they went to seek it to help them beat dragons
meanwhile HE doesn’t want it because it’s the Raven Queen’s
but only he can wear it obvs b/c of his connection to the Raven Queen
i can pick apart these minute interactions for DAYS—could you imagine taking for the greater good the armor you’re now destined to wear as this visual representation to EVERYONE that you made a deal with a death god nbd
and it fits you, it’s made for you, you’re her champion; and even that sense of rightness is a wrongness because of the nature of the arrangement aaaahaljdflskjdd fuck
oh my god Vax’s Raven Queen character arc is made of magic and perfection
if magic were real and i could also, and if gods were real and I could
i want a Raven Queen as my patron
when you’re reckless, and then your sister dies, and then you make a pact with death
you become simultaneously more and less everything
if you engage with anyone it will hurt because they or you will die because you MADE A PACT WITH DEATH
if you’re reckless you remember how close you are to death, but being this close to death makes you reckless
fucking death drives are my heart and soul
and what’s so beautiful about death deities is that death is both fetishized and neutralized; it’s not evil, just profound. which is what death is!!! compelling, meaningful, but ultimately neutral, inevitable
remove negative connotations for me, Raven Queen, AND engage with violence and death as narrative and interaction
i want so badly, but at least i have this vicarious experience
[when Vax fights NPCs for the first time after] hey Vax does it feel good to bring death to people now that death is your patron, does it feel even better than it used to, does that balance out the anxiety of worrying if you’ve brought loved ones closer to death too
“so while everyone is having THAT discussion and i’m sitting in my room alone, i start talking to the air to have a conversation with my death patron…”
Vax is like 50% sexy brooding and 50% pathetic brooding and I am 100% here for it
he legit stealthed away from an awkward convo to sit in his room alone and talk to his god about death
he is my heart
godddddd his faith, his “i believe that other people believe, but my own attempts to believe never worked out, and then belief was thrust upon me” this is literally me & my wish-fulfillment, i want SO BADly to have this exact same experience
she! she left him a favor!! he’s wearing it! oh god these TROPEs my feeLINGS i am not okay
[Juu leaves a sidenote] i keep a log of all the liveblogging i’ve done re: Vax
so maybe i’ll turn it into a cogent post someday
but it means i have collated evidence of HOW MUCH i have written and i apologize
its hilarious b/c the other arc i got super wrapped up in [Whitestone] was a really tight thing and this is loose and unfixed and slow-burny and even redundant and very conflicted and not tight solid storytelling at all and i’m like, who care about all that, i see a death goddess
oh my god there’s a scene where Vax talks explicitly with Pike (their cleric and god-worshiper) about how he was actively attempting to follow her footsteps and become faithful when
the death goddess co-opted his service and forced belief, a different belief, upon him
this is LITERALLY the scene i always wanted i just
so i was totally reading things right even tho that arc (Vax’s worship of Sarenrae) didn’t get to pan out as it was “““meant””” too—his admiration of Pike leading him to try to follow her faith, but with middling success, he couldn’t find faith from within and was equally searching for her (Pike) as for her patron, so his attempts were just surface-level
entirely interrupted and co-opted by the Raven Queen, a patron who didn’t require, but who did force, faith
of a diametrically opposed purpose since Pike serves a healing/orderly god and Vax serves a death god, but of the same patron/follower relationship
so he still doesn’t know how faith works, but now faith is thrust upon him, BUT it’s not the path he wanted; much conflict, a betrayal of desires
lksjadfsldjafs the parallels to my OWN wish-fulfillment are intense man
all i want! in the world!! is Vax’s initiation into the Raven Queen’s service
i have such an envy
she, she literally chose him BECAUSE of his recklessness, of that self-conflicting death wish, of driving towards danger and being scared of it
she called him her beautiful champion
death drives are my jam and this is the jammiest jam it so jammy
(ps I’ve hella death drive too, Raven Queen; hit me up)
he drowned in a pool of cold blood and had a vision of his untrustworthy beautiful goddess who plucked him from the web of fate because he is fate-touched, he is special, and she’s just the god that happened to snatch him up first, then he came up freezing and confused and yet for the first time full of faith
bless my small blood-sodden trash child
I normally admire Keyleth’s confrontations but DAMN girl you do not get to dictate other people’s experiences
but I am so here for shellshocked but weirdly enthusiastic Vax who wanted something like this, but not this, but is now on board with this; who trusts someone he shouldn’t really trust, but feels unanswered; who suddenly has this forced but complete but imperfect faith
PERCY ALSO WENT IN BLOOD POOL OF RAVEN QUEEN VISIONS EWLRJKSELSDJFS
“did it choose me because i was broken, or did it break me”
PERCY
your story arc was “““““resolved”””” but we’ve just been reminded that it’s not and that Ripley is still alive, and you are forever marked and that’s why you could showdown with Craven Edge and why you can still hex and bewitch people
“you were always broken, Percival”
rip me i am dead now
Percy so fascinating b/c he feels like this great evil revolves around him, AND IT DOES, but that doesn’t mean he’s suddenly the source of all answers; you’re broken, Percy, so evil preyed upon you, it used you, and it was vast and terrible and will never leave you, but here’s the thing: everyone is broken, you aren’t actually a special snowflake, you were just unlucky
i love the DM smackdowns, the relative inaccessibility of the divine to these characters who keep expecting to have Glorious Narrative Moments and he’s like “yo that summoning spell is super unlikely to work” and “she doesn’t give you easy answers” and other versions of divine untenability; the divine is present in the narrative but not cheapened; the inaccessibility makes it valuable
(but i can’t wait for the one time in battle when Pike for example DOES successfully ask her patron’s aid and a goddess of fixing shit and healing does a divine smackdown)
Percy just made a brooch cast from a raven’s skull and filled with a sachet of resins and opium
he just MADE a BPAL locket
(that perfume line i love which is all esoteric and gothic)
bless you small man you are such a goth geek and also hard same and also the scents
myrrh, opium, dragon’s blood resin, sandalwood
are ACTUALLY scents i wear a lot
and how very suiting it would be a resinous, deep, sweetish scent with a very red, bright top note and he’s making it for a champion of the raven queen all about dat blood and death and funeral resins
stop the press after Vax did his blood communion with the Raven Queen HIS ARMOR GAINED THE POWER OF FLIGHT via black raven wings we have reached maximum emo and it’s beautiful
and then Percy gave him the gothiest perfume locket ever to be cast from a raven skull THESE NERDS AND MY FEELS
Pike tells Keyleth that she (Pike) actually feels like she HASN’T fully dedicated herself to her patron; the Raven Queen is more “involved” than Pike’s deity and they’re not sure why but Pike wonders if it’s b/c she’s still struggling with her faith, which is HUGE character building for both Pike and Vax (and their respective gods)
Vax to Raven Queen: “you have me”
gently melts
!!!!! SLKDJF OH MY GOD
IN A Q&A
Liam talks a lot about how Liam himself was 200%
“i’ve always believed that Vax would die for his sister, so the Raven Queen exchange was meant to be just that, take my life for hers”
and then Mercer made it a deal with Raven Queen instead and it went against EVERYTHING he was doing with the character
his romance, his other religious interests
and it took him as player as long as it took Vax as character to reinterpret and dedicate himself to this new thing
this is the best???? this gives such useful context for that character development???
which is so drawn out, a gradual seduction; i think some fan reaction was “why take so long” and also Vax is so death-oriented?? why is this particular death thing something he’s not taking to??
because PLAYER was moving CHARACTER aWAY from that and they both had to come to terms with the inability to move away
i have like seven thousand feelings
(Question was “is there anything you’ve done in the campaign you regret” and his answer was literally let me explain a major character arc and how it threw me off balance for forever and made me complete reinterpret and redirect my character)
if I could religion (rather than having tried and failed), enabled probably by the fact that I suddenly lived in a fictional world, I would:
have faith trust upon me when selected by my patron deity, à la my sincere jealousy of Vax,
build altars to the void and voidwhales, and the amoral appreciation of curiosity and ability, because no religion, fictional or otherwise, has ever spoken to me like the Outsider in Dishonored,
or simply godtrash and the sunchips place.
There’s a sincere religious quality to Car Boys that—I mean, the series is ridiculous & innately insincere, but—I’ve always used the permeable manufactured reality of video games to explore my real world existential horror, my inability to comprehend size and scale and reality, a horror fundamental to my (mis)comprehension of the world and my most sincere, primal motivation; and I’ve encountered other games that, intentionally or otherwise, explore that in themselves to great effect, that break their own realities and therefore the player’s perception of reality—but the evolution of a theology, the unmaking of the world, is so central to Car Boys and has such a sincere shock/beauty/awe that it sparks an incredulous, nervous laughter.
That too is a manufactured reality! even a manufactured narrative! but it speaks to me, it speaks to my terror I have of space and time; it encourages me to practice not-comprehending it via video games as glitch art; it intentionally engages, and creates for me a sort of catharsis. Exploring a feeling like that never really makes it more comprehensible, or even less terrifying. But it feels—essential, I suppose? as in: an essential part of my understanding.
or, as I told Missy:
i have a lot of feelings
i have so many
i feel like it’s hard to have feelings
“it’s intentional universe breaking for sake of lols”
“also, i can see god”
TAGGED: #and 'so what a civilian of gridmap might see here' just tipped me over into the beyond because that it that's my breaking point #'imagine you are really here' 'see the polygons unfold above you' just ... it too much for me that self-insert into an unmade universe #Juu watches #Juu watches other people play #Car Boys #Critical Role #Dishonored #Juu metadata #conversations with Missy #Juu needs a void tag but at a certain point maybe Juu has enough tags #existential horror tw // #religion tw //
Nick Robinson liked this post! remember when that was considered a good thing??
I’ve been keeping a log of all my liveblogging (normally in a Missy-ward direction) re: Vax and the Raven Queen in the hopes that I will refine it into something resembling an essay, but I’ve broken 2k words of shouting into a void and it’s so personal and I’m not sure how make it cogent.
This is not that theoretical cogency.
I’ve mentioned before that I love faith in fantasy settings because I’ve attempted and failed at real world faith, and fantasy settings with evident divinity provide catharsis and wish-fulfillment. Vax’s journey beings at my starting place: seeing Pike’s faith, he tried—and failed—to emulate it: there was something there for someone else, but he couldn’t access it. And then the Raven Queen is forced upon him—her presence and his belief. He begs and bargains and hedges, but she’s unremitting. Taking communion provides clarity without losing the sense of the numinous—rather, it depends on the numinous, the uncertain and transcendent and larger-than-me: her answers only birth more questions, there’s no obvious path, but she inspires a commitment, a certainty. “You have me.”
Because of my mental illness and constant suicidal ideation, I have strong feelings re: death as a lawful neutral: it is universal, inevitable, and without connotation; we may fear it because of its finality but the event itself is not evil, is in fact productive, is certainly inescapable. The Raven Queen chose Vax for his death drive; mine is as strong, albeit different, and I wish it were also validated.
I like that it’s the men, Percy and Vax and Grog, who have taken questionable deals with shady figures; offered her own; Vex turned it down immediately. I especially admire the way Vax and the Raven Queen are gendered: rogue assassin paladin, death’s avatar, this position of increasing power over literal life and death—subjugated by a female divinity, his power coming at her blessing and for her service.
If I wrote Vax’s experience with the Raven Queen myself it still couldn’t be More Me, more tailored to my particular tropes and desires and wish-fulfillment, sparking a stronger feeling of loss and longing, or doing more to make wonder “wait do I want to be hers or be her???”. I love it in the wider narrative, too; I have a lot of feels re: Vax as death-avatar both benefiting and endangering Vox Machina & the opposition of the Raven Queen and Sarenrae & Keyleth the Doubting vs. Percy wishing he were the one given pseudo-answers vs. Pike and her fragile faith. But the heart of my investment is personal, to a degree I’m not used to: not just id-media, not just pinging kinks (but those things, too), but appealing to an internal narrative which I long for and which it hurts, in a good way, to witness.
I’m looking to catch up on Critical Role (pray for me & my feelings), but first I want to memorialize my Vax and the Raven Queen feels (specifically from ep. 44-58 and the 58b Q&A). I’ve written about them before, sort of? But I have no better way to summarize them all than by vaguely editing my chronological liveblogs to Missy [NB: Missy Sparkles = Teja], unfortunate victim of my yelling, and presenting them for public consumption.
So that’s what this is! It’s really long! Editing it forced me to relive all my feels!
this is my second favorite relationship dynamic
“me and my possessing demon/dark artifact/god spouse”
people in relationships with these vast untouchable things that cause fundamental change & a loss of sense of self; sacrificing agency and independence in order to gain strength or achieve goals
it’s one of my favorite tropes and Critical Role!! has done it! three times!!!
SO FAR*
i could count on one hand the number of INDEPENDENT stories I’ve encountered up ‘til now that have done it
(and i want everyone that cares about Critical Role to read the Hexslinger books and Maledicte because it’s such a saaaaaame in this regard)
but damn these corrupted tainted powerful men
no power over themselves or their wills, but granted power over others through questionable bonds with the divine or evil spirits or sexy shadow demons
i saw this fic that paralleled Vax/Raven Queen with Percy/Orthax the Vengeful Shadow Demon and i knew!!! i would love this arc and I was right
Missy Sparkles: you have just oddly specific fetishes, I find this amuse
yes that is basically my entire life
i love fantasy religions because i find obvious divine presence really cathartic/engaging and i love faustian bargains that aren’t obvious moral messages like Evil Is Bad
the two colliding is, just
OH BLACK BUTLER TOO (as another example of this trope)
it’s happened elsewhere but so much in such succession i just
everything i care about is a unique combination of power dynamics/intimacy/specific expressions of intimacy
and this is a distinct version of that
* Orthax, Vesh, the skull from “Desperate Measures” is a partial but sadly unfulfilled example, the Raven Queen, then Craven Edge, I may be missing some? this world & cast love this trope, bless them
Liam does a fantastic job of never breaking character/perpetual sad or angry face AND being really difficult to live with
“i start an intimate conversation with her, but as soon as it gets confrontational i literally run out of the room”
“i knock on my sister’s door, change my mind, and stealth outie because talking about my fears is hard”
“i am generally a dick to everyone”
“i punch Percy in the face but to be fair he got my sister killed so he deserved it”
it’s so easy to want to make everyone happy in roleplay as in life; this is much more dynamic
Missy Sparkles: wait what? one twin dead?
she got better
Percy triggered a trap
she didn’t even go KO she outright died
they immediately attempted a resurrection and luckily had a priest in party but
it was a death goddess that killed her
her avatar showed up and boy twin offered his life
she accepted
but I know he’s still alive in like ep 60 so he’s not trading his life
more like “have fun being death queen’s bitch, forever”
Missy Sparkles: so basically girl twin better but boy twin now champion of death, like.. Deadpool?
Raven Queen is so intelligently written as a goddess btw, i have an acquaintance who does a lot of work with the Morrigan and the inspiration is STRONG and also accurate and respectful
and, i just, Vax “i throw myself into danger because yolo” 'ildan is now literally death’s bitch
how’s that death drive feeling now eh Vax?
all i really care about in this universe is men without power for any reason
and “my patron, the goddess of death, who literally own my soul, oopsie” TOTALLY COUNTS
(male victims aside the VERY BEST THING about the sequence of events is that female twin was totally on the other side of the room initially but went over because the trapped location was covered in shinies; her greed LITERALLY killed her)
Vex gave Vax the armor that was trapped & is for the Raven Queen’s champion so okay
he doesn’t want her to have it because it could be bad news bears; it’s a legendary item, super powerful, they went to seek it to help them beat dragons
meanwhile HE doesn’t want it because it’s the Raven Queen’s
but only he can wear it obvs b/c of his connection to the Raven Queen
i can pick apart these minute interactions for DAYS—could you imagine taking for the greater good the armor you’re now destined to wear as this visual representation to EVERYONE that you made a deal with a death god nbd
and it fits you, it’s made for you, you’re her champion; and even that sense of rightness is a wrongness because of the nature of the arrangement aaaahaljdflskjdd fuck
oh my god Vax’s Raven Queen character arc is made of magic and perfection
if magic were real and i could also, and if gods were real and I could
i want a Raven Queen as my patron
when you’re reckless, and then your sister dies, and then you make a pact with death
you become simultaneously more and less everything
if you engage with anyone it will hurt because they or you will die because you MADE A PACT WITH DEATH
if you’re reckless you remember how close you are to death, but being this close to death makes you reckless
fucking death drives are my heart and soul
and what’s so beautiful about death deities is that death is both fetishized and neutralized; it’s not evil, just profound. which is what death is!!! compelling, meaningful, but ultimately neutral, inevitable
remove negative connotations for me, Raven Queen, AND engage with violence and death as narrative and interaction
i want so badly, but at least i have this vicarious experience
[when Vax fights NPCs for the first time after] hey Vax does it feel good to bring death to people now that death is your patron, does it feel even better than it used to, does that balance out the anxiety of worrying if you’ve brought loved ones closer to death too
“so while everyone is having THAT discussion and i’m sitting in my room alone, i start talking to the air to have a conversation with my death patron…”
Vax is like 50% sexy brooding and 50% pathetic brooding and I am 100% here for it
he legit stealthed away from an awkward convo to sit in his room alone and talk to his god about death
he is my heart
godddddd his faith, his “i believe that other people believe, but my own attempts to believe never worked out, and then belief was thrust upon me” this is literally me & my wish-fulfillment, i want SO BADly to have this exact same experience
she! she left him a favor!! he’s wearing it! oh god these TROPEs my feeLINGS i am not okay
[Juu leaves a sidenote] i keep a log of all the liveblogging i’ve done re: Vax
so maybe i’ll turn it into a cogent post someday
but it means i have collated evidence of HOW MUCH i have written and i apologize
its hilarious b/c the other arc i got super wrapped up in [Whitestone] was a really tight thing and this is loose and unfixed and slow-burny and even redundant and very conflicted and not tight solid storytelling at all and i’m like, who care about all that, i see a death goddess
oh my god there’s a scene where Vax talks explicitly with Pike (their cleric and god-worshiper) about how he was actively attempting to follow her footsteps and become faithful when
the death goddess co-opted his service and forced belief, a different belief, upon him
this is LITERALLY the scene i always wanted i just
so i was totally reading things right even tho that arc (Vax’s worship of Sarenrae) didn’t get to pan out as it was “““meant””” too—his admiration of Pike leading him to try to follow her faith, but with middling success, he couldn’t find faith from within and was equally searching for her (Pike) as for her patron, so his attempts were just surface-level
entirely interrupted and co-opted by the Raven Queen, a patron who didn’t require, but who did force, faith
of a diametrically opposed purpose since Pike serves a healing/orderly god and Vax serves a death god, but of the same patron/follower relationship
so he still doesn’t know how faith works, but now faith is thrust upon him, BUT it’s not the path he wanted; much conflict, a betrayal of desires
lksjadfsldjafs the parallels to my OWN wish-fulfillment are intense man
all i want! in the world!! is Vax’s initiation into the Raven Queen’s service
i have such an envy
she, she literally chose him BECAUSE of his recklessness, of that self-conflicting death wish, of driving towards danger and being scared of it
she called him her beautiful champion
death drives are my jam and this is the jammiest jam it so jammy
(ps I’ve hella death drive too, Raven Queen; hit me up)
he drowned in a pool of cold blood and had a vision of his untrustworthy beautiful goddess who plucked him from the web of fate because he is fate-touched, he is special, and she’s just the god that happened to snatch him up first, then he came up freezing and confused and yet for the first time full of faith
bless my small blood-sodden trash child
I normally admire Keyleth’s confrontations but DAMN girl you do not get to dictate other people’s experiences
but I am so here for shellshocked but weirdly enthusiastic Vax who wanted something like this, but not this, but is now on board with this; who trusts someone he shouldn’t really trust, but feels unanswered; who suddenly has this forced but complete but imperfect faith
PERCY ALSO WENT IN BLOOD POOL OF RAVEN QUEEN VISIONS EWLRJKSELSDJFS
“did it choose me because i was broken, or did it break me”
PERCY
your story arc was “““““resolved”””” but we’ve just been reminded that it’s not and that Ripley is still alive, and you are forever marked and that’s why you could showdown with Craven Edge and why you can still hex and bewitch people
“you were always broken, Percival”
rip me i am dead now
Percy so fascinating b/c he feels like this great evil revolves around him, AND IT DOES, but that doesn’t mean he’s suddenly the source of all answers; you’re broken, Percy, so evil preyed upon you, it used you, and it was vast and terrible and will never leave you, but here’s the thing: everyone is broken, you aren’t actually a special snowflake, you were just unlucky
i love the DM smackdowns, the relative inaccessibility of the divine to these characters who keep expecting to have Glorious Narrative Moments and he’s like “yo that summoning spell is super unlikely to work” and “she doesn’t give you easy answers” and other versions of divine untenability; the divine is present in the narrative but not cheapened; the inaccessibility makes it valuable
(but i can’t wait for the one time in battle when Pike for example DOES successfully ask her patron’s aid and a goddess of fixing shit and healing does a divine smackdown)
Percy just made a brooch cast from a raven’s skull and filled with a sachet of resins and opium
he just MADE a BPAL locket
(that perfume line i love which is all esoteric and gothic)
bless you small man you are such a goth geek and also hard same and also the scents
myrrh, opium, dragon’s blood resin, sandalwood
are ACTUALLY scents i wear a lot
and how very suiting it would be a resinous, deep, sweetish scent with a very red, bright top note and he’s making it for a champion of the raven queen all about dat blood and death and funeral resins
stop the press after Vax did his blood communion with the Raven Queen HIS ARMOR GAINED THE POWER OF FLIGHT via black raven wings we have reached maximum emo and it’s beautiful
and then Percy gave him the gothiest perfume locket ever to be cast from a raven skull THESE NERDS AND MY FEELS
Pike tells Keyleth that she (Pike) actually feels like she HASN’T fully dedicated herself to her patron; the Raven Queen is more “involved” than Pike’s deity and they’re not sure why but Pike wonders if it’s b/c she’s still struggling with her faith, which is HUGE character building for both Pike and Vax (and their respective gods)
Vax to Raven Queen: “you have me”
gently melts
!!!!! SLKDJF OH MY GOD
IN A Q&A
Liam talks a lot about how Liam himself was 200%
“i’ve always believed that Vax would die for his sister, so the Raven Queen exchange was meant to be just that, take my life for hers”
and then Mercer made it a deal with Raven Queen instead and it went against EVERYTHING he was doing with the character
his romance, his other religious interests
and it took him as player as long as it took Vax as character to reinterpret and dedicate himself to this new thing
this is the best???? this gives such useful context for that character development???
which is so drawn out, a gradual seduction; i think some fan reaction was “why take so long” and also Vax is so death-oriented?? why is this particular death thing something he’s not taking to??
because PLAYER was moving CHARACTER aWAY from that and they both had to come to terms with the inability to move away
i have like seven thousand feelings
(Question was “is there anything you’ve done in the campaign you regret” and his answer was literally let me explain a major character arc and how it threw me off balance for forever and made me complete reinterpret and redirect my character)
if I could religion (rather than having tried and failed), enabled probably by the fact that I suddenly lived in a fictional world, I would:
have faith trust upon me when selected by my patron deity, à la my sincere jealousy of Vax,
build altars to the void and voidwhales, and the amoral appreciation of curiosity and ability, because no religion, fictional or otherwise, has ever spoken to me like the Outsider in Dishonored,
or simply godtrash and the sunchips place.
There’s a sincere religious quality to Car Boys that—I mean, the series is ridiculous & innately insincere, but—I’ve always used the permeable manufactured reality of video games to explore my real world existential horror, my inability to comprehend size and scale and reality, a horror fundamental to my (mis)comprehension of the world and my most sincere, primal motivation; and I’ve encountered other games that, intentionally or otherwise, explore that in themselves to great effect, that break their own realities and therefore the player’s perception of reality—but the evolution of a theology, the unmaking of the world, is so central to Car Boys and has such a sincere shock/beauty/awe that it sparks an incredulous, nervous laughter.
That too is a manufactured reality! even a manufactured narrative! but it speaks to me, it speaks to my terror I have of space and time; it encourages me to practice not-comprehending it via video games as glitch art; it intentionally engages, and creates for me a sort of catharsis. Exploring a feeling like that never really makes it more comprehensible, or even less terrifying. But it feels—essential, I suppose? as in: an essential part of my understanding.
or, as I told Missy:
i have a lot of feelings
i have so many
i feel like it’s hard to have feelings
“it’s intentional universe breaking for sake of lols”
“also, i can see god”
TAGGED: #and 'so what a civilian of gridmap might see here' just tipped me over into the beyond because that it that's my breaking point #'imagine you are really here' 'see the polygons unfold above you' just ... it too much for me that self-insert into an unmade universe #Juu watches #Juu watches other people play #Car Boys #Critical Role #Dishonored #Juu metadata #conversations with Missy #Juu needs a void tag but at a certain point maybe Juu has enough tags #existential horror tw // #religion tw //
Nick Robinson liked this post! remember when that was considered a good thing??
