4chan raiders decided to fracture the tumblr queer community by making up an imaginary gender for child molesters, “clovergender.”
Because people on this website are godforsaken, they bought into that, and believed quite genuinely that there was a secret, massive conspiracy of child molesters on this website seeking to rape various underage users.
In the context of this conspiracy nonsense, antisexual radical feminists stepped in to advance their own goals, by suggesting that anyone who engages in certain forms of kink or reads certain types of fiction is one of these child-rapists-in-waiting.
Simultaneous to this development, the popularization of “stimboards” as an evolution of moodboards/aesthetic boards and “so satisfying” gifs occurred.
Stimboards were highly popular with two major groups (often overlapping): fandoms, and tumblr’s LGBTQIAPN+ population.
Because those were the two groups that were also targetted by the antisexual radical feminists and by 4chan’s nonsense, stimboard makers were convinced that their art would be used to groom and rape children unless they “made sure” that it “couldn’t be” by putting up those banners.
However, because radical feminists had convinced these artists that the “real” child molesters were adults engaging in consensual relationships and/or “shippers,” the “preventative banners” mostly targetted those groups.
The irony that these people genuinely believe that the only thing between a rapist and their victim is a 15x500px banner is hilarious and deeply, deeply depressing.
oh, is THAT what that was? i was so confused by the whole “x don’t interact” thing
To be totally, 100% fair there are some people who do the “kinksters don’t interact” thing because DD/LG folks might reblog moodboards and tag them with things like “daddy’s little slut” or “how cummies feel” or whatever and I do get people who want to keep tags like “pink” “princess” and “kitten” free of kink gifs.
So, while I understand and abide by people not wanting kink put on their posts, that can be resolved by saying things like, “ask to tag,” or “this post is sfw.”
It’s also worth remembering that the majority of kink blogs aren’t going to be tits deep in stimboards, they’ll be posting their own content and sharing between themselves.
It’s a very rare problem, and the reaction has not been to block perpetrators or request boundaries be respected.
Instead it has been feeding into this notion that all fandoms and queer spaces are positively crawling with child molesters, which is shitty for a number of reasons, as well as claiming that autistic people (the nominal target audience of stim boards) can never be involved in kink or shipping, or rather, that being involved in either is proof that you’re lying about being autistic.
In effect, autistic people have been declared acceptable casualties in a fight against an enemy that does not exist.
Which wouldn’t be okay even if the phantom horror were real, but since it’s entirely fictional, it’s basically just an enormous fuck you to any autistic who isn’t “innocent” or “pure” enough.
As for keeping tags clear: safe mode.
Blogs that include explicit sexuality are Nate nsfw. If you don’t want to see NSFW content, out on safe mode. If you’re underage, you can’t even turn safe mode off without lying.
On a semi-unrelated note, as much as 4chan is often found at the head of such disasters, I can’t find myself feeling resentment toward it: instead the mass of people who blindly believe anything they read and jump from one troll to the other seemingly unaware of being used as volleyball…oh, those I can get behind being pissed off at.
Like. Everyone knows 4chan is terrible, and suddenly there’s this ridiculous “gender for child molesters” bullshit (and if that convinced you for even a hot second wow you really fucking hate trans people) and it LITERALLY USED 4CHAN GRAPHICS, and y’all still drank the kool-aid.
I’d say I’m disappointed, but this is exactly what I’ve come to expect from this hellsite.
Hot take: kink is often literally just emotional and sexual stimming, special interest hyperfocus, and/or the result of sensory processing differences in how people experience sexuality.
Autistic self-hate/internalized ableism therefore likely plays a huge role in the social popularity of extreme, performative anti-kink sentiment in this community and overlapping communities.
Some autistic folks internalize the messages telling us we’re creeps for existing socially with other people (pervasively, but especially around sexuality), and wind up in a pit of puritanical scrupulosity trying desperately to pretend that the things that make us tick aren’t important in our sexual lives.
We would fall for this shit less often if we weren’t pervasively culturally gaslighted about our worth as people.
Agree.
I also feel, as a physically disabled person, that anti-kink is ableist against people with unusual bodies as well. I’ve known a lot of people who have been interested in impact play/painplay because, say, nervous system issues mean they can’t feel or can only partially feel “standard” sexual stimulation.
Telling those people they are disrespecting themselves by, like, getting their backs whipped instead just makes me go ??? WHAT WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS YOU ARE NOSY MEAN AND DUMB
As someone both autistic and with physical nerve damage in a few places due to both injuries and genetic structural issues… yeah, don’t assume everyone experiences the same stimulus the same way.
Nerve damage comes in different flavors. There’s the “everything hurts” kind, the “can’t feel much in general” kind, the “randomly itchy or tingly” kind and also the “certain kinds of touches tickle or itch or sting when they ‘shouldn’t’ but other kinds are extra nice” (and that’s just for sensory-nerve damage; motor-nerve damage gives its own weirdnesses, like “sudden cramping for no reason” or “one very specific muscle out of this whole area doesn’t work right” – and on that last one, you don’t realize how much some of the weird tiny muscles that you might not even know you have are essential for normal functioning until that weird tiny muscle stops working). It depends on which specific nerves are damaged and in what way. There may be more kinds than I’ve described but I’ve personally experienced ALL those things as a direct result of physically damaged nerves.
And then there are differences in sensory processing. I have synesthesia and other sensory-processing differences. I perceive sounds as having colors and textures and as producing physical sensations in my body, among other overlaps of sensory input -> perceptions not generally associated with that specific input. This doesn’t impair my ability to determine reality, it’s not hallucinatory. You won’t make me believe I’m physically seeing a red square that’s suddenly appeared in front of me if you play a sound that translates as a red square on my visual overlap, I’ll be aware that the red square is the sound and not something that physically exists in my visual field. But it does mean that some sensory inputs are more or less pleasant to me because of how they translate across other senses than the one originally stimulated. The smell of sulfur is a rather lovely dark purple shade, so I’m less averse to smelling sulfur (it still stinks but the color’s pretty nice so it’s overall kinda ok). Fluorescent red is the color of the pain of a headache, so I’m not a big fan of looking at actual fluorescent red thanks to associative aversion, even though it doesn’t actually cause me pain to look at (the sensory translation is one-way).
It’s fair to not want sexual stuff added on to your stimboard posts. But the fact that some people find some “stim” stuff sexually stimulating doesn’t automatically make them bad people.
These are good additions and really well-explained, thank you.
I have a very deep-seated kink that basically functions as a form of synesthesia/cross-wiring.
It’s more inherent to my sexuality than gendered attractions have been, showed up earlier in my life, and during the years when I was trying to repress shit (being young and embarrassed and on the Try Real Hard To Act Neurotypical life plan) it resurfaced harder and faster than gender-based orientation. Hell, it resurfaced harder and faster than my gender.
I’m sure that there are people for whom kink is an expendable part of their sexual preference and not essential neurological wiring. Probably many people!
But I’m not one of them, and so when someone labels a post “no kink” or “kinksters don’t interact” – not “don’t reblog to NSFW blogs” but a comment that is ambiguously or unambiguously about the type of person who’s allowed to engage – I get approximately the same emotional reaction as if they’d named any other thing I can’t change about myself.
Like, since the specific thing they hate about me is invisible unless I make it visible, it doesn’t even particularly make it impossible for me to reblog a post.
But reblogging that post would send a message to everyone like me that they’re unwanted and wrong. Messages we already get constantly. Some of us die of the cumulative burden of those messages (not only about sexuality but about everything from how we dress to how we eat.)
Neurotypical society needs to stop doing this to neurodivergent people – and neurodivergent people need to stop buying in out of fear and doing it to each other.
When Nott stole from a guest: nothing happened When Vex stole from a guest: she was mercilessly attacked on reddit, twitter, called a greedy bitch and had her alignment changed
When Fjord threatened Caleb with his sword because he was stealing scrolls during a mission: everyone called it a shippy sexually charged moment. When Jester and Caleb disagreed over money management: she was called a spoiled selfish brat who had humiliated him
When Molly slapped Caleb out of a panic attack and when he got uncomfortably close to his personal space: it was called a sexy shippy moment When Jester insisted to check Fjord’s abs with a medicine check to solve part of the orb mystery (after Caleb’s insistence): everyone claimed it was gross creepy groping
When Scanlan modified several allies’ memories to try to make them fall for him or get him drugs: it was all for laughs and giggles or interesting character choices that would eventually lead to his redemption When Jester denied the Traveler’s suggestion that she use magic to get a boy to like her: she’s suddenly seriously 100% considering roofying Fjord to get him to bed
When Vax waxed poetic through long conversation with his two romantic interests: it was all swoons and heartfelt moments the fandom wrote thousands of words worth of meta about When Jester quietly fumes over being jealous of an apparent romantic rival in the background: she’s stealing the spotlight and being catty and manipulative over someone she has no claim over
When Fjord cut off a man’s hand to take off his genie-bracelet: it was a badass and dark moment that had everyone speculating about his alignment When Jester tattooed a little smiley face on a sailor: she’s suddenly an abuser branding her victims like a r*pist
So I am really honestly sorry for all the people who have actual and real reasons to be critical of Laura’s character and who are genuinely uncomfortable with some of her decisions, but the double standard has rendered me unable to take most of those claims seriously or lightly because they exist within a context where the trend is to demonize female characters over things their male counterparts are celebrated for.
And I didn’t even get into Marisha/Keyleth/Beau but you get the idea.
Real tired of having legit discomfort or critical moments about certain characters, but not being able to discuss them in the main tags because of this reddit bro sexism/fandom internalized misogyny crap.
Like heaven forbid I have a negative reaction to something one of Marisha or Laura’s characters do, ever. If I voice it anywhere, even untagged, it’s just like those reddit bros who send them threats every week. (This is much more overt with their characters, but it’s happened with Matt and sometimes Liam too. In the eyes of a lot of fans, if you disagree with anything Matt does, you’re as good as sending him personal hate mail and making him cry right now, you’re a bad fan, and don’t belong in the fandom.)
And people wonder why fandom is moving into curated chatrooms like discord these days.
P.S. I’d like to point out a ton of fans HATED Scanlan’s use of mind control magic on his allies, found his behavior towards Pike (especially early on) EXTREMELY CREEPY, and have over and over again cited him as a reason it took them a while to get into the show, or why they skipped ahead several episodes. The players treated it like a funny joke or harmless behavior. Quite a few of the fans were super grossed out, myself included, and have been for years. Scanlan was and is beloved by many but I wouldn’t say there’s widespread and universal support of his actions towards Pike, quite the opposite in fact.
“she’s aro/ace uwu” = fan favorite female character who’s not an immediate threat to the popular m/m ship
“she’s a strong independent woman who doesn’t need a man!” = main heroine who clearly has chemistry with main hero, or any WoC
“I don’t hate her, but…” = impending threat to popular m/m ship, erased from the story/written out in fanworks
“She lied to this male character once, that means she’s abusive!!” = canon love interest, immediate threat to the popular m/m ship, gets all her hate tagged
Okay so there’s a lot of things I wanna say about the fandom’s perception of Jester (by herself and regarding Fjord) but for starters let’s talk about how people are so ready to go from “she’s so forward and she’s making him uncomfortable” to “she’s practically a child and he’s too experienced for her” in the course of like two episodes.
Like, we’re falling into the typical “seductress vs pure child” dichotomy in which everyone has a hard time realizing women can be more than a single thing at a time. Also, they are not defined by their sexual experiences and the idea that lack of a romantic past makes someone “childish” is screwed up in so many ways I can’t even start to explain it to you.
When it comes to how all this relates to her dynamic with Fjord, though, I come to you with a wild new take: they are exactly on the same page.
How? You ask. I mean, think about it:
They both grew up isolated, her because of her mother and him because of other people’s rejection of his heritage, which means they’ve both reached adulthood still being fairly lonely and found one of their first strong and lasting connections to one another.
Because of this, they are both rather insecure about their worth to others and how they are perceived. Jester keeps asking the Nein if they actually like her, and has voiced a couple of comments about comparing herself to her mother’s reputation. Whereas Fjord is insecure about his half-orc heritage and seems uneasy with the leadership position he’s fallen into with the Nein.
They both spent a lot of time in heavily sexually charged environments but didn’t part-take in it (other than that one encounter Fjord mentioned). Jester is more obvious, but, I mean, it’s not like sailors are known for their celibacy. And yet, Jester’s never had a romantic encounter before and Fjord has had a grand total of two sexual encounters in his life, both of which have been with people he harbored no feelings for.
They both present themselves as far more sexually experienced than they actually are. Again, Jester is the obvious side of this parallel, though I’d later love to talk about why she feels it’s important to present herself as an experienced sexual partner when she isn’t and what that says about her. Fjord, however, does this too. He uses his charm and looks to flirt his way in and out of situations, as if he was experienced and comfortable with it, but immediately backtracks whenever actual interest is shown by the other party.
Both of them have built some sort of “character”, with which they present themselves to others to hide their inner struggles. Jester’s cheerful and “””childish””” attitude hides most of her negative feelings, but also a high level of wisdom, maturity, and understanding of how the world works, which often leads to others underestimating her. Whereas Fjord’s charming and in-control demeanor is used to hide his own doubts about his choices and his powers but also misrepresents his rather impulsive unwise nature. Nicely enough, we’ve seen them both drop that guard around each other in private.
So my point is, we don’t have a “Super Mature Experienced Person A and Young Childish Naive Person B” situation (though it’s a bit effed up that fandom keeps interchanging them in that same dynamic based on what we go finding out, like maybe don’t?).
What we actually have is two inexperienced dummies constantly trying to act like they know more than they do and buying each other’s act. That’s the reason they keep bumping into each other in such funny awkward ways… because they still don’t know that they stand on the same exact spot.
What they need is not for one of them to “gain more experience in the world”. What they really need to do is realize that the other person is just as new to this as them, just as confused and just as nervous… so that they can make the journey together, side by side.
I think a lot of people tend to just take Jester’s words at face value and write off the rest of her character entirely. (Which is sadly not unusual for female characters on this show.)
Which, granted, can be difficult not to do sometimes (I’ve found myself falling into this mindset on occasion.) Like tonight when she asked Nott “have you ever kissed a boy before?” and was worried her kiss with Fjord “didn’t count.” They were mostly playing that up for comedy, but it still sounded like something a very young person would say. Jester’s demeanor, voice, and general attitude can sometimes read as young, immature, or naive to viewers. We’ve even seen this in the context of the show itself with Caleb trying to find out exactly how old she is. But if that’s all people think of Jester, they haven’t been paying attention.
Jester’s somewhere in her early 20s. She’s just led a very sheltered, lonely life until now. I think Laura’s been doing a great job at portraying that.
It does really bug me when people infantilize her though, especially in regards to those things. People did it with Keyleth last campaign and they’re doing it with Jester now.
…is this supposed to be considered weird? I don’t get it.
I think it’s more that it was an unexpected feature. I’m glad it’s there.
Yeah I actually found it while prepping for brain surgery, and was incredibly relieved that it was a built-in feature and not something I’d have to leave convoluted instructions about or whatever. It’s a bit morbid, sure, but it’s a great feature.
…an unexpected but very appreciated feature.
This is a feature designed by women who’d been in fandom for decades, and who had faced the issue of, “X is dead, and we know she loved fandom, so… can we reprint her stories? Who can decide? Her family knows fuck-all about fandom. Who was her best friend? Do they know if she would’ve liked her story to be reprinted in the Best Of OTP Fic zine?”
Running across that once doesn’t make you think about a policy, but by the time it’s five to ten times, and then you’ve seen people vanish from the internet (might be dead; might just be not interested anymore) and nobody knows whether it’s okay to collect their fic in an archive or transfer it to a new one….
Yeah, the FNoK policy is one of the awesome things about AO3.
You know what I’ve been saying about combat really not being fun anymore because EVERYTHING IS ANXIETY?
*gestures broadly at the screen*
Episode 26 changed everything, man.
Knowing that the smallest mistake can just result in a character being completely abandoned makes it nearly impossible to watch live like..when I was naive and stupid and thought resurrection arcs were a thing combat was stressful enough, but now as soon as it starts I get downright nauseated if I don’t already know how it ends.
Well said!
I finally realized that I both want to stay caught up and it’s easier for me to stay caught up if I watch live. And I have been enjoying the past couple of episodes in spite of the stressful as fuck combats where we almost lost characters but, like…it’s very much an “in spite of” situation.
Co-signed.
Seriously, why must they have to go through such brutal “meat-grinder” scenarios? I understand that this campaign is supposed to be darker and more morally grey, but… I feel like there is a severe imbalance of tension, excitement, and genuine fun. Every time we end up with a brutal combat scenario or even a brutal dungeon full of traps that can easily kill those unprepared, I’m always so scared and tempted to just quit watching altogether. Too much grimdark, too little breathing room.
Although part of it may be because Matt still occasionally gets complaints about “taking it easy” on the group too often for their liking. That, and not enough of enforcing “consequences”.
IF that is the case and it is a factor… then those people are partly to blame for all the stress that both the audience and the players end up dealing with. I can’t wait for this godsdamn arc to be OVER. Then we can finally, hopefully get back to more lighthearted stuff. Because the pacing as is… it’s zigzagging too much.
We can have more backstory shenanigans WITHOUT the constant threat of PC death or even a TPK. Those are NOT fun. They never are. I don’t give a damn about how it would be “so good for drama”. Not everyone is up for that. There’s nothing about death that is “so good for drama”. It’s nothing but tragedy, anxiety, and depression.
Phew… my brain is exhausting just having to write all that. Can we please not have yet another situation that might induce a heart attack for some? PLEASE?!
I keep seeing this clash of D&D playing styles from fans of CR. It happened in the first campaign, especially towards the end. Y’know, the M*tt C*l*ville types who were saying Matt should have been nastier, had more character deaths, it’s not “real D&D” unless you get a TPK, etc. … and then you’ve got fans invested in the story and characters, and fans getting tattoos because VM helped them through dark times. I feel like at times we’re watching the same show but seeing two very different things.
Matt’s said in the past he trawls Reddit purposefully looking for the mean things people are saying about him and how he runs his games. Viewers like that are the reason he started taking pictures of key dice rolls during critical moments and especially resurrections. So many vile people accused him of lying about dice rolls that he now live blogs his own dice rolls at key moments, and they still don’t believe him all the time.
I don’t think the intensity of the M9 campaign is a direct response to reddit troll types accusing him of going easy on the team, but it could be influencing him a bit. I think that for so many years, he was dealing with high level encounters with people pretty well used to their classes … now most of the cast is playing something brand new (remember most of the cast had no D&D experience prior to CR) but Matt is operating like they are all highly experienced and high level players. He continually seems surprised when they don’t back down from fights or run away from encounters. When the team pushed themselves to exhaustion to hunt down the Iron Shepherds – who held three of their own in chains – he seemed surprised the team was moving so fast and ditched the cart to be faster. I also think the team badly needed a support healer from the start and that greatly impacted the challenge of encounters. I don’t think Matt intends his encounters to be so stressful for people. Last night the strain seemed to be showing on some of the players, I hope things get tweaked a bit in the future. I love this show so much but this campaign is still kinda rough around the edges.
I ask this genuinely, without malice, and in complete sincerity: In general, without the risk of player death, what is the point of combat encounters?
Like, I agree that at certain points of campaign 2 Matt’s made some missteps (the kidnapping of 3 PC’s by a relatively easily track-able Oni as a way to write out characters for a short time for example).
But with that said, If invading the ancient temple of a lost demi-god promising warlocks control of the ocean for freeing him doesn’t come with serious risk, especially if the players are going to continue to run in blindly without doing a modicum of recon…there is no plot.
I know it’s not a 1 to 1 comparison, but if all Frodo had to do to destroy the One Ring was go to a pub in Ronan with his buds and then toss it in a bin before going back to the Shire…that wouldn’t have been a good story.
I also get the argument that they’re playing new classes, but I think it’s a bit I…can’t think of the word…to pretend these guys are new to D&D. They know the game, they know Matt’s style of game. They’ve been playing it essentially professionally for the better part of 4 years now and are building a legitimate entertainment company on the back of it. In terms of challenge level, this might be a small step harder than the VM campaign, but I think it’s just about the same.
Matt’s made it very clear going back to campaign 1 that this is much more a 50/50 split between story and game than other things out there (Acquisition’s Inc and Adventure Zone pop to mind as games that are far more story heavy). He’s also always made it clear that for him crafting a story and game that his friends are entertained by is always where his intents lie, and while he hopes we enjoy it as an audience, the player’s enjoyment of the game comes first…and at least publicly the party seems to be not just content actively enjoying the campaign to this point.
I don’t know really what my point is besides, I agree that parts of this campaign have been borderline Too Much, but I really don’t know how or what I would change so I’m curious as to what people who have stronger feelings would.
My gut reaction to this argument:
I don’t understand why so many people seem to think that character death is the only consequence that matters, or that it’s the only punishment that suffices for not doing something optimally. “Here’s a monster, you must fight it, well you fucked up, now you have to stop playing and your story is over and you have to either just leave the table completely, sucks to be you, or start over as someone else with no emotional resonance yet in the arc everyone else was building together, and somehow you have to jam yourself into the middle of events and the rest of the party and make it make sense somehow, good luck” — what’s so great about that, exactly? (It’s definitely not great from a run-on sentence perspective, that’s for sure.)
My essential problem with D&D in general, and I suspect it’s something I’m not getting past, is that I value it as a scaffolding for storytelling and a toolset for architecting challenges for the characters to face, but beyond that, I honestly DO NOT CARE. The sorts of DMs who are clearly setting up combat based on whatever page of the Monster Manual they’re wanking over this week: I am so very, very done with you. I have zero interest in min-maxing for combat if it gets in the way of making interesting characters. I play video-game RPGs on casual/easy mode so that I can pick characters for missions based on who’d have the most interesting dialogue, not who would be better at fighting whatever particular beastie is going to be coming at me on the third wave of some interminable fucking fight scenario. I’m here for story, and the rest of it is mostly just getting in my way. Death may have a part in it, but something that big and consequential can’t be handled lightly, and I hate that it feels so much more like “this is a punishment” than “this makes narrative sense.”
And the push-pull I have with CR is that as you said, okay, maybe Matt’s more game-based than some DMs on similar shows might be, so I walked myself into that part, but his players are SO GOOD at character work, improv, and overall RP that it’s easy to latch on to that, and it’s easy to get deeply invested. And it’s HEARTBREAKING if combat not only gets in the way of that but actively robs me of characters and stories I wanted to see play out in full. I still want to scream to the goddamn skies about how much Molly’s death was an utter fucking waste, and the fact that the arguments I get against it have all been from people defending THE SANCTITY OF THE GAME just defeats me.
You’re arguing here based on LotR logic while ignoring the fact that we’re essentially enforcing gameplay that amounts to “well, Pippin got killed off in chapter 3, and this next battle against Random Orc #46 might rob us of Boromir before it would make any emotional sense for him to bite it, and everything’s getting so hard near the end of the game that we’re going to have to resurrect the actual Ringbearer four times, and oh by the way Sam died a while ago and Frodo’s new bestie is a court jester because the player got annoyed and bored, so the whole payoff scene atop Mount Doom is a parody song now.”
How is THAT a good story?
My take on this is that I haven’t seen the last three episodes of this, but when Campaign 1 started, they were like level 7 or 8 already and so we didn’t see the ‘brutal’ fights with real chance of death. Jester and Cad both have access to Revivify now as a possible option should the characters die, which means that there is a smaller chance we will see perma-death from this point forward. Also I think people are mistaking Molly’s death as a small mistake, that had a big consequence, as opposed to being a character decision. These comments make me feel like people don’t have a lot of experience playing D&D because there is always a real chance that your characters are going to die at lower levels. Hell Curse of Strahd has a murder house that is supposed to get you up to level 3 and in my game, we had two characters die and then had three more character deaths before we were level 6. Like if we are considering what a fight is in real life, we know that there is always a chance of injury or death. People don’t fight wars expecting to die when situationally convenient. And like, characters still died in campaign 1. Every character in Campaign One died at least once. Like, fights were hard and brutal and you couldn’t always save them right away and Matt instituted a rule that made it harder to revive people the more times they died because he wanted there to still be a real chance that they wouldn’t come back. Because it makes people more careful and makes the story more raw when we are afraid of death for the characters we love.
Talisen knew what he was doing and he knew what might happen when he jumped in front of Beau with 4 fucking hit points. Molly’s actions had nothing to do with Matt. It wasn’t even Lorenzo that killed him, when you take a second to think about it. Molly killed himself on accident doing the blood malidict. He had four hit points when he rolled that, it was entirely possible that it would knock him unconscious. And Matt was nice enough to let Talisen have last words there. I have never seen that happen. But we know Lorenzo would have hit Molly, and he would have failed the saves anyway. Like if Grog had lost to Kevdak we know there was no coming back from that, he would have been cut to pieces. There are elements of the story and the villains that have to be preserved in order to tell the story. Like they were like level 3 when they fought Lorenzo. The cast of Critical Role spent five years playing as Vox Machina and I think they are still running around having not gotten used to the fact that they can no longer get away with storming into situations without a plan. Molly’s death was a wake-up call.
I’m like, GUYS ITS PART IF THE GAME, ITS PART OF THE SHOW, THEY AREN’T VOX MACHINA, MATT ISN’T WEIRD FOR EXPECTING THEM TO RUN AWAY FROM FIGHTS. They’ve done it before in character as Vox Machina, multiple times. Not every fight is winnable.
And also, anyone who thinks Matt is super focused on combat has not been watching the 6 hour long shopping episodes. There are plenty of instances when they don’t go from fight to fight, there are plenty of times when they get to just fuck around in character.
Like we’re taking D&D as a greater reality to story telling than a book, because we know a book is going to give you the story that makes the most sense, books are going to give you a well thought out death. D&D at it’s core puts far more reality into a situation than a fantasy novel will. Well thought out deaths, that’s not real, what’s real is meaningless deaths that make no goddamn sense, that waste a life. That make people angry anyway because it’s just not fair. Because that’s what the real fucking world is like!
Like you don’t see characters in books fumbling for words, you don’t see the innuendos and the like “oh fuck I forgot what I was saying” unless its a comedy. You don’t see people trying to be cool and suave, and having the universe be like “Nope, fuck you,”. There is no editing in D&D, the players are reacting to everything in their gut, there are eloquent moments, and then there are moments where they end up stealing a ship when that was literally not anything close to what they were planning. It’s not a predictable tale, just like life. This story is human. It’s about humanity, and real humanity is about those random bits, and those injustices, and the anger. And there is fighting too because it’s also a fucking game. There is going to be battle chess. And it’s making me really upset that people are getting pissy about combat. We saw Vax get fucking disintegrated. And you think Molly getting stabbed was ‘too rough’?
Most stories have a great villain, have a big fight, so it doesn’t make sense to me that people are complaining about combat here. The point of D&D is to fight things, and to have characters that grow and learn from those fights, from those adversities. I don’t think these fights are any more difficult than the ones in Campaign One that everyone seemed to love. I think you’re just more aware of the character’s mortality now that you actually saw a perma-death and you’ve gotten it so far into your heads that that’s not how this is supposed to work when, it most definitely is, that you are getting angry and anxious when people go down, as if you don’t want to see them grow as characters from the scares they have in encounters.
Is it not interesting to see what happened with Cadueceus when he went unconscious and to see him start to develop a fear of water? Is it not interesting to see the way that Caleb is fiercely protective of his friends even when he is terrified to be fighting. That he overcomes and convinces himself to step and and fight when he’s sweating and hugging the wall because his friends need help. D&D would not be fun if you blew through every fight, if nothing ever seemed like a real threat. If there wasn’t ever a possibility that something bad would happen to the characters before they have a chance to make it emotionally relevant? Guess what. All of this complaining about combat being stressful and giving you anxiety makes the story emotionally relevant and shows me that you give enough of a shit about these characters to be scared when they fall.
And furthermore, it’s not your fucking game. It’s theirs. The cast of Critical Role are making themselves emotionally vulnerable to you all every week. They are providing you with laughter, and tears, and characters, and humanity, and stories, and courageous battles, and terrible losses. And you are sitting here complaining about it and trying to change it because it’s not how you envisioned. You are making Matthew Mercer, the greatest DM that has ever existed, who brings a beautiful story, who knows so much about his world that he could tell you the national flower of the civilizations in any continent that he is being too harsh, that he his failing as a DM, that he is failing his viewers, and his players. And that’s just fucking mean.
I loved Molly and I was sad to see his character cut down so soon, but I also love Caduceus, and so does Talisen, and he’s gotten over Molly’s death. So you all need to too. Dungeons and Dragons is a wonderful opportunity for story telling, but you seem to forget that it is also a game, and it involved fighting, and if you don’t like that, then you can stop putting hours into your life complaining about it, and do something else. Go to therapy and get over Molly’s death because he’s not coming back and its hard for you to get used to that because you always get what you want. You always get the characters back.
Stop insulting the amazing work these people are doing by pretending like combat is any harder than it used to be, and that they don’t stand a chance. If you are worried about the characters, don’t watch live, and look up spoilers so you can be secure in your knowledge that they make it through the other side alive. I personally, am always 30 seconds away from tuning in live when I see someone is down, because I want to watch how the rest of that story unfolds as they continue to fight. I am fine with spoilers because I like knowing what happened. My friend doesn’t want me to say anything ever because he thinks it ruins the nature of the improv to know what’s coming next.
You’re right, episode 26 did change everything. It started creating a group of salty Critical Role fans, that suddenly forgot that death has always been a real possibility and have decided to just…not get over it, and instead complain that Matt is being too hard on the players. I haven’t seen the players complain, yet the community seems to be in uproar.
The point of all of this being, the players are having fun, and doing what they love, and it seems to be working for them, so why can’t people just accept that and appreciate Critical Role for what it is instead of attacking the players and the DM and making them feel like shit?
TL;DR People complaining that Matt is making combat too hard and that everything is anxiety inducing now fundamentally misunderstand the nature of Dungeons and Dragons and need to re-evaluate what they think about death and storytelling in these games now that they have seen for the first time that people don’t always come back from fights. Leave the cast alone, they are all doing great. Combat isn’t that much harder than it was previously, you guys are just mean.
Hooo boy. First, I agree with you that I don’t think the big fights of either campaign are appreciably any more challenging. Grog did die in the Kvarn fight, after all. I think the issue a lot of the people who are getting fight anxiety are having is that ALL the fights feel like big fights. And are mostly just asking for a breather. And yes, the cast are very good at reacting to the things that happen to their characters in game.
But uh, did it not ocurr to you that telling people to go to therapy to get over Molly’s death might be…what’s the phrase…really fucking rude?
@returnoffismasm
I did not even remember putting that in there, you are right, saying is…what’s the phrase…really fucking rude and I will edit it so that it does not say that with my sincerest apologies for saying it in the first place while I ranted blindly. I once again am sorry, I take mental health seriously and was not considering the weight of that.
I am fixing it.
Nobody here is @’ing Matt and the players about this thread. Nobody here is screenshoting this and tweeting it to the cast or something. What you’re seeing here is no different from how fans react to a weekly tv show, or a book, or a movie. Discussion is not “attacking” Matt and the team. Even outright criticism is not “attacking” Matt and the team. This is a fandom space where fans are allowed and expected to talk to each other about media. Sometimes, *gasp*, fans don’t like a choice, or story beat, or moment! And we are allowed to talk about it with each other. It’s not being “mean.” If you think this incredibly civil and interesting thread is “mean” hateful rhetoric, I can’t imagine you’ve seen what goes on in bigger fandoms. This thread has been a delightful chat until you barreled in to yell at everyone.
The nature of CR is unfortunately that of a “new media” fandom, where the traditional barriers between fans and creators is thinner than usual. It’s very easy to get in touch with the cast. This does not, however, mean that fandom should cease and desist all discussions of the show that are less than glowingly positive. This does mean that snitch-tagging, and other such practices, are extremely inappropriate.
Going around shouting at fans having discussions is not going to make them go away or stop. Going around accusing longtime fans of not understanding D&D and being fake fans is not going to make them go away or stop. Oh you might convince a few people to move discussions to private chats and discord servers, but stop fans from talking to each other? That’s something you’ll never succeed in doing. If that’s your goal, I encourage you to find a new hobby.
Y’all ever just remember that any of these characters can die at any time and have their entire arcs go completely unfulfilled and just
what did I get myself into
every fucking week.
I can feel myself consciously trying to hold the M9 at arm’s length, trying not to get attached to them. Which is like … not a good feeling. Why am I watching a show where I make an effort NOT to get attached to the characters? That’s why I quit shit like GoT and its imitators, that’s not the kind of media I want to watch.
I think other people are doing this as well. Fanfic noticeably took a dip after Molly’s death. And no I don’t just mean Caleb/Molly fics, I mean all CR2 fics. I’ve noticed a lot of people going back to CR1, drawing art for CR1 characters. I think this is a combo of 1) people who quit watching the show 2) people who are taking a break from the show and 3) people who lost their enthusiasm for creative fanworks for a while.
That’s really sad, and I don’t know what to do about it. Take a break? Wait for them to reach higher levels and make a frantic dash to catch up on dozens of hours of content by then? I don’t want to do that at all.
given the common threads between things people on this website are inexplicably attracted to (pinstripes, bow ties, really thin, literal skeletons) i present to you
Like 93% of the self-contradictory behavior of fandom antis clicks into place when you realize the majority of them are victims of right wing authoritarian training from birth
Here, ‘right wing’ means ‘hates social change & prefers the established order/traditional way of doing things’, not ‘republican’. (Though in America it’s Republicans who have been taken over by right wing authoritarians. (Specifically Christian fundamentalist authoritarians.))
Authoritarianism can also be ‘left wing’, meaning ‘wants to overthrow the established order/traditional way of doing things’. people who supported Stalin when he overthrew Russia’s rulers would have been left-wing authoritarians.
All it takes to be an eager follower of authoritarian rule of any kind is
being very, very afraid
pretending you’re not afraid by being self-righteous
And reacting with
dogmatic loyalty to your ingroup – anyone who agrees with you – and your chosen leader to the point of defying logic, reason, and truth
burning resentment towards people who make you aware of your fear – and taking it out on a scapegoat (someone who you can pretend is scary, but you know can’t hurt you back)
deciding that you and your group is soafraid of somethingRight about everything that it’s your duty to wipe outthe thing you’re afraid ofthe Evil you oppose – and make everybody else agree (or pretend to agree) with you along the way.
like @curlicuecal said: authoritarianism can be found anywhere, and authoritarians can walk all kinds of life paths. it takes root wherever a would-be despot finds enough scared, hyper-submissive people they can rally to their cause and start crusading with.
I mean, fandom antis aren’t political right-wingers, but they’re doing just fine at this, aren’t they?
someone said:
People who dont like pedophilia are radical right wingers now huh?
first of all, a fun fact: most people who call literally everyone who they don’t like ‘pedophiles’ actually are radically right-wing – both politically and in the ‘everything that isn’t traditional is bad’ sense. like: antis literally lifted this tactic from fundamentalist Christians who say all gay people are pedophiles.
‘people who disagree with me are sexual perverts!!!’ is the most right-wing propaganda tactic there is.
that aside: please read more closely.
I don’t think fandom antis are right wing authoritarians: I think a whole bunch of them are the kids of right wing authoritarians.
I think their parents instilled all their own fear and anger and hatred and rigidity into their kid’s brain from day one. and after stuffing their kid with all this fear and alarm about the chaotic world out there … what should we expect their kids to feel when they realize they’re LGBT+/queer, or have a mental illness, or don’t believe in the same God as their parents do, or whatever else puts them on the ‘wrong’ side of order vs chaos?
If they don’t outright oppress & bury their own self-awareness – if they tentatively venture out and look for their own people – is it reasonable to expect adolescents who grew up trained for an authoritarian lifestyle to not fall facefirst into politically leftist spaces that promise authoritarian safety, rigidity, aggression and leadership? is it a surprise that many of them settle into spaces that keeps the things that might still scare them (their sexuality and their awareness of it, their gender, their sex drive or lack thereof) strictly off-limits? that lets them blow off their anger in familiar patterns of aggression towards outsiders? that lets them keep feeling like a Good Person despite their fear otherwise?
my point is this:
are all fandom antis from homes like this? of course not. anti-shipping isn’t a monolith, though the authoritarian part of it is by far the most organized.
but when I look at fandom anti-shipping as a movement that is primarily authoritarian in operation & design, a lot of the things I couldn’t understand before begin to make sense. (which I’ll elaborate on someday, I’m sure.)
Like 93% of the self-contradictory behavior of fandom antis clicks into place when you realize the majority of them are victims of right wing authoritarian training from birth
out-there-on-the-maroon 