He and Laura were already playing Thor and Black Widow (respectively) on the show that had been airing since 2013, so he definitely had a relationship with Marvel and wanted to keep building it. It’s just funny how times change, and less than a year later, Laura skipped her category in an awards show to fight the Briarwoods lol
In terms of Keyleth and Kima, I can see it happening. Whenever I have an NPC who is strong willed, devoted and really driven towards a goal, my players immediately dislike them, even if the goal is a good one (like saving the world). I think we have seen so many villains using the ends justify the means argument in pop culture that we all immediately distrust them.
I will say that Marisha has elaborated during a Q&A (as an answer to a question that I actually submitted, in fact) that Keyleth's distrust of Kima has roots in how the druid has seen corruption even among the most pious. She's seen her fair share of zealotry. She is cautious. And eventually, she does reconcile with Kima later on, because actions speak louder than words and Kima does earn Keyleth's respect and trust by doing so.
We also know that Keyleth dislikes the gods, and has a very different view on gods than the rest of the group, if we add inn the fact that she is still dealing with the agony of killing the kid and failing the aramente she did on her own in the "in between time" (the time in between the last home game and the first stream)
That much is clear enough, she pretty much beats you over the head with the whole "not vibing with the church" sentiment. The thing that makes it seem off is that she voices and expresses her distrust immediately upon finding her, in the quest they were sent to *find her*, by the council member they trust who regards her as a valuable ally, IN CHAINS having been exposed to torture for days by the hands of the Duergar King. Give people you're wary of special attention, give them shit for all I care, but Keyleth lacked tact and lacked empathy. She gave her shit as soon as she finished saying she was being tortured - interrupting her, even.
@@rodrigoa.m3566 Yeah, it felt less like, "You were tortured, and I'm sorry for that, but your quest has already done more harm than good, and maybe we should consider our options," and more like, "Let me be contrarian to everything you believe in based solely on the fact that you believe in a god, and completely disregard the torture you received." I mean I get it, I've faced plenty of "contrarian just because it bothers you" people before, but in the moment, it felt like she murdered a bunch of soldiers while giggling about it, and then turned around and gaslit Kima while also claiming to be an unwilling participant in this quest.
The only thing that can be said about keyleth is that marisha plays a high wisdom low charisma druid well. whenever she goes on a serious speech/debate she makes good points, but the way she presents those point most often backfire, straining relationship with friendly npcs and with the audience. if these results were intentional or desired, is something to wonder, but at least it is consistent.
It's also because Keyleth was given a role she didn't ask for but was expected of her to fulfill regardless of whether she was ready. And no one really understood on her level until much later. For instance, see the insight check in episode 9, or her interaction with Kerrek in 56.
I think character growth and progression is key. The first few levels are always more or less accidental success/grit through simple scenarios. By mid level, a party can liberate a village or city. By high level rule a kingdom. It makes sense that lesser problems fade as the characters grow.
On that note, I feel like Episode 22, "Aramente to Pyrah" serves as a much-needed way to give greater context for Keyleth's characterization in the Kraghammer arc as well as to show that even before that arc, she was dealing with a heavy trauma that lingered long into the start of the streamed sessions. In fact, 22 is the moment she became my favorite VM member.
Exactly. It makes no sense how "fans" refuse to separate their dislike of a character from the player. Especially when the Marisha hate held no water to begin with. People can dislike whoever they want for no reason, of course, but they don't have to be disrespectful to them in the chat/comments/whatever.
Marisha is a nice lady, and I don't think Matt would've tied the knot with her if it was otherwise. I dislike Kiki for how she goes about showing her distrust of Kima and other ways she shows her negative emotions. I mean hell I dislike Vex for her greed, just personally I dislike greedy people. But Laura Bailey and Marisha Ray are two nice women, and I for one enjoy watching their antics as well as everyone else's no matter what the character.
I have never understood the hate of either. It makes no sense. I play a lot of lawful good paladins but still dont even dislike her interaction with Kena. Testing a paladins convention, faith or code is fun, though most of mine would say the fight isn't till all are heading home or something like that.
Currently watching CR 2, it's been almost a year since i saw the Underdark Arc. It's so weird (and fun) to see the old setup, the younger cast, etc. The show evolved so much.
I just reached episode #100 from Campaign One and I am loving these analyzes. It's nice to know that when I move to the next campaign, I'll still have your videos to reminisce my first watch-through.
That’s how I feel too! I’m on 113 so I’m super close to the end. I’m already feeling sad but I’m grateful for this series to allow me to continue living with vox machina while getting excited for mighty nein
When you mentioned mistrust, I remembered that Campaign 2 was stalling due to the incredible paranoia, the party was aimless because they didn't have any solid point of reference. Mercer noticed this, and fixed with a special appearence by Alura. The trust the party placed on her was considerably out of place... but it worked, they became able to function due to the idea of there being someone that could be trusted even if they played no relevant part and were on the other side of the word.
Very briefly re: Keyleth and Kima, I've noticed that Marisha has a habit (not saying good or bad, simply an RP style choice) where she extends conversations or social interactions beyond where most players would. I say Marisha because she did largely the same thing with Beau in C2 and Beau is a very different character from Keyleth. But this choice sometimes leads to great character interactions, I'd argue this one falls into that category, and sometimes just becomes tedious. It's just a stylistic choice from Marisha, but it's something worth noting when certain interactions come up.
@@emilymitchell6823 and the fact that too often do we have cases where the audience CANNOT separate player from character, or completely misinterpret facial expressions. For instance, in C2, Beau and Yasha's date. Too many times folks commented that Travis and the rest looked sleepy or bored and thus it was all a waste of time. In truth, they were being respectful and not interrupting such an important stretch of RP. They were invested.
Hmm, she's almost always on the 'big shit just happened, so we need to talk about the big shit, either right now or tomorrow at the latest' side of things, which I personally appreciate, but fully understand that's not everybodys favourite thing. However, I feel like it is often a necessary thing, because other players are almost always on the 'big shit just happened, we have to leave and be cool and broody for 6 hours of play before we can acknowledge any feelings' side of things. Which can also be fun! But I'm not necessarily looking at D&D for someones moment of 'I have already figured out and reorganised all my emotions and thoughts and incorporated them into a meticulously streamlined worldview and now lets discuss our future plans', I want the adrenaline-kick reaction and then how 'that' makes sense for a person. And if it sometimes takes some floundering, circling back or run-on sentences, I just can't be mad about it. It's sincere in a way, that I find endlessly more endearing than a rehearsed hero speech.
That's a good point. I think sometimes that was my issue with some of her scenes. She tended to extend some of the stuff I was less interested in. Frustrating as a viewer but necessary to get some of the deeper character moments
The hatred for Keyleth/Marisha always pisses me off. Marisha has always been committed to RP above all else, even if it makes her do things that don't seem like the best move. We saw it with Keyleth and how her naivety and awkwardness was played up, we saw it with Beau's brash nature and blunt way of talking to those around her, and we're seeing it with Laudna's general affect and consistent tics. Marisha always throws herself into her characters and the fact that she was scorned for that is just really upsetting. I will always prefer that dedicated RP no matter the consequences to someone who goes against their usual character in order to make the smart or right decision. It's not even fully exclusive to Marisha. We saw the same thing when Ashly Burch came into Campaign 2 and chose to give herself disadvantage on rolls because she was fighting someone from her past who terrifies her. But because someone died in that episode, Ashly still gets shit for this decision to this day. She's said she knows whenever a new fan has reached that episode because she gets hateful dms. And interestingly enough I never see the same scrutiny applied to any of the other mainstays when they do what their character would at the detriment of others. When Grog rushes the party into an ambush or spends way too much money on something. When Scanlan refuses to use an item of immense power just to fuck with the rest of the party. When Vax stealths away from the party while they're planning and decides to enter a dangerous place solo. It's just Keyleth/Marisha who gets the flack.
That's fair, I've seen Travis as Grog deliberately spend a truckload of money on alcohol in the episode I just watched (66) and it had no use to the party, I saw Sam's character also get swindled out of a lot of coin around the same timeframe, and I have seen party members commit crimes or murder other characters regardless of the consequences, I've seen Sam and Travis decide to have their characters run into a sacred cave when it is more likely to end up screwing the party, and so on. And Sam and Travis play my very favorite characters and I loved every second of every single one of those "bad" decisions. Even though they could have had bad consequences. I think if someone already doesn't gel well with Keyleth or aspects of her character's personality bother you, then the player's decisions or RP will get examined more negatively. They don't know Marisha. I don't know Marisha. It's silly to think you have an opinion on Marisha if you don't know her. I think it's fair to not like her character or the choices that character makes, but Marisha isn't a troll and she's not a cheat or a predator or a criminal or whatever. And she's not trying to play a character that's supposed to be hated like Joffrey Baratheon or Ramsay Snow. So if people actually hate her because of her character I am glad they have so little to worry about that they can spare hate for a fictional character that is, at worst, mildly annoying at times, and not even nearly all the time.
@@askthepizzaguy You're hitting the nail on the head in terms of what I was getting at with the other characters. The point wasn't "If you think Keyleth is bad then you have to hate the others, too!" It was "Literally all the players have made bad choices because it's what their characters would do, so why does only Marisha get the scrutiny?" Grog being dumb. Scanlan blatantly sexually harassing women. Vex being greedy. Percy being an asshole. Vax throwing a wrench in planning sessions. The only one who doesn't fit into this is Pike and that's because Ashley unfortunately wasn't around often enough to do things like that, and when she was around it was usually as the party's voice of reason. But again, she did that because it's what Pike would do.
Hm, I wonder what Marisha and Ashley have in common that the players of the other characters you’ve brought up don’t. It’s just impossible to determine what the correlating factor could be.
@@smoogieboogie1694 Most of the comments I’ve seen towards Ashley in the first and second campaigns were along the lines of “she can never remember how to play her character why is she even there?” Or writing her off as a reoccurring guest instead of a full member of the cast because of her absences Sure let’s just pretend she hadn’t been on the other side of the country for months at a time, probably hadn’t had a lot of free time to brush up on the game/study and wasn’t ever back long enough between filming breaks to fully derust I guess 🙄 Especially in C2 when they didn’t have her remote in like they did in C1 so she didn’t get to play at all while in New York (except when the rest of them were over there for NYCC) And I still see those types of comments here and there on C3 videos because “she’s been back permanently for over a year so she should know how to play by now.” And while yeah maybe? But they also went on a three month hiatus shortly after she got back. She’s not the only one who makes mistakes and forgets things either. Most of what I’ve seen towards Marisha is “she’s only there cuz she’s sleeping with the DM”
As with more than one thing, the (successful) use of homebrew creatures requires the trust of your players. It's also really good for throwing off the player(s) that is familiar with a significant portion of the Monster Manual, and is likely to figure out what a critter is by its description. Sometimes, it's as simple as reskinning the monster. Other times, something completely new is called for. Obviously, creating a homebrew creature can be a fair amount of work. An alternative is dipping into lesser known source books. One of my favorites was the Nilbog (out of the Fiend Folio) in 2E.
I think one the most important DM things Matt does that I'm not good at is tone. When he's describing anything, his tone sets the mood for the other players.
I just want to preface this comment with this statement; I like Keyleth and I enjoy Marisha's roleplay with her characters. With that said I still find the scene where she's pissy with Keema hella weird. I'm not even saying it's weird that she didn't trust her I just think her treatment of the person who IS THE ENTIRE REASON THE PARTY IS HERE, a trusted friend of Allura and the victim of the duergar's torcher doesn't make sense. Sure she was acting somewhat rashly but I personally don't think Keemah was doing anything suspicious, the only issue I could really get behind is that she was celebrating too early for Keyleth's tastes. As for the celebration, did no one take into consideration that she'd been having hooks drawn through her flesh while Keyleth and Percy were making greeting cards? Keemah just got freed from capture, unpetrified AND is getting revenge on those that wronged her. Again nothing against Keyleth but her treatment of Keemah here still annoys me to this day simply because it just seemed unjustified in my opinion. Also she literally just trusted a mindflayer with little to no discussion after finding him in a cave whining about getting kicked out of his gaggle of brain eaters, watched said mindflayer ear not one but TWO different brains then complained about Keemah "congratulating them on being murderers"? Again I really do like Keyleth but I won't lie, when I first started watching I thought I wasn't going to purely because of this scene.
This monster was amazingly memorable. I haven't watched a ton of critical role, but I've watched around fifty episodes, I think, and... this one just stuck with me throughout it. I remember other great monsters ofc, but this one? Oh boy, I'll never forget him as one of the first terrifying homebrew monsters I've seen.
I mean, I love Marisha. Keyleth just has a personality that i dont like.... isn't that fine? I see a lot of people using the greed of Vex or hedonistic actions of Scanlan or Ashley's forgetfulness etc. as counters as if to say, "look, everyone's flawed!" But why cant it just be that Keyleth just doesnt have the most likeable personality? I mean, she can be a real downer at times and as far as roleplay goes, Marisha knocked it out of the park as someone "destined for greatness" but burdened by that responsibility and haunted by their decisions. Its just not always the most fun thing to see. I may not HATE Keyleth, but I certainly struggled to enjoy her character moments the way I did with the others. (Plus, it does feel a bit weird that it seems like she was supposed to be an incredibly empathetic person and could reflect so heavily on her own actions and mistakes, but then quickly take a "holier than thou" approach sometimes. It seems counterintuitive, but that could just be me) That's just an attitude that I never really enjoyed, so it just rubs me the wrong way when i see it, but again, not bad rp, its just akin to tasting a flavor i dont like. Marisha's awesome, but Keyleth was far from my fav C1 character. That still doesn't make her a bad character though, and its a real shame that Marisha received so much backlash for deciding to rp such a character.
People can like or dislike whatever characters they want, the reason I asked folks not to jump into the comments to complain about her is because I don’t want my comments full of people bashing Keyleth. But I do appreciate when folks like you can make the distinction between personal preference and “objectively poor behavior,” between play style and “being bad at the game,” and look you get it, this was a much more respectful comment than most so thank you ☺️
Like your vids. Good analysis and thought provoking. Really love these Vox Machina (formerly 'the shits') episodes, look forward to them a lot. I even watched the linked vid, you charismatic sweet-talker! Keep up the good work.
Something I definitely miss in my sessions is physical acting. I play online without a camera, so I can't convey expressions and mannerisms to my party, but the way Matt uses physical acting is incredible. Look how he moves while describing the HB monster; waving his arms, swaying from side to side, using his hands to show physical concepts and turning his head in an almost unnatural way!
I never liked Keylith, but I never held that against Marisha; my opinion is, and always was, that she knew her own character best and the only one that got a say in how the character acted is her. As viewers coming midway into a long running campaign there was likely stuff that happened to the character that shaped how she acted/reacted to situations so I generally passed it off as us just not having insight into the character. I think part of my dislike of the character might also have been her butting heads with more likeable characters, such as Kima in this case. Another part might be Marisha’s acting style in some scenes not being my cup of tea, so that may have distorted my opinion of the character; eg her argument with Kima here comes across as haughty and holier than thou to me due to how Marisha chose to act for this scene when perhaps that wasn’t what she was going for and my perception of said acting made me infer more hostility than there actually was. Again, I don’t knock Marisha here; it’s her character and she should act her how she sees fit, not how the audience wants her to act. I can’t speak about Campaign 2 as I haven’t watched it, but from the episodes of Campaign 3 I’ve watched I haven’t had similar feelings about her character/acting there, so I do think my gripes with her acting in Campaign 1 are tied entirely to the character and not Marisha as a player/actor. The only thing that ever really annoyed me about Marisha the player, was how she regularly misunderstood how some spells worked, but I always gave her a pass on it because there’s so many spells she needed to keep track of, on top of all the other rules in the game, plus having a life outside of D&D/CR, not to mention having switched systems means she probably had the spells/rules of the previous system knocking around, so as far as I’ve always been concerned allowances should be made, especially as it’s something all of us have fallen victim to when we play. One positive thing about Keylith/Marisha I will say is that I don’t think I ever noticed her falling into the DM’s Girlfriend trope; I don’t recall Matt ever giving her special treatment, nor did Marisha ever appear to expect it.
If anything, the one who gets the most "hand holding" (so to speak) is Ashley, but seeing as she wasn't there half the time... And saying about not remembering mechanics, when you listen to the episodes one after the other, you tend to notice how many times Matt has to say to the rest of the cast "You can only hold your actions. You can't do your entire turn later" in combat. (I'm at Episode 103 of Campaign 1 that is now seriously the combat rule I am most familiar with at this point)
I think in the rules, a long rest only needs to be 6 hours of sleep, and just 2 other hours of nonstenuous waking activity, so I think it's almost within the rules anyway, even if that doesn't matter that much.
I think a lot of the keylith hate is misconstrued by nothing the person expressing the hate and the people they express it to. I and a friend of mind both hated Keylith and originally blamed it on marisha, but learned when campaign 2 started that we didn't actually have a problem with how marisha played the game, we just hated keylith. And I'm sure a lot of people thought this way as well, many expressing such in these very comments. However, I think a lot of people assume they disliked it because the character was not well executed or there were issues with how she was played, but as I rewatch campaign 1 in recent times I have come to realize that it's actually something much more simple; keylith is just kind of a unlikable sometimes. And it's intirely because that is the intent. Marisha is doing a great job the whole time of playing a character who is actively hypocritical and self-egrandising to a fault, and that is almost certainly intentional. Marisha is doing a great job of acting as a character who is just unlikable by a lot of standards and when we see that we want to assume it's unintentional, because why would you intentionally want to be unlikable, but marisha is a Profesional actor and is very devoted to playing the part of her character, a character that is in fact majorly flawed, especially when dealing with other people, and she is playing to that constantly. It's a fantastic performance, and we can see that in the genuine emotional responses it provokes from so many people, even if that genuine response is a negative one.
I think the problem I have always had with the way Marisha played Keyleth in situations like this is that she tuned out and completely ignored the non-verbal and sometimes verbal cues of the other players at the table that enough was enough and to just move on. Even Orion tried to defuse the situation here and she completely walked over it. Yes she was creating tension, but it was bad tension. This wasn't the dramatic tension of the lava flow and the hourglass of the prior episode, it was tension that drained some of the life out of the table and the episode. She did the same thing with Spireling Shenn in the Chroma Conclave arch, and that was an extremely detrimental thing to do in world. There were even times where it felt like maybe something happened between her and Matt earlier in the day and she was venting at him, in character. Like when you are at a dinner party and the hosts had a huge argument just before the guests arrived and the negative energy is still palpable. And I know she argues that she was trying to roleplay Keyleth's stats, but I think these moments were too often defended with the "Well, it is what here character would do." I think other than that, Marisha is great, and she has been a driving force behind the development of CR as not only a viable business, but also as a force of good. But, there are still idiosyncrasies she has at the table that I don't appreciate. I am also really critical of how Vox Machina almost never set up Vax's Assassinate feature, and there where a couple of times, like in the island fight against Ripley where it probably resulting in the death (temporary) of a PC.
Love to see some Marisha love! Honestly the fact that some of Keyleth's scenes WERE difficult to watch speaks to marisha's skill as a roleplayer. I saw a lot of my own insecurities in Keyleth which isn't always easy to see, but it's important and real. Keyleth grows so much and is always, always trying ❤️
I never disliked keyleth, except during this conversation with kima, and all the similar keyleth convos after. Not because I didn't see how it was sensible or justifiable in some way, just because it was very uncomfortable and not particularly fun to watch, and I can't imagine me having fun playing it either. That's more of a playstyle difference than anything else, tho
I have always used homebrew monsters (with the only exception of my current campaign, mainly because the concept is "everything is rolled on a random table"), and I think it's a ton of fun. Whether it is magically enhanced goblins (one of which is actually a "goblin bomb") or Resident Evil style mega zombies, I love creating homebrew monsters, most of the time horrifying.
I hate Keyleth but love Beau. It's almost like they're fictional characters and not the same as entity as Marisha (whom we do not have even a parasocial relationship with as viewers). However, I do find Keyleth distrusting gods also to be an important part of the game viewers that don't actually play the game might miss: even though druids (and paladins) are divine casters, they do NOT get their powers from deities. I stopped watching Crit Role in S3 not because of the show, but because the fandom just became too much. And, the toxicity trails all the way back to the beginning where people had some serious beef with Marisha IRL because they disagreed with Keyleth. That sounds healthy.
The hatred for Campaign 3 is baffling. People are upset that the show is no longer live. People are upset that the show is hitting "mainstream" (it's not, it's just popular among its circles now). People are upset that it's not Campaign 1. People are upset that they reference Campaign 1 and 2 more now. There's no consistency, there's no direction with their criticism, it comes off as whining about how Critical Role was better when it was smaller, less successful, just a couple hundred viewers per episode. Like a toxic partner saying the early days of the relationship were more fun and that we should go back to that.
I think people forget how hard it is to play a consistent character with different worldviews from yours... And whoever says they are perfect at it probably didnt have millions of people watching and disecting their character for Hours of gameplay. Marisha has gotten better with time but still you can see the Marisha drip into every character... as you can see Liam and Laura's etc etc... Beau was more consistent because she was alligned with the Player's tendencies and worldview... so yeah, maybe At The Time this seemed weird from Keyleth but Marisha tried to add it to Kiki ... you can be surprised at how your own character reacts at certain things, and ask Why and develop on that... I admit Keyleth's inconsistencies drove me crazy but having played a bit more now I think: hey... its improv, and being in the spotlight Hey,things come out weird sometimes and you gotta roll with it. ( talking to myself xD)
Beau went through a stretch where she was insufferable, but at both ends of the campaign she was much better at not being insufferably whiney. Laudna is finally a good balance of damaged, but not whiney
I like that half of this episode is just "in defense of keyleth". I would say, getting into critrole quite late with the animated show and jumping right away into campaign 3, its kind of fascinating to see what people reactions were to Keyleth at the time. As far as I can tell, people like her fine in the show, and they absolutely love Laudna. Seeing all the hate Marisha received is a big stretch. But I also absolutly can see why Keyleth was disliked by most of the audience back in 2014
I think part of the problem was people at the time didn't see what she was going for. Also at a time when the long term character journey role playing wasn't really expected from CR. With TLoVM, not only do they know the destination of her arc, but they can build the nature of the character with recognisable animation choices. A lot harder to get across with no real visual clues. It's something the players and the audience learned through the first campaign, and is still being refined. Although here it is rough, as I feel that Marisha wants a key character roleplay moment as the situation calls for it for Keyleth, but hasn't reached the stage of putting those watching out of her mind, and the whole thing comes over as a theatre improv session. As I started at C2, I couldn't help but see the post VM wake of the anti Marisha hate and couldn't really understand it. I liked Beau and what she brought to things. Going back and seeing C1, I spotted pretty early what she was doing with Keyleth. I think an animated series is probably the best way to showcase the character as she plays into a lot of familiar anime tropes. It's a real pity doing those tropes as a RP character where it dropped in and improvised over 3 years would lead to the hate that Marisha received.
I personally loved the conversation between Keyleth and Kima. I never blamed her for being suspicious and, given the conversations she and Percy have later, it really fits with her beliefs.
while i agree with your interpretation of what keyleth was trying to communicate i think why this blow up doesn't hit while beau's later clashes with caleb do is the consistency of the rp. we get 0 clue keyleth doesn't like gods or excessive violence at all. she's been cheerfully shoving duregar under lava and dragging around dead dwarves and offering excised hearts to vax as minxie. her popping off at the torture victim for congratulating them on defeating the guy the they were trying to defeat comes out of nowhere.
For about ~5minutes in... I came in very late caring even indirectly about C.R, and I was never exposed to any Keylith drama. But I still have to say - At least in Episode 28, the **player** struck me as very rude to other members. I guess the Tiberius drama is a big part of that- But the personal behavior, outside of in-character things, really did leave a bad taste in my mouth. I came away with that impression without any exposure to all the drama. So you can say what you want, but I really don't think it all boils down to just drama about the character.
Its probably not the intention, but in a lot of media that isnt dnd, bahamut is often portrayed more evil or at least antagonistically compared to him being a dragon god of justice in dnd, in video games if bahamut is there, 90% of the time its to have a badass fight with a huge dragon god, so assumptions and preconceptions from outside, while still not as bad as what you'd probably have for a mind flayer, aren't likely as good as what a long time dnd player would have.
That seems to be because the name Bahamut comes from Arabic mythology (or, probably to be more accurate, mistranslations of the Arabic word for “leviathan” from what we think of as the Old Testament). It’s essentially referred to as a monster that lies beneath the surface of the world. This seems to be why so many other pieces of media appropriate that name for their own version of a mythological monster, it’s pretty mailable ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’ll admit I haven’t kept updated on critical role and I truly wished they’d made it easier to watch the earlier seasons. On Marisha’s roleplaying I feel she connects with her character well and she does seem to draw out social interactions more than what I’ve seen with most other players. Sometimes that tends to come off as a bit pretentious and scene chewing but it’s how she plays the character and in the end sometimes you have to go against the party on occasions and be critical in some actions previously taken. Not all lawful good people are fair people they can easily turn to be a tyrant. This reminds me of a homebrew game we played for nearly three years and my character would been considered as am artificer, mad scientist was the class and over the course of the campaign he’d been eager to build destructive things until he had seen what happens when people like him go unchecked and he begins to have his tony stark moment that he needs to help people more but a few huge disasters and unleashing an army of the undead later his popular opinion was shot people and cities where terrified of him and our bbeg exploited that and when the final showdown happened it was a capitulation the city states saw the bbeg as being someone that brought stability and my character was seen as someone to fear. So yeah the are we the baddies moment. Caught some of us off guard but it was easy to catch a few bits of insight that the mood had shifted. The conclusion was even though we stopped the undead army and removed a elder god of terror threat my character was privately acknowledged by the leaders of our alliance but the publicity condemned him which three of the party members hated but my guy was used to it and so he set off to leave society behind.
The only thing I didn't like about Keyleth was the fact that her description of the character at the top of the game had basically no relation to the character herself. When Marisha was talking about Keyleth in the intro, she made the character sound like a badass loner instead of this insecure novice adventurer who would eventually grow into badassdom. Otherwise, I liked her. As far as Marisha as a person, I've never met her, but she seems like a genuinely nice person and a fun person to hang out with.
Matt was probably long past annoyed with the flying carpet bypassing every terrain challenge, and to me, he didn't sound too enthused about the levitating stone disk trick. I'm a podcast listener, so when I listened to these episodes, I was still trying to link voices with characters and their players, so I don't recall; how did they get horizontal motion? Was Keyleth towing them somehow? I also don't recall how they got around the 500 lb. weight limit. "One creature or loose object of your choice that you can see within range rises vertically, up to 20 feet, and remains suspended there for the duration. The spell can levitate a target that weighs up to 500 pounds. An unwilling creature that succeeds on a Constitution saving throw is unaffected. The target can move only by pushing or pulling against a fixed object or surface within reach (such as a wall or a ceiling), which allows it to move as if it were climbing."
I find it honestly silly that so many people feel they have to clarify everything that Keyleth did that (some) fans hated. The kind of ire that Keyleth (/Marisha) received is primarily as a result of how unreasonable most of these instances seemed to fans upon first experiencing them through the campaign. I am not defending the mindless Redditor hatred directed towards Marisha, not one bit. But I also think it's childish to dismiss all criticism of the character she played, when there is plenty to criticize. When I watched this episode first, I was wondering why she was being so hostile - while being thanked, not congratulated. She was also desperately reading into things Kima was saying, just so she could continue that hostility. There are times other characters/players have done dumb things, that left fans and other players wondering why they did them SPOILER ALERT HERE: I would say primarily like when Scanlan left the party. I think a lot of times when people rush to Keyleth/Marisha's defence, it's often done by stating something along the lines of "You just don't understand the context." Like, no. It doesn't work that way. I'm seeing the context play out in front of me, Marisha's past doesn't matter for the interaction between Keyleth and Kima, even if it does for her personally, and that's completely fine. But I think the biggest issue so many of Keyleth "haters" have is that Keyleth is simultaneously naive, and incredibly self-righteous. That's not a combination that's very likeable, and she's not like this all the time, of course. But when she is, it's grating, and doesn't endear her to people, especially if in the same instance she is also being irrational, angry or downright stupid (#GoldfishIncident).
This was all played much better with their dealings with Raishan. There I actually loved Keyleth's adamant "No deal, no negotiation" while Percy argued that they should hear her out while still not trusting a single word that came out her mouth. It was also such a grand character moment where GROG had to tell her to show some restraint and patience. This part was Keyleth's low point to me. She did get a lot better as it went on, but I wasn't fully on until around the beginning of the Chroma Conclave (still has my favorite HDYWTDT in how she killed Sylas Briarwood "I want him to eat a bag of holy dicks!")
Not a big fan of the idea that 'some people were jerks to this person therefore you aren't allowed to say anything bad about their character'. Keyleth was inconsistent and hypocritical (not bad character traits for dramatic purposes, but she was never taken to task for this in-game) and this conversation with Kima always left a sour taste in my mouth. Not because she pushes back or distrusts Kima, but because she is *constantly* putting words in Kima's mouth. Listen to the clip that was played again-- Kima says something relatively innocuous and Keyleth just goes straight to accusing her of zealotry, putting words in her mouth, and effectively mocking her religion... and nobody else intervenes. Nobody else calls out Keyleth for judging somebody they met, like, twenty minutes ago based on nothing, and Keyleth maintains this weird moral superiority about telling somebody else what THEY are thinking through her own skewed lens. And again, as a character trait, this is really interesting! But she's never taken to task. This never comes back to bite her. It's a character trait I personally hate in any work of fiction-- I'm told one thing about her by the narration but the character's actual actions run utterly contrary to it. 'Keyleth is so empathic' while she's literally berating somebody because of factors that she completely made up.
yeah I think the thing that bugs me is just that lady kima literally JUST escaped from being traumatically tortured, and she just shows like zero sympathy at all
I like keyleth and marisha but i think you missed the mark on this one. This episode gave her a hard journey to get me to like her again. It's not about her "irrational" line of thought. Critical role was my first dnd thing, so mind flayer vs bahamut meant nothing to me. Kima opens up to them, talks about her genuine trauma from being tortured. Skin torn repeatedly while her assailants reveled in her suffering. She thanks them for rescueing her from that dark place, and keyleth acts like she is thanking them for killing innocents. Keyleth is supposed to be this kind, compassionate soul. But she makes light of Kima's torture and would rather belittle someone already going through the worst month of their life instead of making amends over stepped on toes.
Interesting, I didn't realize I had that in common with Marisha. I lived in GA and SC during the satanic panic, and seeing how wrong the church leaders were about D&D and how unquestioningly the followers bought into it, it got me to questioning what else they might be wrong about. Seeing misogyny and racism throughout that culture was disturbing too, although as a kid I didn't realize or understand even half of it. So for me, indoctrination couldn't hold up to questioning and I realized it was probably false. I spent some time exploring neopaganism and plenty of time just ignoring the topic and calling myself agnostic, but I eventually figured out that it didn't matter what I might wish were true and the futility of proving a negative, so I realized I am an theist and have been all along, in the sense that I make decisions based on my understanding of morality, not what some religion says. Today, I could play a druid just fine, but would avoid cleric and paladin in most cases. I did try playing a cleric of Isis once, (the Egyptian goddess, not the islamist state), but the DM had a very narrow view of what religion looked like, and expected me to act like an obnoxious televangelist. I had the character sacrifice themselves to save the party, but I was looking for an opportunity to end the character. If I were to play a cleric or paladin now, it would have to be one that follows a code rather than a being. If you could unserstand Deontology to be roughly equivalent to Lawful Good (mostly about correct means) and Consequentialism to be more like Chaotic Good (mostly about maximizing beneficial ends), then I'd rather play Neutral Good and consider both moral duties and results, which is more aligned with Virtue Ethics. I could use the virtue system from Ultima IV, which hads a good code.
So I love Marisha, Baeu is one of my fave season 2 characters and Laudna is great. But I am not a fan of Keyleth. Its not that she's a bad character, she can just be a bit of a wet blanket for me and seemed to have a touch of main character syndrome. She was my least favourite character of season 1 followed by Vax, which made there romance scenes later on a struggle to sit through. I think Key is a bit of a marmite character. She's gonna rub some people the wrong way but that's fine. At the end of the day She's a character she made for herself and enjoyed playing...I'm still gonna skip some of her scenes when I rematch though...
I'm not super experienced watcher of CR and may be wrong but it seems really obvious why Keyleth would trust Clarota over Kima. Clarota is a person who was ostracized by his hive because of abilities he couldn't help but have, but he still cares deeply about his ppl and ready to do anything to free them. And _this_ resonates with Keyleth at the core level, this is resonates well with the way she sees the world and lives her life. And brain-eating part is also would be less off putting for her as a moon druid, one creatures eating others is a part on nature and life. Tiger also would eat duergar if happened to kill one, so🤷🏻♀️. Plus, again - all this "being faithful to your ppl even after they did ostracize you" part definitely outweigh brain eating part for Keyleth. And Kima on other hand is seems to represent everything Keyleth didn't like and her actions seems to be influenced more by her religion and pride than her care for ppl. She's server of God, not server of ppl. And adding Kima's conflict with Clarota and the fact that Kima did push towards fight that lead to Grog absence it's realistic for Keyleth to be harshier with her words and show some slight hostility. In reality i would totally see a lot of ppl acting much worse just because of Grog situation and blame Kima openly just bc they're upset. Keyleth is acting as real person and that maybe not what ppl want to see, but that definitely not justified some horrible accusations i saw about Marisha in the RUclips comments of CR clips.
Hindsight is always 20/20. I grew to like Keyleth later in the campaign, enough that I completely forgot about this interaction which I still can't help but find cringeworthy. For me this is informed by my own personal experiences and perspective and how it reminded me too much of 'Edgy Atheists' who would shit on Religion for the sake of shitting on Religion without moderation or consideration.
As for the Marisha haters, I think after Orion left people got it in their heads that if they complained enough about a character/player, that player would go away. As if they haven't been friends for years and would sooner stop filming altogether than force one of them out of the group. It's that type of entitlement that makes me really dislike the DnD Fandom, thinking you can force people to change their games because you don't like the way they play. I don't like being rude, but to anyone who thinks that way: Go watch another campaign. I promise they, and their millions of other fans, won't miss your presence.
I agree with this statement with everything in my being. don't like it? don't watch it. nobody is forcing you to stick around. But yea, I can't watch them live on twitch anymore because of how ridiculous the fans get, I prefer youtube streams instead. There is no chat to bother me there.
@@rekkwaffle7668 I only bothered with Twitch for the LOVM episode watch parties and even then I turned chat off. I’m a more recent Critter (started watching just over a year ago) and as much as I want to watch the original VM campaign, I’ve already heard enough about Tiberius to make me vom (yay trauma triggers) and not want to and I can’t stand all the toxic bullshit towards Marisha. So I guess I’d have to find a playlist or something of key VM episodes with as little Tiberius exposure as possible before they finally bounced him for his bullshit and can watch the rest of the campaign in peace. (Sorry, I’m ADHD and I can’t words very well at all this morning)
@@BiFelicia319 you can pretty much skip to the episode he leave the campaign. It's hoesntly the best way to do it. They haven't figured out how to play on camera for a few episodes. The general quality isn't as great. But by the time orion leaves, they got a better grasp on things. Also it's right as the Briarwood arc starts off too
@@BiFelicia319 Start with episode 28 (Orion leaves i ep 27) and maybe read up on what happened before on the wiki, won't take you long. The campaign is worth it, trust me.
Wow I must’ve been a rare watcher, Keyleth and Marisha as a player was almost instant fall in love once I started hearing the podcast (watched the season 1 of the show first and loved the twins instantly). But Kiki is such a fantastic character, and marisha knows her character well 😍🥰😍
I will always hate Keyleth but Marisha as much as I find her annoying gets WAYY too much hate I don’t like Keyleth because she just isn’t May cup of tea. Grog and Scanlan are WAYY better characters and later defined really well. However, I am glad to see that he does defend her. EDIT: I mean no way in a horrible way towards Marisha, like no animosity or anything.
It’s okay to not like characters, it’s even okay to not like players. For me, Keylith was worse than Tibs. If it’s okay to knock Tibs, it’s okay to knock Keyleth. She rarely knew what her spells did and honestly her RP here doesn’t make a lot of sense. They were sent by someone they trust to save Kima and they learn Kima is friends with a PC they all think is amazing so naturally she distrusts Kima and is rude to her in the middle of a life and death situation. Eh.
To each their own. What bothered some audience members about Keyleth clearly didn’t bother the cast in the same way. For them, Tiberius was a problem, but not Keyleth. Not everyone will agree.
@@SupergeekMike idk I think sometimes they did get annoyed, Matt did sometimes, the guys got annoyed with the early railroading where she does what she wants after being outvoted etc. i recall reading many comments that Keyleth gets special treatment due to being Matt’s gf which I cannot prove, but sometimes seemed that way. Marisha’s personal comments came out in Keyleth more than the others in campaign one. I think she is great in campaign 3 though. I think some criticism of marisha was too harsh she clearly doesn’t understand the mechanics as well as others - honestly Ashley and her should not have been casters forgot their spells consistently - but she seems to have less experience with RPG stuff which is okay. She isn’t as talented a voice actor like the rest but who is? She is more of a normal player on stage with high end players the contrast makes it harder than a normal home game. That being said the white knighting of her is old as well. Once Orion leaves Marisha is pretty dang close to what Orion was doing, I think him leaving was more the outside issues than game only. But at least to me, she does get better campaign 3 or at least the parts I saw.
What behavior of Orion’s do you see Keyleth’s behavior as being similar to? I’m genuinely curious, I’ve heard this critique a few times and I don’t think I understand it, but I want to understand what it’s addressed toward.
@@SupergeekMike the easiest to show is the early on railroading. The party voted to do one thing but Keyleth decides to go down the waterfall anyway. Trying to make spells do things they don’t actually do - Keyleth does this more over the campaign but she is around more so not sure more is a fair critique. She also talks outside of being Keyleth out of turn etc telling others what to do. It becomes much more apparent once Tibs is out of the picture. I apologize as I don’t recall the episodes - as there are so many - but she also does his pouting angry yelling at Matt thing when some of her spells don’t work out the way she wanted. Argues with Matt about rulings etc Now I do think it is more complicated because chat and comments were not kind to her, especially in the beginning. I think this is because of the contrast of the rest of the cast who are excellent. So I really do think she was concerned about what chat would say about her and maybe that caused her to do different things. She actually mentions a few times okay chat etc. so that gives context for her in some areas. However, if Orion did really have an addiction which is a disease that context means more than not nice comments on the internet, at least in my mind. Ultimately, I think Marisha feels some imposter syndrome in this show. She isn’t the accomplished voice actor the others are, she isn’t a fan favorite (until people tried to combat her criticism) she knows people are saying she is only there because she is Matt’s GF etc. that’s not easy for anyone. Doesn’t make it okay, but I can certainly understand it.
@@jamesritter5922 I agree, I think that’s a very thoughtful way to describe the experience she was having. I think I’ll make a video about the Keyleth subject at some point but won’t make that for a while still - these comments help me get feedback about the different experiences people had with the character.
I think its fair to not like Keyleth, I dont think its fair to not like Marisha. I really didnt like Beau until after episode 26. but harassing because I dont like a character sound like such a weird thing to me.
I think it was more just that the character was being really mean and self righteous to a torture victim that hadn’t really done anything particularly wrong. It’s valid well-founded RP, but it definitely makes sense that people would find the character less likable because of it
I dunno, you can explain the way Keyleth acts and still hate the character. No hate for Marisha, I can separate the two, but Keyleth remains insufferable pretty much the entire campaign. She's self-righteous and selfish and makes a lot of bad decisions. That can be seen here and it can be seen in another 80 episodes. I'm still making my way through the first campaign (episode 91 next) and haven't watched future campaigns, but Keyleth is genuinely my least favourite character so far, PC or NPC.
Here’s the thing: Keyleth spends the entire campaign with the weight of her decisions weighing on her, holding herself to a high standard because of her expectations and punishing herself when she falls short of impossible goals… and the messed-up part is that viewers call her self-righteous and selfish for it. The reason people point to her “bad decisions” as worse than anyone else in the party… is because Keyleth punishes herself for them. Scanlan, Percy, Vax, Vex, Pike, Grog - all of them have made major mistakes, sometimes getting themselves or others killed. But Keyleth dwells on her failings, and the audience somehow interprets that as proof she makes more mistakes (or worse mistakes) than anyone else. As you go into episode 91, I encourage yourself to think critically about what Keyleth is actually saying when she does things you interpret as self-righteous. You might still dislike her, but you also might discover that Keyleth is a character dealing with tremendous expectations from her family and her culture, and now she’s trying to reconcile that with the demands of the real world. She is, in many ways, an example of what “gifted children” go through when they leave academia and enter the real world. You don’t have to like her, but I encourage you to look closer and see the depth you might be missing.
@@SupergeekMike I'm not saying I don't understand all that. I really do. It's just that the way she comes across and deals with things makes me dislike her. I get her motivations and her reasons for acting the way she does, but that doesn't make her come across as less selfish and spoiled, it makes me want to shake her by the shoulders and shout "Stop making it all about you." I've watched a few episodes of the show, and honestly she's much better there, using the time to retcon the way she acts and improve upon the character. In the campaign sessions, though, she's someone I wouldn't want in my party if I was an adventurer.
"If you're going to comment about how much you don't like Keyleth, stop." Uh... no. We're allowed opinions. We should just be respectful about it. And yeah, I heard that maybe it's some problems I have with myself and seeing Keyleth have the same issues. Maybe. She's still my least favorite c1 character. Beau also was mostly my least favorite c2 character. I'm SO GLAD personally that Marisha isn't playing my least favorite in c3. And look. EVERY character had some good moments. Keyleth has a couple EPIC ones. But someone has to be the least favorite... and I'm just glad it's not Marisha this time. And that I like each of her characters a bit more than the last. Ultimately though, as long as we're being respectful about it, we should be able to give our opinions. I'm sure Marisha, Matt, and all the others would be fine with that.
Believing in a good god doesn't mean you're good. Many people tend to overlook that, even if we see examples of this everyday Recently I made a village that cultivates an evil god of Chaos, but their interpretation makes them live in peace with anyone. Honestly, only one player wanted to do something with them, even if rest of the party decided to just leave them alone. So he sneaked out one night and tried to use his connection to chaos to strip them of it's power... Long story short he failed and got three new levels of corruption
I definitely defend Marisha on everything with Keyleth I mean I haven’t seen much of anything with C1 but we are diving into a campaign which is midway through so the players already know how to play their characters but the audience doesn’t know. Marisha really commits to her RP with what I have seen with Beau and Laudna and she’s playing a character it’s not on her at all, it’s like her playing a VA role in a game or show. A lot of the other players also have quirks which I don’t seen people really complain about like Laura being very money grubbing even tho the party gets a lot of money(more money than what I give my players or things) she hardly wants to spend alot of money as well feels using certain spells would have been a waste instead of doing something else. Sam always under powers himself, Travis hates shopping and always wants to fight stuff. Ashley forgets a lot of her character abilities like with Yasha. But they aren’t perfect you know a lot of my own players have their quirks too which someone would hate. I have a player who no matter what always wants to test the limits of what he can do and even when he plays a different character they still do things he would do very Chaotic stupid. I have a player who very much wants to power build and do alot of damage which is very similar to how I am as a player, wanting to do these very powerful builds. I have a player who hardly pays attention and only does so when it involves their character. We still all enjoy playing the game together and are having lots of fun. With the whole Keyleth Kima situation, I know most of my own players would be very suspicious and wouldn’t like Kima especially since they pointed out that she doesn’t really seem to care if one of their close friends died in the process of completing the mission. I understand that Keyleth would want to do anything to try and rush to help Grog even if they would be underpowered for the encounter but they want to save their friend while the rest of the party wants to do them more game thing and rest up before a big fight which the whole party is pretty guilty of doing a lot where they fall behind because they want to be fully fresh for a fight which then ends up with the bad guys at a major advantage.
Marisha did very well playing a nieve character, I enjoyed Keyleth as a character and I understood the way Marisha played her. The only down fall was we didn't get more on how Keyleath grew as a chosen of Maylora.
It's wasn't so much what Marisha/Kiki was doing saying. It just went on and on and ON. Lol like we get it you've made your point lol it's hard to believe it was only 8 minutes. It felt like 30
I do not understand the hate towards Keyleth and especially towards Marisha. Keyleth is genuinely one of my favorite characters and it makes me sad that a lot of people don't like her
I don't dislike Keyleth or Marisha at all, I just find this kind of RP interaction... cringy, I guess? Rewatching it now I literally have to skip forward because it just bothers me. It isn't her fault, and even if they're televising it I think the most important thing is that she and her table had fun with it, which I think they did. It's just a little too much for me and I have trouble articulating why. Something about how antagonistic she is and her tone just drives me up the wall.
I'm about a month late replying to this, sorry about that. Much of what Keyleth does and thinks are (I think) completely in character and well thought out (with a few exceptions like vapor transformations and terminal velocity), and I think Keyleth and Marisha's development of her is wonderful. Marisha is incredibly intelligent as both a person and a player and she deserves a thousand levels of respect for how much effort she's put into the company, her characters, her friends, and the community. The sole reason I fast forward through her important/intelligent/diplomatic scenes as both Keyleth and Beauregard (not Laudna so much, which is lovely) is because of the particular intonation Marisha adopts when addressing others from a point of authority. Her voice gets deeper, breathier, and there are more pauses, all of which can add up to sounding grating, artificial, and condescending, regardless of her actual words. It's an acting choice that doesn't work for me personally. That doesn't make it wrong and it doesn't mean that Marisha is any way a bad actor or poor at character creation because she is neither of those things. People react differently to other people and the cadence in these scenes is a certain brand of off-putting and I unfortunately react to it the way I would to nails on a chalkboard. It's difficult to try to explain personal feelings without it sounding insulting, because it absolutely is not. It's just a particular idiosyncrasy that I don't jive with, and that's okay. No one has to like every single thing about a person and not liking it doesn't mean I love her any less. It's in no way Marisha's fault, just maybe there are others who react the same way I do for the same reason I do, which isn't their fault either. Not saying this is what is bothers you about the tone or antagonism, just throwing it out there. I've always kind of felt afraid of voicing this because there's a tendency to dive headfirst into accusations of misogyny when you don't like something about someone who also happens to be female, even though I myself am female and find Scanlan FAR more offensive than I ever found Keyleth, but it is what it is, I guess.
It is pretty uncomfortable, because it is disruptive and heated and protracted, like many confrontations. Most of the time, confrontation in TTRPGs is flipped immediately into a fight, a roll, or a parting, and is mechanically resolved. When a confrontation becomes a conversation, particularly one that won't lead to a mechanical resolution, it tends to remind me of actual arguments and disagreements, and raise my hackles.
I was someone that did not enjoy the character of Keyleth or the player Marisha. I wouldn't say I hated either. I just found Marisha an annoying player and the character was often annoying. The character got better for me near the end of the campaign. Season 2, for me, was a game changer in my appreciation for Marisha the player.
I don't think many people's issue was that her reaction to Kima was unrealistic per se. I think most people were just put off by the hostility and antagonistic approach. It's not something easy to watch especially considering how by this time Keyleth has a dead kid on her resume and during this whole conversation it felt like she thinks she is owed respect from a god like she has a moral high ground.
I think Keyleth's experience with the Dread Emperor actually is exactly why she's so hostile to Kima. Keyleth knows incredibly personally what can result from good intentions combined with zealous action. The most dangerous people are those who rely on being righteous to address questions about whether they are right. In Exandria, the gods are banned from direct action for good reason, and the Ashari druids are particularly suspicious of *all* extraplanar influence. Keyleth is a leader by birth in an adeific religion: it makes a lot of sense that she's suspicious of someone openly talking about their "greater good" mentality, because to Keyleth that's the sort of person who would kill a kid to get to a slaver and convince themselves that because they were trying to do a good thing, the child's death is tragic but doesn't need to be examined, learned from, or be atoned for. Keyleth isn't eloquent, but her point that justifying your actions by saying "my god says to" is pretty much the same as saying "I was just following orders," is a pretty good one.
@@danielbeshers1689 Yeah sorry but I just rewatched that scene. She started that fight on purpose, was itching to find something to latch onto. It was plain as day when Kima merely congratulated Scanlan for dealing the final blow to the king and Keyleth started with her "are you congratulating us for being murderers". Like - she knows exactly that what they did was so far from simple murder. It was plain as day that Kima irked her and she wanted to blow off some steam in that conversation.
@@danielbeshers1689 From how I understood it, their attacks on the Dread Emperor were being transferred to the kids that were chained to him and in her attempts to free one of them she accidentally killed him/her. So it was a complete accident - I’m assuming whatever she was attempting came down to a roll of the dice and she failed badly so if she had succeeded she wouldn’t have that on her conscience I suppose
Marisha and her characters are a really good slow burn I think you can see how over the years she's really improved as a roleplayer and just how awesome her characters are. I think a lot of people really failed to appreciate how good she is at playing her characters at the beginning and I would doubt anyone would these days deny how good she is with her character work. It's just that she, like talisan, are more subtle than their coworkers
On alignmement... it is funny how this is something particularly dificult to consider appart from our own views. For me, Lawful Good is the only nonsense alignment. It is an impossibility (I am quite fine with all the other 8). The only LG character I made was an absolute psycopath and awful to play, a perturbing headspace to get into and the only way someone could be LG (of course, IMO).
There is a lot of great analysis and discourse on Keyleth/Marisha, but honestly it just boils down to something simple: scenes like this are just frustrating and annoying. It doesn't matter if it's in character or justified by the narrative if it's just not fun. Her cast mates get away with a lot more because they are more skilled and seasoned actors who have better delivery, are more charismatic, are better at collaborative storytelling and working with scene partners, having the self-awareness and judgment and taste to know how to commit to your character in an appropriate and entertaining way, a better sense of when to push and when to compromise for the most fun-to-watch outcome etc. That's why her characters tend to get more tolerable with time because Marisha herself is getting better at acting as well as the collaborative storytelling aspect of the game.
Even though I don’t want to bash a player, in this series if you are going to praise certain elements of role play you also have to criticize bad elements. I.E. Marisha telling Liam to attack Rishon even though she’s not there or Vax having 5-6 luck points. Criticism of PCs can be valid, not all is just hatred for Marisha
Yes, criticism is valid and should be taken into account, but it becomes not okay when the community only ever criticizes one or two people and only give praise to the rest Edit: grammar
In this very video, I pointed out something Marisha could’ve done differently to improve communication at the table. I’m gonna talk about every episode of the show, it’s inevitable that I’ll offer some form of criticism at some point. But my criticism might not line up with yours (for example, I don’t think the two you gave are legitimate criticisms, or at least I don’t have anything meaningful to say about them). Also - my goal is to find things we can learn from to improve our own games. I don’t *have* to criticize the players just for the sake of balance.
The whole dislike of Keyleth and or Marisha, makes no sense to me. I think Marisha acts out the socially awkward character of Keyleth perfectly. What were people expecting?
Honestly, while it’s a larger topic that will demand a lot more attention, I do think the fact that Keyleth isn’t a traditional power fantasy plays a huge role in this. She’s not as cool (by design) as most of the other characters, who are either badass, witty, or both. She challenges the idea a lot of players have about what makes a “good D&D player.” The fact that she “didn’t know her spells” is another thing that freaks people out, because of course if you play D&D, you NEED to memorize every druid spell and aren’t allowed to get them wrong. When you get right down to it, a lot of aspects of Keyleth hate are just a version of the argument, “Your fun is wrong.”
I'll probably talk more about this in a future video, but there are a lot of elements at play. One is sexism, of course. There are plenty of cast members who did exactly the same thing as Marisha but never got nearly as much scrutiny, and it's easy to see why. 2015 was still very much an era where seeing women playing D&D online was uncommon, and for some viewers, it was perceived that the female players were only there to bring in male audience members, and not because they actually enjoyed D&D. (Thankfully this is *slightly* less common these days, but it was a very common mindset at the time.) Another is the fact that Keyleth has the least common fantasy archetype, so if that's your window into CR, she feels less familiar/more out of place compared to the others. A third is connected to that - Keyleth especially is a very uncommon form of wish fulfillment (the idea that you might be intended to be a leader but have to overcome your own flaws), and that felt alien to a lot of viewers. (Neither of these should matter, but it impacts audience perception, and some audience members just couldn't overcome that.) The fourth is that she is Matt's partner, and there are always those who assume that's the only reason she's at the table, instead of actually being a good D&D player. Also, even if she was only playing with them because she was dating Matt, the other players are only there because they were friends with Matt, so this shouldn't matter. But because she had the least robust resume as a voice actor, she seemed "unqualified" compared to the others (to those who cared about such ridiculous things). The fifth, ostensibly, is because she makes "so many mistakes" in "forgetting what her spells do," but truthfully, playing a high-level druid is hard, they switched editions halfway through the campaign, it's just a game so it doesn't actually matter at all, some of Matt's behavior at the table actually disincentivizes the players from memorizing their abilities (more on that another time), she doesn't REALLY make more mistakes than anyone else (they're just more visible because they're dealing with high-level spells), and it's just a game so it doesn't matter at all. This is another one where the fact that the audience expects to be entertained impacts what they criticize - rules arguments aren't fun to watch, and Keyleth/Marisha was accidentally the center of a lot of them. This was perceived as her "making mistakes" and thus being a "bad D&D player" (that is NOT my definition of a bad D&D player, by the way), and thus, "She's the worst." The sixth is because her character did sometimes make mistakes, and unlike the other characters, she didn't simply shrug them off. The most extreme version is this: When Scanlan kills a kid later in the campaign, he quickly justifies it. When Keyleth kills a kid pre-stream, it haunts her for years. That baggage makes for excellent dramatic fodder in the story of the campaign, but it inadvertently opens the door for hyper-critical viewers to deride her for "making so many mistakes." Those are my biggest observations on this, but again, I'll surely make a whole video about this in the future. In the meantime, I highly recommend William SRD's video on the subject: ruclips.net/video/mxImqEnUvnY/видео.html
@@SupergeekMike honestly you covered a lot there already. Honestly, sounds like a mix of legit criticism and unnecessary toxicity. CR has definitely got a full fledged fandom. It is unfortunate that many pull the "your the DMs spouse," card; especially since, as you put, they are all friends anyway. Those people miss the point of the show and dnd itself I think. I get that it is a game, but games are meant to be played, not always won. Edit* I would watch that in depth vid btw. Sounds like a good topic.
The "I've seen people with good intentions do bad things" could also refer to herself, since we know keyleth killed a child in the prestream game
I believe that even comes up as part of the discussion of the next episode.
She also killed a prisoner literally hours before that conversation.
Man, it is so hard to comprehend Travis missing dnd to watch age of ultron, like that idea wouldn’t even touch their minds nowadays
Also, couldn't it have been a better movie? I mean, Ultron is one of the weakest MCU entries.
I believe he mocapped for the film if I remember correctly
it also wasn't too long after this He became the official Voice actor for Thor so I think it was a good career move
@@karlmbeal you might be right
He and Laura were already playing Thor and Black Widow (respectively) on the show that had been airing since 2013, so he definitely had a relationship with Marvel and wanted to keep building it. It’s just funny how times change, and less than a year later, Laura skipped her category in an awards show to fight the Briarwoods lol
I think the backstory Kima was talking about was later used in a Chroma Conclave arc with slight changes. The "15 years ago" is a clear give away.
That’s my guess as well
In terms of Keyleth and Kima, I can see it happening. Whenever I have an NPC who is strong willed, devoted and really driven towards a goal, my players immediately dislike them, even if the goal is a good one (like saving the world). I think we have seen so many villains using the ends justify the means argument in pop culture that we all immediately distrust them.
I will say that Marisha has elaborated during a Q&A (as an answer to a question that I actually submitted, in fact) that Keyleth's distrust of Kima has roots in how the druid has seen corruption even among the most pious. She's seen her fair share of zealotry. She is cautious. And eventually, she does reconcile with Kima later on, because actions speak louder than words and Kima does earn Keyleth's respect and trust by doing so.
We also know that Keyleth dislikes the gods, and has a very different view on gods than the rest of the group, if we add inn the fact that she is still dealing with the agony of killing the kid and failing the aramente she did on her own in the "in between time" (the time in between the last home game and the first stream)
That much is clear enough, she pretty much beats you over the head with the whole "not vibing with the church" sentiment.
The thing that makes it seem off is that she voices and expresses her distrust immediately upon finding her, in the quest they were sent to *find her*, by the council member they trust who regards her as a valuable ally, IN CHAINS having been exposed to torture for days by the hands of the Duergar King.
Give people you're wary of special attention, give them shit for all I care, but Keyleth lacked tact and lacked empathy. She gave her shit as soon as she finished saying she was being tortured - interrupting her, even.
@@rodrigoa.m3566 Yeah, it felt less like, "You were tortured, and I'm sorry for that, but your quest has already done more harm than good, and maybe we should consider our options,"
and more like, "Let me be contrarian to everything you believe in based solely on the fact that you believe in a god, and completely disregard the torture you received."
I mean I get it, I've faced plenty of "contrarian just because it bothers you" people before, but in the moment, it felt like she murdered a bunch of soldiers while giggling about it, and then turned around and gaslit Kima while also claiming to be an unwilling participant in this quest.
@@rodrigoa.m3566 Keyleth beats you over the head with literally everything she has any particularly strong opinion on, to be fair.
@@biggrayalien4791contrarian just to be contrarian is exactly right
This is such a great way to learn about season 1 without having to watch thousands of hours of content. Keep it up!
The only thing that can be said about keyleth is that marisha plays a high wisdom low charisma druid well. whenever she goes on a serious speech/debate she makes good points, but the way she presents those point most often backfire, straining relationship with friendly npcs and with the audience.
if these results were intentional or desired, is something to wonder, but at least it is consistent.
It's also because Keyleth was given a role she didn't ask for but was expected of her to fulfill regardless of whether she was ready. And no one really understood on her level until much later. For instance, see the insight check in episode 9, or her interaction with Kerrek in 56.
Oh yea, ppl somehow always forget about low charisma. Like, of course she doesn't appear likeable! Just like Grog isn't smart.
I don't know why the line "They fly more" made me laugh so hard
I think character growth and progression is key. The first few levels are always more or less accidental success/grit through simple scenarios. By mid level, a party can liberate a village or city. By high level rule a kingdom.
It makes sense that lesser problems fade as the characters grow.
At 18-20 the characters are basically gods. 😜
@@faranior not in my games, I don't play 5e
@@MySqueezingArm It's just a joke
12:39 „…and Vex is able to determine, using her hunter‘s mark, that the Queen is on the _moon_“ o.o
Thank you for defending marisha in a way that ive never been able to find words to do in a just manner
On that note, I feel like Episode 22, "Aramente to Pyrah" serves as a much-needed way to give greater context for Keyleth's characterization in the Kraghammer arc as well as to show that even before that arc, she was dealing with a heavy trauma that lingered long into the start of the streamed sessions.
In fact, 22 is the moment she became my favorite VM member.
Whether I personally like Kiki or not is irrelevant I WILL throw hands on sight for Marisha Ray
Exactly. It makes no sense how "fans" refuse to separate their dislike of a character from the player. Especially when the Marisha hate held no water to begin with. People can dislike whoever they want for no reason, of course, but they don't have to be disrespectful to them in the chat/comments/whatever.
Marisha is a nice lady, and I don't think Matt would've tied the knot with her if it was otherwise. I dislike Kiki for how she goes about showing her distrust of Kima and other ways she shows her negative emotions. I mean hell I dislike Vex for her greed, just personally I dislike greedy people. But Laura Bailey and Marisha Ray are two nice women, and I for one enjoy watching their antics as well as everyone else's no matter what the character.
@@yoyohaloreach thats' really interesting beacause I found Vex's obsession with money to br one of the funniest bits in season 1😂
@@SweetDeath777 just some personal history with people like that, I can admit there are times that she can be funny.
I have never understood the hate of either. It makes no sense. I play a lot of lawful good paladins but still dont even dislike her interaction with Kena. Testing a paladins convention, faith or code is fun, though most of mine would say the fight isn't till all are heading home or something like that.
Currently watching CR 2, it's been almost a year since i saw the Underdark Arc. It's so weird (and fun) to see the old setup, the younger cast, etc. The show evolved so much.
Oh man I miss some of the more insane body horror monsters Matt came up with
Love these vids! Keep them coming! I at first was pissed a Keyleth at first but I can see her reasoning in her mind.
I just reached episode #100 from Campaign One and I am loving these analyzes. It's nice to know that when I move to the next campaign, I'll still have your videos to reminisce my first watch-through.
That’s how I feel too! I’m on 113 so I’m super close to the end. I’m already feeling sad but I’m grateful for this series to allow me to continue living with vox machina while getting excited for mighty nein
@@alliebrown4790 so close! Aah! I remember the excitement/dread of that last month of watching xD
When you mentioned mistrust, I remembered that Campaign 2 was stalling due to the incredible paranoia, the party was aimless because they didn't have any solid point of reference. Mercer noticed this, and fixed with a special appearence by Alura. The trust the party placed on her was considerably out of place... but it worked, they became able to function due to the idea of there being someone that could be trusted even if they played no relevant part and were on the other side of the word.
I love, love, love this series!
Very briefly re: Keyleth and Kima, I've noticed that Marisha has a habit (not saying good or bad, simply an RP style choice) where she extends conversations or social interactions beyond where most players would. I say Marisha because she did largely the same thing with Beau in C2 and Beau is a very different character from Keyleth. But this choice sometimes leads to great character interactions, I'd argue this one falls into that category, and sometimes just becomes tedious. It's just a stylistic choice from Marisha, but it's something worth noting when certain interactions come up.
OMG yes. Just like Liam’s grumpiness and Travis’s dislike of shopping lol
@@emilymitchell6823 and the fact that too often do we have cases where the audience CANNOT separate player from character, or completely misinterpret facial expressions.
For instance, in C2, Beau and Yasha's date. Too many times folks commented that Travis and the rest looked sleepy or bored and thus it was all a waste of time.
In truth, they were being respectful and not interrupting such an important stretch of RP. They were invested.
Interesting point! I hadn’t considered that, but that could always be a factor.
Hmm, she's almost always on the 'big shit just happened, so we need to talk about the big shit, either right now or tomorrow at the latest' side of things, which I personally appreciate, but fully understand that's not everybodys favourite thing. However, I feel like it is often a necessary thing, because other players are almost always on the 'big shit just happened, we have to leave and be cool and broody for 6 hours of play before we can acknowledge any feelings' side of things. Which can also be fun! But I'm not necessarily looking at D&D for someones moment of 'I have already figured out and reorganised all my emotions and thoughts and incorporated them into a meticulously streamlined worldview and now lets discuss our future plans', I want the adrenaline-kick reaction and then how 'that' makes sense for a person. And if it sometimes takes some floundering, circling back or run-on sentences, I just can't be mad about it. It's sincere in a way, that I find endlessly more endearing than a rehearsed hero speech.
That's a good point. I think sometimes that was my issue with some of her scenes. She tended to extend some of the stuff I was less interested in.
Frustrating as a viewer but necessary to get some of the deeper character moments
Sweeeet, new episode O.O I am always looking forward to these!
The hatred for Keyleth/Marisha always pisses me off. Marisha has always been committed to RP above all else, even if it makes her do things that don't seem like the best move. We saw it with Keyleth and how her naivety and awkwardness was played up, we saw it with Beau's brash nature and blunt way of talking to those around her, and we're seeing it with Laudna's general affect and consistent tics. Marisha always throws herself into her characters and the fact that she was scorned for that is just really upsetting. I will always prefer that dedicated RP no matter the consequences to someone who goes against their usual character in order to make the smart or right decision.
It's not even fully exclusive to Marisha. We saw the same thing when Ashly Burch came into Campaign 2 and chose to give herself disadvantage on rolls because she was fighting someone from her past who terrifies her. But because someone died in that episode, Ashly still gets shit for this decision to this day. She's said she knows whenever a new fan has reached that episode because she gets hateful dms.
And interestingly enough I never see the same scrutiny applied to any of the other mainstays when they do what their character would at the detriment of others. When Grog rushes the party into an ambush or spends way too much money on something. When Scanlan refuses to use an item of immense power just to fuck with the rest of the party. When Vax stealths away from the party while they're planning and decides to enter a dangerous place solo. It's just Keyleth/Marisha who gets the flack.
That's fair, I've seen Travis as Grog deliberately spend a truckload of money on alcohol in the episode I just watched (66) and it had no use to the party, I saw Sam's character also get swindled out of a lot of coin around the same timeframe, and I have seen party members commit crimes or murder other characters regardless of the consequences, I've seen Sam and Travis decide to have their characters run into a sacred cave when it is more likely to end up screwing the party, and so on. And Sam and Travis play my very favorite characters and I loved every second of every single one of those "bad" decisions. Even though they could have had bad consequences.
I think if someone already doesn't gel well with Keyleth or aspects of her character's personality bother you, then the player's decisions or RP will get examined more negatively.
They don't know Marisha. I don't know Marisha. It's silly to think you have an opinion on Marisha if you don't know her. I think it's fair to not like her character or the choices that character makes, but Marisha isn't a troll and she's not a cheat or a predator or a criminal or whatever. And she's not trying to play a character that's supposed to be hated like Joffrey Baratheon or Ramsay Snow. So if people actually hate her because of her character I am glad they have so little to worry about that they can spare hate for a fictional character that is, at worst, mildly annoying at times, and not even nearly all the time.
@@askthepizzaguy You're hitting the nail on the head in terms of what I was getting at with the other characters. The point wasn't "If you think Keyleth is bad then you have to hate the others, too!" It was "Literally all the players have made bad choices because it's what their characters would do, so why does only Marisha get the scrutiny?"
Grog being dumb. Scanlan blatantly sexually harassing women. Vex being greedy. Percy being an asshole. Vax throwing a wrench in planning sessions. The only one who doesn't fit into this is Pike and that's because Ashley unfortunately wasn't around often enough to do things like that, and when she was around it was usually as the party's voice of reason. But again, she did that because it's what Pike would do.
Hm, I wonder what Marisha and Ashley have in common that the players of the other characters you’ve brought up don’t. It’s just impossible to determine what the correlating factor could be.
@@Pablo360able Yep it sure is a mystery. I can't think of any correlation.
@@smoogieboogie1694 Most of the comments I’ve seen towards Ashley in the first and second campaigns were along the lines of “she can never remember how to play her character why is she even there?” Or writing her off as a reoccurring guest instead of a full member of the cast because of her absences
Sure let’s just pretend she hadn’t been on the other side of the country for months at a time, probably hadn’t had a lot of free time to brush up on the game/study and wasn’t ever back long enough between filming breaks to fully derust I guess 🙄 Especially in C2 when they didn’t have her remote in like they did in C1 so she didn’t get to play at all while in New York (except when the rest of them were over there for NYCC)
And I still see those types of comments here and there on C3 videos because “she’s been back permanently for over a year so she should know how to play by now.” And while yeah maybe? But they also went on a three month hiatus shortly after she got back. She’s not the only one who makes mistakes and forgets things either.
Most of what I’ve seen towards Marisha is “she’s only there cuz she’s sleeping with the DM”
As with more than one thing, the (successful) use of homebrew creatures requires the trust of your players.
It's also really good for throwing off the player(s) that is familiar with a significant portion of the Monster Manual, and is likely to figure out what a critter is by its description.
Sometimes, it's as simple as reskinning the monster. Other times, something completely new is called for. Obviously, creating a homebrew creature can be a fair amount of work.
An alternative is dipping into lesser known source books. One of my favorites was the Nilbog (out of the Fiend Folio) in 2E.
I think one the most important DM things Matt does that I'm not good at is tone. When he's describing anything, his tone sets the mood for the other players.
I really loved the different perspective Keyleth brought to the campaign, easily top 3 in the party when it comes to characterization.
Easy to bring a different perspective when you're a different character episode to episode and situation to situation lol
I just want to preface this comment with this statement; I like Keyleth and I enjoy Marisha's roleplay with her characters. With that said I still find the scene where she's pissy with Keema hella weird. I'm not even saying it's weird that she didn't trust her I just think her treatment of the person who IS THE ENTIRE REASON THE PARTY IS HERE, a trusted friend of Allura and the victim of the duergar's torcher doesn't make sense. Sure she was acting somewhat rashly but I personally don't think Keemah was doing anything suspicious, the only issue I could really get behind is that she was celebrating too early for Keyleth's tastes.
As for the celebration, did no one take into consideration that she'd been having hooks drawn through her flesh while Keyleth and Percy were making greeting cards? Keemah just got freed from capture, unpetrified AND is getting revenge on those that wronged her. Again nothing against Keyleth but her treatment of Keemah here still annoys me to this day simply because it just seemed unjustified in my opinion.
Also she literally just trusted a mindflayer with little to no discussion after finding him in a cave whining about getting kicked out of his gaggle of brain eaters, watched said mindflayer ear not one but TWO different brains then complained about Keemah "congratulating them on being murderers"?
Again I really do like Keyleth but I won't lie, when I first started watching I thought I wasn't going to purely because of this scene.
This monster was amazingly memorable. I haven't watched a ton of critical role, but I've watched around fifty episodes, I think, and... this one just stuck with me throughout it. I remember other great monsters ofc, but this one? Oh boy, I'll never forget him as one of the first terrifying homebrew monsters I've seen.
I just generally like this channel.
I mean, I love Marisha. Keyleth just has a personality that i dont like.... isn't that fine?
I see a lot of people using the greed of Vex or hedonistic actions of Scanlan or Ashley's forgetfulness etc. as counters as if to say, "look, everyone's flawed!" But why cant it just be that Keyleth just doesnt have the most likeable personality? I mean, she can be a real downer at times and as far as roleplay goes, Marisha knocked it out of the park as someone "destined for greatness" but burdened by that responsibility and haunted by their decisions. Its just not always the most fun thing to see. I may not HATE Keyleth, but I certainly struggled to enjoy her character moments the way I did with the others. (Plus, it does feel a bit weird that it seems like she was supposed to be an incredibly empathetic person and could reflect so heavily on her own actions and mistakes, but then quickly take a "holier than thou" approach sometimes. It seems counterintuitive, but that could just be me) That's just an attitude that I never really enjoyed, so it just rubs me the wrong way when i see it, but again, not bad rp, its just akin to tasting a flavor i dont like. Marisha's awesome, but Keyleth was far from my fav C1 character. That still doesn't make her a bad character though, and its a real shame that Marisha received so much backlash for deciding to rp such a character.
People can like or dislike whatever characters they want, the reason I asked folks not to jump into the comments to complain about her is because I don’t want my comments full of people bashing Keyleth. But I do appreciate when folks like you can make the distinction between personal preference and “objectively poor behavior,” between play style and “being bad at the game,” and look you get it, this was a much more respectful comment than most so thank you ☺️
I'm so excited for this series to reach CinderGrove revisited
Like your vids. Good analysis and thought provoking.
Really love these Vox Machina (formerly 'the shits') episodes, look forward to them a lot.
I even watched the linked vid, you charismatic sweet-talker!
Keep up the good work.
Something I definitely miss in my sessions is physical acting. I play online without a camera, so I can't convey expressions and mannerisms to my party, but the way Matt uses physical acting is incredible. Look how he moves while describing the HB monster; waving his arms, swaying from side to side, using his hands to show physical concepts and turning his head in an almost unnatural way!
I never liked Keylith, but I never held that against Marisha; my opinion is, and always was, that she knew her own character best and the only one that got a say in how the character acted is her. As viewers coming midway into a long running campaign there was likely stuff that happened to the character that shaped how she acted/reacted to situations so I generally passed it off as us just not having insight into the character. I think part of my dislike of the character might also have been her butting heads with more likeable characters, such as Kima in this case.
Another part might be Marisha’s acting style in some scenes not being my cup of tea, so that may have distorted my opinion of the character; eg her argument with Kima here comes across as haughty and holier than thou to me due to how Marisha chose to act for this scene when perhaps that wasn’t what she was going for and my perception of said acting made me infer more hostility than there actually was. Again, I don’t knock Marisha here; it’s her character and she should act her how she sees fit, not how the audience wants her to act. I can’t speak about Campaign 2 as I haven’t watched it, but from the episodes of Campaign 3 I’ve watched I haven’t had similar feelings about her character/acting there, so I do think my gripes with her acting in Campaign 1 are tied entirely to the character and not Marisha as a player/actor.
The only thing that ever really annoyed me about Marisha the player, was how she regularly misunderstood how some spells worked, but I always gave her a pass on it because there’s so many spells she needed to keep track of, on top of all the other rules in the game, plus having a life outside of D&D/CR, not to mention having switched systems means she probably had the spells/rules of the previous system knocking around, so as far as I’ve always been concerned allowances should be made, especially as it’s something all of us have fallen victim to when we play.
One positive thing about Keylith/Marisha I will say is that I don’t think I ever noticed her falling into the DM’s Girlfriend trope; I don’t recall Matt ever giving her special treatment, nor did Marisha ever appear to expect it.
I agree with the acting part for sure. I think a lot of Keyleth and Beau scenes probably would've come off better with different delivery.
If anything, the one who gets the most "hand holding" (so to speak) is Ashley, but seeing as she wasn't there half the time...
And saying about not remembering mechanics, when you listen to the episodes one after the other, you tend to notice how many times Matt has to say to the rest of the cast "You can only hold your actions. You can't do your entire turn later" in combat.
(I'm at Episode 103 of Campaign 1 that is now seriously the combat rule I am most familiar with at this point)
I just realized this sounds like Deoxys (Speed form) but like an evil fleshwarped version.
I realized after I uploaded the video that the monster is also, mechanically, a bit like Doctor Octopus.
Wait this is where the kitten hit points come from.
Yep!
I think in the rules, a long rest only needs to be 6 hours of sleep, and just 2 other hours of nonstenuous waking activity, so I think it's almost within the rules anyway, even if that doesn't matter that much.
Yeah, but I'm pretty sure that "concentrating on a spell" would prevent you from gaining the benefits of a long rest.
@@Laurence_za you right. I forgot it was concentration
I think a lot of the keylith hate is misconstrued by nothing the person expressing the hate and the people they express it to. I and a friend of mind both hated Keylith and originally blamed it on marisha, but learned when campaign 2 started that we didn't actually have a problem with how marisha played the game, we just hated keylith. And I'm sure a lot of people thought this way as well, many expressing such in these very comments. However, I think a lot of people assume they disliked it because the character was not well executed or there were issues with how she was played, but as I rewatch campaign 1 in recent times I have come to realize that it's actually something much more simple; keylith is just kind of a unlikable sometimes. And it's intirely because that is the intent. Marisha is doing a great job the whole time of playing a character who is actively hypocritical and self-egrandising to a fault, and that is almost certainly intentional. Marisha is doing a great job of acting as a character who is just unlikable by a lot of standards and when we see that we want to assume it's unintentional, because why would you intentionally want to be unlikable, but marisha is a Profesional actor and is very devoted to playing the part of her character, a character that is in fact majorly flawed, especially when dealing with other people, and she is playing to that constantly. It's a fantastic performance, and we can see that in the genuine emotional responses it provokes from so many people, even if that genuine response is a negative one.
I think the problem I have always had with the way Marisha played Keyleth in situations like this is that she tuned out and completely ignored the non-verbal and sometimes verbal cues of the other players at the table that enough was enough and to just move on. Even Orion tried to defuse the situation here and she completely walked over it.
Yes she was creating tension, but it was bad tension. This wasn't the dramatic tension of the lava flow and the hourglass of the prior episode, it was tension that drained some of the life out of the table and the episode. She did the same thing with Spireling Shenn in the Chroma Conclave arch, and that was an extremely detrimental thing to do in world.
There were even times where it felt like maybe something happened between her and Matt earlier in the day and she was venting at him, in character. Like when you are at a dinner party and the hosts had a huge argument just before the guests arrived and the negative energy is still palpable. And I know she argues that she was trying to roleplay Keyleth's stats, but I think these moments were too often defended with the "Well, it is what here character would do."
I think other than that, Marisha is great, and she has been a driving force behind the development of CR as not only a viable business, but also as a force of good. But, there are still idiosyncrasies she has at the table that I don't appreciate. I am also really critical of how Vox Machina almost never set up Vax's Assassinate feature, and there where a couple of times, like in the island fight against Ripley where it probably resulting in the death (temporary) of a PC.
Love to see some Marisha love! Honestly the fact that some of Keyleth's scenes WERE difficult to watch speaks to marisha's skill as a roleplayer. I saw a lot of my own insecurities in Keyleth which isn't always easy to see, but it's important and real. Keyleth grows so much and is always, always trying ❤️
I never disliked keyleth, except during this conversation with kima, and all the similar keyleth convos after. Not because I didn't see how it was sensible or justifiable in some way, just because it was very uncomfortable and not particularly fun to watch, and I can't imagine me having fun playing it either. That's more of a playstyle difference than anything else, tho
Fair enough
I'm really enjoying these analysis recap episodes!
I have always used homebrew monsters (with the only exception of my current campaign, mainly because the concept is "everything is rolled on a random table"), and I think it's a ton of fun. Whether it is magically enhanced goblins (one of which is actually a "goblin bomb") or Resident Evil style mega zombies, I love creating homebrew monsters, most of the time horrifying.
I mean, not all gods are good right? The betrayer gods are still gods.
I hate Keyleth but love Beau. It's almost like they're fictional characters and not the same as entity as Marisha (whom we do not have even a parasocial relationship with as viewers). However, I do find Keyleth distrusting gods also to be an important part of the game viewers that don't actually play the game might miss: even though druids (and paladins) are divine casters, they do NOT get their powers from deities.
I stopped watching Crit Role in S3 not because of the show, but because the fandom just became too much. And, the toxicity trails all the way back to the beginning where people had some serious beef with Marisha IRL because they disagreed with Keyleth. That sounds healthy.
The hatred for Campaign 3 is baffling. People are upset that the show is no longer live. People are upset that the show is hitting "mainstream" (it's not, it's just popular among its circles now).
People are upset that it's not Campaign 1.
People are upset that they reference Campaign 1 and 2 more now.
There's no consistency, there's no direction with their criticism, it comes off as whining about how Critical Role was better when it was smaller, less successful, just a couple hundred viewers per episode. Like a toxic partner saying the early days of the relationship were more fun and that we should go back to that.
6:35 the satanic panic is still (sadly) alive and well in many areas...
This is a good channel. This is a good series. I like Mike.
I think people forget how hard it is to play a consistent character with different worldviews from yours...
And whoever says they are perfect at it probably didnt have millions of people watching and disecting their character for Hours of gameplay.
Marisha has gotten better with time but still you can see the Marisha drip into every character... as you can see Liam and Laura's etc etc...
Beau was more consistent because she was alligned with the Player's tendencies and worldview... so yeah, maybe At The Time this seemed weird from Keyleth but Marisha tried to add it to Kiki ... you can be surprised at how your own character reacts at certain things, and ask Why and develop on that...
I admit Keyleth's inconsistencies drove me crazy but having played a bit more now I think: hey... its improv, and being in the spotlight Hey,things come out weird sometimes and you gotta roll with it.
( talking to myself xD)
Beau went through a stretch where she was insufferable, but at both ends of the campaign she was much better at not being insufferably whiney. Laudna is finally a good balance of damaged, but not whiney
I like that half of this episode is just "in defense of keyleth". I would say, getting into critrole quite late with the animated show and jumping right away into campaign 3, its kind of fascinating to see what people reactions were to Keyleth at the time. As far as I can tell, people like her fine in the show, and they absolutely love Laudna. Seeing all the hate Marisha received is a big stretch. But I also absolutly can see why Keyleth was disliked by most of the audience back in 2014
I think part of the problem was people at the time didn't see what she was going for. Also at a time when the long term character journey role playing wasn't really expected from CR.
With TLoVM, not only do they know the destination of her arc, but they can build the nature of the character with recognisable animation choices. A lot harder to get across with no real visual clues. It's something the players and the audience learned through the first campaign, and is still being refined. Although here it is rough, as I feel that Marisha wants a key character roleplay moment as the situation calls for it for Keyleth, but hasn't reached the stage of putting those watching out of her mind, and the whole thing comes over as a theatre improv session.
As I started at C2, I couldn't help but see the post VM wake of the anti Marisha hate and couldn't really understand it. I liked Beau and what she brought to things. Going back and seeing C1, I spotted pretty early what she was doing with Keyleth.
I think an animated series is probably the best way to showcase the character as she plays into a lot of familiar anime tropes. It's a real pity doing those tropes as a RP character where it dropped in and improvised over 3 years would lead to the hate that Marisha received.
I personally loved the conversation between Keyleth and Kima. I never blamed her for being suspicious and, given the conversations she and Percy have later, it really fits with her beliefs.
It’s a wild experience coming back to it after watching the rest of the campaign.
Oh man. Starting from the beginning- a trip in the way back machine
How many ideas for future videos did you have while making this? I count two or three haha.
NEW DEMYSTIFIED LETS GOOOO
22:10 When a player cheats it ruins the game, when a DM cheats it can make the game.
It can also make the game less fun if your players know you're doing it, which is why we should be sparing in our deployment.
@@geoffdewitt6845 I mean absolutely. Better off never than too much. Ideas like that can be dangerous when misused.
I found this now. It's a good idea. I love this
Hard to think that this was 7 years ago.
while i agree with your interpretation of what keyleth was trying to communicate i think why this blow up doesn't hit while beau's later clashes with caleb do is the consistency of the rp. we get 0 clue keyleth doesn't like gods or excessive violence at all. she's been cheerfully shoving duregar under lava and dragging around dead dwarves and offering excised hearts to vax as minxie. her popping off at the torture victim for congratulating them on defeating the guy the they were trying to defeat comes out of nowhere.
For about ~5minutes in...
I came in very late caring even indirectly about C.R, and I was never exposed to any Keylith drama.
But I still have to say - At least in Episode 28, the **player** struck me as very rude to other members. I guess the Tiberius drama is a big part of that-
But the personal behavior, outside of in-character things, really did leave a bad taste in my mouth. I came away with that impression without any exposure to all the drama.
So you can say what you want, but I really don't think it all boils down to just drama about the character.
One of my favorite Keyleth moments is coming up yet. I can't help but smile and/or laugh whenever I think about it.
Ooh I’m curious which moment that is… :)
@@SupergeekMike The wyvern polymorph
@@shogonekocosplay1416 Oooooooh that's a good one!
Love this video!
Jokes on you, I actually do have an after show / afters on my D&D games
Its probably not the intention, but in a lot of media that isnt dnd, bahamut is often portrayed more evil or at least antagonistically compared to him being a dragon god of justice in dnd, in video games if bahamut is there, 90% of the time its to have a badass fight with a huge dragon god, so assumptions and preconceptions from outside, while still not as bad as what you'd probably have for a mind flayer, aren't likely as good as what a long time dnd player would have.
That seems to be because the name Bahamut comes from Arabic mythology (or, probably to be more accurate, mistranslations of the Arabic word for “leviathan” from what we think of as the Old Testament). It’s essentially referred to as a monster that lies beneath the surface of the world.
This seems to be why so many other pieces of media appropriate that name for their own version of a mythological monster, it’s pretty mailable ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’ll admit I haven’t kept updated on critical role and I truly wished they’d made it easier to watch the earlier seasons.
On Marisha’s roleplaying I feel she connects with her character well and she does seem to draw out social interactions more than what I’ve seen with most other players. Sometimes that tends to come off as a bit pretentious and scene chewing but it’s how she plays the character and in the end sometimes you have to go against the party on occasions and be critical in some actions previously taken. Not all lawful good people are fair people they can easily turn to be a tyrant.
This reminds me of a homebrew game we played for nearly three years and my character would been considered as am artificer, mad scientist was the class and over the course of the campaign he’d been eager to build destructive things until he had seen what happens when people like him go unchecked and he begins to have his tony stark moment that he needs to help people more but a few huge disasters and unleashing an army of the undead later his popular opinion was shot people and cities where terrified of him and our bbeg exploited that and when the final showdown happened it was a capitulation the city states saw the bbeg as being someone that brought stability and my character was seen as someone to fear. So yeah the are we the baddies moment. Caught some of us off guard but it was easy to catch a few bits of insight that the mood had shifted. The conclusion was even though we stopped the undead army and removed a elder god of terror threat my character was privately acknowledged by the leaders of our alliance but the publicity condemned him which three of the party members hated but my guy was used to it and so he set off to leave society behind.
Keylith was right about a lot, just usually wrong about which NPC did what evil
Is Orion's comment at 20:20 poking fun at Matt's overuse of Toothy Maw, or had that not happened yet?
I don’t think it had happened yet, at least that we’d seen on-stream
The only thing I didn't like about Keyleth was the fact that her description of the character at the top of the game had basically no relation to the character herself. When Marisha was talking about Keyleth in the intro, she made the character sound like a badass loner instead of this insecure novice adventurer who would eventually grow into badassdom. Otherwise, I liked her. As far as Marisha as a person, I've never met her, but she seems like a genuinely nice person and a fun person to hang out with.
Matt was probably long past annoyed with the flying carpet bypassing every terrain challenge, and to me, he didn't sound too enthused about the levitating stone disk trick. I'm a podcast listener, so when I listened to these episodes, I was still trying to link voices with characters and their players, so I don't recall; how did they get horizontal motion? Was Keyleth towing them somehow? I also don't recall how they got around the 500 lb. weight limit.
"One creature or loose object of your choice that you can see within range rises vertically, up to 20 feet, and remains suspended there for the duration. The spell can levitate a target that weighs up to 500 pounds. An unwilling creature that succeeds on a Constitution saving throw is unaffected.
The target can move only by pushing or pulling against a fixed object or surface within reach (such as a wall or a ceiling), which allows it to move as if it were climbing."
I find it honestly silly that so many people feel they have to clarify everything that Keyleth did that (some) fans hated. The kind of ire that Keyleth (/Marisha) received is primarily as a result of how unreasonable most of these instances seemed to fans upon first experiencing them through the campaign. I am not defending the mindless Redditor hatred directed towards Marisha, not one bit. But I also think it's childish to dismiss all criticism of the character she played, when there is plenty to criticize.
When I watched this episode first, I was wondering why she was being so hostile - while being thanked, not congratulated. She was also desperately reading into things Kima was saying, just so she could continue that hostility. There are times other characters/players have done dumb things, that left fans and other players wondering why they did them SPOILER ALERT HERE: I would say primarily like when Scanlan left the party.
I think a lot of times when people rush to Keyleth/Marisha's defence, it's often done by stating something along the lines of "You just don't understand the context." Like, no. It doesn't work that way. I'm seeing the context play out in front of me, Marisha's past doesn't matter for the interaction between Keyleth and Kima, even if it does for her personally, and that's completely fine. But I think the biggest issue so many of Keyleth "haters" have is that Keyleth is simultaneously naive, and incredibly self-righteous. That's not a combination that's very likeable, and she's not like this all the time, of course. But when she is, it's grating, and doesn't endear her to people, especially if in the same instance she is also being irrational, angry or downright stupid (#GoldfishIncident).
This was all played much better with their dealings with Raishan. There I actually loved Keyleth's adamant "No deal, no negotiation" while Percy argued that they should hear her out while still not trusting a single word that came out her mouth.
It was also such a grand character moment where GROG had to tell her to show some restraint and patience.
This part was Keyleth's low point to me. She did get a lot better as it went on, but I wasn't fully on until around the beginning of the Chroma Conclave (still has my favorite HDYWTDT in how she killed Sylas Briarwood "I want him to eat a bag of holy dicks!")
Not a big fan of the idea that 'some people were jerks to this person therefore you aren't allowed to say anything bad about their character'. Keyleth was inconsistent and hypocritical (not bad character traits for dramatic purposes, but she was never taken to task for this in-game) and this conversation with Kima always left a sour taste in my mouth. Not because she pushes back or distrusts Kima, but because she is *constantly* putting words in Kima's mouth. Listen to the clip that was played again-- Kima says something relatively innocuous and Keyleth just goes straight to accusing her of zealotry, putting words in her mouth, and effectively mocking her religion... and nobody else intervenes. Nobody else calls out Keyleth for judging somebody they met, like, twenty minutes ago based on nothing, and Keyleth maintains this weird moral superiority about telling somebody else what THEY are thinking through her own skewed lens. And again, as a character trait, this is really interesting! But she's never taken to task.
This never comes back to bite her. It's a character trait I personally hate in any work of fiction-- I'm told one thing about her by the narration but the character's actual actions run utterly contrary to it. 'Keyleth is so empathic' while she's literally berating somebody because of factors that she completely made up.
yeah I think the thing that bugs me is just that lady kima literally JUST escaped from being traumatically tortured, and she just shows like zero sympathy at all
I like keyleth and marisha but i think you missed the mark on this one. This episode gave her a hard journey to get me to like her again.
It's not about her "irrational" line of thought. Critical role was my first dnd thing, so mind flayer vs bahamut meant nothing to me.
Kima opens up to them, talks about her genuine trauma from being tortured. Skin torn repeatedly while her assailants reveled in her suffering. She thanks them for rescueing her from that dark place, and keyleth acts like she is thanking them for killing innocents. Keyleth is supposed to be this kind, compassionate soul. But she makes light of Kima's torture and would rather belittle someone already going through the worst month of their life instead of making amends over stepped on toes.
Interesting, I didn't realize I had that in common with Marisha.
I lived in GA and SC during the satanic panic, and seeing how wrong the church leaders were about D&D and how unquestioningly the followers bought into it, it got me to questioning what else they might be wrong about. Seeing misogyny and racism throughout that culture was disturbing too, although as a kid I didn't realize or understand even half of it. So for me, indoctrination couldn't hold up to questioning and I realized it was probably false. I spent some time exploring neopaganism and plenty of time just ignoring the topic and calling myself agnostic, but I eventually figured out that it didn't matter what I might wish were true and the futility of proving a negative, so I realized I am an theist and have been all along, in the sense that I make decisions based on my understanding of morality, not what some religion says.
Today, I could play a druid just fine, but would avoid cleric and paladin in most cases. I did try playing a cleric of Isis once, (the Egyptian goddess, not the islamist state), but the DM had a very narrow view of what religion looked like, and expected me to act like an obnoxious televangelist. I had the character sacrifice themselves to save the party, but I was looking for an opportunity to end the character.
If I were to play a cleric or paladin now, it would have to be one that follows a code rather than a being. If you could unserstand Deontology to be roughly equivalent to Lawful Good (mostly about correct means) and Consequentialism to be more like Chaotic Good (mostly about maximizing beneficial ends), then I'd rather play Neutral Good and consider both moral duties and results, which is more aligned with Virtue Ethics. I could use the virtue system from Ultima IV, which hads a good code.
So I love Marisha, Baeu is one of my fave season 2 characters and Laudna is great.
But I am not a fan of Keyleth. Its not that she's a bad character, she can just be a bit of a wet blanket for me and seemed to have a touch of main character syndrome. She was my least favourite character of season 1 followed by Vax, which made there romance scenes later on a struggle to sit through.
I think Key is a bit of a marmite character. She's gonna rub some people the wrong way but that's fine. At the end of the day She's a character she made for herself and enjoyed playing...I'm still gonna skip some of her scenes when I rematch though...
I'm not late for once!
I'm not super experienced watcher of CR and may be wrong but it seems really obvious why Keyleth would trust Clarota over Kima. Clarota is a person who was ostracized by his hive because of abilities he couldn't help but have, but he still cares deeply about his ppl and ready to do anything to free them. And _this_ resonates with Keyleth at the core level, this is resonates well with the way she sees the world and lives her life. And brain-eating part is also would be less off putting for her as a moon druid, one creatures eating others is a part on nature and life. Tiger also would eat duergar if happened to kill one, so🤷🏻♀️. Plus, again - all this "being faithful to your ppl even after they did ostracize you" part definitely outweigh brain eating part for Keyleth. And Kima on other hand is seems to represent everything Keyleth didn't like and her actions seems to be influenced more by her religion and pride than her care for ppl. She's server of God, not server of ppl. And adding Kima's conflict with Clarota and the fact that Kima did push towards fight that lead to Grog absence it's realistic for Keyleth to be harshier with her words and show some slight hostility. In reality i would totally see a lot of ppl acting much worse just because of Grog situation and blame Kima openly just bc they're upset. Keyleth is acting as real person and that maybe not what ppl want to see, but that definitely not justified some horrible accusations i saw about Marisha in the RUclips comments of CR clips.
Hindsight is always 20/20. I grew to like Keyleth later in the campaign, enough that I completely forgot about this interaction which I still can't help but find cringeworthy. For me this is informed by my own personal experiences and perspective and how it reminded me too much of 'Edgy Atheists' who would shit on Religion for the sake of shitting on Religion without moderation or consideration.
As for the Marisha haters, I think after Orion left people got it in their heads that if they complained enough about a character/player, that player would go away. As if they haven't been friends for years and would sooner stop filming altogether than force one of them out of the group. It's that type of entitlement that makes me really dislike the DnD Fandom, thinking you can force people to change their games because you don't like the way they play.
I don't like being rude, but to anyone who thinks that way: Go watch another campaign. I promise they, and their millions of other fans, won't miss your presence.
I agree with this statement with everything in my being. don't like it? don't watch it. nobody is forcing you to stick around. But yea, I can't watch them live on twitch anymore because of how ridiculous the fans get, I prefer youtube streams instead. There is no chat to bother me there.
@@rekkwaffle7668 I only bothered with Twitch for the LOVM episode watch parties and even then I turned chat off. I’m a more recent Critter (started watching just over a year ago) and as much as I want to watch the original VM campaign, I’ve already heard enough about Tiberius to make me vom (yay trauma triggers) and not want to and I can’t stand all the toxic bullshit towards Marisha.
So I guess I’d have to find a playlist or something of key VM episodes with as little Tiberius exposure as possible before they finally bounced him for his bullshit and can watch the rest of the campaign in peace. (Sorry, I’m ADHD and I can’t words very well at all this morning)
@@BiFelicia319 you can pretty much skip to the episode he leave the campaign. It's hoesntly the best way to do it. They haven't figured out how to play on camera for a few episodes. The general quality isn't as great. But by the time orion leaves, they got a better grasp on things. Also it's right as the Briarwood arc starts off too
@@rekkwaffle7668 Thanks so much, mate! 🙏🏻 You’re a life/sanity-saver! 😃
@@BiFelicia319 Start with episode 28 (Orion leaves i ep 27) and maybe read up on what happened before on the wiki, won't take you long.
The campaign is worth it, trust me.
Wow I must’ve been a rare watcher, Keyleth and Marisha as a player was almost instant fall in love once I started hearing the podcast (watched the season 1 of the show first and loved the twins instantly). But Kiki is such a fantastic character, and marisha knows her character well 😍🥰😍
I will always hate Keyleth but Marisha as much as I find her annoying gets WAYY too much hate
I don’t like Keyleth because she just isn’t May cup of tea. Grog and Scanlan are WAYY better characters and later defined really well. However, I am glad to see that he does defend her.
EDIT: I mean no way in a horrible way towards Marisha, like no animosity or anything.
It’s okay to not like characters, it’s even okay to not like players. For me, Keylith was worse than Tibs. If it’s okay to knock Tibs, it’s okay to knock Keyleth. She rarely knew what her spells did and honestly her RP here doesn’t make a lot of sense. They were sent by someone they trust to save Kima and they learn Kima is friends with a PC they all think is amazing so naturally she distrusts Kima and is rude to her in the middle of a life and death situation. Eh.
To each their own. What bothered some audience members about Keyleth clearly didn’t bother the cast in the same way. For them, Tiberius was a problem, but not Keyleth. Not everyone will agree.
@@SupergeekMike idk I think sometimes they did get annoyed, Matt did sometimes, the guys got annoyed with the early railroading where she does what she wants after being outvoted etc. i recall reading many comments that Keyleth gets special treatment due to being Matt’s gf which I cannot prove, but sometimes seemed that way. Marisha’s personal comments came out in Keyleth more than the others in campaign one. I think she is great in campaign 3 though.
I think some criticism of marisha was too harsh she clearly doesn’t understand the mechanics as well as others - honestly Ashley and her should not have been casters forgot their spells consistently - but she seems to have less experience with RPG stuff which is okay. She isn’t as talented a voice actor like the rest but who is? She is more of a normal player on stage with high end players the contrast makes it harder than a normal home game.
That being said the white knighting of her is old as well. Once Orion leaves Marisha is pretty dang close to what Orion was doing, I think him leaving was more the outside issues than game only. But at least to me, she does get better campaign 3 or at least the parts I saw.
What behavior of Orion’s do you see Keyleth’s behavior as being similar to? I’m genuinely curious, I’ve heard this critique a few times and I don’t think I understand it, but I want to understand what it’s addressed toward.
@@SupergeekMike the easiest to show is the early on railroading. The party voted to do one thing but Keyleth decides to go down the waterfall anyway. Trying to make spells do things they don’t actually do - Keyleth does this more over the campaign but she is around more so not sure more is a fair critique. She also talks outside of being Keyleth out of turn etc telling others what to do. It becomes much more apparent once Tibs is out of the picture. I apologize as I don’t recall the episodes - as there are so many - but she also does his pouting angry yelling at Matt thing when some of her spells don’t work out the way she wanted. Argues with Matt about rulings etc Now I do think it is more complicated because chat and comments were not kind to her, especially in the beginning. I think this is because of the contrast of the rest of the cast who are excellent. So I really do think she was concerned about what chat would say about her and maybe that caused her to do different things. She actually mentions a few times okay chat etc. so that gives context for her in some areas. However, if Orion did really have an addiction which is a disease that context means more than not nice comments on the internet, at least in my mind. Ultimately, I think Marisha feels some imposter syndrome in this show. She isn’t the accomplished voice actor the others are, she isn’t a fan favorite (until people tried to combat her criticism) she knows people are saying she is only there because she is Matt’s GF etc. that’s not easy for anyone. Doesn’t make it okay, but I can certainly understand it.
@@jamesritter5922 I agree, I think that’s a very thoughtful way to describe the experience she was having. I think I’ll make a video about the Keyleth subject at some point but won’t make that for a while still - these comments help me get feedback about the different experiences people had with the character.
I think its fair to not like Keyleth, I dont think its fair to not like Marisha. I really didnt like Beau until after episode 26. but harassing because I dont like a character sound like such a weird thing to me.
I think it was more just that the character was being really mean and self righteous to a torture victim that hadn’t really done anything particularly wrong. It’s valid well-founded RP, but it definitely makes sense that people would find the character less likable because of it
I dunno, you can explain the way Keyleth acts and still hate the character. No hate for Marisha, I can separate the two, but Keyleth remains insufferable pretty much the entire campaign. She's self-righteous and selfish and makes a lot of bad decisions. That can be seen here and it can be seen in another 80 episodes. I'm still making my way through the first campaign (episode 91 next) and haven't watched future campaigns, but Keyleth is genuinely my least favourite character so far, PC or NPC.
Here’s the thing: Keyleth spends the entire campaign with the weight of her decisions weighing on her, holding herself to a high standard because of her expectations and punishing herself when she falls short of impossible goals… and the messed-up part is that viewers call her self-righteous and selfish for it. The reason people point to her “bad decisions” as worse than anyone else in the party… is because Keyleth punishes herself for them. Scanlan, Percy, Vax, Vex, Pike, Grog - all of them have made major mistakes, sometimes getting themselves or others killed. But Keyleth dwells on her failings, and the audience somehow interprets that as proof she makes more mistakes (or worse mistakes) than anyone else.
As you go into episode 91, I encourage yourself to think critically about what Keyleth is actually saying when she does things you interpret as self-righteous. You might still dislike her, but you also might discover that Keyleth is a character dealing with tremendous expectations from her family and her culture, and now she’s trying to reconcile that with the demands of the real world. She is, in many ways, an example of what “gifted children” go through when they leave academia and enter the real world.
You don’t have to like her, but I encourage you to look closer and see the depth you might be missing.
@@SupergeekMike I'm not saying I don't understand all that. I really do. It's just that the way she comes across and deals with things makes me dislike her. I get her motivations and her reasons for acting the way she does, but that doesn't make her come across as less selfish and spoiled, it makes me want to shake her by the shoulders and shout "Stop making it all about you."
I've watched a few episodes of the show, and honestly she's much better there, using the time to retcon the way she acts and improve upon the character. In the campaign sessions, though, she's someone I wouldn't want in my party if I was an adventurer.
"If you're going to comment about how much you don't like Keyleth, stop." Uh... no. We're allowed opinions. We should just be respectful about it. And yeah, I heard that maybe it's some problems I have with myself and seeing Keyleth have the same issues. Maybe. She's still my least favorite c1 character. Beau also was mostly my least favorite c2 character. I'm SO GLAD personally that Marisha isn't playing my least favorite in c3. And look. EVERY character had some good moments. Keyleth has a couple EPIC ones. But someone has to be the least favorite... and I'm just glad it's not Marisha this time. And that I like each of her characters a bit more than the last.
Ultimately though, as long as we're being respectful about it, we should be able to give our opinions. I'm sure Marisha, Matt, and all the others would be fine with that.
Believing in a good god doesn't mean you're good. Many people tend to overlook that, even if we see examples of this everyday
Recently I made a village that cultivates an evil god of Chaos, but their interpretation makes them live in peace with anyone. Honestly, only one player wanted to do something with them, even if rest of the party decided to just leave them alone. So he sneaked out one night and tried to use his connection to chaos to strip them of it's power...
Long story short he failed and got three new levels of corruption
I definitely defend Marisha on everything with Keyleth I mean I haven’t seen much of anything with C1 but we are diving into a campaign which is midway through so the players already know how to play their characters but the audience doesn’t know. Marisha really commits to her RP with what I have seen with Beau and Laudna and she’s playing a character it’s not on her at all, it’s like her playing a VA role in a game or show.
A lot of the other players also have quirks which I don’t seen people really complain about like Laura being very money grubbing even tho the party gets a lot of money(more money than what I give my players or things) she hardly wants to spend alot of money as well feels using certain spells would have been a waste instead of doing something else. Sam always under powers himself, Travis hates shopping and always wants to fight stuff. Ashley forgets a lot of her character abilities like with Yasha. But they aren’t perfect you know a lot of my own players have their quirks too which someone would hate. I have a player who no matter what always wants to test the limits of what he can do and even when he plays a different character they still do things he would do very Chaotic stupid. I have a player who very much wants to power build and do alot of damage which is very similar to how I am as a player, wanting to do these very powerful builds. I have a player who hardly pays attention and only does so when it involves their character. We still all enjoy playing the game together and are having lots of fun.
With the whole Keyleth Kima situation, I know most of my own players would be very suspicious and wouldn’t like Kima especially since they pointed out that she doesn’t really seem to care if one of their close friends died in the process of completing the mission. I understand that Keyleth would want to do anything to try and rush to help Grog even if they would be underpowered for the encounter but they want to save their friend while the rest of the party wants to do them more game thing and rest up before a big fight which the whole party is pretty guilty of doing a lot where they fall behind because they want to be fully fresh for a fight which then ends up with the bad guys at a major advantage.
Marisha did very well playing a nieve character, I enjoyed Keyleth as a character and I understood the way Marisha played her.
The only down fall was we didn't get more on how Keyleath grew as a chosen of Maylora.
It's wasn't so much what Marisha/Kiki was doing saying. It just went on and on and ON. Lol like we get it you've made your point lol it's hard to believe it was only 8 minutes. It felt like 30
I do not understand the hate towards Keyleth and especially towards Marisha. Keyleth is genuinely one of my favorite characters and it makes me sad that a lot of people don't like her
It’s messed up
I don't dislike Keyleth or Marisha at all, I just find this kind of RP interaction... cringy, I guess? Rewatching it now I literally have to skip forward because it just bothers me. It isn't her fault, and even if they're televising it I think the most important thing is that she and her table had fun with it, which I think they did. It's just a little too much for me and I have trouble articulating why. Something about how antagonistic she is and her tone just drives me up the wall.
I'm about a month late replying to this, sorry about that.
Much of what Keyleth does and thinks are (I think) completely in character and well thought out (with a few exceptions like vapor transformations and terminal velocity), and I think Keyleth and Marisha's development of her is wonderful. Marisha is incredibly intelligent as both a person and a player and she deserves a thousand levels of respect for how much effort she's put into the company, her characters, her friends, and the community.
The sole reason I fast forward through her important/intelligent/diplomatic scenes as both Keyleth and Beauregard (not Laudna so much, which is lovely) is because of the particular intonation Marisha adopts when addressing others from a point of authority. Her voice gets deeper, breathier, and there are more pauses, all of which can add up to sounding grating, artificial, and condescending, regardless of her actual words. It's an acting choice that doesn't work for me personally. That doesn't make it wrong and it doesn't mean that Marisha is any way a bad actor or poor at character creation because she is neither of those things. People react differently to other people and the cadence in these scenes is a certain brand of off-putting and I unfortunately react to it the way I would to nails on a chalkboard.
It's difficult to try to explain personal feelings without it sounding insulting, because it absolutely is not. It's just a particular idiosyncrasy that I don't jive with, and that's okay. No one has to like every single thing about a person and not liking it doesn't mean I love her any less. It's in no way Marisha's fault, just maybe there are others who react the same way I do for the same reason I do, which isn't their fault either. Not saying this is what is bothers you about the tone or antagonism, just throwing it out there. I've always kind of felt afraid of voicing this because there's a tendency to dive headfirst into accusations of misogyny when you don't like something about someone who also happens to be female, even though I myself am female and find Scanlan FAR more offensive than I ever found Keyleth, but it is what it is, I guess.
It is pretty uncomfortable, because it is disruptive and heated and protracted, like many confrontations. Most of the time, confrontation in TTRPGs is flipped immediately into a fight, a roll, or a parting, and is mechanically resolved.
When a confrontation becomes a conversation, particularly one that won't lead to a mechanical resolution, it tends to remind me of actual arguments and disagreements, and raise my hackles.
Hey does anyone have the link to that keyleth analysis I love keyleth but I'd love to watch it and learn more of the subject.
Yes indeed, it’s by the wonderful William SRD: ruclips.net/video/mxImqEnUvnY/видео.html
@@SupergeekMike Thank you so much. Keep up the amazing work these vids help me have a more critical (lol) eye to one of my newest hyperfixations
I was someone that did not enjoy the character of Keyleth or the player Marisha. I wouldn't say I hated either. I just found Marisha an annoying player and the character was often annoying. The character got better for me near the end of the campaign.
Season 2, for me, was a game changer in my appreciation for Marisha the player.
I don't think many people's issue was that her reaction to Kima was unrealistic per se.
I think most people were just put off by the hostility and antagonistic approach. It's not something easy to watch especially considering how by this time Keyleth has a dead kid on her resume and during this whole conversation it felt like she thinks she is owed respect from a god like she has a moral high ground.
I think Keyleth's experience with the Dread Emperor actually is exactly why she's so hostile to Kima. Keyleth knows incredibly personally what can result from good intentions combined with zealous action. The most dangerous people are those who rely on being righteous to address questions about whether they are right.
In Exandria, the gods are banned from direct action for good reason, and the Ashari druids are particularly suspicious of *all* extraplanar influence. Keyleth is a leader by birth in an adeific religion: it makes a lot of sense that she's suspicious of someone openly talking about their "greater good" mentality, because to Keyleth that's the sort of person who would kill a kid to get to a slaver and convince themselves that because they were trying to do a good thing, the child's death is tragic but doesn't need to be examined, learned from, or be atoned for.
Keyleth isn't eloquent, but her point that justifying your actions by saying "my god says to" is pretty much the same as saying "I was just following orders," is a pretty good one.
And the fact that we just saw her slowly kill a Duegar by pushing him into lava.
@@danielbeshers1689 Yeah sorry but I just rewatched that scene. She started that fight on purpose, was itching to find something to latch onto. It was plain as day when Kima merely congratulated Scanlan for dealing the final blow to the king and Keyleth started with her "are you congratulating us for being murderers". Like - she knows exactly that what they did was so far from simple murder. It was plain as day that Kima irked her and she wanted to blow off some steam in that conversation.
@@Lathlaer I don't see how those can't both be true. Someone can have a rational opinion rooted in an emotional reaction.
@@danielbeshers1689 From how I understood it, their attacks on the Dread Emperor were being transferred to the kids that were chained to him and in her attempts to free one of them she accidentally killed him/her. So it was a complete accident - I’m assuming whatever she was attempting came down to a roll of the dice and she failed badly so if she had succeeded she wouldn’t have that on her conscience I suppose
Marisha and her characters are a really good slow burn I think you can see how over the years she's really improved as a roleplayer and just how awesome her characters are. I think a lot of people really failed to appreciate how good she is at playing her characters at the beginning and I would doubt anyone would these days deny how good she is with her character work. It's just that she, like talisan, are more subtle than their coworkers
On alignmement... it is funny how this is something particularly dificult to consider appart from our own views. For me, Lawful Good is the only nonsense alignment. It is an impossibility (I am quite fine with all the other 8). The only LG character I made was an absolute psycopath and awful to play, a perturbing headspace to get into and the only way someone could be LG (of course, IMO).
There is a lot of great analysis and discourse on Keyleth/Marisha, but honestly it just boils down to something simple: scenes like this are just frustrating and annoying. It doesn't matter if it's in character or justified by the narrative if it's just not fun. Her cast mates get away with a lot more because they are more skilled and seasoned actors who have better delivery, are more charismatic, are better at collaborative storytelling and working with scene partners, having the self-awareness and judgment and taste to know how to commit to your character in an appropriate and entertaining way, a better sense of when to push and when to compromise for the most fun-to-watch outcome etc. That's why her characters tend to get more tolerable with time because Marisha herself is getting better at acting as well as the collaborative storytelling aspect of the game.
I won't mince my words, I hate Keylith.
I will say again Keylith, not Marisha.
Even though I don’t want to bash a player, in this series if you are going to praise certain elements of role play you also have to criticize bad elements. I.E. Marisha telling Liam to attack Rishon even though she’s not there or Vax having 5-6 luck points. Criticism of PCs can be valid, not all is just hatred for Marisha
Yes, criticism is valid and should be taken into account, but it becomes not okay when the community only ever criticizes one or two people and only give praise to the rest
Edit: grammar
In this very video, I pointed out something Marisha could’ve done differently to improve communication at the table. I’m gonna talk about every episode of the show, it’s inevitable that I’ll offer some form of criticism at some point. But my criticism might not line up with yours (for example, I don’t think the two you gave are legitimate criticisms, or at least I don’t have anything meaningful to say about them).
Also - my goal is to find things we can learn from to improve our own games. I don’t *have* to criticize the players just for the sake of balance.
Second
The whole dislike of Keyleth and or Marisha, makes no sense to me. I think Marisha acts out the socially awkward character of Keyleth perfectly. What were people expecting?
Honestly, while it’s a larger topic that will demand a lot more attention, I do think the fact that Keyleth isn’t a traditional power fantasy plays a huge role in this. She’s not as cool (by design) as most of the other characters, who are either badass, witty, or both. She challenges the idea a lot of players have about what makes a “good D&D player.” The fact that she “didn’t know her spells” is another thing that freaks people out, because of course if you play D&D, you NEED to memorize every druid spell and aren’t allowed to get them wrong. When you get right down to it, a lot of aspects of Keyleth hate are just a version of the argument, “Your fun is wrong.”
First
Why do people hate on marisha?
I'll probably talk more about this in a future video, but there are a lot of elements at play.
One is sexism, of course. There are plenty of cast members who did exactly the same thing as Marisha but never got nearly as much scrutiny, and it's easy to see why. 2015 was still very much an era where seeing women playing D&D online was uncommon, and for some viewers, it was perceived that the female players were only there to bring in male audience members, and not because they actually enjoyed D&D. (Thankfully this is *slightly* less common these days, but it was a very common mindset at the time.)
Another is the fact that Keyleth has the least common fantasy archetype, so if that's your window into CR, she feels less familiar/more out of place compared to the others.
A third is connected to that - Keyleth especially is a very uncommon form of wish fulfillment (the idea that you might be intended to be a leader but have to overcome your own flaws), and that felt alien to a lot of viewers.
(Neither of these should matter, but it impacts audience perception, and some audience members just couldn't overcome that.)
The fourth is that she is Matt's partner, and there are always those who assume that's the only reason she's at the table, instead of actually being a good D&D player. Also, even if she was only playing with them because she was dating Matt, the other players are only there because they were friends with Matt, so this shouldn't matter. But because she had the least robust resume as a voice actor, she seemed "unqualified" compared to the others (to those who cared about such ridiculous things).
The fifth, ostensibly, is because she makes "so many mistakes" in "forgetting what her spells do," but truthfully, playing a high-level druid is hard, they switched editions halfway through the campaign, it's just a game so it doesn't actually matter at all, some of Matt's behavior at the table actually disincentivizes the players from memorizing their abilities (more on that another time), she doesn't REALLY make more mistakes than anyone else (they're just more visible because they're dealing with high-level spells), and it's just a game so it doesn't matter at all. This is another one where the fact that the audience expects to be entertained impacts what they criticize - rules arguments aren't fun to watch, and Keyleth/Marisha was accidentally the center of a lot of them. This was perceived as her "making mistakes" and thus being a "bad D&D player" (that is NOT my definition of a bad D&D player, by the way), and thus, "She's the worst."
The sixth is because her character did sometimes make mistakes, and unlike the other characters, she didn't simply shrug them off. The most extreme version is this: When Scanlan kills a kid later in the campaign, he quickly justifies it. When Keyleth kills a kid pre-stream, it haunts her for years. That baggage makes for excellent dramatic fodder in the story of the campaign, but it inadvertently opens the door for hyper-critical viewers to deride her for "making so many mistakes."
Those are my biggest observations on this, but again, I'll surely make a whole video about this in the future. In the meantime, I highly recommend William SRD's video on the subject: ruclips.net/video/mxImqEnUvnY/видео.html
@@SupergeekMike I wish I could inject this comment into every single C1 watcher ❤
@@SupergeekMike honestly you covered a lot there already. Honestly, sounds like a mix of legit criticism and unnecessary toxicity. CR has definitely got a full fledged fandom.
It is unfortunate that many pull the "your the DMs spouse," card; especially since, as you put, they are all friends anyway. Those people miss the point of the show and dnd itself I think. I get that it is a game, but games are meant to be played, not always won.
Edit*
I would watch that in depth vid btw. Sounds like a good topic.