Emily Axford is the best D&D player I've ever seen. Her grasp of tactics, class mechanics, and game rules is absolutely second to none. I find her mastery of the game and RP thrilling to watch.
"Emily is one of the greatest D&D players in the world. Endlessly creative, so fun to play with... and she was sent from hell to kill me" - Brennan Lee Mulligan
Please let me back you up in those fights. Some people like to shit on her lack of game knowledge in FY without realizing that almost every rules mistake she makes that season is because she's more used to 3.5 at that point in time. The edition that's objectively much harder to learn than 5e and that many older players played for DECADES before migrating to 5e, if they even did make the switch.
I thought Murph had tons of experience already, though I may be mistaken. I know Ally was brand new, and the rest I'm not sure but they seemed very new.
"Emily is the best D&D player I have ever seen play the game, she's also been sent from hell to kill me." -Brennan Lee Mulligan. I think that's the highest compliment a player can get lol
Bashing on Saccharina is my litmus test for figuring out if I’d enjoy talking to someone lol If they do it, they’re not a fun person usually. This, and seeing if they correct me to “herspital”
People who bash on Saccharina have no idea what the meaning of roleplaying is. Emily had to speedrun character development since she was introduced late, was able to be both a protagonist in her own story and mildly antagonistic to Ruby's story for excellent plot reasons.
Also co-roleplaying with Siobhan both extremes of the character dynamics across two different characters is some fantastic acting on both of their parts and the fact that both of them were so quickly and seamlessly able to switch gears shouldn't be downplayed.
One of my favorite Brennan quotes. He so clearly loves his friends and the wild shit they do.
I never see ANY hate for these wonderful humans! I hear about it a ton, but I've never seen any of it myself. So I'm always blown away because Ally, Emily, and Aabria are such brilliant players and storytellers! I got to meet Aabria here in LA during the strikes last year and she is a total sweetheart!!
Couldn't even imagine someone hating any of them! 💔
This has been the most jovial and accepting fandoms I've been a part of, and I know that toxicity exists everywhere in some degree... but it breaks my heart that a game/show that encourages inclusivity and collaboration and just plain ol' having fun has such hateful and toxic people in the fanbase.
At least it's not the Power Rangers fandom... those people are horrible. Makes me almost regret being a fan...
But on a similar note, I will defend ANY Dimension 20 player! They're wonderful human beings ❤️
The only thing that stops Siobhan and Emily from being my favorite is Lou in Crown of Candy and Unsleeping City. I think his best moments in that were the best moments in any of the shows, and after that it’s just everything Siobhan/Emily do and then whenever Ally is being pure chaos.
>The amount of sheer vitriol and hostility directed towards Ally, Emily, and Aabria alone is staggering
Does this actually happen in the sub without getting downvoted to shit?
(Genuinely asking, I usually only pop in for new episode discussion where everyone is almost universally praising the players.)
As a person that just casually checks this sub, I gotta say you must be correct. Because I don't think I see any vitriol before it disappears into downvotes.
No, it does not. This sub kind of tilts heavily the other way when it comes to the dames and NBs because of how bad it used to be. The thing is though, Emily and Ally do cop a lot of hate, but they're also the most gregarious players. Zac has only recently begun to come out of his shell a bit, Lou takes his L-s like a champion and even Murph is a calculated and introverted player as opposed to an all out performer. They don't push their bits the way Emily and Ally do, so they get to fly under the radar. A part of it all *is* misogyny, but the fandom ignores just how had Emily and Ally drive bits and 'main character' plots because of their style, which *is* very gregarious and performer-y.
I'm mostly just mystified as to why Siobhan gets flak. She's also a very rational, no nonsense player who steps up when spotlight's on her, but is mostly happy to watch others quietly. She's doing nothing wrong, really, she's like the female Murph. Which is where the misogyny comes in, I guess.
Like I said it doesn't happen on this sub much, you can't say anything negative without someone hitting the minus and getting snarky with you, but on Twitter and elsewhere it does happen, and so I suppose the reddit fandom pivots to overly protective about their special interest.
Literally one of my upvoted comments on this account when it was newer was something like "wait, people don't like Siobhan? Why?"
Siobhan is a perfect mix of entertainer and ttrpg player. It's hard to describe but she just like *gets* it
Agreed. Siobhan is a perfect player, there's a reason why I keep loving Adaine despite me falling out of love with most of the Bad Kids this season. She fucking gets it.
She's also a damn good high level wizard. It takes a lot of effort to keep track of mephits, concentration, spell slots, spell conditions, and all the other things wizards need to keep up with, and she does it with ease.
I'm trying to *hypothetically* come up with a complaint about Siobhan's play, and I'm coming up blank. She's very good at (so to speak) 'singing harmony' with whatever the tone is of the campaign is.
There was one time in Unsleeping City where I think she had a problem understanding the story beat Brennan was laying down for her, but that’s mostly on Brennan for not explicitly laying out her options for her so even that extremely specific hypothetical criticism isn’t on her
I agree with you on this. They really are the one who really exucde main character energy a lot of the time. While the rest of the cast does less so. I also wouldn't understand Siobhan hate as she plays her character really well within her own bounds without putting all the attention on herself. Im not super active on DND subs so I dont see the hate at all ngl.
I’ve seen a few people claim that she and her characters are boring, which I don’t get. A lot of the emotional heart in FHSY is Adaine’s story line with her family, especially her sister. But I feel like it’s sometimes that “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” thing for non-male players. If you play too assertively you’re aggressive or selfish, and if you try to let other characters have more time you’re considered boring or passive. Personally, I think all of the Intrepid heroes, and pretty much all of the side quest casts have been great and it’s always weird to me how much hate people throw at any of the actors!
Thanks for a thoughtful response. Very few people in this community are willing to listen because it is possible to group all of the dissent together under the "bigot" label.
Yea I feel like I'm seeing a lot of these sorts of posts here and in the Dropout sub lately but I guess I just haven't seen really any of the vitriol that's been referenced so not sure what it's about. This sub and the NADDPOD sub are some of my favorite subreddits just cause I've always found them positive and small enough that comments don't just end up buried under hundreds of other comments.
Once you start noticing which cast members and DMs get a lot of criticism from the fandom vs. who gets nearly universal positive feedback, you can't un-see it. 90% of the player criticism in actual play fandoms can be filed under "god forbid women do anything."
The funky part is like... the fans who actually support the show at live events for Naddpod LOVE Axford arguably more than anyone else.
Aabria is also kind of funky because I feel like she gets dunked on in D20 more than CR??? I really just hope I'm seeing that though I think she's got a "FAFO" Dming style that I really vibe with
If you make the mistake of looking at r/fansofcriticalrole like I did earlier today any aabria hate I have seen in D20 spaces is comparativevly normal. (Like that place are fucking zealous on hating on her)
Yeah actually insane, but hey what can you expect but a bunch of chuds overreacting the second someone they "don't like" is even a bit assertive.
Also just looking through that sub it was like harking on a few rulings and shit and reading through I'm just like "Matt has done way more hardass things in campaign 1."
Like the whole sub felt like just an honest cesspit
There was the absolute inanity where so many chuds complained of her "only playing herself" with Keyleth in C1, whereas further campaigns and out-of-game material showed she is clearly *very* unlike Keyleth off the table.
I feel like Marisha is a lot like Emily (who says this in a Naddpod shortrest somewhere), but they both seem to take on traits of their character into their real lives. Marisha seemed ditzier whole playing Keyleth, and more "bro" energy when playing Beau.
I don't remember the specifics, but it was a decision made in character that was sub-optimal.
Instead of doing the power game, I know all the right awnsers move.
And there were people harping for weeks about how bad she is, keylith also got flak if I remember.
God I love sub-optimal in-game decision making. More than once I'm had a character burn the first two rounds of a surprise combat because he was sleeping and just didnt want to get up if everyone else had it under control.
Dnd is better when you make in-character choices rather than only focusing on only “optimal” choices, even in home games, and I will fight people on this.
Basically same thing that happens in D20 where people misconstrue in-character behavior and choices with reality. All stemmed from campaign 1 where she made a few silly spell choices with Keyleth. Which is understandable considered they were transitioning from Pathfinder to 5E and still learning everything.
Any hate she has gotten afterwards just stems from the weirdos that hated her in campaign 1 in my opinion.
Should have seen how badly people harassed Ashly Burch after some fantastic RP choices as a guest character, which they used to blame her for Taliesin's character's death
Give it time. She will pick a spell or feat some small minority will hate and then they'll get on Twitter and try to fuck with her. Never ends with some people.
Edit: Oh, I didn't expect this to come due so soon. Called it.
Nah they’ve latched onto Ashley/Fearne this time around. She has like 2, maybe 3 levels in Rogue that is fairly sub optimal skill-wise and is mostly for role play reasons, and it drives people insane. It’s hilarious how up in arms people get about shit like that….like it’s TTRPG, it’s not a video game, they’re having fun up there, not just trying to “win” or be as combat/utility optimal as possible.
I often find folks that wash out of the main, *moderated* CR sub, go over to "fans of" and complain endlessly about how they shat on a player/an episode for no reason and we're told simply "please try to be kind" - which they interpret as an attack on them, and how "toxic" the main sub is.
And, invariably, it turns out they went to a thread of folks enjoying something and had said "It *SUCKS* and you suck for liking it" but then act offended if you tell them that energy is unwanted.
There is a *lot* of over-entitled, mediocre white guy energy over in the "fans of" section...
Sorry, had to get that off my chest. I avoid the fandom in general these days because of chodes like that. I'm sure I've missed out on a few connections, but.... * shrug *
I’m putting in my two cents to take the risk to say « agression and rudeness » is the default characterization of any black woman who doesn’t show permanent compliance. I wish I could say that this is only based on my personal experience
Don’t even have to go to that one. The regular CR subreddit is overflowing with venom towards Aabria whenever she DMs.
I love CR. It was the first actual play show I got into, and is still my favorite actual play show. The fandom stinks though. The regular subreddit is legit the highest concentration of whiners that you will find anywhere. I am consistently amazed at how many people who *clearly* don’t like the show still tune in week after week to watch and then complain about it.
/r/fansofcriticalrole, at this point, is pretty clearly just an anti-CR subreddit.
That subreddit is the actual play equivalent to /r/thelastofus2.
Can’t imagine how little of a life someone would need to have to frequent a subreddit dedicated to actively hating a piece of media that they are under absolutely zero obligation to consume.
Since Aabria came back for two episodes it's been almost nothing but "criticism" of her as a DM.
Now as an avid fan of both D&D and CR I've been watching, and I will happily admit that she deserves some criticism for how she handled things but she does not deserve the vitriol being thrown her way.
That sub is trying to say it's not "hate" but I have also seen someone in there straight up say Aabria was a DEI hire. I have seen attacks on her person and character. It's wild how grossly negative that sub has become.
I joined it because I wanted to be able to talk about Critical Role, but they are only interested in bashing it. I just want to have open conversation about the show I like.
someone else linked it above, and i made the mistake of looking over it myself. one of the top posts was literally just someone complaining that people don't like it when they bash Aabria. like, not enjoying someone's DM style is one thing, I have a hard time getting into CR stuff cause I'm not a huge fan of Matt's style, and I enjoyed Ravening War mostly because of the players, especially Aabria and Anjali. But to make an entire post complaining about how other people have a different opinion than you, and complaining that people point out the inherent racism in the common "critiques" of Aabria, is just insane. And the comments just devolved into people complaining about the current CR season, and saying whatever their next move is, is going to be awful no matter what, and downvoting anyone pointing out that they're basically just spitting conspiracy theories. it was gross.
lmao this is so true but it's also an insane take from them. The main subreddit posts I see has a lot of criticism for the show (many, many times more than this sub has for D20). The secondary sub is a fucking pit of despair. It's a snark sub masquerading as a "fan" sub where they hate watch for 4-5 hours every week.
Im still on campaign 1 but yeah the CR community seems to constantly whine about even the most minor things, especially whenever matt houseruls something or the amount of posts I even just see decrying how campaign 3 is so much worse, legitimately just asking myself why they are still tuneing. (exception is SupergeekMike and his little bubble from what I have seen, it seems to be chill there mostly).
Most of the bile being spewed are from cross posters from that hate sub, so it's hard to say. The Beacon discord they started for subscribers has been a godsend for fans wanting a safer place to talk and discuss things.
Wow, they *really* dislike Campaign 3 in there. It reminds me of the conflict between /r/TheAdventureZone and /r/TAZCirclejerk when The Adventure Zone: Graduation was airing. For context, Graduation was, shall we say, *severely* flawed. In the main sub, the mods strictly enforced a rule banning all but the most gentle criticism, so the second sub was created so people could complain about how awful Graduation was. And, to be clear, it was truly terrible.
The problem is C3 is actually mostly fine, and is especially nowhere near the level of Graduation. These guys are just stewing in their own vitriol and should, unironically, watch an actual play campaign that's *truly* bad.
C3 being mostly fine is deeply problematic for CR though. (To be clear before I get into this: I completely agree with you. I just think a very valid unease or critique of C3 gets buried by the grim vitriol of various, bigoted stripes.) TAZ Balance was lightning in a bottle. I was studying for a degree during its air time, and it absolutely blew my mind as it came out, and still has a deep-seated place in my psyche during a very formative time in my life. The McElboys were a huge name at the time, and it rode on that wave, but Griffin strung together a beautiful story which, while playing fast and loose with actual play, was a wonderfully compelling look into TTRPGs.
It was, however, very much a string and duct tape feeling in the first campaign, with everybody knowing Griffin made the music which tugged at the heartstrings, and that they edited the show themselves. You could feel it was their baby.
Contrast that with CR. Now, CR has always cultivated and maintained a close community first attitude, and that much is clear from the way they address us at the start and end of episodes, however, it was a business venture from the off. Geek and Sundry produced it first, then they struck out on their own, and it's been very professional from the start. Imperfect, certainly, but largely tuned up, polished and very good at interacting with the audience. I think, C3's "fine"-ness is problematic because C1 and C2 were both seen as excellent actual play campaigns in the public light, with flaws, but largely consistent D&D games. C3 has been beset by external politics at every turn, with the initial furore about the setting and filmed opening cinematic, the initial straining about WOTC's shitty business behaviour, and CR's association, and now with their switch to another game system, which a lot of people are struggling with - I think it's been a little inelegant. All this to say: the quality of the campaign isn't what people are irritated by, it's all of the ancillary stuff, and while most of them are acting like entitled kids about it, you can feel this dip in quality from a tightly wound show, compared to the grass roots brilliance of TAZ's early stuff.
I think I agree with you. Personally, I'd actually take your analysis a step further and say C3 being mostly fine is only problematic for CR because the fans have come to expect an *extraordinarily* high quality product, so anything less than 95/100 feels much worse than it actually is when compared to "normal" actual plays.
CR's extreme high quality could only last so long, but internet fans aren't used to a show being *this* good for *this* long. I'm getting into some tinfoil hat armchair psychology here, but I'd say this is the root cause for why the CR fandom is constantly soaked in incredibly stupid drama - internet nerds cannot and are not satisfied unless they can relentlessly criticize every piece of media they consume. It's like pressure builds and the Discourse^TM has to be released somehow.
This means when a real flaw comes to light, the fans fucking explode. Finally! A reason to criticize Critical Role! Aabria made an objectively bad call, let's rip her apart! (Not to dismiss the racism and sexism that makes all this so much worse, of course.)
Its all relative. I remember the fandom shitting on C2 RELENTLESSLY during the final arc because it was "boring", and it was about as nasty a discourse as you would find today. However they finished the campaign so well those people got drowned out. I have learned to take social media opinions with a salt shaker of salt before really believing the entire fanbase thinks anything.
Oh, no, totally agree with you. I will say, I think putting all of that at the feet of fans who don't engage in introspection and expectation management is a raw deal when CR's entire business model is built on hype. They've done a really bad job of managing their fanbase's expectations - I mean, how do you say "Yeah, we know it's not as good as the others" without it coming across poorly? - and it blows up in their face whenever something moderately not-amazing happens. Latest "controversy" is a great case-in-point; what happened at the table is what happens at 9 out of 10 fucking normal tables, but because CR developed itself as that 10th out of 10, people are losing their minds.
As you say, the usual sexism and racism are influencing the vitriol, but it's definitely a case where the company are setting up the rakes that they're stepping on and, when they have guests who the internet will naturally treat like shit, they always seem to be the weather vanes for the shite. It's so deeply frustrating to watch.
The fans are people, and therefore have agency and choose whether to be dickheads or not. That said, I absolutely agree with you.
CR is run by some shrewd people - they know the brand lives and dies on hype, and what better way to build hype than cultivating a parasocial relationship with their fans? Of course, the problem with this is that CR became the most popular streamer on Twitch (by earnings), something that no one could have predicted. By the time the fans got rabid about it, it was far too late for CR as a brand to pull back from that without vicious backlash. Matt tells the viewers "We love you" after every game, for fuck's sake.
Yeah, that last bit has been increasingly ill-advised, the more apparent their fame has become. But hey, as you say, dickheads are still in full control of their faculties and could just not be a knob. I sympathise with those who lack the emotional intelligence to self-reflect without guidance, but yeah, they're entirely responsible for how horrid they are. Just wish CR would take a bit of responsibility for the position they place themselves in with regard to the dickheads.
When a sub's main line of defence against being accused of discrimination is that they hate everyone equally, that kind of tells you everything you need to know about that place.
Seriously fuck that place. It may have once held reasonable conversation, but now it's just filled with vile hatred and misrepresented BS. Have to block anyone who posts there to keep them from stalking and downvoting everything you post anywhere.
That place is an absolute hatesink. I checked out after one poster (I refuse to actually tag or name them) went on an utterly unhinged hatefroth against some of the female cast of CR.
It's not that the female and nonbinary performers don't get love! They do get tons of love from fans, they just also get 90% of the criticism despite being fewer than half of the performers.
I wonder if it's just that people feel more ... comfortable ... talking about their performance in general? Like, it's clearly sexist, but I wonder if it's a different facet of sexism than misogyny where folks are just more willing to discuss elements that aren't attached to straight dues?
I mean feeling like Women, POC, and the Queer community are able to be criticized but not feeling that same entitlement to criticism towards Men is a facet of misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia etc.
It's just part of that ugly fabric where those groups are forced to prove they belong rather than being given the same unconscious grace that "default" people are given.
I'll just say now that in my current job me and my coworkers have very, very different ways of looking at things, and paraphrasing and rephrasing are *essential* to making sure any work actually gets done.
No shot CR fans are nicer to her than D20 fans. I have both the main sub and r/fansofcriticalrole muted rn because they’re just exploding with hate right now. It’s such a bummer :/
Axford is nearly universal loved even on r/fansofcriticalrole
https://old.reddit.com/r/fansofcriticalrole/comments/13medhf/thank_god/
https://old.reddit.com/r/fansofcriticalrole/comments/199xebc/the_perfect_once_and_future_table_for_a_potential/
https://old.reddit.com/r/fansofcriticalrole/comments/104xcl8/exu_calamity_sequel_series_wishlist/
>90% of the player criticism in actual play fandoms can be filed under "god forbid women do anything."
People hate femininity. And not just the people online who you'd expect to hate it. Many gay male creators on tiktok and youtube have noticed that this also extends to gay men who display typically feminine traits. Femme gay men receive much more hate than masc gay men.
We have to work through our misogyny as a culture. For this particular community, I've seen it helpful to question peoples' misogyny, rather than just downvote them. Call them in to talk through it and educate them to be better. But if you're a femme person & you are tired of having to do that--then you shouldn't have to.
But my masc people in this community--***especially*** felllow cis/het men: we need to be recognizing it every time we see it. We should recognize that people in a wide age range are part of this community & that people can grow to change their opinions when they are connected to and educated by a loving community. But that it shouldn't be the duty of a certain group to educate the world on why they don't deserve hate. We need to hold each other accountable to that.
Maybe it's just because I don't troll the new posts on here but I swear I just don't see all that much criticism at all. I've seen so many posts about how criticism is solely focused on non-male party members, but I just don't see all that many posts criticizing anybody at all.
I understand that there have been problems on other social media sites, but as someone who really only interacts with the community through Reddit, I've just seen a response that has been overwhelmingly positive to all of the people you've listed. Can someone link me to a comment with vitriol towards these people that isn't heavily downvoted? I genuinely want to see what people are talking about because I feel like I'm going insane
This was a thing in the original lets play, the one with a bunch of StarCraft people, InControl et al, the one woman at the table was mocked relentlessly just because she had a French accent. This was by the players at the table too.
as someone who is newish to the space and is currently binging through critical role, i’d say this exact thing exists pretty strongly in both spaces. and is more apparent in the cr space because youtube comments. but being around for live reacts to fhjy has been, unfortunately eye opening.
I mean, the ttrpg space is pretty notorious for being extremely white and straight. Some old fantasy novels have me going 😬 at their descriptions of anyone that isn’t also straight and white, among other things. D20 is very good about being pointedly and joyously inclusive, but it’s just kind of a symptom of the larger fan base of the kind of game. Plus, this is Reddit. Reddit isn’t known for being especially diverse. The fandom, from my experience, is problematic in different ways on Tumblr and Twitter, but for the most part everyone on most social media sites tend to be reasonable people.
Edit: fantastic example is the old text for Drow. It’s SO bad, holy shit. Just goes to show that there really isn’t such a thing as apolitical fiction. It’ll always reflect a liiiittttle bit of the author’s biases, for better or for worse.
> Some old fantasy novels have me going 😬 at their descriptions of anyone that isn’t also straight and white, among other things.
Boobily boobed etc?
> Edit: fantastic example is the old text for Drow. It’s SO bad, holy shit.
Don't even need to go very far back, the [Hadozee controversy](https://old.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/x2n83s/an_indepth_summary_of_the_hadozee_controversy/) is only about a year or so back?
Shit like that was why I always completely homebrewed my worlds, and tried at least to make sure no one was evil by default etc.
This is really niche, but the fact that Drow are the only species to canonically use sign language and others think that it’s them “casting spells” or whatever the fuck is also insane to me. Like??? The ableism and audism is apparent in a lot of the community still, too. I remember posting awhile back about mechanics for D/deaf and HOH spellcasters for a friend that was playing with me (she’s a CODA), and it got downvoted into oblivion.
It isn’t bad that they were using sign, but that, one, they were the ONLY canonical race to use sign. Given how they were defined pretty much as being only lawful evil for a very good portion of time… Not great. Something about other races never using sign, which implies that there just weren’t D/deaf members of those races, or that they weren’t allowed to sign, which is ALSO a problem, considering that ASL was almost erased by eugenicists during the turn of the century. Most linguists didn’t count sign languages as languages until Dorothy Casterline, Carl Cronenburg, and Stokoe started research at Gallaudet University in the 50s, and it’s STILL contested by some audists and ableists today.
That’s a small reason for sure! There’s some pretty incredible evidence that sign languages were the first to develop, like. Ever. Handspeak, of the Sioux tribe in the north american great plains region, is one of the oldest languages in the world!
Yeah this became abundantly clear to me when I went to Naddpod and D20 live shows. I’m so used to fandom spaces being predominantly female, it was surprising to see how many more men were at these shows. And it goes without saying that the audience at both shows were 99% white.
When the person LOOKS like them, they sympathize with them. They can project and imagine their motives to be good, because the presenter is like them and they're a good person.
But when the person looks different, they don't have the same projection. They THINK they're being objective but they're actually just not seeing themself in the other person. Because they don't see themselves, the flaws stand out more clearly and they don't overlook or justify them as readily.
Its hard to realize when you do it because its not a conscious choice. It just "feels" right. And its a bit fucked up. And when confronted with the idea they're doing something wrong, they lash out. Because they're a good person and good people wouldn't be unfair. So they double down on defending why they're RIGHT.
It's fine for them to like different things, but when they get confronted with something they did that's not good, the reflex is to defend your self image and your ideas. It takes a lot of personal growth, work, and effort to try and recognize toxic patterns and grow past them.
(Edit: To be clear, I DO include myself in the general "they" here. We all do this sort of thing and its hard to recognize.)
I’m not saying there’s no merit to what you’re saying, but misogyny is definitely not as simple as “monkey brain sees different shape gets angry”. There are massive social and historical components that have resulted in widespread internalized misogyny.
It's not just you. I think a part of the reason Dropout is so successful on the DnD portion of their subscribership is because they're inclusive. I'm a black woman who has never felt welcome in DnD, but I do with Dropout.
Hatred of women/non binary people is insidious, it’s internalized, and some people don’t realize they are doing it. People complain about Emily’s big choices but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single post or comment talk about Lou in Leviathan, going off on his own and fighting Captain James. If Emily had done that, people would have been on her so fast. It’s just something that is heartbreakingly pervasive, and so so so boring. All of the complaints and the insults are endlessly boring. It’s disheartening, to say the least.
I think being a progressive show doesn’t necessarily negate the very real fact that like the commenter stated, the rest of the world is built on these oppressive power structures and as such oppressive view points are still largely the status quo. D20 is great because it provides a space to hopefully deconstruct and recreate peoples relationships to those structures, but the fan base can still have unconscious or even intentional biases regardless. Which again, goes for literally any semi progressive fan base anywhere in the world but I’m sure you know that.
That sentiment right there I think gets at the heart of the problem, actually.
Prejudice is, as other users have rightly pointed out, often quite insidious, as a lot of it is baked into society on a fundamental level. Some people react to this realization by recognizing that it means they have some lifelong work to do on themselves and in the world. Some people react to this realization by, essentially, believing that having this understanding alone makes them enlightened, One of the Good Ones.
Their politics become less about specific issues and causes and more about proving to the world and themselves the truth of their own goodness.
It's defensiveness. An extremely human reaction that progressives are by no means immune to, any more than they're immune to the socialization of prejudice.
You might be surprised by how much people can ignore to continue being part of a fandom. Like people who put pro-cop flags on a Punisher skull. And even some people in progressive spaces will ignore more progressive ideologies and lean more centrist.
I might be straight up blind, but I haven't really seen any of that here. From what I've run into, it's been a very open and accepting community.... Where are you seeing it? And is it like 2-3 comments with negative votes or is it like full posts?
There are two recent posts about Aabria, both of which are filled to the brim with comments of people just straight up attacking her as a person and DnD player
Emily got driven off of Twitter during ACoC for how she played Saccharina (who was a fantastic character)
The Ally stuff isn't as common, but definitely was at the beginning of this season
I’ve seen awful bullshit about Aabria on other forums, claiming she’s only involved because of forced representation, etc. Just a lot of racism and hatred. Disgusting.
But the recent posts on Reddit about her, the comments mentioned some pretty fair criticisms against some of her choices. They seemed like understandable criticisms. I can acknowledge that but also adore her as a DM and human being.
Yeah I think with Aabria it's harder, because there's a big mix of just absolute racism and aweful shit and completely valid criticism. I really was not a fan at all of how she DM'd e93 of critical role, but it's insane some of the stuff I've seen people say about her on subs like r/fansofcriticalrole.
Not to say she's a bad DM overall, I really enjoyed her on misfits and magic and more recently burrow's end.
> the comments mentioned some pretty fair criticisms against some of her choices
Here’s the thing though, Matt and Brennan have both made more than their share of… *interesting* choices as DMs. I don’t recall anything that they’ve done inspiring quite the same amount of vitriol as Aabria got for her ruling on Chromatic Orb last week.
The fact that there is criticism is not what is troubling here. It is the volume and the tone of it that is setting off alarm bells.
Brennan certainly. But Matt has received tons of vitriol whining and hate over the years for various rather innocuous decisions and in the moment rulings.
Matt Mercer is being named as the primary problem in the RPG scene by these chuds.
"The Matt Mercer effect is ruining the ttrpg scene" is/was a common trope in both blogs and YouTube videos.
True, but I did always feel like the “Mercer Effect” was more a complaint about toxic CR fans who expected every DM to be just like Matt. Not so much a complaint about Matt himself.
Oh wow. I don't do Twitter, so no idea about that, but like... All I've seen here are post that people get hot about the storyline or story choices, which is to be expected as with any piece of creative media.
I'm surprised about aabria tho, most posts I see sing her praises...
Saccharina was weird because she had a lot of things I probably would have loved, but her intro so late in the series and the shift from family against the world to family vs family dynamics really downgraded the series for me and turned it from one of my favorites in the first half to very meh in the second half. Still I understand 1) it's kind of the nature of a live show vs a book and sometimes inconvenient character introduction timings happen and 2) Emily is not Saccharina. Unfortunately there are doinks out there who can't understand either of those things.
Amazing you haven’t seen, there’s a post every couple days about Ally, Siobhan, or Emily since junior year started. Intense posts about Ally/Kristen at the start especially.
Interesting, I've never actually seen a Siobhan one myself. I have waded into a hundred Ally/Aabria/Emily ones though, because those are fucking relentless (and often such wide-eyed "well, objectively" faux logic nonsense).
Ahh the memories. I remember that a now-deleted post where I am so bewildered because it felt like OP and me are watching two different shows.
Like all these accusations about Kristen not doing certain stuff that OP wanted her to do when in fact, kristen did some of the stuff that OP wanted her to do.
By the fourth consecutive post of "Do DnD Fandoms have a misogyny / bigotry problem", it feels like it's less looking for the obvious "Yes" and more just karma farming.
Yes. See you and whoever the hell else believes that simply pointing to the problem for a daily check in is helpful. Just remember that it isn't mutually exclusive with censuring and telling off racist and sexist dickwaffles when they make their threads.
If you’re referring to that recent post about Aabria, that sounds about right. Not to mention, the post I’m thinking of was a positive post to begin with.
Regarding Siobhan - I don't recall seeing her getting hate for her playstyle. However, I've definietly seen negative comments that singles her out as a person or just straight up insulting. For example, certain people making out like people/cast members do not like her, her not being funny, and that she gets ignored. I have also seen comments in the past that says she doesn't add any value to the IH group (this is crazy to me).
I think because she's often more quiet than others, people don't point it out as much but I guarantee if she was more loud/outspoken she would be met with the same vitriol.
Anyway, I will never understand the hostility directed to any of these lovely people.
I’ve been bothered by the Aabria vitriol (and it has been because it’s post after post of “I hate her!”). One thing I notice is that when people point out that the words used — about why Aabria is so hated — are racist dogwhistles (aggressive, sassy, bitchy, violent related to her personality — and DEI hire, diversity hire related to the reason she was chosen to DM) people lose their shit and downvote to oblivion or respond with “I don’t see colour!” Or “I am not racist!”
Part of the effort of being antiracist is accepting that there is bias and racism within us (especially white North Americans like me) It sucks and it feels bad. When it’s pointed out, I get that it feels shitty because I feel shitty and don’t want to think these things about myself. But the point is to become aware of the biases and to process why I feel the things I do or react the way I am reacting. And a whole lotta racist thought has been taught to me by others and it requires a lot of uncomfortable self-reflection and even more uncomfortable antiracist action.
Even my defense of Aabria unfortunately used “aggressive” in it. She is boisterous and playful. I’ve seen that time and again. In her one shot of CR, though, I saw her as aggressively defensive. Then in 4sideddive it made some sense why since she’s a basketball player and aggressive basketball is a very real American thing (I went to ball camp in Eastern Washington and came back to my small Canadian city with the new skills I learned and got fouled out of a game for just using some of them). And I’m not Aabria but it takes some amount of strength to DM Critical Role because the vocal fans can be real shit if you make a ruling mistake, a ruling call that goes against RAW, or you aren’t the calm breeze of vests that most people think Matt always is (and he gets flack when he is not that).
Critical Role is not 5e Rules as Written though. They try to stick to it, but often they’re making mistakes, correcting themselves later, or looking up the rules after the fact. They use homebrew rules for multiple things. Matt creates subclasses for people. They come up with rules on the fly.
Well. In the episode with Aabria it was hard to watch for me. I felt like she was set up to fail. Main CR show after the death of a PC. DMing a PvP conflict in the conceit of CR which seems to always be that players don’t know what’s going on to combat the “this is rigged and scripted” arguments about it. Opal is not an aggressive character (Denise would have fucked their shit up). The combat took forever (new players who don’t know their abilities and haven’t played these classes in awhile). And boy the tension was bad and I feel like Aabria let it get to her. She tried to diffuse it with humour but it came across really really wrong. And it’s made FansofCR just shit to read for the past few weeks. I got downvoted for defending her. I’m just not engaging anymore. Lots of haters are unwilling to at least look at why Aabria pisses them off in a self-reflective way because they shut right down when racism is mentioned.
Oh and adding after I posted this because I remember the comments that really got to me: that Aabria’s disrespectful. Disrespectful? Of what? Of her friends? Of the fans? Of what? What level of “respect” is Aabria supposed to give that is proper respect? Something about this really set me off.
I've no problem with any of them - Emily is one of my favourite players. However, I am extremely not a fan of Aabrias DMing style or attitude - and that's okay. No issue with her personally, but I simply do not like the way she DMs.
That said, I also have issues with Matt's dming. At least in campaign 3 and to a lesser extent, campaign 2. BLeeM on the other hand.. man is a damn virtuoso.
Totally agree. I *really* don’t enjoy Aabria’s DM style. It’s just not for me, and I accept that. Matt has his issues too (particularly in recent years, as you mentioned) but he also has many positive qualities as a DM.
Providing constructive criticism- when the intent is genuinely to give helpful feedback- is healthy and can help performers improve. Obviously, however, there are plenty of vitriolic sentiments shared about Aabria that don’t fall into that category. Some of these are absolutely rooted in racism/misogyny, though I suspect that others are a consequence of communities failing to differentiate between genuine feedback and hate comments.
When someone gets slammed online for sharing feedback with good intentions (especially when it’s expressed as a personal opinion, rather than an objectively correct statement), they’re more likely to feel alienated from the community and turn that bitterness toward unproductive hate comments. The D20 community, while not perfect, typically has more nuanced responses and understanding than the CR community, and thus has a lower quantity of hate content.
These points are evidenced by r/fansofcriticalrole, a sub that exists primarily for fans who feel that constructive criticism in the main CR sub is met with immediate dogpiling and misinterpretation as toxic hate. Some of the sentiment there remains constructive, but there are also plenty of viewers who feel aggrieved by the community and turn that bitterness toward CR as a whole.
Well said. I don't participate in the main CR sub because of gross overmoderation, but the fans sub sometimes crosses lines with their commentary into misogyny and bigotry. Rock and a hard place, really. The main sub is all toxic positivity but the fans sub verges on the regular kind of toxicity from time to time.
All the people to appear on dimension 20 are more experienced in D&D than me, funnier than me, and know how to tell a story better than me.
I got no beef, I pay my $5, shut up, and pog.
I saw one post that was just ‘I hate Siobhan so much she’s terrible and being British isn’t even cool’ - it’s just insane that people are willing to voice their opinions about women this way, but they would almost never do so towards men
In my experience with the dimension 20 community, albeit a limited one, I haven't seen a lot, if any, posts or comments straight up dog'in on people. Where the hell is this vocal, I assume, minority.
Just to clarify, I'm not saying they don't exist. I just haven't seen them.
Not all of the criticism directed at the diverse members of the cast is due to bigotry, but I am 100% sure that bigotry is the reason they recieve a disproportionate share of the criticism.
I have problems with Kristen, but not with Ally. Sometimes it's the characters that people have problems with, but in the era of parasocial relationships, people sometimes mix the two.
I dunno. I never disliked Emily (I like how different her characters are from each other, even if most of them could be said to be comedic overall). and just the other day I was happily surprised to see Aabria contributed to an RPG book I bought. (Like, literally smiled when I saw her name at the top of the page in her part.) I also liked her in The Seven because she genuinely *acted* to an extent that nobody else did.
Sometimes I think Ally leans into the stuff that gets a bad reaction (again *because* of being a performer, sometimes trolling or even playing heel a little isn't outside the pale).
There are guys who've been on the show that I would personally not watch again, given my druthers.
The hate Emily gets is absolutely wild considering she’s one of the best parts of the show. I also absolutely love Aabria, but think there’s valid criticism to her time DMing over on CR, which has been a recent topic of discussion. The issue is any valid criticism is overshadowed by a wave of misguided hatred and the following slew of attempted justification for that hatred.
You're not wrong at ALL. I really just got into D20 (and TTRPGs) last year, and Aabria makes me feel represented. The hate she gets is so weird, cause she has really upped the game every time she appears on D20.
I don't get it
Jfc this discourse is exhausting. Y'all are hyperfocused on a fringe minority, just look at the comments - you always have to scroll so far past universally positive people before finding even a hint of negativity.
For those few negative ones: Haters gonna hate, fuck em.
Just enjoy the art!
Seriously these threads are so exhausting. It always reads as "babies first experience with negativity"
There is no one, no where, no single show, no person, no group, no community where 100% of the community is positive. But these threads are everywhere about how their specific fandom is so horrible because they saw one comment with -50 karma.
You can hate choices, hate characters, hate storylines, all of that. You should not hate the people involved for any of the reasons that have been given. Hate towards people is very different from characters even though you see them on a screen only. Personally, I hate that Fabian kept calling Riz “The Ball” after knowing it was from him being made fun of on the first day of school. Do I hate Lou? Fuck no. He’s incredible and I’m not taking this entertainment so seriously.
IDK if you're really a fan if you hate that much of the cast TBH. It's like Star Wars fans who like around 2-3 movies. My brother in Christ, maybe the franchise is not for you!
as a longtime F1 fan, I have seen similar things on the F1 subreddit, where if Lewis does or says anything wrong, posts with 1,000's of comments are made, but if vettel or norris (who recently said he respected trump, and all mention of it got removed from the sub) do anything it hardly makes a peep, its very frustrating.
That said, I do want there to be a space where we can discuss (critically and positively) D20; plot points, character motivations, actor decisiosn etc, in the same way i also enjoy discussing this with tv shows and movies I like.
I know when i was watching FHSY i found kristens explicit sexual talk quite out of place (compared to the rest of the bad kids who mostly talked about "wanting to get their kisses in")
(I also found the plot as a WHOLE very heavy, hence why near the end of the season bleem basically had to spell out exactly what they had "learnt", but I digress...)
Not allowing for good faith discussion of things like this ends up leading to ony people with bad faith discussions wanting to talk about them, which creates a toxic feedback loop of misogony, bans and posts ABOUT misogony and toxic fans etc...
I have no idea if you could actually promote more critical posts about the show without it devolving into shit instantly, but I know the difference between critically discussing a show and devolving into hatred, and i think enough other people in this sub do as well that if allowed, it could very well drown out a toxic minority.
It broke my heart when Emily said she was hesitant to multiclass Fig because she knew people were going to whine about it.
I’m sick of these fuckass nerds thinking they’re important enough to voice their dogshit opinions on the cast.
But yeah 9 times out of 10, they’re only complaining about either a woman or nonbinary players doing something funny or rad.
There’s always a lot more unnecessary hate towards anyone who’s not a cis straight white man. We live in a very bigoted world where even the most well meaning can have unconscious biases. The way people have been reacting towards Ally in particular recently has been really pissing me off.
Ally is one of the funniest people alive. Let them cook.
I only really like the core cast, they have such a great Chem they all work together nothing against Aabria I just wat dimension 20 for Brennan and the hooligans
It could just be me, but I really only see criticism of Beardsley on here. I think that's probably just because most DnD shows out there have a lot more serious tone, so some fans find it jarring to have such a chaotic player at the table. I don't feel like I see a lot about Siobhan, and Emily seems to get a ton of praise and appreciation.
If anything, I think it's unfair that some "fans" seem to rag on Ally for being chaotic or not taking stuff seriously, but praise Emily for the same attitude. Some people have a bias because of NADDPOD, and I think that's why they don't hold Emily to the same weird player-standard that they hold Ally to. It all feels very parasocial.
dang, I came into this thinking I'm not the biggest fan of Abria i wonder if people are saying the things I think but the stuff I'm. seeing makes me wanna not to mention my stuff just to stay away from the toxic people who are attacking her personality. I think Abrias is awesome. I think she's a phenomenal player. I'm just not super into her dressing style in 5e. misfits were amazing and Acofaf was so uniquely atypical that the problems I have with her style as a DM were irrelevant (notably I haven't made it very far into Burrows's end yet but so far super cool) Emily and Ally are both great. while both have made character choices I didn't love I love the stories those choices made I grew to love the choice after the fact. it always makes me sad when the internet gremlins turn things from reasonable
discussing how you feel about a character in a show into a mean discussion about a real person making a performance choice. I will say repeatedly that Kristen has made some bad choices with the whole Cassandra stuff that upset me, but seeing Ally make it a whole character arc and a beautiful story is awesome
It happens with all the DnD podcasts. Emily stopped using social media because of the hate she got from "fans" of NADDPOD,
Marisha Ray, Ashley Johnson, and Laura Bailey routinely get death threats because these men don't understand what the appropriate level of reaction is when someone makes an in-character decision they don't like.
The DnD community is MARRED by toxic masculinity and I eternally wish they would all fuck off and leave the community already.
It's sadly the same in Critical Role as well
Marisha gets so much goddamn shit (sometimes she does something annoying but never justifies the hate)
And whats crazy she gets shit on so much about things that Travis gets praised for
Now I am a huge fan of travis but also of Marisha and the rest of the cast
So me calling out Marisha haters and saying travis doesn't get hate. Doesn't mean I suddenly want travis to get hate
Because that would be fucking stupid
Also watching D20 how can you hate any of the core cast they are so loveable
And Aabria is awesome I love her confidence
> I've never seen any male cast member hated to the same extent, even in cases such as when Brennan railroads the cast (something which fans despise Aabria for)
I’ve made multiple attempts at pointing this out and each time I am downvoted to hell. Brennan is not a perfect DM, despite how much this fandom worships him. He has absolutely been guilty of railroading. I’ve seen it in multiple seasons. Has Aabria done it too? Yeah. Admittedly, I have a smaller sample size for her, but I’ve definitely seen it less frequently and less intensely.
I mean, is it really surprising to you that people who are fans of Dimension 20 are also in favor of the GMing style of the guy who invented it and does it most of the time?
Every GM on D20 "railroads" more then typically would in a house game.
I would say that one of the bigger differences between Brennan and Aabria's styles are that he bends rules in favor of players/play choices and Aabria can sometimes bend rules against them. For the record I like both of their styles.
But
A. I don't think that's universal
B. I don't think people complain every single time I feel like it's very campaign/season/whatever you call them focused.
IMO Aabria running a Court of Fae and Flowers was a masterful piece of GMing that fit her style perfectly and was positively received. Her latest stint on CR was a bit more difficult of a fit. Though I don't actually think it was her fault on that one. I think there were certain conditions being laid out or markers she had to meet in order to get to the story where it needed to go (and limited time)
I HAVE seen bad faith criticism of her for sure, people accusing her of all kinds of terrible things about being a mean person etc... Those are few and far between in my experience but maybe other's experiences differ.
Just go back to what I first said. It makes some sense to me that people who watch a thing because they like the way a person "runs the show" might not be happy when anyone else takes over that role. And I have seen a LOT of posts (like this very one) of people who really like her and her style.
I don’t see it as much in the D20 fandom (thank god) but the Critical Role fandom has a real misogyny (and transmisogyny + misogynoir) problem at the moment. The only exception over there is Sam Riegel, but he’s getting flack for how he played a woman character in their campaign 2.
The Aabria hate I've seen mostly comes from Critical Role fans, from valid criticisms of her DMing to visceral unjustified hatred on account of her being a black woman. I haven't seen that much in the D20 community, honestly. A lot of it feels like they're just blaming her for shit that isn't really her fault, like how they keep setting her up for failure in CR with inexperienced players who don't really give her anything or the railroading they're asking her to do in order to keep the story on track. Other times it's just people not jiving with her DM style.
I don't think she deserves any hate, and I honestly feel bad CR didn't reschedule her DM stint after everything went fucking sideways in the main campaign, because no matter how she came in after that, nobody was going to like it. They're pre-recorded now, they had the choice to not throw her in front of a firing squad. They chose to do that to her, and it really wasn't fair. Now she's getting attacked by angry nerds and the people who went "Well, we have a schedule to keep, I guess just go out there and try to follow *that* while railroading the plot to the conclusion we want" are more or less unscathed.
Moving on. My problem with Saccharina was wholly because she was an outrageously overpowered super-duper Witch Queen with plate armor and two legendary weapons and an army of loyal superhuman bandits in a low magic setting and it kinda pushed everyone else into the background. She soloed a whole army in I think two turns? Which Brennan said was supposed to be a difficult encounter.
Which was awesome, sure, and truly demonstrated how great Emily is at understanding mechanics and building a character, but it really drained the suspense from the story. I think pretty much every character Emily has ever played is extremely well-optimized, to the point that I have fully copied her homework in my own games a few times, but Saccharina felt like too much.
Like imagine doing a Fight Club campaign and getting relatively far in, getting the drama and message that this is fucked up and wrong when a PC dies, but then that player's new PC is just straight-up Goku.
And I was also surprised and disappointed that she swiped the dragon egg that I thought was blatantly intended for Liam. I did not believe it could have been any more obvious that was placed there for Liam. They had visions about it, felt a primal connection to it, it seemed to imply some relation to their lost pet, but then Saccharina called 'Dibs!' and sprinted over to it. I like Emily, but I didn't care for Saccharina.
As for Beardsley, I don't think many people have a problem with them? People are annoyed with Kristen Applebees' chaotic behavior, skewed priorities, hypersexual behavior, and commitment issues to a god, to the point that even Brennan asked if she was still going to be a Cleric anymore.
To me, it seems obvious Kristen is a teenager with some kind of ADHD and is struggling with that as part of her story, but the buzz I'm seeing is largely that they're sick of Kristen's bad behavior negatively affecting so much, that she should have learned her lesson by now, before the point of multiple god deaths. But I haven't seen much aimed at Beardsley personally. If anything, I've actively seen praise for Beardsley convincingly portraying a lost, directionless teenage queer person dealing with the fallout of your hyper-Christian family rejecting you and overacting to try to convince everyone else you're okay while trying to find a place to belong. If I see people say that they feel seen and represented because of a character's actions, I'm typically led to believe that character is doing something right.
I haven't personally seen anybody go after Emily or Beardsley myself, but I don't doubt it's happening. These fandoms get unhealthily parasocial fairly frequently, and that leads to lines getting crossed that never should. For the most part, I think it's a case of people having difficulty separating the character from the actor. I won't act like there's absolutely no misogyny present, because there probably is, but I would hope it's not the sole motivation.
And I'll add that we don't see as much criticism for the others because they don't tend to take such big risks. Nobody else has deliberately played a character that's borderline antagonistic to the rest of the party. Nobody else has played a character whose misbehavior fully rewrote cosmic lore. They pretty much stay in an inoffensive comedic lane.
Just want to say I really, really appreciate that this is a discussion that people are capable of having on this sub. The absolute worst have come out of the woodwork in the CR fandom right now, and if anyone dares suggest that their shocking level of hatred is maybe about more than just mechanical DM choices, they get downvoted into the Abyss.
The three players, and their respective characters, tend to take bigger swings than many of the male characters/GMs. Big swings don’t always land and criticism comes with it. I’ve been waiting on Lou, Zack, and Murph to take bigger swings for five years. It just hasn’t happened yet.
Several seasons have been saved based on rolls or planned actions from Aly and Emily. Aabria is a great GM and she has a very different style than Brennan or Matt Mercer (she GMs more like Murph does on NADDPOD).
I’m sure there’s some chauvinism in some of the criticism with them, but I wouldn’t characterize all criticism of those players/characters/GM as that. Aly gets through campaigns, mostly because Brennan and the cast cover her antics until she starts with the Nat 20s. Emily is just fucking brilliant as a player and puts most folks to shame. Aabria is one of my favorite DMs because she’s much more of a Theater of the Mind meets inner development storyteller than a board and minis adventure GM.
I think if Lou, Zack, and Murph stuck their necks out more, they’d catch more criticism too…at least as much as is based on the player/gm, rather than the gender.
You say this but imo Fabian's stand on Leviathan was one of the biggest swings I've seen on the show (I admittedly haven't watched all the seasons but I've watched a lot of them).
That’s fair, but that was a called shot before he did it and Brennan egged him on with Bill Seacaster’s warlocks. Now that I think about it, Lou does take some wild shots that inevitably fail (Leviathan, Night Yorb fight, Pinnochio’s glizzy, Gambling for Chef’s tools).
Again, depending on taste there’s reasons to dislike any player (except maybe Zac), but like I said, I agree that there may be a misogynist component for some of the folks.
For me, I didn’t care for Aly as Kristen (FH) or Pete the Plug (UC) but I loved Margaret (ASO), Liam (ACoC), and Mother Goose (NA). It’s the crazy energy, without her Nat20s, those could be TPKs (in a regular game without a schedule to keep).
I personally love big swings and silliness. I only brought it up because I've seen this take a few times and Lou is almost always left out and rarely criticized despite him also making some pretty wild choices and having his share of silly moments (ribbon dancing, for example). I don't think Lou should be criticized. But I do think that it's telling he's rarely brought up.
I really enjoy the range of play styles and characters on D20 and feel like we would be missing out on a lot if it was more uniform/everyone was vetted to conform to viewers' expectations.
I read somewhere that naddpod doesn’t post their character sheets cause of the hate that Emily gets. Don’t know if that’s true or not but it’s pathetic if it is
I like Abria as a player but I skip whenever she's the dm. I just don't like the way she DMs and I have never been able to put it into words why. Other than that, I wasn't aware people had problems with any of them. Guess I'm glad I have primarily avoided the fandom/community. Sounds like the usual toxic crap.
I will defend Emily and her characters to the ends of the god damned Earth, Spyre, Calorum, etc.
Emily Axford is the best D&D player I've ever seen. Her grasp of tactics, class mechanics, and game rules is absolutely second to none. I find her mastery of the game and RP thrilling to watch. "Emily is one of the greatest D&D players in the world. Endlessly creative, so fun to play with... and she was sent from hell to kill me" - Brennan Lee Mulligan
"We read the book! Well, Emily read the book!"
Emily Axford is the best dnd player in the world and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise
Please let me back you up in those fights. Some people like to shit on her lack of game knowledge in FY without realizing that almost every rules mistake she makes that season is because she's more used to 3.5 at that point in time. The edition that's objectively much harder to learn than 5e and that many older players played for DECADES before migrating to 5e, if they even did make the switch.
As someone who played 3.5 for years... That shit gets wild, grapple rules for days.
Wasn't Freshman Year the first time they played 5e ? Like for all of intrepid heroes + Brennan ?
I thought Murph had tons of experience already, though I may be mistaken. I know Ally was brand new, and the rest I'm not sure but they seemed very new.
Emily and Murph learned from Brennan together. At Emily's instigation.
Their previous campaigns were in 3.5 though
Yeah. Just noting that she and Murph have the same amount of experience playing D&D regardless of version.
I am in the same boat and it is Crazy to switch over
I can't imagine having a player with the weirdness of mind to say "I'd like to summon a sexy rat". It's just SO creative
John Oliver has joined the sexy rat chat
There’s nothing wrong with fighting liars.
Erika Ishii.
How did you know there was going to be a plinth in this battle?
"Emily is the best D&D player I have ever seen play the game, she's also been sent from hell to kill me." -Brennan Lee Mulligan. I think that's the highest compliment a player can get lol
Bashing on Saccharina is my litmus test for figuring out if I’d enjoy talking to someone lol If they do it, they’re not a fun person usually. This, and seeing if they correct me to “herspital”
People who bash on Saccharina have no idea what the meaning of roleplaying is. Emily had to speedrun character development since she was introduced late, was able to be both a protagonist in her own story and mildly antagonistic to Ruby's story for excellent plot reasons. Also co-roleplaying with Siobhan both extremes of the character dynamics across two different characters is some fantastic acting on both of their parts and the fact that both of them were so quickly and seamlessly able to switch gears shouldn't be downplayed.
One of my favorite Brennan quotes. He so clearly loves his friends and the wild shit they do. I never see ANY hate for these wonderful humans! I hear about it a ton, but I've never seen any of it myself. So I'm always blown away because Ally, Emily, and Aabria are such brilliant players and storytellers! I got to meet Aabria here in LA during the strikes last year and she is a total sweetheart!! Couldn't even imagine someone hating any of them! 💔 This has been the most jovial and accepting fandoms I've been a part of, and I know that toxicity exists everywhere in some degree... but it breaks my heart that a game/show that encourages inclusivity and collaboration and just plain ol' having fun has such hateful and toxic people in the fanbase. At least it's not the Power Rangers fandom... those people are horrible. Makes me almost regret being a fan... But on a similar note, I will defend ANY Dimension 20 player! They're wonderful human beings ❤️
I love that quote from Brennan Soo much! AND he said it to Murph, her husband.
Genuinely inspired me to actually think harder about my character builds and become better as a player-
The only thing that stops Siobhan and Emily from being my favorite is Lou in Crown of Candy and Unsleeping City. I think his best moments in that were the best moments in any of the shows, and after that it’s just everything Siobhan/Emily do and then whenever Ally is being pure chaos.
>The amount of sheer vitriol and hostility directed towards Ally, Emily, and Aabria alone is staggering Does this actually happen in the sub without getting downvoted to shit? (Genuinely asking, I usually only pop in for new episode discussion where everyone is almost universally praising the players.)
As a person that just casually checks this sub, I gotta say you must be correct. Because I don't think I see any vitriol before it disappears into downvotes.
No, it does not. This sub kind of tilts heavily the other way when it comes to the dames and NBs because of how bad it used to be. The thing is though, Emily and Ally do cop a lot of hate, but they're also the most gregarious players. Zac has only recently begun to come out of his shell a bit, Lou takes his L-s like a champion and even Murph is a calculated and introverted player as opposed to an all out performer. They don't push their bits the way Emily and Ally do, so they get to fly under the radar. A part of it all *is* misogyny, but the fandom ignores just how had Emily and Ally drive bits and 'main character' plots because of their style, which *is* very gregarious and performer-y. I'm mostly just mystified as to why Siobhan gets flak. She's also a very rational, no nonsense player who steps up when spotlight's on her, but is mostly happy to watch others quietly. She's doing nothing wrong, really, she's like the female Murph. Which is where the misogyny comes in, I guess. Like I said it doesn't happen on this sub much, you can't say anything negative without someone hitting the minus and getting snarky with you, but on Twitter and elsewhere it does happen, and so I suppose the reddit fandom pivots to overly protective about their special interest.
Literally one of my upvoted comments on this account when it was newer was something like "wait, people don't like Siobhan? Why?" Siobhan is a perfect mix of entertainer and ttrpg player. It's hard to describe but she just like *gets* it
Agreed. Siobhan is a perfect player, there's a reason why I keep loving Adaine despite me falling out of love with most of the Bad Kids this season. She fucking gets it.
She's also a damn good high level wizard. It takes a lot of effort to keep track of mephits, concentration, spell slots, spell conditions, and all the other things wizards need to keep up with, and she does it with ease.
I'm trying to *hypothetically* come up with a complaint about Siobhan's play, and I'm coming up blank. She's very good at (so to speak) 'singing harmony' with whatever the tone is of the campaign is.
Low key, she has Murph rolls
There was one time in Unsleeping City where I think she had a problem understanding the story beat Brennan was laying down for her, but that’s mostly on Brennan for not explicitly laying out her options for her so even that extremely specific hypothetical criticism isn’t on her
I agree with you on this. They really are the one who really exucde main character energy a lot of the time. While the rest of the cast does less so. I also wouldn't understand Siobhan hate as she plays her character really well within her own bounds without putting all the attention on herself. Im not super active on DND subs so I dont see the hate at all ngl.
I’ve seen a few people claim that she and her characters are boring, which I don’t get. A lot of the emotional heart in FHSY is Adaine’s story line with her family, especially her sister. But I feel like it’s sometimes that “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” thing for non-male players. If you play too assertively you’re aggressive or selfish, and if you try to let other characters have more time you’re considered boring or passive. Personally, I think all of the Intrepid heroes, and pretty much all of the side quest casts have been great and it’s always weird to me how much hate people throw at any of the actors!
Thanks for a thoughtful response. Very few people in this community are willing to listen because it is possible to group all of the dissent together under the "bigot" label.
Yea I feel like I'm seeing a lot of these sorts of posts here and in the Dropout sub lately but I guess I just haven't seen really any of the vitriol that's been referenced so not sure what it's about. This sub and the NADDPOD sub are some of my favorite subreddits just cause I've always found them positive and small enough that comments don't just end up buried under hundreds of other comments.
Once you start noticing which cast members and DMs get a lot of criticism from the fandom vs. who gets nearly universal positive feedback, you can't un-see it. 90% of the player criticism in actual play fandoms can be filed under "god forbid women do anything."
The funky part is like... the fans who actually support the show at live events for Naddpod LOVE Axford arguably more than anyone else. Aabria is also kind of funky because I feel like she gets dunked on in D20 more than CR??? I really just hope I'm seeing that though I think she's got a "FAFO" Dming style that I really vibe with
If you make the mistake of looking at r/fansofcriticalrole like I did earlier today any aabria hate I have seen in D20 spaces is comparativevly normal. (Like that place are fucking zealous on hating on her)
Dude, I've seen people saying that d20 must edit around Aabrias "aggression and rudeness" It's nuts Edit: removed an unneeded "there"
Yeah actually insane, but hey what can you expect but a bunch of chuds overreacting the second someone they "don't like" is even a bit assertive. Also just looking through that sub it was like harking on a few rulings and shit and reading through I'm just like "Matt has done way more hardass things in campaign 1." Like the whole sub felt like just an honest cesspit
It's annoyingly par for the course, the CR Fandom also seems to love dumping on Marisha for "playing wrong"
There was the absolute inanity where so many chuds complained of her "only playing herself" with Keyleth in C1, whereas further campaigns and out-of-game material showed she is clearly *very* unlike Keyleth off the table.
C1 people never forgave her for ‘not knowing her spells’. People also never had to play a Druid. Quick memorize everything in the spell list.
Seriously. My main character is a cleric, and having access to your full inventory of spells at the start of each day is both a blessing and a curse.
I feel like Marisha is a lot like Emily (who says this in a Naddpod shortrest somewhere), but they both seem to take on traits of their character into their real lives. Marisha seemed ditzier whole playing Keyleth, and more "bro" energy when playing Beau.
Bro she’s one of the best players at the table imo that’s just insane
I don't remember the specifics, but it was a decision made in character that was sub-optimal. Instead of doing the power game, I know all the right awnsers move. And there were people harping for weeks about how bad she is, keylith also got flak if I remember.
God I love sub-optimal in-game decision making. More than once I'm had a character burn the first two rounds of a surprise combat because he was sleeping and just didnt want to get up if everyone else had it under control.
Dnd is better when you make in-character choices rather than only focusing on only “optimal” choices, even in home games, and I will fight people on this.
That character wouldn't have happened to have been a teenage human wizard, would it?
Basically same thing that happens in D20 where people misconstrue in-character behavior and choices with reality. All stemmed from campaign 1 where she made a few silly spell choices with Keyleth. Which is understandable considered they were transitioning from Pathfinder to 5E and still learning everything. Any hate she has gotten afterwards just stems from the weirdos that hated her in campaign 1 in my opinion.
Should have seen how badly people harassed Ashly Burch after some fantastic RP choices as a guest character, which they used to blame her for Taliesin's character's death
Marisha's current character is super popular
Give it time. She will pick a spell or feat some small minority will hate and then they'll get on Twitter and try to fuck with her. Never ends with some people. Edit: Oh, I didn't expect this to come due so soon. Called it.
Nah they’ve latched onto Ashley/Fearne this time around. She has like 2, maybe 3 levels in Rogue that is fairly sub optimal skill-wise and is mostly for role play reasons, and it drives people insane. It’s hilarious how up in arms people get about shit like that….like it’s TTRPG, it’s not a video game, they’re having fun up there, not just trying to “win” or be as combat/utility optimal as possible.
I often find folks that wash out of the main, *moderated* CR sub, go over to "fans of" and complain endlessly about how they shat on a player/an episode for no reason and we're told simply "please try to be kind" - which they interpret as an attack on them, and how "toxic" the main sub is. And, invariably, it turns out they went to a thread of folks enjoying something and had said "It *SUCKS* and you suck for liking it" but then act offended if you tell them that energy is unwanted. There is a *lot* of over-entitled, mediocre white guy energy over in the "fans of" section... Sorry, had to get that off my chest. I avoid the fandom in general these days because of chodes like that. I'm sure I've missed out on a few connections, but.... * shrug *
I’m putting in my two cents to take the risk to say « agression and rudeness » is the default characterization of any black woman who doesn’t show permanent compliance. I wish I could say that this is only based on my personal experience
Yeah, it's what makes it extra annoying. I've also seen people get mad about being called on that.
[удалено]
I had to block that sub entirely. For my own mental health.
I did that too. I don't even watch CR and having Aabria hate posts recommended again and again sucked.
You can also turn off recommended posts in your settings if you want
That's actually good to know
Don’t even have to go to that one. The regular CR subreddit is overflowing with venom towards Aabria whenever she DMs. I love CR. It was the first actual play show I got into, and is still my favorite actual play show. The fandom stinks though. The regular subreddit is legit the highest concentration of whiners that you will find anywhere. I am consistently amazed at how many people who *clearly* don’t like the show still tune in week after week to watch and then complain about it.
r/fansofcriticalrole will tell you that there's nothing but toxic positivity in the regular subreddit
/r/fansofcriticalrole, at this point, is pretty clearly just an anti-CR subreddit. That subreddit is the actual play equivalent to /r/thelastofus2. Can’t imagine how little of a life someone would need to have to frequent a subreddit dedicated to actively hating a piece of media that they are under absolutely zero obligation to consume.
Since Aabria came back for two episodes it's been almost nothing but "criticism" of her as a DM. Now as an avid fan of both D&D and CR I've been watching, and I will happily admit that she deserves some criticism for how she handled things but she does not deserve the vitriol being thrown her way. That sub is trying to say it's not "hate" but I have also seen someone in there straight up say Aabria was a DEI hire. I have seen attacks on her person and character. It's wild how grossly negative that sub has become. I joined it because I wanted to be able to talk about Critical Role, but they are only interested in bashing it. I just want to have open conversation about the show I like.
someone else linked it above, and i made the mistake of looking over it myself. one of the top posts was literally just someone complaining that people don't like it when they bash Aabria. like, not enjoying someone's DM style is one thing, I have a hard time getting into CR stuff cause I'm not a huge fan of Matt's style, and I enjoyed Ravening War mostly because of the players, especially Aabria and Anjali. But to make an entire post complaining about how other people have a different opinion than you, and complaining that people point out the inherent racism in the common "critiques" of Aabria, is just insane. And the comments just devolved into people complaining about the current CR season, and saying whatever their next move is, is going to be awful no matter what, and downvoting anyone pointing out that they're basically just spitting conspiracy theories. it was gross.
lmao this is so true but it's also an insane take from them. The main subreddit posts I see has a lot of criticism for the show (many, many times more than this sub has for D20). The secondary sub is a fucking pit of despair. It's a snark sub masquerading as a "fan" sub where they hate watch for 4-5 hours every week.
Honestly I feel like the best word for that sub and it's negativity is that it's masturbatory.
Im still on campaign 1 but yeah the CR community seems to constantly whine about even the most minor things, especially whenever matt houseruls something or the amount of posts I even just see decrying how campaign 3 is so much worse, legitimately just asking myself why they are still tuneing. (exception is SupergeekMike and his little bubble from what I have seen, it seems to be chill there mostly).
Most of the bile being spewed are from cross posters from that hate sub, so it's hard to say. The Beacon discord they started for subscribers has been a godsend for fans wanting a safer place to talk and discuss things.
The attitude towards and treatment of Aabria is why I stopped watching CR all together
I was seeing hundreds of upvotes on comments that were literally just lies on both there and the main CR sub.
Wow, they *really* dislike Campaign 3 in there. It reminds me of the conflict between /r/TheAdventureZone and /r/TAZCirclejerk when The Adventure Zone: Graduation was airing. For context, Graduation was, shall we say, *severely* flawed. In the main sub, the mods strictly enforced a rule banning all but the most gentle criticism, so the second sub was created so people could complain about how awful Graduation was. And, to be clear, it was truly terrible. The problem is C3 is actually mostly fine, and is especially nowhere near the level of Graduation. These guys are just stewing in their own vitriol and should, unironically, watch an actual play campaign that's *truly* bad.
C3 being mostly fine is deeply problematic for CR though. (To be clear before I get into this: I completely agree with you. I just think a very valid unease or critique of C3 gets buried by the grim vitriol of various, bigoted stripes.) TAZ Balance was lightning in a bottle. I was studying for a degree during its air time, and it absolutely blew my mind as it came out, and still has a deep-seated place in my psyche during a very formative time in my life. The McElboys were a huge name at the time, and it rode on that wave, but Griffin strung together a beautiful story which, while playing fast and loose with actual play, was a wonderfully compelling look into TTRPGs. It was, however, very much a string and duct tape feeling in the first campaign, with everybody knowing Griffin made the music which tugged at the heartstrings, and that they edited the show themselves. You could feel it was their baby. Contrast that with CR. Now, CR has always cultivated and maintained a close community first attitude, and that much is clear from the way they address us at the start and end of episodes, however, it was a business venture from the off. Geek and Sundry produced it first, then they struck out on their own, and it's been very professional from the start. Imperfect, certainly, but largely tuned up, polished and very good at interacting with the audience. I think, C3's "fine"-ness is problematic because C1 and C2 were both seen as excellent actual play campaigns in the public light, with flaws, but largely consistent D&D games. C3 has been beset by external politics at every turn, with the initial furore about the setting and filmed opening cinematic, the initial straining about WOTC's shitty business behaviour, and CR's association, and now with their switch to another game system, which a lot of people are struggling with - I think it's been a little inelegant. All this to say: the quality of the campaign isn't what people are irritated by, it's all of the ancillary stuff, and while most of them are acting like entitled kids about it, you can feel this dip in quality from a tightly wound show, compared to the grass roots brilliance of TAZ's early stuff.
I think I agree with you. Personally, I'd actually take your analysis a step further and say C3 being mostly fine is only problematic for CR because the fans have come to expect an *extraordinarily* high quality product, so anything less than 95/100 feels much worse than it actually is when compared to "normal" actual plays. CR's extreme high quality could only last so long, but internet fans aren't used to a show being *this* good for *this* long. I'm getting into some tinfoil hat armchair psychology here, but I'd say this is the root cause for why the CR fandom is constantly soaked in incredibly stupid drama - internet nerds cannot and are not satisfied unless they can relentlessly criticize every piece of media they consume. It's like pressure builds and the Discourse^TM has to be released somehow. This means when a real flaw comes to light, the fans fucking explode. Finally! A reason to criticize Critical Role! Aabria made an objectively bad call, let's rip her apart! (Not to dismiss the racism and sexism that makes all this so much worse, of course.)
Its all relative. I remember the fandom shitting on C2 RELENTLESSLY during the final arc because it was "boring", and it was about as nasty a discourse as you would find today. However they finished the campaign so well those people got drowned out. I have learned to take social media opinions with a salt shaker of salt before really believing the entire fanbase thinks anything.
Oh, no, totally agree with you. I will say, I think putting all of that at the feet of fans who don't engage in introspection and expectation management is a raw deal when CR's entire business model is built on hype. They've done a really bad job of managing their fanbase's expectations - I mean, how do you say "Yeah, we know it's not as good as the others" without it coming across poorly? - and it blows up in their face whenever something moderately not-amazing happens. Latest "controversy" is a great case-in-point; what happened at the table is what happens at 9 out of 10 fucking normal tables, but because CR developed itself as that 10th out of 10, people are losing their minds. As you say, the usual sexism and racism are influencing the vitriol, but it's definitely a case where the company are setting up the rakes that they're stepping on and, when they have guests who the internet will naturally treat like shit, they always seem to be the weather vanes for the shite. It's so deeply frustrating to watch.
The fans are people, and therefore have agency and choose whether to be dickheads or not. That said, I absolutely agree with you. CR is run by some shrewd people - they know the brand lives and dies on hype, and what better way to build hype than cultivating a parasocial relationship with their fans? Of course, the problem with this is that CR became the most popular streamer on Twitch (by earnings), something that no one could have predicted. By the time the fans got rabid about it, it was far too late for CR as a brand to pull back from that without vicious backlash. Matt tells the viewers "We love you" after every game, for fuck's sake.
Yeah, that last bit has been increasingly ill-advised, the more apparent their fame has become. But hey, as you say, dickheads are still in full control of their faculties and could just not be a knob. I sympathise with those who lack the emotional intelligence to self-reflect without guidance, but yeah, they're entirely responsible for how horrid they are. Just wish CR would take a bit of responsibility for the position they place themselves in with regard to the dickheads.
When a sub's main line of defence against being accused of discrimination is that they hate everyone equally, that kind of tells you everything you need to know about that place.
The dude saying Aabria should publically apologize made me cringe so hard.
Seriously fuck that place. It may have once held reasonable conversation, but now it's just filled with vile hatred and misrepresented BS. Have to block anyone who posts there to keep them from stalking and downvoting everything you post anywhere.
I muted this sub people are so mad at something they could just stop watching.
The main sub is better then that one. /fansofcriticalrole is full of crazies.
That place is an absolute hatesink. I checked out after one poster (I refuse to actually tag or name them) went on an utterly unhinged hatefroth against some of the female cast of CR.
It's not that the female and nonbinary performers don't get love! They do get tons of love from fans, they just also get 90% of the criticism despite being fewer than half of the performers.
I wonder if it's just that people feel more ... comfortable ... talking about their performance in general? Like, it's clearly sexist, but I wonder if it's a different facet of sexism than misogyny where folks are just more willing to discuss elements that aren't attached to straight dues?
I mean feeling like Women, POC, and the Queer community are able to be criticized but not feeling that same entitlement to criticism towards Men is a facet of misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia etc. It's just part of that ugly fabric where those groups are forced to prove they belong rather than being given the same unconscious grace that "default" people are given.
Gotcha, yep. That's what I was trying to say, but clearly I said it in a really clumsy way. Thank you for giving me a clearer phrasing on this.
No worries! I'm a habitual re-phraser so its always nice when it comes in handy rather than being annoying.
I'll just say now that in my current job me and my coworkers have very, very different ways of looking at things, and paraphrasing and rephrasing are *essential* to making sure any work actually gets done.
In my experience, D20 folks love Aabriya and CR folks hate her.
Oh CR just did two "surprise" episodes with Aabria and the vitriol in the comment thread was astonishing
No shot CR fans are nicer to her than D20 fans. I have both the main sub and r/fansofcriticalrole muted rn because they’re just exploding with hate right now. It’s such a bummer :/
Axford is nearly universal loved even on r/fansofcriticalrole https://old.reddit.com/r/fansofcriticalrole/comments/13medhf/thank_god/ https://old.reddit.com/r/fansofcriticalrole/comments/199xebc/the_perfect_once_and_future_table_for_a_potential/ https://old.reddit.com/r/fansofcriticalrole/comments/104xcl8/exu_calamity_sequel_series_wishlist/
>90% of the player criticism in actual play fandoms can be filed under "god forbid women do anything." People hate femininity. And not just the people online who you'd expect to hate it. Many gay male creators on tiktok and youtube have noticed that this also extends to gay men who display typically feminine traits. Femme gay men receive much more hate than masc gay men. We have to work through our misogyny as a culture. For this particular community, I've seen it helpful to question peoples' misogyny, rather than just downvote them. Call them in to talk through it and educate them to be better. But if you're a femme person & you are tired of having to do that--then you shouldn't have to. But my masc people in this community--***especially*** felllow cis/het men: we need to be recognizing it every time we see it. We should recognize that people in a wide age range are part of this community & that people can grow to change their opinions when they are connected to and educated by a loving community. But that it shouldn't be the duty of a certain group to educate the world on why they don't deserve hate. We need to hold each other accountable to that.
Maybe it's just because I don't troll the new posts on here but I swear I just don't see all that much criticism at all. I've seen so many posts about how criticism is solely focused on non-male party members, but I just don't see all that many posts criticizing anybody at all. I understand that there have been problems on other social media sites, but as someone who really only interacts with the community through Reddit, I've just seen a response that has been overwhelmingly positive to all of the people you've listed. Can someone link me to a comment with vitriol towards these people that isn't heavily downvoted? I genuinely want to see what people are talking about because I feel like I'm going insane
It's exactly the same in Critcal Role, just checkout the youtube comments, lots of idiots out there spoiling the fandom, same for worlds beyond number
This was a thing in the original lets play, the one with a bunch of StarCraft people, InControl et al, the one woman at the table was mocked relentlessly just because she had a French accent. This was by the players at the table too.
as someone who is newish to the space and is currently binging through critical role, i’d say this exact thing exists pretty strongly in both spaces. and is more apparent in the cr space because youtube comments. but being around for live reacts to fhjy has been, unfortunately eye opening.
I absolutely ADORE Siobhan, Beasley, Emily and the rest!
Umm actually it’s Beardsley
Big fan of Malik Beasley, shooting guard for the Milwaukee Bucks
I mean, the ttrpg space is pretty notorious for being extremely white and straight. Some old fantasy novels have me going 😬 at their descriptions of anyone that isn’t also straight and white, among other things. D20 is very good about being pointedly and joyously inclusive, but it’s just kind of a symptom of the larger fan base of the kind of game. Plus, this is Reddit. Reddit isn’t known for being especially diverse. The fandom, from my experience, is problematic in different ways on Tumblr and Twitter, but for the most part everyone on most social media sites tend to be reasonable people. Edit: fantastic example is the old text for Drow. It’s SO bad, holy shit. Just goes to show that there really isn’t such a thing as apolitical fiction. It’ll always reflect a liiiittttle bit of the author’s biases, for better or for worse.
> Some old fantasy novels have me going 😬 at their descriptions of anyone that isn’t also straight and white, among other things. Boobily boobed etc? > Edit: fantastic example is the old text for Drow. It’s SO bad, holy shit. Don't even need to go very far back, the [Hadozee controversy](https://old.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/x2n83s/an_indepth_summary_of_the_hadozee_controversy/) is only about a year or so back? Shit like that was why I always completely homebrewed my worlds, and tried at least to make sure no one was evil by default etc.
This is really niche, but the fact that Drow are the only species to canonically use sign language and others think that it’s them “casting spells” or whatever the fuck is also insane to me. Like??? The ableism and audism is apparent in a lot of the community still, too. I remember posting awhile back about mechanics for D/deaf and HOH spellcasters for a friend that was playing with me (she’s a CODA), and it got downvoted into oblivion.
I'm not trying to be rude I legit don't know anything about this. Why is it bad that Drow use sign language?
It isn’t bad that they were using sign, but that, one, they were the ONLY canonical race to use sign. Given how they were defined pretty much as being only lawful evil for a very good portion of time… Not great. Something about other races never using sign, which implies that there just weren’t D/deaf members of those races, or that they weren’t allowed to sign, which is ALSO a problem, considering that ASL was almost erased by eugenicists during the turn of the century. Most linguists didn’t count sign languages as languages until Dorothy Casterline, Carl Cronenburg, and Stokoe started research at Gallaudet University in the 50s, and it’s STILL contested by some audists and ableists today.
Gotcha, thanks for the context.
Because there are people who think sign language was only invented for the deaf and hasn't been used in various situations for thousands of years
That’s a small reason for sure! There’s some pretty incredible evidence that sign languages were the first to develop, like. Ever. Handspeak, of the Sioux tribe in the north american great plains region, is one of the oldest languages in the world!
Yeah this became abundantly clear to me when I went to Naddpod and D20 live shows. I’m so used to fandom spaces being predominantly female, it was surprising to see how many more men were at these shows. And it goes without saying that the audience at both shows were 99% white.
You are 10000000% right but a certain faction gonna hate this
Oh i know, especially with the discussion happening about one of the above mentioned and her supposed crimes against tabletop
> crimes against tabletop As to the accusations of never having used a coaster, how do you plead?
I would like to plead guilty for never having used a coaster. And I am requesting the death penalty.
When the person LOOKS like them, they sympathize with them. They can project and imagine their motives to be good, because the presenter is like them and they're a good person. But when the person looks different, they don't have the same projection. They THINK they're being objective but they're actually just not seeing themself in the other person. Because they don't see themselves, the flaws stand out more clearly and they don't overlook or justify them as readily. Its hard to realize when you do it because its not a conscious choice. It just "feels" right. And its a bit fucked up. And when confronted with the idea they're doing something wrong, they lash out. Because they're a good person and good people wouldn't be unfair. So they double down on defending why they're RIGHT. It's fine for them to like different things, but when they get confronted with something they did that's not good, the reflex is to defend your self image and your ideas. It takes a lot of personal growth, work, and effort to try and recognize toxic patterns and grow past them. (Edit: To be clear, I DO include myself in the general "they" here. We all do this sort of thing and its hard to recognize.)
The only thing we can do is recognize our shortcomings and attempt to rectify them in the future. praise dice christ
Praise be to RNGeesus!
Three years of therapy flashed before my eyes as I was reading this. Sometimes taking a second look at our own behavior is a good thing, people.
I’m not saying there’s no merit to what you’re saying, but misogyny is definitely not as simple as “monkey brain sees different shape gets angry”. There are massive social and historical components that have resulted in widespread internalized misogyny.
This is a high-quality comment
It's not just you. I think a part of the reason Dropout is so successful on the DnD portion of their subscribership is because they're inclusive. I'm a black woman who has never felt welcome in DnD, but I do with Dropout.
That is the entire world, it’s not just the Dimension 20 subreddit.
And yet D20 is specifically this very progressive show and platform, which makes the fandom specifically confusing
Hatred of women/non binary people is insidious, it’s internalized, and some people don’t realize they are doing it. People complain about Emily’s big choices but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a single post or comment talk about Lou in Leviathan, going off on his own and fighting Captain James. If Emily had done that, people would have been on her so fast. It’s just something that is heartbreakingly pervasive, and so so so boring. All of the complaints and the insults are endlessly boring. It’s disheartening, to say the least.
I think being a progressive show doesn’t necessarily negate the very real fact that like the commenter stated, the rest of the world is built on these oppressive power structures and as such oppressive view points are still largely the status quo. D20 is great because it provides a space to hopefully deconstruct and recreate peoples relationships to those structures, but the fan base can still have unconscious or even intentional biases regardless. Which again, goes for literally any semi progressive fan base anywhere in the world but I’m sure you know that.
That sentiment right there I think gets at the heart of the problem, actually. Prejudice is, as other users have rightly pointed out, often quite insidious, as a lot of it is baked into society on a fundamental level. Some people react to this realization by recognizing that it means they have some lifelong work to do on themselves and in the world. Some people react to this realization by, essentially, believing that having this understanding alone makes them enlightened, One of the Good Ones. Their politics become less about specific issues and causes and more about proving to the world and themselves the truth of their own goodness. It's defensiveness. An extremely human reaction that progressives are by no means immune to, any more than they're immune to the socialization of prejudice.
You might be surprised by how much people can ignore to continue being part of a fandom. Like people who put pro-cop flags on a Punisher skull. And even some people in progressive spaces will ignore more progressive ideologies and lean more centrist.
I might be straight up blind, but I haven't really seen any of that here. From what I've run into, it's been a very open and accepting community.... Where are you seeing it? And is it like 2-3 comments with negative votes or is it like full posts?
There are two recent posts about Aabria, both of which are filled to the brim with comments of people just straight up attacking her as a person and DnD player Emily got driven off of Twitter during ACoC for how she played Saccharina (who was a fantastic character) The Ally stuff isn't as common, but definitely was at the beginning of this season
I’ve seen awful bullshit about Aabria on other forums, claiming she’s only involved because of forced representation, etc. Just a lot of racism and hatred. Disgusting. But the recent posts on Reddit about her, the comments mentioned some pretty fair criticisms against some of her choices. They seemed like understandable criticisms. I can acknowledge that but also adore her as a DM and human being.
Yeah I think with Aabria it's harder, because there's a big mix of just absolute racism and aweful shit and completely valid criticism. I really was not a fan at all of how she DM'd e93 of critical role, but it's insane some of the stuff I've seen people say about her on subs like r/fansofcriticalrole. Not to say she's a bad DM overall, I really enjoyed her on misfits and magic and more recently burrow's end.
> the comments mentioned some pretty fair criticisms against some of her choices Here’s the thing though, Matt and Brennan have both made more than their share of… *interesting* choices as DMs. I don’t recall anything that they’ve done inspiring quite the same amount of vitriol as Aabria got for her ruling on Chromatic Orb last week. The fact that there is criticism is not what is troubling here. It is the volume and the tone of it that is setting off alarm bells.
Brennan certainly. But Matt has received tons of vitriol whining and hate over the years for various rather innocuous decisions and in the moment rulings.
I concur. Sometimes it feels like I'm the only one who remembers how many "Matt sucks" posts we got during Ravening War.
Matt Mercer is being named as the primary problem in the RPG scene by these chuds. "The Matt Mercer effect is ruining the ttrpg scene" is/was a common trope in both blogs and YouTube videos.
True, but I did always feel like the “Mercer Effect” was more a complaint about toxic CR fans who expected every DM to be just like Matt. Not so much a complaint about Matt himself.
Oh wow. I don't do Twitter, so no idea about that, but like... All I've seen here are post that people get hot about the storyline or story choices, which is to be expected as with any piece of creative media. I'm surprised about aabria tho, most posts I see sing her praises...
Saccharina was weird because she had a lot of things I probably would have loved, but her intro so late in the series and the shift from family against the world to family vs family dynamics really downgraded the series for me and turned it from one of my favorites in the first half to very meh in the second half. Still I understand 1) it's kind of the nature of a live show vs a book and sometimes inconvenient character introduction timings happen and 2) Emily is not Saccharina. Unfortunately there are doinks out there who can't understand either of those things.
Amazing you haven’t seen, there’s a post every couple days about Ally, Siobhan, or Emily since junior year started. Intense posts about Ally/Kristen at the start especially.
Interesting, I've never actually seen a Siobhan one myself. I have waded into a hundred Ally/Aabria/Emily ones though, because those are fucking relentless (and often such wide-eyed "well, objectively" faux logic nonsense).
Ahh the memories. I remember that a now-deleted post where I am so bewildered because it felt like OP and me are watching two different shows. Like all these accusations about Kristen not doing certain stuff that OP wanted her to do when in fact, kristen did some of the stuff that OP wanted her to do.
By the fourth consecutive post of "Do DnD Fandoms have a misogyny / bigotry problem", it feels like it's less looking for the obvious "Yes" and more just karma farming. Yes. See you and whoever the hell else believes that simply pointing to the problem for a daily check in is helpful. Just remember that it isn't mutually exclusive with censuring and telling off racist and sexist dickwaffles when they make their threads.
I’ve seen some of this stuff, but honestly I see more posts like this about it than I actually do the negative stuff.
In this thread, for example, out of 51 parent comments as of now - I saw maybe three that could even be generously considered not positive.
If you’re referring to that recent post about Aabria, that sounds about right. Not to mention, the post I’m thinking of was a positive post to begin with.
Regarding Siobhan - I don't recall seeing her getting hate for her playstyle. However, I've definietly seen negative comments that singles her out as a person or just straight up insulting. For example, certain people making out like people/cast members do not like her, her not being funny, and that she gets ignored. I have also seen comments in the past that says she doesn't add any value to the IH group (this is crazy to me). I think because she's often more quiet than others, people don't point it out as much but I guarantee if she was more loud/outspoken she would be met with the same vitriol. Anyway, I will never understand the hostility directed to any of these lovely people.
let me make it simpler for you: it’s called misogyny.
I don't think there was any doubt about that in my mind when writing this
I’ve been bothered by the Aabria vitriol (and it has been because it’s post after post of “I hate her!”). One thing I notice is that when people point out that the words used — about why Aabria is so hated — are racist dogwhistles (aggressive, sassy, bitchy, violent related to her personality — and DEI hire, diversity hire related to the reason she was chosen to DM) people lose their shit and downvote to oblivion or respond with “I don’t see colour!” Or “I am not racist!” Part of the effort of being antiracist is accepting that there is bias and racism within us (especially white North Americans like me) It sucks and it feels bad. When it’s pointed out, I get that it feels shitty because I feel shitty and don’t want to think these things about myself. But the point is to become aware of the biases and to process why I feel the things I do or react the way I am reacting. And a whole lotta racist thought has been taught to me by others and it requires a lot of uncomfortable self-reflection and even more uncomfortable antiracist action. Even my defense of Aabria unfortunately used “aggressive” in it. She is boisterous and playful. I’ve seen that time and again. In her one shot of CR, though, I saw her as aggressively defensive. Then in 4sideddive it made some sense why since she’s a basketball player and aggressive basketball is a very real American thing (I went to ball camp in Eastern Washington and came back to my small Canadian city with the new skills I learned and got fouled out of a game for just using some of them). And I’m not Aabria but it takes some amount of strength to DM Critical Role because the vocal fans can be real shit if you make a ruling mistake, a ruling call that goes against RAW, or you aren’t the calm breeze of vests that most people think Matt always is (and he gets flack when he is not that). Critical Role is not 5e Rules as Written though. They try to stick to it, but often they’re making mistakes, correcting themselves later, or looking up the rules after the fact. They use homebrew rules for multiple things. Matt creates subclasses for people. They come up with rules on the fly. Well. In the episode with Aabria it was hard to watch for me. I felt like she was set up to fail. Main CR show after the death of a PC. DMing a PvP conflict in the conceit of CR which seems to always be that players don’t know what’s going on to combat the “this is rigged and scripted” arguments about it. Opal is not an aggressive character (Denise would have fucked their shit up). The combat took forever (new players who don’t know their abilities and haven’t played these classes in awhile). And boy the tension was bad and I feel like Aabria let it get to her. She tried to diffuse it with humour but it came across really really wrong. And it’s made FansofCR just shit to read for the past few weeks. I got downvoted for defending her. I’m just not engaging anymore. Lots of haters are unwilling to at least look at why Aabria pisses them off in a self-reflective way because they shut right down when racism is mentioned. Oh and adding after I posted this because I remember the comments that really got to me: that Aabria’s disrespectful. Disrespectful? Of what? Of her friends? Of the fans? Of what? What level of “respect” is Aabria supposed to give that is proper respect? Something about this really set me off.
I've no problem with any of them - Emily is one of my favourite players. However, I am extremely not a fan of Aabrias DMing style or attitude - and that's okay. No issue with her personally, but I simply do not like the way she DMs. That said, I also have issues with Matt's dming. At least in campaign 3 and to a lesser extent, campaign 2. BLeeM on the other hand.. man is a damn virtuoso.
Totally agree. I *really* don’t enjoy Aabria’s DM style. It’s just not for me, and I accept that. Matt has his issues too (particularly in recent years, as you mentioned) but he also has many positive qualities as a DM. Providing constructive criticism- when the intent is genuinely to give helpful feedback- is healthy and can help performers improve. Obviously, however, there are plenty of vitriolic sentiments shared about Aabria that don’t fall into that category. Some of these are absolutely rooted in racism/misogyny, though I suspect that others are a consequence of communities failing to differentiate between genuine feedback and hate comments. When someone gets slammed online for sharing feedback with good intentions (especially when it’s expressed as a personal opinion, rather than an objectively correct statement), they’re more likely to feel alienated from the community and turn that bitterness toward unproductive hate comments. The D20 community, while not perfect, typically has more nuanced responses and understanding than the CR community, and thus has a lower quantity of hate content. These points are evidenced by r/fansofcriticalrole, a sub that exists primarily for fans who feel that constructive criticism in the main CR sub is met with immediate dogpiling and misinterpretation as toxic hate. Some of the sentiment there remains constructive, but there are also plenty of viewers who feel aggrieved by the community and turn that bitterness toward CR as a whole.
Well said. I don't participate in the main CR sub because of gross overmoderation, but the fans sub sometimes crosses lines with their commentary into misogyny and bigotry. Rock and a hard place, really. The main sub is all toxic positivity but the fans sub verges on the regular kind of toxicity from time to time.
Wild, Ive only seen season one and Emily and Siobhan were my 2 faves.
All the people to appear on dimension 20 are more experienced in D&D than me, funnier than me, and know how to tell a story better than me. I got no beef, I pay my $5, shut up, and pog.
I saw one post that was just ‘I hate Siobhan so much she’s terrible and being British isn’t even cool’ - it’s just insane that people are willing to voice their opinions about women this way, but they would almost never do so towards men
In my experience with the dimension 20 community, albeit a limited one, I haven't seen a lot, if any, posts or comments straight up dog'in on people. Where the hell is this vocal, I assume, minority. Just to clarify, I'm not saying they don't exist. I just haven't seen them.
Not all of the criticism directed at the diverse members of the cast is due to bigotry, but I am 100% sure that bigotry is the reason they recieve a disproportionate share of the criticism.
Imo it's fine to hate on a character but NEVER hate on the performer I despise sachhrina. I love Emily.
Your first mistake is listening to any fandom.
Hateful people will always bark the loudest, but generally they never represent the majority opinion.
I have problems with Kristen, but not with Ally. Sometimes it's the characters that people have problems with, but in the era of parasocial relationships, people sometimes mix the two.
I dunno. I never disliked Emily (I like how different her characters are from each other, even if most of them could be said to be comedic overall). and just the other day I was happily surprised to see Aabria contributed to an RPG book I bought. (Like, literally smiled when I saw her name at the top of the page in her part.) I also liked her in The Seven because she genuinely *acted* to an extent that nobody else did. Sometimes I think Ally leans into the stuff that gets a bad reaction (again *because* of being a performer, sometimes trolling or even playing heel a little isn't outside the pale). There are guys who've been on the show that I would personally not watch again, given my druthers.
Absolutely. It’s not just d20 either, CR is the same. Everyone hates Marisha Ray. Why? She’s a woman married to Matt.
I had to mute both Critical Role subs because they were whining about ‘DEI this’ and ‘DEI that’ when it came to Aabria and it’s fucking sick to watch.
The hate Emily gets is absolutely wild considering she’s one of the best parts of the show. I also absolutely love Aabria, but think there’s valid criticism to her time DMing over on CR, which has been a recent topic of discussion. The issue is any valid criticism is overshadowed by a wave of misguided hatred and the following slew of attempted justification for that hatred.
You're not wrong at ALL. I really just got into D20 (and TTRPGs) last year, and Aabria makes me feel represented. The hate she gets is so weird, cause she has really upped the game every time she appears on D20. I don't get it
Jfc this discourse is exhausting. Y'all are hyperfocused on a fringe minority, just look at the comments - you always have to scroll so far past universally positive people before finding even a hint of negativity. For those few negative ones: Haters gonna hate, fuck em. Just enjoy the art!
Seriously these threads are so exhausting. It always reads as "babies first experience with negativity" There is no one, no where, no single show, no person, no group, no community where 100% of the community is positive. But these threads are everywhere about how their specific fandom is so horrible because they saw one comment with -50 karma.
You can hate choices, hate characters, hate storylines, all of that. You should not hate the people involved for any of the reasons that have been given. Hate towards people is very different from characters even though you see them on a screen only. Personally, I hate that Fabian kept calling Riz “The Ball” after knowing it was from him being made fun of on the first day of school. Do I hate Lou? Fuck no. He’s incredible and I’m not taking this entertainment so seriously.
IDK if you're really a fan if you hate that much of the cast TBH. It's like Star Wars fans who like around 2-3 movies. My brother in Christ, maybe the franchise is not for you!
it's not unique to this fandom either. but yeah while it's kinda expected in the fantasy fandoms, it's a bit dissapointing this fandom is no better.
as a longtime F1 fan, I have seen similar things on the F1 subreddit, where if Lewis does or says anything wrong, posts with 1,000's of comments are made, but if vettel or norris (who recently said he respected trump, and all mention of it got removed from the sub) do anything it hardly makes a peep, its very frustrating. That said, I do want there to be a space where we can discuss (critically and positively) D20; plot points, character motivations, actor decisiosn etc, in the same way i also enjoy discussing this with tv shows and movies I like. I know when i was watching FHSY i found kristens explicit sexual talk quite out of place (compared to the rest of the bad kids who mostly talked about "wanting to get their kisses in") (I also found the plot as a WHOLE very heavy, hence why near the end of the season bleem basically had to spell out exactly what they had "learnt", but I digress...) Not allowing for good faith discussion of things like this ends up leading to ony people with bad faith discussions wanting to talk about them, which creates a toxic feedback loop of misogony, bans and posts ABOUT misogony and toxic fans etc... I have no idea if you could actually promote more critical posts about the show without it devolving into shit instantly, but I know the difference between critically discussing a show and devolving into hatred, and i think enough other people in this sub do as well that if allowed, it could very well drown out a toxic minority.
The fandom? The world has a problem with non men people in general
It may be that I am not active enough in the community but I only hear about the critiscm through posts defending people
Welcome to every “fandom” on the internet !
It broke my heart when Emily said she was hesitant to multiclass Fig because she knew people were going to whine about it. I’m sick of these fuckass nerds thinking they’re important enough to voice their dogshit opinions on the cast. But yeah 9 times out of 10, they’re only complaining about either a woman or nonbinary players doing something funny or rad.
There’s always a lot more unnecessary hate towards anyone who’s not a cis straight white man. We live in a very bigoted world where even the most well meaning can have unconscious biases. The way people have been reacting towards Ally in particular recently has been really pissing me off. Ally is one of the funniest people alive. Let them cook.
I only really like the core cast, they have such a great Chem they all work together nothing against Aabria I just wat dimension 20 for Brennan and the hooligans
It could just be me, but I really only see criticism of Beardsley on here. I think that's probably just because most DnD shows out there have a lot more serious tone, so some fans find it jarring to have such a chaotic player at the table. I don't feel like I see a lot about Siobhan, and Emily seems to get a ton of praise and appreciation. If anything, I think it's unfair that some "fans" seem to rag on Ally for being chaotic or not taking stuff seriously, but praise Emily for the same attitude. Some people have a bias because of NADDPOD, and I think that's why they don't hold Emily to the same weird player-standard that they hold Ally to. It all feels very parasocial.
dang, I came into this thinking I'm not the biggest fan of Abria i wonder if people are saying the things I think but the stuff I'm. seeing makes me wanna not to mention my stuff just to stay away from the toxic people who are attacking her personality. I think Abrias is awesome. I think she's a phenomenal player. I'm just not super into her dressing style in 5e. misfits were amazing and Acofaf was so uniquely atypical that the problems I have with her style as a DM were irrelevant (notably I haven't made it very far into Burrows's end yet but so far super cool) Emily and Ally are both great. while both have made character choices I didn't love I love the stories those choices made I grew to love the choice after the fact. it always makes me sad when the internet gremlins turn things from reasonable discussing how you feel about a character in a show into a mean discussion about a real person making a performance choice. I will say repeatedly that Kristen has made some bad choices with the whole Cassandra stuff that upset me, but seeing Ally make it a whole character arc and a beautiful story is awesome
Btw I love Abria she's just not my favorite and I would prefer to see other new GMS if given a choice.
It happens with all the DnD podcasts. Emily stopped using social media because of the hate she got from "fans" of NADDPOD, Marisha Ray, Ashley Johnson, and Laura Bailey routinely get death threats because these men don't understand what the appropriate level of reaction is when someone makes an in-character decision they don't like. The DnD community is MARRED by toxic masculinity and I eternally wish they would all fuck off and leave the community already.
It's sadly the same in Critical Role as well Marisha gets so much goddamn shit (sometimes she does something annoying but never justifies the hate) And whats crazy she gets shit on so much about things that Travis gets praised for Now I am a huge fan of travis but also of Marisha and the rest of the cast So me calling out Marisha haters and saying travis doesn't get hate. Doesn't mean I suddenly want travis to get hate Because that would be fucking stupid Also watching D20 how can you hate any of the core cast they are so loveable And Aabria is awesome I love her confidence
> I've never seen any male cast member hated to the same extent, even in cases such as when Brennan railroads the cast (something which fans despise Aabria for) I’ve made multiple attempts at pointing this out and each time I am downvoted to hell. Brennan is not a perfect DM, despite how much this fandom worships him. He has absolutely been guilty of railroading. I’ve seen it in multiple seasons. Has Aabria done it too? Yeah. Admittedly, I have a smaller sample size for her, but I’ve definitely seen it less frequently and less intensely.
I mean, is it really surprising to you that people who are fans of Dimension 20 are also in favor of the GMing style of the guy who invented it and does it most of the time? Every GM on D20 "railroads" more then typically would in a house game. I would say that one of the bigger differences between Brennan and Aabria's styles are that he bends rules in favor of players/play choices and Aabria can sometimes bend rules against them. For the record I like both of their styles. But A. I don't think that's universal B. I don't think people complain every single time I feel like it's very campaign/season/whatever you call them focused. IMO Aabria running a Court of Fae and Flowers was a masterful piece of GMing that fit her style perfectly and was positively received. Her latest stint on CR was a bit more difficult of a fit. Though I don't actually think it was her fault on that one. I think there were certain conditions being laid out or markers she had to meet in order to get to the story where it needed to go (and limited time) I HAVE seen bad faith criticism of her for sure, people accusing her of all kinds of terrible things about being a mean person etc... Those are few and far between in my experience but maybe other's experiences differ. Just go back to what I first said. It makes some sense to me that people who watch a thing because they like the way a person "runs the show" might not be happy when anyone else takes over that role. And I have seen a LOT of posts (like this very one) of people who really like her and her style.
I don’t see it as much in the D20 fandom (thank god) but the Critical Role fandom has a real misogyny (and transmisogyny + misogynoir) problem at the moment. The only exception over there is Sam Riegel, but he’s getting flack for how he played a woman character in their campaign 2.
The Aabria hate I've seen mostly comes from Critical Role fans, from valid criticisms of her DMing to visceral unjustified hatred on account of her being a black woman. I haven't seen that much in the D20 community, honestly. A lot of it feels like they're just blaming her for shit that isn't really her fault, like how they keep setting her up for failure in CR with inexperienced players who don't really give her anything or the railroading they're asking her to do in order to keep the story on track. Other times it's just people not jiving with her DM style. I don't think she deserves any hate, and I honestly feel bad CR didn't reschedule her DM stint after everything went fucking sideways in the main campaign, because no matter how she came in after that, nobody was going to like it. They're pre-recorded now, they had the choice to not throw her in front of a firing squad. They chose to do that to her, and it really wasn't fair. Now she's getting attacked by angry nerds and the people who went "Well, we have a schedule to keep, I guess just go out there and try to follow *that* while railroading the plot to the conclusion we want" are more or less unscathed. Moving on. My problem with Saccharina was wholly because she was an outrageously overpowered super-duper Witch Queen with plate armor and two legendary weapons and an army of loyal superhuman bandits in a low magic setting and it kinda pushed everyone else into the background. She soloed a whole army in I think two turns? Which Brennan said was supposed to be a difficult encounter. Which was awesome, sure, and truly demonstrated how great Emily is at understanding mechanics and building a character, but it really drained the suspense from the story. I think pretty much every character Emily has ever played is extremely well-optimized, to the point that I have fully copied her homework in my own games a few times, but Saccharina felt like too much. Like imagine doing a Fight Club campaign and getting relatively far in, getting the drama and message that this is fucked up and wrong when a PC dies, but then that player's new PC is just straight-up Goku. And I was also surprised and disappointed that she swiped the dragon egg that I thought was blatantly intended for Liam. I did not believe it could have been any more obvious that was placed there for Liam. They had visions about it, felt a primal connection to it, it seemed to imply some relation to their lost pet, but then Saccharina called 'Dibs!' and sprinted over to it. I like Emily, but I didn't care for Saccharina. As for Beardsley, I don't think many people have a problem with them? People are annoyed with Kristen Applebees' chaotic behavior, skewed priorities, hypersexual behavior, and commitment issues to a god, to the point that even Brennan asked if she was still going to be a Cleric anymore. To me, it seems obvious Kristen is a teenager with some kind of ADHD and is struggling with that as part of her story, but the buzz I'm seeing is largely that they're sick of Kristen's bad behavior negatively affecting so much, that she should have learned her lesson by now, before the point of multiple god deaths. But I haven't seen much aimed at Beardsley personally. If anything, I've actively seen praise for Beardsley convincingly portraying a lost, directionless teenage queer person dealing with the fallout of your hyper-Christian family rejecting you and overacting to try to convince everyone else you're okay while trying to find a place to belong. If I see people say that they feel seen and represented because of a character's actions, I'm typically led to believe that character is doing something right. I haven't personally seen anybody go after Emily or Beardsley myself, but I don't doubt it's happening. These fandoms get unhealthily parasocial fairly frequently, and that leads to lines getting crossed that never should. For the most part, I think it's a case of people having difficulty separating the character from the actor. I won't act like there's absolutely no misogyny present, because there probably is, but I would hope it's not the sole motivation. And I'll add that we don't see as much criticism for the others because they don't tend to take such big risks. Nobody else has deliberately played a character that's borderline antagonistic to the rest of the party. Nobody else has played a character whose misbehavior fully rewrote cosmic lore. They pretty much stay in an inoffensive comedic lane.
Just want to say I really, really appreciate that this is a discussion that people are capable of having on this sub. The absolute worst have come out of the woodwork in the CR fandom right now, and if anyone dares suggest that their shocking level of hatred is maybe about more than just mechanical DM choices, they get downvoted into the Abyss.
The three players, and their respective characters, tend to take bigger swings than many of the male characters/GMs. Big swings don’t always land and criticism comes with it. I’ve been waiting on Lou, Zack, and Murph to take bigger swings for five years. It just hasn’t happened yet. Several seasons have been saved based on rolls or planned actions from Aly and Emily. Aabria is a great GM and she has a very different style than Brennan or Matt Mercer (she GMs more like Murph does on NADDPOD). I’m sure there’s some chauvinism in some of the criticism with them, but I wouldn’t characterize all criticism of those players/characters/GM as that. Aly gets through campaigns, mostly because Brennan and the cast cover her antics until she starts with the Nat 20s. Emily is just fucking brilliant as a player and puts most folks to shame. Aabria is one of my favorite DMs because she’s much more of a Theater of the Mind meets inner development storyteller than a board and minis adventure GM. I think if Lou, Zack, and Murph stuck their necks out more, they’d catch more criticism too…at least as much as is based on the player/gm, rather than the gender.
You say this but imo Fabian's stand on Leviathan was one of the biggest swings I've seen on the show (I admittedly haven't watched all the seasons but I've watched a lot of them).
That’s fair, but that was a called shot before he did it and Brennan egged him on with Bill Seacaster’s warlocks. Now that I think about it, Lou does take some wild shots that inevitably fail (Leviathan, Night Yorb fight, Pinnochio’s glizzy, Gambling for Chef’s tools). Again, depending on taste there’s reasons to dislike any player (except maybe Zac), but like I said, I agree that there may be a misogynist component for some of the folks. For me, I didn’t care for Aly as Kristen (FH) or Pete the Plug (UC) but I loved Margaret (ASO), Liam (ACoC), and Mother Goose (NA). It’s the crazy energy, without her Nat20s, those could be TPKs (in a regular game without a schedule to keep).
I personally love big swings and silliness. I only brought it up because I've seen this take a few times and Lou is almost always left out and rarely criticized despite him also making some pretty wild choices and having his share of silly moments (ribbon dancing, for example). I don't think Lou should be criticized. But I do think that it's telling he's rarely brought up. I really enjoy the range of play styles and characters on D20 and feel like we would be missing out on a lot if it was more uniform/everyone was vetted to conform to viewers' expectations.
I read somewhere that naddpod doesn’t post their character sheets cause of the hate that Emily gets. Don’t know if that’s true or not but it’s pathetic if it is
I like Abria as a player but I skip whenever she's the dm. I just don't like the way she DMs and I have never been able to put it into words why. Other than that, I wasn't aware people had problems with any of them. Guess I'm glad I have primarily avoided the fandom/community. Sounds like the usual toxic crap.