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addme_fandom Name: higglety will do :)
Age: 29
Country: USA
Subscription/Access Policy: because I’m adult, I will not knowingly grant access to minors, and I’d prefer minors not grant me access. Otherwise, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ whatevs, subscribe away
Main Fandoms: Right now Critical Role is my current obsession
Other Fandoms: Venom, Yuri on Ice, Voltron, Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, Due South, Yowamushi Pedal, The Adventure Zone, BomBARDed, Castlevania (Netflix), My Hero Academia, Tiger and Bunny
Fannish Interests: I like to make art, and I like to read fic.
OTPs and Ships: I’m a multishipper and a polyshipper at heart. My current faves include but are not limited to Fjord/Caleb, Widomauk, Fjester, Venom/Eddie, Venom/Eddie/Anne, and Venom/Eddie/Anne/Dan, Trevor/Sypha/Alucard, Kotetsu/Barnaby
Other Info: I’m also a fiber crafter and calligrapher, and I like to make fandom stuff on occasion.
ETA: Also I forgot to mention but I love D&D and other tabletop role playing games and I would love to yell about my characters and my dumb parties and all of the wacky hijinks they’ve gotten up to with folks so please add me if you like D&D stories, or want to tell me your own D&D stories!!!
Age: 29
Country: USA
Subscription/Access Policy: because I’m adult, I will not knowingly grant access to minors, and I’d prefer minors not grant me access. Otherwise, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ whatevs, subscribe away
Main Fandoms: Right now Critical Role is my current obsession
Other Fandoms: Venom, Yuri on Ice, Voltron, Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, Due South, Yowamushi Pedal, The Adventure Zone, BomBARDed, Castlevania (Netflix), My Hero Academia, Tiger and Bunny
Fannish Interests: I like to make art, and I like to read fic.
OTPs and Ships: I’m a multishipper and a polyshipper at heart. My current faves include but are not limited to Fjord/Caleb, Widomauk, Fjester, Venom/Eddie, Venom/Eddie/Anne, and Venom/Eddie/Anne/Dan, Trevor/Sypha/Alucard, Kotetsu/Barnaby
Other Info: I’m also a fiber crafter and calligrapher, and I like to make fandom stuff on occasion.
ETA: Also I forgot to mention but I love D&D and other tabletop role playing games and I would love to yell about my characters and my dumb parties and all of the wacky hijinks they’ve gotten up to with folks so please add me if you like D&D stories, or want to tell me your own D&D stories!!!
no subject
Date: 2018-12-06 05:38 pm (UTC)I've added you. :)
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Date: 2018-12-09 03:16 pm (UTC)And yeah, the CritRole back library can be... intimidating. But protip: you can actually go ahead and ignore the first hundred or so episodes for now. See, Critical Role is made up of two campaigns. Campaign 1 follows the adventures of the Vox Machina group. It sprang from a home game that they played for a while before they started recording, so we jump in kinda in media res when they start streaming the sessions. Because they’re at the beginning of their live play journey, there’s some rough parts from a production standpoint, and they also started with some character choices that play somewhat better around a table in person than they do for an audience. It’s not bad, and it’s definitely worth going back to watch once you’re hooked, but I wouldn’t recommend starting at the very beginning.
I myself started (and would recommend any new viewer start) with Campaign 2. It’s the one they’re currently playing, and it’s set about 23 years after the events of Vox Machina, on a different continent of the same planet, and following an entirely new group of characters: the Mighty Nein. There are currently 44 episodes, which is a bit more manageable. New episodes stream every Thursday, and an audio recording is released in podcast form a week after. If you can’t watch the livestream (or if, like me, you fall asleep at the end because time zones are nonsense), you can find video on demand versions of the episodes up on the Critical Role YouTube, with current episodes going up the Monday following each stream.
I got hooked by listening to the podcast. The whole cast, particularly the DM, Matt Mercer, is very good at doing great evocative visual descriptions of what’s going on, and because they’re all voice actors, they all DO THE VOICES which is great. There’s never any confusion about who’s talking, and it’s really easy to keep the characters straight. The episodes are about 3-4 hours long usually, which was one of the reasons I picked it up initially (plus just enough recommendations from sources I trust that were saying it was good - but not so many that I felt pressured to listen, which sucks). 4 hours seems long, and it is if you’re trying to sit there and concentrate on only that, but it’s actually the perfect length if I want something to listen to while I do something else like crafting or housework or driving or so forth. Shorter episodes of podcasts are nice, but I have to constantly switch to something new when they’re done; I can put one episode of CR on and I know I’m good for a good while. When I caught up with the podcast to where they were with the live episodes at the time, I started watching the stream live each week.
The main thing that you gain when you watch the video is you get to see the faces everyone makes, which are honestly priceless. I’d say 95% of the story gets specifically told or described verbally, and that last 5% lives in the facial expressions and gestures that happen quickly and spur of the moment as a reaction to other events, without being described. Watching live every Thursday is an interesting experience, too. I stopped paying for cable a long time ago and do Netflix and Hulu instead, and even when I had cable, I was recording most shows to watch at my own convenience, so it had been a long time since I’d watched anything live. It’s interesting to have a specific time that I watch a thing, and to factor that into my plan for the week. It’s also a really cool shared experience to watch the thing live with a group of people who also really love the thing and are super excited to see what happens. It’s like the internet turns into one big watch party. One thing that I really enjoyed about tumblr-based Crit Role fandom is going into the #cr spoilers tag every Thursday and yelling about shocking events, and watching people yell with me. It’s like screaming into the void, but also the void is full of other people screaming, and we’re all screaming about the backstory bomb that just dropped. It’s pretty great!
So anyway, yes, I highly recommend Critical Role, and if you decide to watch it PLEASE let me know because I would love to hear what you think as you go along! I got one of my friends hooked and she’s been working her way through the C2 backlog to catch up, and her reactions as she gets to the good bits are amazing and give me life.
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Date: 2018-12-14 05:41 am (UTC)The length of the episodes is still intimidating but I'm checking out s2e1 as I type (although it is 5AM...I'm optimistically hoping I won't fall asleep and miss anything!).
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Date: 2018-12-20 04:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-06 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-09 03:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-09 03:37 pm (UTC)Have you been watching Double Decker this season? It's in the same universe as Tiger and Bunny.
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Date: 2018-12-09 03:42 pm (UTC)And what, a series in the same univers as Tiger and Bunny??? How did I not know this was a thing??? Where are you watching it; is it streaming on Crunchyroll or Netflix or something? No I have not been watching, but I’m gonna now!!!
hlo!
Date: 2018-12-07 03:52 am (UTC)anyway let's be buds
Re: hlo!
Date: 2018-12-09 03:37 pm (UTC)I love fiber crafts because they make me feel like a spider witch, which is pretty great. I knit some and embroider, mostly as trim or embellishment for garments (I’ve never gotten the hang of cross-stitch, but I very much admire folks who can do that; I always lose track of where I’m at). Lately I’ve been getting really into weaving; I got an inkle loom within the last year and have started playing with that, and with tablet weaving, which is super fun!
Re: hlo!
Date: 2018-12-10 01:26 am (UTC)i'm pretty busy these next couple of weeks, but if i can get to walking or doing some housework, i'll pop it on and see what i think! i'll let you know.
spider-witch, huh? i never thought about it that way, but that's really fun! i'll remember that, haha. i've always wanted to try loom weaving, it seems so cool. but i have this friend who has a loom and she tried to explain it to me once? and oh my god it just went right over my head. maybe someday, though! :^)
Re: hlo!
Date: 2018-12-11 04:45 am (UTC)The great thing about living in -*the future*- is that there are like a zillion tutorials of any skill that you can possibly imagine up on YouTube, and weaving is no exception. The best way to learn is if you can get a person who knows how and a loom in the same physical location as you and have them show you step by step the way to do the thing, but mainlining YouTube videos and not being afraid to try stuff out and waste a few skeins of yarn in the process also works, I can attest. I can gather up links to videos I’ve found helpful and throw them up in a post if you like?
Re: hlo!
Date: 2018-12-11 09:00 pm (UTC)Re: hlo!
Date: 2018-12-11 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-12-09 03:50 pm (UTC)Double Decker is streaming on Crunchyroll right now. It's so funny and all the characters are pretty great.
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Date: 2018-12-09 04:32 pm (UTC)And oh gosh thanks for the tip, I can’t wait to watch it!
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Date: 2018-12-10 08:21 am (UTC)I've been meaning to listen to The Adventure Zone (and Critical Role) for the longest time, but every time I start, the length of the episodes puts me off, haha. The post you made below regarding the different campaigns is interesting because I didn't know it was divided into more than one section, and that certainly makes me more interested in giving it a go sooner rather than later. All I know about the fandom is that its beautiful art constantly floods my Tumblr dash.
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Date: 2018-12-11 05:21 am (UTC)Have you listened to any other D&D podcasts in the past? If not, I would say that the easiest entry would be with the Adventure Zone, mostly because of tone. It’s every easy-going and doesn’t take itself too seriously (even though by the end of it, they’ve told a beautiful story together). TAZ also has a large backlog, but it also is divided into multiple campaigns. The first 69 episodes are the “Balance” campaign, which uses the D&D rule system, and follows Takko, Magnus, and Merle on their fantasy dungeons and dragons adventure. The players are three brothers and their father, with the GM being youngest brother and most experienced tabletop role player Griffin, and the players being his two older brothers Travis and Justin, plus their father Clint. If I recall correctly Travis had a little bit of roleplaying experience at the start of the podcast, and Clint and Justin had never played before at all. So it’s a little rough for the first couple episodes as they work through their beginning-roleplayer awkwardness (which: relatable), but they quickly find their groove and settle in. Balance is very much a comedy, with lots of casual joking around, but that doesn’t mean it’s without depth. Listening to the finale of that arc is honestly one of the most cathartic story moments I’ve ever experienced.
After they wrapped up Balance, they did a few shorter, experimental mini-arcs in order to try out different rule sets and give the others the chance to GM, and now they’re playing the second long-form campaign, called “Amnesty.” It uses a different rule set which allows the storytelling to be even more collaborative, which I appreciate. The characters are Aubrey Little, Duck Newton, and Ned Chicane, and it’s kind of a monster hunter/cryptid story, which is pretty cool!
If you’re looking to get caught up to current asap, I would say start at the beginning of the Amnesty arc, since there’s only 19 episodes currently, and they’re only about an hour to two hours each. Once you’re current, you can go back and start listening to Balance while waiting for new episodes to drop. (Either that, or just start at the beginning and listen to Balance, that’s good too!). Most of the art you’re seeing probably is of the Balance arc; that’s where the tree lesbians and the team sweet flips lesbians, and the adorable boy detective, and the fashion disaster elves are from. Balance inspired a TON of art. Amnesty is starting to catch up because the characters are a ton of fun, and Aubrey in particular has a really cool aesthetic that is fun to draw.
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Date: 2018-12-12 02:16 am (UTC)I've never listened to a D&D podcast before, and from what you've said, I think TAZ is the way to go for me. The idea of starting on "Balance" and learning how D&D works alongside the actual players sounds particularly appealing, and from what you've said of the players' dynamic, it should be a good time. (I've also heard TAZ described as an "absurdist epic" over on Tumblr, which absolutely piqued my interest because I want to understand what that means in a D&D context.) After I'm more familiar with the format, getting to watch a professional-level campaign like CR would probably be the next step.
So yes! I'll download some episodes tonight and start listening to them during my day's transports tomorrow. I'm a little sad it'll take me a while to catch up (all this beautiful CR fanart I don't understand), but if I can burn through one a day or so, it's doable.
Can't wait to meet this Taako Taaco character with the floppy hat that my dash likes so much.
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Date: 2018-12-13 06:08 pm (UTC)But dont’t think of it as ‘sad to be behind,’ think of it as ‘excited to have so much enjoyment ahead of you!’ Because if you like it, you’ve got hours and hours of content to enjoy, which is pretty great! :D
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Date: 2018-12-12 04:28 am (UTC)Anyway, not all of my old franz are back on DW and it might be fun to make some new ones. I saw the above comment about Critical Role, which is super helpful as I was also holding off on it solely for the sheer number of episodes. ~45 is way easier.
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Date: 2018-12-13 06:21 pm (UTC)And yeah, the backlog is pretty intimidating and I definitely wasn’t on board to listen to 400+ hours of content when I first heard of it. Jumping in at campaign 2 was much more manageable. And I get that C2 is beginning to approach the same accessibility wall that Campaign 1 had - I jumped in at something like 5 or 6 episodes in, which was a much easier start.
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Date: 2018-12-13 06:36 pm (UTC)