January Talking Meme: Day #12
Talk about the fandom you most want people to join in.
So, yes, I totally mean to talk about how great a fandom Critical Role is on Thursday night... but I was too busy watching Critical Role to do so. Oops?
Seriously, though, CR is very much the fandom that I'm throwing at people right now. I love it so much, for so many reasons. ♥
For those of you who have somehow missed me talking at length about the fandom in the past, Critical Role is a weekly webseries on Geek & Sundry. New episodes air on Twitch (and/or Project Alpha) every Thursday, and they're archived on YouTube the following Monday. It's currently 81 episodes in, and at 3-5 hours per episode it's definitely not something you can quickly catch up on.
"Okay, that's great, but what is it?" a lot of people are probably asking. Well, that's a good very good question.
Critical Role is a Dungeons & Dragons game (5e rules, with quite a bit of homebrew mixed in) that's played live by a bunch of professional voice actors that you'll probably recognize at least a few of if you've ever played a video game or watched cartoons/the English dub of any anime. It started out as a private Pathfinder game that they were playing in their living rooms for about two years, before they converted it over to 5e and started streaming live on the internet. And it's amazing.
If you're familiar with RPGs, you probably already know this, but if you don't? Anything can happen. No, really, anything. It's a combination of a luck, creativity, humor, sarcasm, seriousness, utter foolishness, the blessings of the Dice Gods, and so many other things. Add in the fact that the people playing are all professional actors who very much get into their characters' heads, and it's just so. fucking. good.
Matthew Mercer (who you'll probably recognize from everything) is the DM, and he's ridiculously talented at it. The world he's crafted is huge and complex, full of all sorts of amazing characters - good, bad, and otherwise. There are literally scenes where he's sitting there talking to himself (as multiple characters) for long periods of time, and you're so engrossed in it that you barely even realize that there aren't several people there. Throwaway lines from months earlier end up coming back up as major plot points. Characters who you think you'll never see again show up again in the most unexpected places, and previous interactions very much affect how future ones go.
There are quite a few LGBTQA characters, both in the PCs (player characters) and the NPCs (non-player characters). There's a huge amount of found family feels. There's character development that's so subtle and well-done that you barely even notice it happening until you go back and rewatch earlier episodes, at which point you realize just how much has changed. There's humor, and there's sorrow, and there's just so much love - among the characters, the cast, and the fans.
There's also basically no fourth wall, at least not if you're involved with the fandom on Twitter (or, to some extent, Tumblr). The cast actively interacts with the fans, and they literally showcase fanart every week. (There have been some comments made to imply that they might at least occasionally read fanfiction, but it's not brought up quite as often simply because it's not nearly as visual as the artwork.) If you talk about the show on Twitter, you never know if one of the people you're talking about is going to pop into the conversation.
(It's not a bad thing, by any means! Just, you know, something I thought that I should mention. Especially for people who are used to more old school fandoms where there's a clear line drawn when it comes to interactions like those. You really should know, going in, that this fandom doesn't have that. At all.)
Critical Role is great for people who are experts at D&D and people who've never even heard of it. When I started watching, I was somewhere in the lower end of that range (played 3.5 for a few months over a decade ago and promptly forgot almost everything about it once college happened), but it didn't take long to figure out how 5e works - and, even without knowing the actual rules, I could very much enjoy the story from the beginning.
So, yes, Critical Role. It's absolutely brilliant, and you should totally go check it out.
This entry has been crossposted to Dreamwidth, and it currently has
replies there. Comment on whichever site you prefer.
So, yes, I totally mean to talk about how great a fandom Critical Role is on Thursday night... but I was too busy watching Critical Role to do so. Oops?
Seriously, though, CR is very much the fandom that I'm throwing at people right now. I love it so much, for so many reasons. ♥
For those of you who have somehow missed me talking at length about the fandom in the past, Critical Role is a weekly webseries on Geek & Sundry. New episodes air on Twitch (and/or Project Alpha) every Thursday, and they're archived on YouTube the following Monday. It's currently 81 episodes in, and at 3-5 hours per episode it's definitely not something you can quickly catch up on.
"Okay, that's great, but what is it?" a lot of people are probably asking. Well, that's a good very good question.
Critical Role is a Dungeons & Dragons game (5e rules, with quite a bit of homebrew mixed in) that's played live by a bunch of professional voice actors that you'll probably recognize at least a few of if you've ever played a video game or watched cartoons/the English dub of any anime. It started out as a private Pathfinder game that they were playing in their living rooms for about two years, before they converted it over to 5e and started streaming live on the internet. And it's amazing.
If you're familiar with RPGs, you probably already know this, but if you don't? Anything can happen. No, really, anything. It's a combination of a luck, creativity, humor, sarcasm, seriousness, utter foolishness, the blessings of the Dice Gods, and so many other things. Add in the fact that the people playing are all professional actors who very much get into their characters' heads, and it's just so. fucking. good.
Matthew Mercer (who you'll probably recognize from everything) is the DM, and he's ridiculously talented at it. The world he's crafted is huge and complex, full of all sorts of amazing characters - good, bad, and otherwise. There are literally scenes where he's sitting there talking to himself (as multiple characters) for long periods of time, and you're so engrossed in it that you barely even realize that there aren't several people there. Throwaway lines from months earlier end up coming back up as major plot points. Characters who you think you'll never see again show up again in the most unexpected places, and previous interactions very much affect how future ones go.
There are quite a few LGBTQA characters, both in the PCs (player characters) and the NPCs (non-player characters). There's a huge amount of found family feels. There's character development that's so subtle and well-done that you barely even notice it happening until you go back and rewatch earlier episodes, at which point you realize just how much has changed. There's humor, and there's sorrow, and there's just so much love - among the characters, the cast, and the fans.
There's also basically no fourth wall, at least not if you're involved with the fandom on Twitter (or, to some extent, Tumblr). The cast actively interacts with the fans, and they literally showcase fanart every week. (There have been some comments made to imply that they might at least occasionally read fanfiction, but it's not brought up quite as often simply because it's not nearly as visual as the artwork.) If you talk about the show on Twitter, you never know if one of the people you're talking about is going to pop into the conversation.
(It's not a bad thing, by any means! Just, you know, something I thought that I should mention. Especially for people who are used to more old school fandoms where there's a clear line drawn when it comes to interactions like those. You really should know, going in, that this fandom doesn't have that. At all.)
Critical Role is great for people who are experts at D&D and people who've never even heard of it. When I started watching, I was somewhere in the lower end of that range (played 3.5 for a few months over a decade ago and promptly forgot almost everything about it once college happened), but it didn't take long to figure out how 5e works - and, even without knowing the actual rules, I could very much enjoy the story from the beginning.
So, yes, Critical Role. It's absolutely brilliant, and you should totally go check it out.
This entry has been crossposted to Dreamwidth, and it currently has
replies there. Comment on whichever site you prefer.