🌏 Get Exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ www.nordvpn.com/luboffin It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✌ Hear my breakdown of the Tales of Exandria: The Bright Queen on my patreon! www.patreon.com/luboffin
I get why the Jester/Traveler relationship is kinda creepy, but I would argue it's less creepy than the young girl falling for a centuries old vampire. To him all mortals are children. He doesn't seem to have any interest in her other than a desire to foster her chaos. Yea he appeared as the same age as her at first, but she probably wouldn't have even given him the time of day if he tried to befriend her as an adult.
I was thinking the same thing. Part of the reason is that not only is he immortal, he's also fey, and they have a very orange-blue type of morality, hence why they don't care about certain stuff but see others as extremely important. For him appearing as a child in front of a child must have been the Feywild equivalent of treat "on equal terms"😂
That and I think that even for a Fey the Traveler was a Peter Pan in that he had resisted growing up. I mean with such a long lifetime what is the rush?
i've read all the M9 comics (without watching the campaign, i'm still making my way through VM) and my favorites are the molly and jester ones! jester's relationship with her mother really tugged at my heartstrings. and molly's comic shows his relationship with yasha and as someone who's a sucker for close platonic relationships it really touched me
on a side note i am someone that really likes tragedy in fiction but i found it pretty interesting how my favorite M9 comics so far have been the more lighthearted ones. maybe it's because i'm reading them as an introduction to the characters but i found that the ones with happier moments made the emotions hit better. like moments of connection between jester and her mother and then seeing them separate, or seeing the love between yasha and molly (knowing that molly dies very early on into the campaign).
I actually never properly picked up on it being a thruple… I’ll be honest I glazed over for most of Caleb’s backstory, so knew the trio had history in that way… but didn’t realise Liam had meant all at once.
So I joined critical role fandom with the vox machina cartoon, and I read the vox machina comics and then was like 'hm I guess i can read the jester comic' and was baffled. I do recommend reading up on the basics of the characters before diving into the comics if you're not familiar with the campaign, because I was fairly baffled at the Traveler with no understanding before (though reading the Jester comic with no context was fun as I was like, 'is this a brothel lol?'). Will say I still haven't watched campaign 2 as I just don't have the time to really watch any of the campaigns properly but c3 weekly--- at this point i have seen a lot of clip compilations so I know the characters well, but the plot is a bit of a mystery (I live in the UK and went to go see the live show and it was one of the best experiences). I think some of the characters have backstories that lend themselves better to comics than others, which is inherent in character design. Like there is a lot more you could have done with Yasha's backstory, compared to Jester's and Molly's (not discussed here). But the Molly comic was one of my favourites as it felt a bit more like an actual comic than a cliffnotes version of their backstory. I think the weakest comic I read was Nott's-- not because of her character or backstory, but because of what the comic focussed on. In the Yasha comic and the Caleb comic we get to see the development of relationships, and we saw more of their character than just the tragedy. With the Nott comic I feel like we got a little bit of her husband at the very start (not even how they met) and then it just went into misery porn, honestly, with a lot more time spent on her torture than say the Caleb and Yasha comics despite being just as sad. I appreciated the approach of the Caleb comic for allowing us to see more of his relationships with Eeadwulf and Astrid, or Yasha and her wife (name escapes me). I think the approach to linger so much on the torture of Veth just felt a bit misguided, especially when Veth does have a strong personality and funny moments. I would have appreciated more of her history pre-goblin, like meeting her husband, then the pain can come later, basically. Set up her actual character and relationships rather than just a lot of time spent on sad events. Perhaps its just me as I mostly see positive experiences regarding these comics but that comic did not work for me all.
Oh this was an excellent overview! I loved the way you reviewed them. But that last panel of the Caleb one you shared? OUCH. It ending on that is just, uh… yeah. It’s f*cked me up, that. 😅
I LOVE these comics, I can’t wait to buy the combined collections when they are all out. I love the variety of artstyles and more detail on the backstories. It’ll be interesting to compare these with the versions of the backstories we’ll eventually see in the animated show. Also I’m so glad other people have Nott/Veth as their favorite character, I thought I was alone! 💛💚
Just because you mentioned Veth-haters - Yes, her story is tragic. It's a brilliant, imaginative story that can easily tug at anyone's heart-strings, even if they don't like Veth. She quite literally is the reason I quit watching M9. Sam's portrayal of a broken alcoholic was spot-on, to the point that I just didn't like seeing her, especially when she would push the rest of the party into fights they knew they weren't prepared for, or other bad ideas. Much like Keyleth, just because the roleplay is good, doesn't mean I like the character. (Marisha might the best at the table) I came back eventually, and I'd somehow stopped right before Ashley came back for good, and, idunno. Ashley's presence just makes everything right, somehow.
Congrats on getting the Nord VPN sponsorship! Not only, therefore, do you do a more convincing Veth than Sam when you cosplay her, but you're inching in on his "advert universe" as well! So, fair play to you, and well done on that! ;) I will have to get these...as much as I like Bells Hells and Vox Machina (and The Darrington Brigade!), The Mighty Nein is really where my heart is at for CR, and I'm always happy to see/read more about them.
The tragic backstory for larger than life heroes doesn’t seem so strange when viewed through the lens of “The Eternal Champion “. Super heroes (or villains) require super motivations.
Random question for you. When should I watch Echos of the Solstice? Do you know where it falls in the episode count? I typically podcast then so the order gets all messed uo
I think it really needs to be watched after the finale of c2. It ties in to the events of c3 but only briefly at the beginning so you don’t need to have seen that I think.
🌏 Get Exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ www.nordvpn.com/luboffin It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✌ Hear my breakdown of the Tales of Exandria: The Bright Queen on my patreon! www.patreon.com/luboffin