Who is your favorite character in the Vox Machina cartoon, and why is it Keyleth? (jk) Thanks so much to Dscryb for sponsoring this video! Visit dscryb.com/supergeek and use the code SUPERGEEK at checkout to get 10% off of your first subscription payment. dscryb.com/supergeek
@@shadowstalk3004 I think you're the only person that I have heard complain about the pacing of the show. I hope the new season is a better experience for you
I started out not liking Keyleth, but I figured out pretty quick that that was because I saw my own flaws and anxieties in her. As she grew, and so did I, I came to appreciate her a lot more. But the Marisha hate was always dumb. Watch the ooc content, Marisha absolutely rules.
I started out not liking Keyleth because she was more willing to trust a mind flayer than a cleric of Bahamut. By the time Orion left, I was fine with her.
I started watching VM right as campaign 2 was starting and I had that same feeling…but then I switched over and watched her as a Beau and it all made sense. She’s a great actress. Even now watching her play Laudna she has lightly become her…like method role playing almost haha.
Man…I’m not one to leave comments, but I just had to applaud the choice to have female voices of the DnD community read Marisha’s words. It was…inspired. Well done.
Yes!! Also it's true that she doesn't have many awesome on-the-spot one-liners, but who can watch her "CALL ME CHILD ONE MORE GODDAMN TIME" and not think "holy shit, that's awesome"?
i will never forget her passionate cry of "Call me "Child" ONE MORE GODDAMN TIME!" when talking to Raishan. That was a moment of just pure passion and fury, i loved it. Hope they include it in the show.
I'll never forget the "key-teor" moment, when she dropped from hundreds of feet up and left a crater in her wake as an elemental. Or the time she was getting pieced up by that bandit in Emon and called lightning on herself out of spite. The contrast from awkward to metal was... fucking metal
She's just...too real. We often hate about others (characters) what we don't like about ourselves, and I think as such, watching a character struggeling with making decisions and being socially akward can be difficult, leading to strong reactions. Which doesn't excuse the open hate towards to the character and especially Marisha in the slightest
I never understood the Marisha hate. Her choices as Keyleth were a big part of why I wanted to start playing in the first place. I first watched after C1 concluded so reading all the hate years later I was like "Are these people watching the same show as me?" Because I thought she was pretty clear in her motivations throughout even if I didn't always agree with the choices she made. Obviously the fact her and Matt were dating added a layer to his rulings that I didn't grasp at first but once I knew that it made more sense.
I feel this. I was already invited to play D&D when I started Critical Role, but watching how they played, especially Marisha, made me so excited to play & help alleviate some of my anxiety. & when I got into Critical Role, campaign 1 was still going on, & I was seeing the Keyleth/Marisha hate & was very angry. "Are these people even watching the same show as me?" Is a sentiment I felt a lot at the time.
Keyleth is honestly a really important character for me. Her inability to act at times can be frustrating, with her struggle with self-doubt and the Aramente. But I absolutely love her personality, powers, and overall arc. Marisha is honestly super entertaining, no matter who she's playing. I like Beau and Luadna a lot more, but Keyleth is one of my faves from Vox Machina.
One other detail about the cocked dice is that Marisha DID pause and looked to Matt to confirm it was cocked. She waited, maybe not as long as Matt would have liked but she only rerolled after everyone agreed with her and when Matt didn't say anything about it. It was after she rerolled that he said something. He could have asked her to hold on or pause or let him look at it or think, but he didn't so Marisha assumed it was fine. This was such a big fight I'm sure she wanted to keep the pace going as well and with everyone else saying it was clearly cocked why wouldn't she reroll ? Honestly, after that moment I was so genuinely frustrated I had to pause and pace around my apartment. It was so clear by that point that its these types of moments that were feeding into the hate. It's not Matt's fault she got hate obviously but I wish he stood up for her more.
It’s unfortunate that in Matts mind, he was likely basically always trying to protect her (and also himself) from the idea that she got special treatment but that, almost certainly due to existing bias, it got twisted into the opposite. I’m not trying to suggest Matts actions were perfect, in that moment or any other time. But I do think Matt intentions are good and is trying to manage these complex situations as best he could. Especially I can’t imagine they’d been doing it as long as they had with such prominent problems without the 2 of them discussing it off camera.
To help the "read the spells" part. In Marisha's defense, her spell card for Wind Walk read differently from the book. The product said a different casting time and such.
I think the "Keyleth Hate" says a lot about geek culture at the time. My sister looks a lot like Ashley, and she is total maths wiz. All her life people don't expect someone who looks like her to be a good maths let alone excel at it. People who look like Marisha just aren't nerdy geeks. Ironically, after Matt and Talisen, she is the next "most nerdy" in the team. Jock Machina is the male version of the issue, yet somehow that battle is accepted and championed. Also, "not being assertive is annoying" is a very American thing. I'm Australian and we are not bombarded by our culture to be assertive and it's our right share opinions. Kaleth's reluctance didn't trigger me the same way it seems it did to Americans. Critical Role had a massive influence on busting apart the preconceived notions of who was part of geek culture. Having a profession DM who is female and black is now considered normal.
I think I pointed this out on your video going over the "Windwalk Incident Episode" - one of the reasons Marisha messed up some spells was DEFINITELY the fact that she kept trying out new ones. She didn't just stick to the limited list of broadly useful, universal spells for every situation. She kept preparing the weird utility spells and tried to find a way to actually use them. I LOVE this. I'll take a "messy experimenter" player over "risk averse optimizer" player EVERY TIME.
I agree. I'll admit that sometimes I found it irritating during an intense battle when Marisha would cast something that required adjudicating -- although she was certainly not the only person to do that sort of thing. But I could see that it was because she was trying to use her spells in the most creative way. As a player, I appreciate seeing another player do that. It's inspiring. Even if in the moment, you're thinking, "Stop playing around and just kill that beholder already!" I think, to his credit, Matt always rewarded creative way, and, over the long run, it's encouraged all the players to think more creatively about what the resources they have. But, to me, it's pretty obvious that Marisha was leading the way in the Vox Machina campaign.
Really - the crew really shines when chaos is presented. Whether that be due to GM surprises, dice rolls, or player mistakes / risks failing to pay off.
@@arandomnamegoeshere THIS. I ran a session for brand new players today and it took them about 5 minutes to grasp the concept of "interesting things happen when things go wrong, getting in trouble and figuring out how to get out of trouble is FUN". "We avoided any potential risks, considered all contingencies, everything went according to plan and nothing surprised us" is how you want a corporate strategy for the next fiscal year to go, not an ADVENTURE.
Honestly half the fun of playing a utility caster like a druid is looking at your spell list and figuring out what wild shit you can do with it. How am I going to use Meld into Stone? No idea, but fuck it, we ball.
I support that. I inspire my Players to think outside of the Box. When you do something special, you discribe something realy good, or you use your abilitys in a interesting way, you can see/feel that in return. And when your Spell or ability couldn't work this way, discribe to me what you wanted to do with it and WE can maybe tweak it a bit. And after i did some extra narrating for their extras they got more hooked. And that is what i saw with Keyleth, later with Caleb, Jester and Cad. And now in C3 with Laudna, Imogen and Fearne. And i love it. My Players now try to make Spell Combos together, and work alot more as a Team than before. And to be honest, it is such a Joy to narrate this and see/hear them getting wild.
The only hate I ever gave keyleth was the "cliff" incident until It was so incredibly comical I had tears 🤣🤣 edit: for clarification it was more me shouting at my screen of "WTF are you doing?!!" 🤣
To be fair, she kinda did deserve it, given that she literally told Vax he's not immortal back in Westruun, and then decided to brag about being a god right before dying as a goldfish.
Thanks for talking about this. As a woman on the internet, it can be difficult even for me to differentiate between valid subjective opinions about a character versus internalised misogyny leading to dislike of a person. Starting out, I was not a fan of Keyleth for some of the reasons you mentioned (she came off as self-righteous in the Underdark arc before we knew much about her, and it took a while before I had my mind changed but she definitely got there in the end), but I never made any personal attacks on Marisha over it. Still not my favourite character/cast member personally but definitely a vital part.
I don’t always agree with everything you say, Mike. Of course not, that would be unreasonable. But I 100% agree with everything you said in this video.
In terms of the "Shut up, Keyleth" part about one-liners, my response to anyone taking issue with Marisha's wording is clearly forgetting about that one infamous line from Taliesin: "Life needs things to live". Like, if we can all find a bit of humour in this blunder, why can't we do the same with Keyleth and not give Marisha crap for it.
I think that while Marisha is incredibly smart and a fantastic role player, she's not as quick-witted as Taliesin or as able to cause a complete chaotic mess (in a good way) like Laura or Sam, so her intelligence is not as easy to notice. She is undoubtedly the most attentive player at the table in a plot sense, she's the de facto note taker and the person who always understands the plot first. This is something that people who are not very smart won't realize, so they project their ignorance unto her.
Omg thank you, Taliesen has his badass memorable one liners specifically because he throws spaghetti at the wall and most of the time ends up with "help, it's again" lmao. Then eventually an absolute banger comes out bc he's willing to risk it being something accidentally super dumb. It says something that fans can laugh at his botched one liners but judge Marisha for hers
If I ever get a chance to meet her, I am going to specifically thank her for that game where she messed up with Windwalk. There was something revelatory for me in watching her make a mistake, one that genuinely seemed to frustrate the other players, and it be okay. Marisha's friends still love her, even when she messes up. My friends love me, and they still will even when I mess up. I KNEW that intellectually, but watching it happen with Marisha in real time made that click in a way nothing else had.
Keyleth is 23 years old doing her first journey into the world and being both strong of opinion and unsure and scared. Just really sounds like me at that same age. Unsure, making decisions that seem hypocritical. If you're over 30, you know things you've done that matched up. We all make mistakes. We all do stupid things. And that's why I love how Marisha played Keyleth.
Yeah, she felt like a real person in those scenarios. Something I feel was lacking a bit in the later campaigns. I loved the Mighty Nein, but they killed a lot of people, and they never really talked about it. In a way that made some of the characters who felt grounded in some emotional aspects come across as cartoonish in others. Keyleth didn't feel that way. And don't even get me started on Campaign 3 in that regard. They've needed someone who isn't scared to speak up, and who is grounded in the world very much in that whole adventure, and it's been tough to watch them flail around without that aspect to the group, especially considering the kind of plot they are engaging with. The closest we have to a Keyleth in that regard is Orym, and Liam is doing something different with him. But they could use a character who just sees that things are wrong, and is uncertain enough to feel conflicted, but has enough conviction to not stay quiet even when everyone tells them to shut up. Keyleth actually embodies something I think more people should aspire to. The willingness to call out the wrongdoing of herself and others, and reckon with their own actions. It often arises out of immaturity, but it is actually the course of wisdom. Maturity often brings undeserved certitude, and I think more people should be a little less certain they know what's right or wrong. Certainly more should be willing to at least ask the question.
"When is it appropriate to hit children to discipline them? Are they old enough to understand reason? Then use reason instead of hitting them. If they are not old enough to understand reason then they probably will not understand the lesson you are trying to teach by hitting them, so you shouldn't hit them"... Something about "punishing the player by making them waste their high level spell slot, to teach them a lesson" reminded be of this. Also, in real life: please don't hit children, or people in general.
@@hawkname1234 right, if your players are "adults old enough to understand reason", why would you choose to literally/metaphorically "hit them to correct their behavior", as opposed to "using reason to correct their behavior"?
I watched at the time and Keyleth was not my favorite. She was playing a spellcaster and really did not understand a surprising number of her spells...and she seemed less "involved" in the story. It was only at the Sun Tree that I noticed that Marisha was a pretty good role player and even then it took me a while to appreciate that she was RPing a relatively low charisma character (+0, whereas even Grog had a +1). So she didn't jump into dialogues in the same way as others. By the end of Series 1, I had a greater appreciation for her acting.
Yes. Sometimes I found Keyleth annoying, especially when she was trying to make speeches. But eventually I realized that that was a character choice and I started to enjoy how inarticulate Keyleth could be. There wasn't a strong distinction between Marisha's natural voice and Keyleth's voice, so that made it harder for me, as a viewer, to distinguish between the two. This is in contrast to Liam, Laura, and Taliesin, who all did variations on a posh British accent, and Travis, who was clearly doing a character voice as Grog. Having watched as much of all three campaigns as possible, I'm very impressed with Marisha as an actor. Keyleth, Beau, and Laudna are all very different characters. I find Laudna to be the most fascinating, but that takes nothing away from the other two, who are just as fleshed out.
THANK YOU for pointing out Confirmation Bias Fallacy! 16:11 The world would be a better place if people read that entry on wikipedia. Critical Thinking is slowly dying out 😢 Other good entries are Ockam's Razor and the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
Hearing that Marisha quote from so many youtubers I'm a fan of was incredible! And thanks for putting together such a great defense. You've been a reall roll lately
what's always gotten me is the criticism that keyleth doesn't have a distinctive voice. I've heard it a lot, but ya know who also plays a character who speaks exactly like their normal speaking voice in campaign one? everyone's favorite ad reader!
I think people often underestimate the level of misogyny which was normalised and unchecked in the mid 2000s in "geek" culture (and still today, honestly). I remember struggling a bit in high school (an all-girls school btw) because most of my friends weren't into the same stuff I was, which is fine, but I wanted a group of friends I could bond over video games and TTRPGs with. At that point I had never played dnd but knew a lot about it because of Critical Role, so I was thinking of finding a group to play with. Seeing how the community treated Marisha completely turned me off it for YEARS. I avoided making friends in these kinds of spaces because as far as I could tell, there were far fewer women than men. And no, it wasn't coming from a place of not liking men, it was coming from a place of being afraid that the kinds of men in these spaces wouldn't like me, would take it upon themselves to "quiz" me about my own interests, and would ultimately shut me out for nothing more than being too much of a girl. And man... that's just depressing. I'm so glad as an adult I have a diverse group of friends who all love what I love and are supportive and kind people.
I'm gonna be honest, it was probably a reaction to the fact that the hobbies they were bullied for in their adolescence were suddenly becoming cool. People tend to gatekeep when it occurs. (Outright misogyny was obviously a massive factor as well.)
I'm sure that still happens plenty. Obviously, it's way worse in the BrOSR. But every group will have its own composite personality, and some of them are going to be toxic. All we can hope is that that toxicity results in people shunning those who engage in anti-social behavior. And maybe some of those people will change-but don't count on it.
@hawkname1234 I've seen a shift in just the direction you've mentioned. Toxic and anti-social behaviour is heavily shunned in my city's ttrpg community.
Great episode, I especially love the Marisha quote read by various voices in the fandom. So well done and a great way to share it without having to share the video it was from!
@@mwhearn1 Understandable I definitely didn’t much care for Tiberius and especially didn’t as those first twenty or so episodes rolled along but like when I did find out what was going on with Orion I’ve definitely cooled on it dude had issues and for sure needed to go but I do appreciate them giving him a send off when VM goes to Draconia to see what Vorugal was up to
It's hard to make a chaotic character liked by D&D funs, let's say it brings traumatic memories, but it sometimes means the tone doesn't remain like people want she isn't my favourite character type but jester is done well for my liking, way too many people confuse not liking a character type to hating the existence of the character
2:12 I have to strongly disagree with this take as a big C1 keyleth fan. I feel like LOVM took away a lot of early keyleth’s edge and made her a more sanitized version of the tabletop game. Her self righteous” attitude and how she would stand up to the party to check them were missimg from S1/S2. Her personality was sanded down something more akin to a more modern Disney princess. The rougher parts of her, the frustration, and anger are as much keyleth as the lovestruck, or sillier or awkward keyleth. But I loved that, she felt like the most 3 dimensional in the game but a lot flatter (though still good) in the show
I was a bit shocked when I saw the animated show, because a lot of the characters were different. And it was interesting to me, considering that they were created by voice actors, that the voices were different. Keyleth sounded younger, lighter, and far less sure of herself than campaign Keyleth. Grog seemed far more child-like. Vex added this whole mean girl personna that wasn't there in the campaign, and Pike, who had a sweet melodic voice in the campaign, sounded much tougher, with a bit of a rasp. I'm not knocking it. It all works.
I honestly think that comes down to run time. I think pretty much All the characters have changed and get a lot less opportunities to shine. Especially in season 1, so heavily focused on Percy, the other characters really didn't get a lot of room to show off. It's one of difficult things about adaptation
@@eastersliceI think it makes sense for show Keyleth to seem younger and less sure of herself then campaign Keyleth. We meet campaign Keyleth halfway through her journey (well technically a 1/3 since she’s done 1 of her 3 trials). So she’s already had a chance to grow a bit in the home games. But though it’s unclear exactly what the characters had done before the start of the TV show, it’s pretty clear they were a much newer group that hadn’t been on the same level of adventures as they were completely unknown by the senior members of the kingdom. So she lacks that extra experience. Plus for a dedicated narrative, it makes sense for the character to start at the very start of her arc, not partway through in a way that would be impossible in the campaign without her awkwardly revising her character in the transition to the live stream (which given the early episodes were just them starting out with no idea what was coming would have been a weird choice).
Marisha, juggling a spell list 80+ spells long and three roles in the party, makes a mistake and never lives it down. Liam, playing arguably the most straightforward class/subclass in the game, BARELY KNOWS HIS OWN ACTION ECONOMY FOR ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN OF GODS OWN EPISODES gets *absolute fucking radio silence*.
I don't recognize the thing you seem to be describing. If you state it more clearly, or in some externally validate-able way, we might agree with you. I can't falsify what Liam knows. What are you claiming he did or didn't do over 115 episodes that deserved hate?
@@hawkname1234 remembering when sneak attack applies, not understanding that just because you get sneak attack doesn't mean you get advantage, mixing up sneak attack with his assassin subclass ability to have advantage on some first rounds of combat...it's literally 3 small paragraphs of text, he could have just memorized it after a few sessions. compared to the absolute walls of text in d&d spells, plus the fact that druids are prepared casters which means they basically need to know _their entire spell list_ in order to be the most effective? but no one ever hates on liam.
I think another point on the Misogyny is related to D20-Emily Axford is the main strategic voice in combat on that show, and she still gets the most Criticism Its never about play quality
If it was Emily would be untouchable. That woman stacks her abilities in ways I can only dream of. It's like the same problem, opposite spectrum from Keyleth/Marisha. Emily is TOO good at the game so clearly she's just power gaming and doesn't actually care about the story blah blah blah.
Oh my God this! Emily is *so good* and builds her characters so well - and all they can focus on is calling her a min maxer... When the problem, if there is a problem, with min maxing is *when it takes away from role play*. And Emily *never* lets it get in the way of her roleplay! She will *utterly decimate* Brennan's villains, usually still using her character voice if she's doing one, and then go right back into what her character is saying/doing. And *still* she gets all the criticism... You just can't win with these trolls if you're a woman or femme in the space. I've never wandered over to NADDPOD... But now I can't help but wonder if she also gets DMs significant other criticism there, cause she's married to Murph.
@@lolaf1erExactly! When that's *so clearly not true* because like... The number of times we've seen Emily cry at the table clearly says she cares. Fig with Sandra Lynn at the end of Fantasy High Campaign 1 springs to mind. (Or the fact that she *literally talked to Murph about concerns for Gilear* on their drives home. The woman was so invested she talked to her real husband about her concerns for her fictional dad away from the table. You don't *get* more invested than that! 😂)
people got REALLY intense about their dislike of like, one character emily played in an early campaign and i think it's sort of shaped how d20 play player to player tension, really sucks to see
Marisha making mistakes was one of the reasons I found CR1 so entertaining. I still will watch her cliffdive to this day when I want a good laugh. I like Marisha a lot. I never read twitch chat so your channel was actually the first place I learned about the hate, and I was very supprised. I don't get why people who watch something don't want to let it entertain them. Life is more fun that way
Thank fuck you’re putting this out, even back in the day all the harassment of keyleth and Marisha was real off putting and seeing people retcon their explanation of hate to just be of keyleth was bullshit.
Seriously. I remember Season 1 (or as it was call, just "Critical Role") and people were absolutely HORRIBLE. I mean, they had to take the chat off the screen pretty damn quickly.
Back in 2022, Matt tweeted that Mariahs as a "bad ass" and I took a screen shot of one of the responses was: "No one needs to display their enamoresness (sic) to anyone other than the one to which they are enamored. That is your life...not ours. I follow you for shareable stuff. Not personal stuff. Goddammit, it's like you're flaunting. Sorry." There's an irrationality to many of the people who attack Mariaha that just can't be explained with anything but misogyny.
I am a 30+ year vetran of the game, been playing through multiple editions, AND I STILL MESS UP MY SPELLS. There are tons of spells and they are all rather specific. Messing up spells is NORMAL. She don't deserve the flack she gets for it. Also Druid is one of the more complicated classes, so there is that.
To be fair, some of that might just be Mike preferring to use examples from episodes he's already covered in Critical Role Demystified. When he uses examples from later in C1, or from C2 or C3, he tends to be vague to avoid spoilers
I was there in the early days and the way Marsha was treated really mirrored my own experiences as a female D&D player, especially because I usually DM. It sucked and I tuned out of the fandom pretty quickly to block it out. I'm so glad there are people like you who can see how unfair the behavior was.
Also, find it interesting that Keyleth gets so much hate for keeping Vox Machina on task and not be totally chaotic, while Jester and presumably Fearne are getting hate for being chaos incarnate.
I really enjoyed Keyleth as a character and Marisha for that manner. One of my best buddies LOATHES her. But that's because we enjoy different types of characters. He really likes Fearne, I don't enjoy Fearne, but I can admit that she is a good character. I love the dynamic she has with the group and Nana Mori, but I don't like the "trope" or archetype she follows. Everyone has different archetypes of characters they like, but that's no reason to bring hate against the person behind the character. Totally agree!
To add, Marisha/Keyleth absolutely had great one-liners and speeches. Just later in the game, when Keyleth was coming into her own as a leader. Her lack of speeches was due to her low charisma. It was a character choice. Marisha is clever and quick and well-spoken, she's proven it so many times since. One of my favorites was her talking back to Raishan, about the colony of ants fighting back against one great diseased foot. Or even in earlier games, Marisha had quick one-liners, just whispered out of character because Keyleth wouldn't say them.
I'm not part of the CR fan community - I found your content from other vectors - so I cannot comment on ...But gods some of what you said definitely resonated with what I've observed elsewhere about how women and other visible minorities are judged more harshly.
What I like to ask in these situations is “Therefore, what?”. When it seems that someone is dancing around what they want/wish they could say. Therefore, what? Usually people clam up real quick or get flustered to the point that their bad faith is pretty plain to see.
Watching C1, Keyleth was one of my favorite characters, and I never understood the hate. At the beginning of C2, I didn't like Beau until episode 26 for spoiler reasons. In C3, I started off hating Chetney so much, but i did warm up to him. There's only 2 times I was ever upset with the cast. One was the Wendy's situation, and the other was at Laura during the centaur fight. The centaur fight in C3 really annoyed me because when it was clear that diplomacy had failed due to bad luck, Laura doubled down on not fighting.
she trusted a mindflayer over a paladin in some of the first episodes. unironically I believe this was what first cemented a bias against both marisha and keyleth in the audience, I know it did for me. I realized my problem was with keyleth and not marisha like 15 minutes later though, so I'm not sure what these nerds are doing in terms of internal emotional deliberation but it doesn't seem very effective
I just went back to the Wind Walk episode to watch Marisha and Matt’s reactions again, and I find it hilarious that immediately after being a hard ass to Marisha, Matt immediately turns around and explains to Sam how concentration checks work because he didn’t know. At least we have another counterargument for why Matt doesn’t treat her better because they’re married
He has his moments of favoritism, but I'd say they're mostly person to person and he *mostly* breaks rulings based on rule of cool. I'd say the most favoritism thing of the entire run was the Cobalt Soul subclass. Shit was busted. edit: or gunslinger, really. pretty much any homebrew matt makes (blood hunter excluded) is overtuned.
@@hem9483I ran the OG CS subclass, if you have god rolls it’s busted (and from winning the battle royale that was a given) if you don’t have the int you didn’t have many options. Edit: you see the boost she got the diadem straight up.
@hawkname1234 The first non-published version he had on his DMsGuild page was like that, he then overnerfed it to the point where fighter had higher avg DPR *every level*, but bloodhunter didn't have any burst damage or massively impactful debuffs to make up for it. (plus taking damage to use class features is a *colossal* drawback in megadungeon settings where resting isn't easy)
Sorry. Side topic. I profoundly dislike Elon Musk and all the racist, homophobic and transphobic trolls, but what has SW theory done that is comparable to those guys? I don't follow him that much, but I have watched some his videos criticising the story and bad world building of most of the Star Wars media produced by Disney (I tend to agree with him that they are quite bad). Iwhat he has done that warrants putting a target on his back alongside one of the most powerful men in the world? He just seems to hate the Acolyte for its writing and lore. Did he get misogynistic while criticising the show? I mean there are so many SW youtubers who are soooo much more toxic.
Keyleth definitely is not my favorite of the characters. That simply comes down to her not being the type of character I enjoy. But I do feel like I should not have read the comments (youtube comments) as I watch critical role episodes, which is hard not to do cause there's not much happening on screen. I definitely started internalising the negativity around keyleth and became more wary of things to dislike about her. Key lesson, don't read the comments.
So full disclosure, when I first started watching the Vox Machina campaign, Percy was my least favorite character. Then the Briarwood arc happened, and my entire attitude changed. Suddenly, I realized that these were players who were on top of things. That made it so any time I had a moment of annoyance with any of the characters, I trusted that the players were on top of things and that this was a moment that was part of their character arc.
Thank you for making this video haven't started much of it yet but I understand the hesitants to make it and I'm glad that we get to see and informed rational explanation of certain people's irrational behavior Love your content keep up the good work!❤❤❤ **Edit: heck you for making me cry at the end! 😅😅😅 JK that was beautifully handled and that is why I continue to support your work and wish you only the best**
I think one of the interesting things about Keyleth is that Marisha likely realized that as a Druid and a leader, Keyleth’s actions and their consequences will always have time to reach her before she dies. She knows that as long as she survives, there’s a chance that someone will come knocking 5 human generations from now because of what she did that day. And that won’t just affect Keyleth, but the whole of the Ashari tribes.
It always bothered me to watch other fans react to CR playing as if it were a professional sporting event. But why? I don't want to dismiss someone's joy. Yet I think this essay touches on exactly what bothers me. Professional sporting events are all about execution of the game. When players fail to execute well (or even worse - make mistakes), it is accepted as part of the experience to directly attack the player. And I think that's some of what we see covered here. But "pro player" is never what I saw CR being presented as. CR has always been more about story with some dice-based mechanics. Very little "professional sport" and far more improvised play. So when players did something sub-optimal - I never cared. But it didn't bug me if someone pointed out a more optimal strategy, etc. It did bug me when someone took shots at the players at the table. It's not sports.
well it is 100% fine for them to be criticized. this is not a home game anymore it is a product put out multi million dolor company and they are being payed a shit ton of money to play the game.
I started watching C1 when it had already finished, and C2 was around E45ish. I never understood the hate. She was one of my favourite characters right from the beginning. Hail the Voice of the Tempest!
I'd like to turn the analogy of someone shouting abuse at the batter on its head. I think that it totally _can_ have the same level of impact. Perhaps it doesn't always, but I would suggest that the potential _is_ almost always there. If you're a young kid who loves baseball, being taken to your first baseball match, and the person next to you is shouting slurs at the batter which you know apply to you... I can totally imagine that _could_ put you off (it might also make you more determined to succeed). (Also, yes I'm picking an extreme example to try and demonstrate a point, but that's just because it's easier to empathise with; you can spread out the same abuse over months or years of being in a community, and get the same results). Either way, I think that the analogy of baseball is more valuable than you give it credit for. I don't think the analogy to sports is flawed, I think the _conclusion_ often drawn from it is. The Critical Role community (and, by extension, a significant portion of the D&D community) shouldn't have to grin and bear it, just because sports people do. _No-one_ should have to grin and bear it! I think there's a fair question as to the purpose of this comment. This isn't to angry mob, to try and reflect a spotlight, or anything. It just made me feel sad to think that, nah, this isn't just a D&D lesson, this is a broader life lesson.
Kudos on this video man. It's very clear you took your time and made an effort to approach this subject respectfully and thoroughly, adding to the discourse with points I personally haven't heard before (good ones I promise) and taking into account who's voices ought to be heard in this conversation. I remember when Marisha's between the sheets episode came out. I remember how hard her words hit me. If anyone thought she wasn't capable of being well spoken, they should have had the chance to watch that video because she very clearly knows who she is and what she stands for which I think is one of the better qualities of Keyleth's character and is commendable for Marisha as a person. The segment with all those amazing women reading Marisha's words should be getting the same reaction as the scene from Barbie with what was I made for playing in the background. And I think, if there was ever a video on your channel at least someone from CR should watch, it's this one. Cuz that was powerful. I just pray it doesn't fall on deaf ears like so much of this conversation tends to. Anyways, thanks for existing in this space.💚
Keyleth is my favourite of Marisha's characters, but the only character ive associated personally with more is Liam's portrayal of Caleb. Both individuals of huge potential and crippling self doubt. Caleb made me feel comfortable in my knowledge, but Keyleth... Keyleth put in front of a 20-something who had heen thrust into the world with zero knowledge of how to exist in it, that even people with power mess up, and mess up royally. DnD has been theraputic for me since CR C1. The experiences, wisdom, grief all feel as much my own as they do the players, most likely, because i was robbed of those Lessons and experiences as a child. Keyleth was... key (sorry, I'm a genius, sorry) to that story playing out, and as someone entirely uninterested in the gender binary, had no hate for Marisha herself, and since C2 onwards, ive been thankful to be able to see her be herself, rather than Keyleth a lot more. People do and be stupid things. Its only by reveling in ignorance and xenophobia that these attitudes persist. Honestly, i say to those people, Go away. You arent wanted here. Keyleth was a fantastic character to those who understood her. If you didnt, ask others, or leave her alone.
I loved what Marisha talked about on her interview with Brian Foster. She wasn't that fazed by the hate, but she knew how the hatred for a nerdy woman was being perceived. The quote "You're not screaming into a void" and going on to explain that hating keyleth/marisha meant that every woman who might want to play the game, but then read all the hatred for her on the internet, meant new players were gatekept out of the game, because who wants to play with a community like that? Edit: I wrote this before getting all the way through the video, and I'm SO glad these quotes have been included! (And said much better than my hasty recap)
She’s right, I’ve found myself intimidated away from joining a campaign because I didn’t want to deal with a bunch of whiners yelling at me for being a girl and a new player. They’ll tell you that’s not the reason but it is, a lot of people just don’t have the patience to play with newbies and a lot of men have weird hang ups about women who like the same hobbies as them
@amethystimagination3332 I think the difference (anecdotally) between irl and online is *fucking massive* in terms of misogyny. None of the groups I've played with have blinked at any differing identity of any players at the table. If your only options for IRL DND are with groups that would just, make fun of women? For wanting to play too? Then I'd recommend online groups tbh. Bigots aren't worth *anyones* time.
i despise when people can't separate the actor from the character. also, marisa is also the dm's wife and people will automatically assume favoritism and main character syndrome. people forget character growth involves becoming a "hypocrite" sometimes because you learn and sometimes your morality changes and you may not believe something you used to believe even a couple days ago. people learn through experiences and mindsets change edit: i made this comment about 2 minutes into the episode so im glad you touched on those topics later in the video
"They make mistakes." After many many years of suffering from "Problem Solver" mentality, I've learned the best thing for a game is to make mistakes, take sub-optimal moves, have your characters act out of passion and personality rather than some hyper-optimized set of Big Brain Logic. Screwing up is half the adventure. An impulsive risk-taking character who is just terrible at their job is a blessing to DMs and players who want story rather than iWin buttons. Also good on you for pointing out how... directed the criticisms were based on the presented gender of the player.
Coming into the fandom in 2016, the Keyleth hate was something I noticed quickly, and often led to ignoring the chat and comment sections. I also recognised the character trope Marisha was going for, because I see it all the time in videogames. It was quickly apparent that much of the hate was toxicity about a person and not issues with the character. Marisha was EXACTLY the kind of strong, "outspoken" woman that sexists love to hate, and that SUCKS. I just realized while watching this... did these people like Beau because she's exactly that kibd of woman... but also (initially) a self-admitted "asshole" who the audience isn't supposed to sympathize with? Hm. In any case, it took until Beau, a vastle different character, for people to realize that Marisha was, in fact, a good actor and that all their issues with Keyleth were intentional character flaws. Which also sucks. Thanks for making this video. Really well-put and researched.
I loved Keyleth, I was new to the game when I started watching Critical Role, and Marisha making mistakes and learning from them made it better for me as I felt that I would be allowed to make mistakes at the table and learn from them myself. I actually based my first character on Keyleth. Thank you for giving this subject a full analysis!
WOW! I was blissfully unaware of the BS thrown around. I had gotten annoyed with keylith (only the character) when she felt everything was the groups fault. (Chroma conclave attack specifically.) I’ve had similar annoyance with other characters (jester C2; dorian C3)
I wouldn't call myself a Keyleth hater but I certainly disliked her, her scenes largely just didn't land for me. All the cast had scenes that went long or felt awkard its essentially hundreds of hours of improv but all the other characters had moments that really hit me in some way but that moment just never really came with Keyleth. Of course thats just my personal taste and anyone who attacked Marisha over her choices in her DnD game is wild and inane to me.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the venn diagram between people who hate Animorph's Cassie and the people who hate Keyleth/Marisha is a CIRCLE
It's almost like these characters are real people and not idiolised characters or NPC's. Strange huh ... Personally i'm fine with Keyleth. Marshiaa herself is quite a blunt person and she uses that in her roleplay quite a lot. Beau it's the prime example of this, that character's main thing was being a bit of a blunt dick Personally i found i had issues with Jester. But i know that's actually a reflection on me; i as a person don't like overly happy people they just rub me the wrong way so with Jester being all bubbly overly happy tends to rub me the wrong way, but i don't hold it against Laura
I'm sorry. What? "These characters are real people and not idoloised characters or NPCs." What???? What the fuck could you possibly mean by this??? In what world are DND PCs not characters LMFAO? If someone plays a lawful evil necromancer does that mean we should screen them for psychopathy and antisocial personality traits?? You are speaking crazy talk.
Mike, I can't thank you enough for calling out the misogyny of this behavior. I am one of those infrequently found female-presenting TTRPG players who's been in the nerd-sphere since the mid-90s, and I have NEVER encountered this kind of animocity. My groups have been majority male, and even when we had one or two other females, we still had respectful behavior and fun and friendship. I can't imagine being a young, 20- or 30-something-year-old, or even more, a teenaged female, getting in on the online nerdsphere. We are all very lucky there are men like you and Rob Builder and Will Earl and others. Y'all give me hope. Thank you, sincerely!
Tbf, turning into a fish was dumb. But funny. Like 90% of my decisions in D&D. And that's not a bad thing that's just her trying to do something to help in the moment, I have literally rung an alarm bell to try and help my party sneaking into an orc stronghold. It shouldn't have worked, we made it work, but in the end it's a game. And yeah, ngl I don't think i'd jump off a cliff for the lols, but if I did yeah i'd turn into a fish if I thought the sea was beneath and I was just put on the spot
I remember being frustrated with Keyleth in 2 big bits: Her antagonism towards Lady Kima in the underdark arc felt like Keyleth coming to the wrong conclusion and creating conflict with the person they were meant to rescue from being tortured. It came across as a bit insesitive and miguided in a way that wasn't a fun character flaw for me. Her actions and attitude when trying to broker a deal with the clasp. Percy put it well when saying that it came across as her looking down on the clasp and the fact they've had to do morally questionable things to survive. With people's lives on the line in Emon, it came across as being on her high horse in a way that didn't help or make the scenes more interesting to me. I don't think either of them were a slight against Marisha though, and I would never hurl abuse at her over them. These were just a conflict in how I interpretted the situation as a viewer and how Marisha interpretted the scene as Keyleth. edit: And to talk about SupergeekMike's final bit asking why am i commenting on this; who am I trying to talk to with my comment, I think that's a good point to consider. I guess I'm trying to understand better about why I felt frustrated with Keyleth in a manner that isn't coloured by misogyny. I don't think I've fully suceeded with that though but vocalising/writing up an answer can help to better look at your opinion with fresh eyes and see the poison inadvetidly in my stance.
It always felt like classic toxic masculinity to me, I am almost 100% certain that if a guy did the exact same thing that Marisha did that he would have gotten far less hatred and vitriol.
Far less, but not none. People dog on Tal for taking too long on his turns, they make fun of Liam's edgy monologuing, etc. Far, far less, but not none. Nobody escapes the ire of the angry nerd.
This video came out the same day as PlayStations State of Play presentation where they announced Ghost of Yotei, the Ghost of Tsushima sequel that has CR guest Erika Ishii as the lead...and predictably the Bros on Twitter aren't happy about it. The fact that it's so predictable that this will happen is the disappointing part.
I disagree with a lot of Keyleth's choices. Those disagreements have no place in critique. Marisha did her job in making me feel things through her character acting. Thumbs up to Marisha for playing such an evocative character. The only thing I can think of atm that I have as a valid critique would be when Keyleth and Vax colluded to prevent Percy and Vex from having a romance roleplay scene in retaliation of Vex who had playfully teased them for their own earlier romance scene. They should've found a way to tease/prank back that didn't prevent the scene from happening and I would recommend this to anyone who plays a roleplay heavy game. To me, that felt like an above board consequence for what should've been an in-character beef. To their credit I haven't noticed this ever happening again and there's been a lot of observable, respectful behavior around intimate scenes between characters ever since. I mourn the loss of that scene to this day and I wonder if they regretted it too. (Note, this wasn't a Marisha/Keyleth only issue)
I came to Critical Role kind of late, people had been suggesting it to me but Campaign 2 was starting up by the time I started watching Campaign one. So I missed a lot of the Fandom nonsense and I really, REALLY liked Keyleth. So realizing afterwards that so many people didn't, I was stunned. Especially when one of the friends who recommended it to me turned out to be someone who disliked her and her choices, when she was easily one of my top characters. I related to her self consciousness and lack of confidence, and I found her sweet and endearing and when she did cool things it brought a smile to my face. I liked her so much I based one of my own player characters off of her. I made this pretty clear to the friend who said they hated Keyleth, as I was playing with them in that game. "Your character is way more interesting.' "You actually know what the spells do.' "You remember your class features and use your spell slots to heal your wild shape form." and those phrases always stung, rather than encouraged. Because interesting is subjective, and rules are things you learn over time, and I wasn't new to the system playing in front of a live audience. It's not comparable. I mostly just not talk about it anymore to them, because it was just a hassle to talk to them about it. The part of this video where you had other female creators read out Marisha's words brought me to tears. It's something as a AFAB person that just cuts deep. Appreciate your work as always, Thank you.
That sucks, sorry to hear that. I wonder if watching C2 first made it easier to see which parts of Keyleth's lack of confidence and mannerisms were intentional acting? Or did you start with C1? As someone else commented once, Marisha is such a good actress she fooled (some of) us into believing she was bad at RP / acting. That's kinda true in my case; I didn't know anything about any of the cast before starting C1, and until seeing Hazel Copperpot (the first non-Keyleth character I'd seen Marisha do), I had assumed she was just weaker overall at RP! Which would be funnier to look back on if a bunch of asshats hadn't made terrible comments about her. It makes me sad that some people can't talk reasonably about things they dislike, and have fun(?) making their words as nasty as possible or even really mean it. (Both sad for the human condition, and sad for the people on the receiving end of that crap.) As a character, I definitely like Keyleth now (and can appreciate what Marisha was doing with her a lot better in hindsight). It took some time to grow on me I think; I was never on the Keyleth hate bandwagon. I was initially less impressed with Marisha as a fun player to watch in an actual-play show than others at the table. It definitely didn't help my enjoyment that she would miss important stuff in rules even after reading them, but I get that different people have different learning styles that do or don't work for them. I never had the impression that she was lazy or not trying with the rules and mechanics. (I think Mike makes a great point about Matt being too harsh several times and that making it seem worse for people who aren't really paying attention or who have confirmation bias.)
@@Peter_Cordes I did start with C1 then moved onto C2 after. I think at the time even though I didn't know Marisha from anything but I had assumed they were all actors and that these were just acting roles so it never came across as anything other than the character to me. It may have also come from a point of that when I play player characters a lot of them come from a place of insecurity, or are hiding insecurities, so it really mirrored a lot of my own role playing choices. In general too Critical role is what I like to put on when I'm working on art so perhaps some of the rule flubs bother me less as I'm not scrutinizing it as a actual play, but as a story which may have coloured my perception in general of the show. It too makes me sad that folks can't just talk about things reasonably, it really makes it hard to discuss things in general. Some things work for some, some don't, but saying it harshly will always alienate folks. I try to be an advocate of people not lingering in their hate, because life is too short to get hung up over stuff like that. I didn't even notice at first Matt was being particularly hard on Marisha until Mike here pointed it out, and now I can't unsee it.
I was definitely someone who allowed myself to be annoyed with Keyleth because of misread or misused spells, and in turn became down on Marisha as a player. One of the things that made me stop feeling that way was actually seeing the vitriol towards her in comments online. Seeing people froth at the mouth over things I only found a bit annoying made me re-evaluate. The funny part is, that Beau in Campaign 2, despite being a character who has multiple personality traits I often find annoying in characters, is one of my favorite characters from that season. It made me realize how weird I had been for letting my opinion of Keyleth and some of the choices in game, color my opinion of Marisha as a person.
When I started watching critical role, I was 16 years old. I loved Keyleth (and Marisha). She felt real to me. She was funny, awkward, and SUPER FUCKING POWERFUL despite the awkwardness. I was a “weird” teen, so see Kiki being weird but still having influence, friends, love, and power made me feel like my awkwardness wasn’t as much of a disadvantage. Now, I’m 23 and she’s still one of my favorite characters from CR to this day and is why I play a morally maternal Druid in my main campaign. Also, I’ve been watching/playing D&D for 7 years now, and I still make mistakes with my spells. I just learned how Moonbeam worked 😂.
There were plenty of moments where I just sat back and went “Goddammit Keyleth….” Whether she was fumbling socially, complicating the decisions of the party, or reading a spell wrong. Then I realised something: “That’s the point” We’re watching a person grow up, and rise to the occasion despite their reluctance. Classic hero’s journey. (She got hella robbed with the Tsunami ruling in the Thordak fight though. But hey, 8th level spell! That’s the one thing I *really* want fixed in season 3 of Legend)
Man. I really loved Between the Sheets. They were such good interviews. I absolutely get why they took them down, but they were so insightful. I hope they'll do a new series like that.
Redoing my comment. I still dont like Keyleth personally, but I understand that's a me thing vs the character archetype (choice paralysis, ND-coded chosen one) that is not unique to Keyleth. I love Marisha and ALL her other characters, and have never been parasocial enough to send her hate. All told, this is a valuable video that pulls no punches, and is needed in this space. The sexism and pisscourse is THE reason I can't just say 'I just don't like the character', due to all the baggage and unnecessary hate. Hell, as said in the vis, some of it isn't even entirely. Marisha's fault. So This is good. Sorry if this comment from a ND Poc and druid enjoyer is a bit weird.
The amount of times I would see comments of people saying they hated Marisha until they realized, "she was just stupid" and proceed with an incel, sociopathic analysis of her entire personality. Marisha. The creative director for Geek & Sundry at its peak and drove the CR channel to its current success. It is no accident that G&S content collapsed after Marisha stepped down. The amount of behind the scenes work that Marisha has done to produce new shows to a quality that became an industry standard for TTRPG shows. She is incredibly smart and talented. I don't think she gets enough credit for that.
Honestly as an outsider looking in, all these years later. And with campaign 3 being my first campaign to start watching from the beginning (though i fell off cuz after not watching one or two episodes when they were out and was suddenly falling behind, which led me to stop watching for a while. Then recently hopped back in cuz the end game of campaign 3 somehow hooked me into now being a fervent monday evening watcher of the new episodes.) I never quite got the Keyleth hate. Honestly throughout these demystifieds and legends of vox machina and so on, I've found that anything that might have frustrated me about Keyleth I found myself equally getting frustrated by Vax or Percy or Vex. They all had some qualities that did and didn't resonate with me, but I still enjoyed them all, all the same.
Holy cow...I've watched CR since 4Q 2017 and never knew there were any "mass" negative feelings about Keyleth or Marisha for that matter. But I basically watched the series, not the commentary. I watched CR01 Vox Machina after the fact and loved it.
I think one thing that might trigger the misogynistic trolls is the persona Marisha sometimes has, not around Keyleth, but around herself. She's a young (during C1 anyway) woman who happens to be a bit scatterbrained at times. That's a minor flaw shared by much of the population, but she sometimes made jokes at her own expense that cast her as a flaky valley girl straight out of the movie Clueless. We've already established that some in the fandom can't tell the difference between the character and the actor -- and the thought Marisha might actually be that kind of person ENRAGED online sexists. After all, that trope in fiction was basically hand-crafted to annoy everyone, and has since become a huge misogynistic boogeyman. To be clear, it's not Marisha's fault for making such jokes or having such a persona. I for one think they're funny! But when placed in front of the internet, it made her a target. And every time she misunderstood the details of a spell or lost track of what was happening in a scene (or whatever), it triggered the trolls all over again, reinforcing their bias. Sometimes her fellow cast even played on the same valley girl trope when they teased her. I'm mid-way through C1E75, where Keyleth had to become the face and voice of the party while the rest were disguised as slaves, and Marisha hammed up her insecurity and low charisma score ... and also lost track of exactly what was happening in the scene a couple times, jeopardizing the quest as a result. Travis outright trash-talked Marisha to her face. He does that with everyone, and it's always meant in a friendly way -- but Liam very clearly muttered, "Don't add fuel to the fire," so the players were certainly aware of the toxic dynamic.
Firstly, I whole-heartedly agree with the heart of your statements. A LOT of the criticism was just barely-if-at-all masked misogyny. That said, I liked Keyleth a LOT better on a second viewing than a first, and I think I've figured out why. Surprisingly you didn't explicitly mention it in your video, usually you cover all the points I could make. I think Keyleth suffered more than most of the other characters by the fact that we were missing a chunk of the campaign. Keyleth's main character motivations come from 1.5 places: First, she is trying to become the leader of her people, doesn't think she's worthy of that, and knows that her own mother failed at this same task. Then an additional 0.5 is from her accidentally killing a kid (I could as 0.5, because it's related to the first). Because it was pre-stream we mostly heard about that as just "keyleth killed a kid" and the players joking about it above-table. It wasn't until later/if you dug in that you found some more context, including just that it was an accident. Because Marisha/Keyleth is so reluctant to be the focus, and we don't really examine those aspects of her until much later, she can seem to be acting weird for "no real reason" in quite a few places. She puts on a brave face when she can muster it because she thinks that's what a leader is supposed to be, and she wants so desperately to BE a leader. She takes any mistakes extra hard because in the future, as a leader of a tribe meant to protect this world against elemental evils, a mistake could cost ... the plane. She has an incredible amount of stress and expectations on herself that the audience, unless they are paying super close attention and/or doing actual research, may not realize. Without that, switching from bold to cowardly can seem random and whiplash-inducing. But with proper context it makes perfect sense. On a second viewing of course, I had the benefits of knowing all of this about Keyleth and she struck me as a much better character. Marisha and Matt and all the other players knew all of this at the time, because they played the game before the stream existed. It was just an audience information problem. Even when they came out with the animatic about their pre-stream stuff, I don't think it really struck me how important that was to Keyleth's character. As for the animated series, I think they very smartly put more of that up front. They don't have Keyleth kill a kid, but we see her freeze in their first real fight and, being a visual medium, it is easier to convey the reason for the freeze. She's not incompetent, she's not ignorant, she's got some sort of real issue with handling pressure. She is immediately sympathetic because we're let in on it more clearly and immediately. Keyleth didn't fundamentally change, but the pacing of our understanding of her got very different in the animated series. And again, this only really applies to those of us who were operating from good faith and not misogyny.
That's a really great point for the in-fiction narrative side of things. I've re-watched a few C1 episodes in my time, too, with the benefit of having heard Marisha talk about Keyleth and her motivations. And critically, after having seen Marisha play other characters (like Hazel Copperpot was I think the first non-Keyleth one I saw) as well as talk out-of-character about how she intentionally played Keyleth as not confident and awkward. When I first started C1, I never really knew which parts of Keyleth were intentional acting and ended up not as impressed with Marisha as a role-player as the others at the table. (Not to the level of active dislike.) So anyway, going back and watching C1, I was able to see the choices Marisha was making and appreciate that even in those early episodes she did already have plenty of the skills and talent that became clearer to me later. You're right that knowing Keyleth's story was key to being able to see that in what Marisha was doing. A comment I remember from another context was that Marisha was such a good actor she made us believe she was bad at acting / RP. Another eye-opener for me was detective Beau putting together some big-picture puzzle-pieces in mid-to-late C2, making me realize something Marisha is good at that I'm not, which is big-picture thinking and analyzing themes. I'm a details guy with ADHD, and Marisha is the opposite. She struggles with taking in rules details even when she reads something out loud and sometimes needs to see it in action to get how it works. (Which is fine, I've had my own learning disabilities, just unfortunate for switching game systems as a high-level druid in front of a camera.) Maybe it says more about me than anything else, but I'd kind of gotten the impression she was just less smart or clever in general than most of the rest of the cast, until that point. Then I started paying closer attention to see her strengths (including re-watching some old C1 episodes) and understand why she'd be good at a job like creative director. Of course I never posted anything about thinking she wasn't smart, just something I can look back on in my memory as an example about keeping an open mind about people that you don't know a lot about.
Personally I'm not a fan of Keylith, but I do not agree or understand the hate she gets. You've made a great video here man, keep up the great work. Side note: I did not know that Jester and Fearne are so heated in the community. Those are legit some of the best characters in the whole series.
Also, Mike was on fire this episode. Good arguments, mature, interesting insight, well researched, and good comedic timing. It's entertaining to see you improve every video.
you can dislike a character without sending the actor hate for it. that is plane and simple. people can find keyleth annoying, they can talk to their friends about not particularly engaging in the character, but sending a real life person hate messages is just childish. this fandom is incredibly gross at times, and I hope we've all grown up since then.
Marisha's characters are constantly my favourite characters in the group. You don't have to like them the way I do. But again and again verbalize your hate? Sounds like you're the problem.
Before watching the video : I didnt hate her but I did get annoyed often, part of it was that she often did'nt understand her spells, or the results seemed very often innefective or conterproductive (you know, "thanks Keyleth") I now think she was unlucky a few times and understand she had a looot of spells , I dont understand the fish transformation thought xD Also I thought Marisha was unsure and conflicted etc... I didn't realise how much acting was going on until I met Beauregard ^^ (tbh Beau also does get on my nerve for the first half of the campaign but for different reasons... ) I'm sure 1 hour of Mike will help me understand it better^^
People who hate keyleth unironically make the same arguments as the people that blame critical role for everything bad with current DnD/the DnD community.
I love this so much! It makes me cry. Thanks to everyone involved! I’m fortunate to play at a safe table - but that’s not the truth for everyone. I hope this video gives every female content creator and every dnd player in general a little bit of love and support! ❤
A recurring issue you may have missed. Modern fans seem to forget that "irritating" and "hypocritical" and flawed characters serve a very important narrative purpose. Early episode Ashoka, season one Katara, early Keyleth (weird trend here) - all got fan hate for being irritating, but that was because their characters had ROOM TO GROW. Keyleth was awkward and nervous, and that lends dramatic juice to the character. For some reason, if people don't like everything about a character all the time, that means "bad character" and that's... entirely incorrect. Second factor - you note the difference between the stream and the cartoon. A factor there is TIME. If livestream Keyleth messes up, it's an hour of impact. Animated Keyleth's mistakes are resolved in minutes because the scene needs to end. As a result, that drama-fueling frustration the character creates is more palatable because we don't need to sit with it for so long. Note that neither of these has anything to do with the PC or the player. They are audience issues.
I absolutely despise both Keyleth and Yasha while strongly loving Marisha and Ashley interpretation of their characters. Both characters rub me the wrong way because of the anxious akwardness, they are achetypes that I generaly don't like to see. But holy shit Marisha and Ashley nailed them and their developement too. You just have to see how they manage to play Beauregard and Fearn to simply understand that you have to separate the character from the player. Every flaw Keyleth had was intentional and well crafted.
I didn't like Keyleth for a while. I did find her self righteous, but I found myself annoyed with some of her choices that might have caused problems. Namely her outright hostility towards Raishan could've led to a fight far sooner than they were prepared. But I thought a lot of her fumbling was more Marisha's inexperience. Then I started Campaign 2 and saw how differently she played Beauregard. I looked back and saw that no, Marisha may have gotten things wrong sometimes, but she also played Keyleth well! She played her as a dorky, inexperienced badass. That's why she panics. Beau, and later Laudna, raised my appreciation for Keyleth.
I just don’t get it 😂 I don’t like watching actual plays, but when I do watch CR sometimes I never see her do anything I don’t see at tables all the time. No wizard ever has known every spell they have lol same with druids or whatever. And I guess I’m just not programmed to hate women?
![100 Days - [MINECRAFT NO MINING]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/uvZ0f6FnuR0/mqdefault.jpg)
Who is your favorite character in the Vox Machina cartoon, and why is it Keyleth? (jk)
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trinket always he’s just a boy 😍
It is Keyleth
Vex or Percy
They all got worse tbh
The pacing is to fast
@@shadowstalk3004 I think you're the only person that I have heard complain about the pacing of the show. I hope the new season is a better experience for you
I started out not liking Keyleth, but I figured out pretty quick that that was because I saw my own flaws and anxieties in her. As she grew, and so did I, I came to appreciate her a lot more. But the Marisha hate was always dumb. Watch the ooc content, Marisha absolutely rules.
@flandomaltrizian4603 Hey, man!! Fancy seeing you here. How you doing??
Preach Flando!
I started out not liking Keyleth because she was more willing to trust a mind flayer than a cleric of Bahamut. By the time Orion left, I was fine with her.
OMG I literally just commented the same thing, except less eloquently
I started watching VM right as campaign 2 was starting and I had that same feeling…but then I switched over and watched her as a Beau and it all made sense. She’s a great actress. Even now watching her play Laudna she has lightly become her…like method role playing almost haha.
Man…I’m not one to leave comments, but I just had to applaud the choice to have female voices of the DnD community read Marisha’s words. It was…inspired. Well done.
I was literally crying listening to that section
@tlowgh125 Same. Cried when I 1st heard Marisha say it, cried again here.
Same…I stopped the video to tell my roommate about it and almost couldn’t make it through telling her!
Not gonna lie, that got me pretty emotional!
Funny how they will talk about all her mistakes but never her crazy awesome moments like the feeblemind moment
That Feeblemind was INCREDIBLE and I can't wait until Mike gets there in Demystified ❤
Yes!! Also it's true that she doesn't have many awesome on-the-spot one-liners, but who can watch her "CALL ME CHILD ONE MORE GODDAMN TIME" and not think "holy shit, that's awesome"?
i will never forget her passionate cry of "Call me "Child" ONE MORE GODDAMN TIME!" when talking to Raishan. That was a moment of just pure passion and fury, i loved it. Hope they include it in the show.
I'll never forget the "key-teor" moment, when she dropped from hundreds of feet up and left a crater in her wake as an elemental. Or the time she was getting pieced up by that bandit in Emon and called lightning on herself out of spite. The contrast from awkward to metal was... fucking metal
She's just...too real. We often hate about others (characters) what we don't like about ourselves, and I think as such, watching a character struggeling with making decisions and being socially akward can be difficult, leading to strong reactions. Which doesn't excuse the open hate towards to the character and especially Marisha in the slightest
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves” - Carl Jung
I never understood the Marisha hate. Her choices as Keyleth were a big part of why I wanted to start playing in the first place. I first watched after C1 concluded so reading all the hate years later I was like "Are these people watching the same show as me?" Because I thought she was pretty clear in her motivations throughout even if I didn't always agree with the choices she made. Obviously the fact her and Matt were dating added a layer to his rulings that I didn't grasp at first but once I knew that it made more sense.
I feel this. I was already invited to play D&D when I started Critical Role, but watching how they played, especially Marisha, made me so excited to play & help alleviate some of my anxiety. & when I got into Critical Role, campaign 1 was still going on, & I was seeing the Keyleth/Marisha hate & was very angry. "Are these people even watching the same show as me?" Is a sentiment I felt a lot at the time.
Keyleth is honestly a really important character for me. Her inability to act at times can be frustrating, with her struggle with self-doubt and the Aramente. But I absolutely love her personality, powers, and overall arc. Marisha is honestly super entertaining, no matter who she's playing. I like Beau and Luadna a lot more, but Keyleth is one of my faves from Vox Machina.
One other detail about the cocked dice is that Marisha DID pause and looked to Matt to confirm it was cocked. She waited, maybe not as long as Matt would have liked but she only rerolled after everyone agreed with her and when Matt didn't say anything about it. It was after she rerolled that he said something. He could have asked her to hold on or pause or let him look at it or think, but he didn't so Marisha assumed it was fine. This was such a big fight I'm sure she wanted to keep the pace going as well and with everyone else saying it was clearly cocked why wouldn't she reroll ?
Honestly, after that moment I was so genuinely frustrated I had to pause and pace around my apartment. It was so clear by that point that its these types of moments that were feeding into the hate. It's not Matt's fault she got hate obviously but I wish he stood up for her more.
It’s unfortunate that in Matts mind, he was likely basically always trying to protect her (and also himself) from the idea that she got special treatment but that, almost certainly due to existing bias, it got twisted into the opposite.
I’m not trying to suggest Matts actions were perfect, in that moment or any other time. But I do think Matt intentions are good and is trying to manage these complex situations as best he could. Especially I can’t imagine they’d been doing it as long as they had with such prominent problems without the 2 of them discussing it off camera.
To help the "read the spells" part. In Marisha's defense, her spell card for Wind Walk read differently from the book. The product said a different casting time and such.
That's an important footnote!
I think the "Keyleth Hate" says a lot about geek culture at the time.
My sister looks a lot like Ashley, and she is total maths wiz. All her life people don't expect someone who looks like her to be a good maths let alone excel at it.
People who look like Marisha just aren't nerdy geeks. Ironically, after Matt and Talisen, she is the next "most nerdy" in the team.
Jock Machina is the male version of the issue, yet somehow that battle is accepted and championed.
Also, "not being assertive is annoying" is a very American thing. I'm Australian and we are not bombarded by our culture to be assertive and it's our right share opinions. Kaleth's reluctance didn't trigger me the same way it seems it did to Americans.
Critical Role had a massive influence on busting apart the preconceived notions of who was part of geek culture. Having a profession DM who is female and black is now considered normal.
In other places American assertiveness can be considered annoying. Especially Europe and Japan.
I think I pointed this out on your video going over the "Windwalk Incident Episode" - one of the reasons Marisha messed up some spells was DEFINITELY the fact that she kept trying out new ones. She didn't just stick to the limited list of broadly useful, universal spells for every situation. She kept preparing the weird utility spells and tried to find a way to actually use them. I LOVE this. I'll take a "messy experimenter" player over "risk averse optimizer" player EVERY TIME.
I agree. I'll admit that sometimes I found it irritating during an intense battle when Marisha would cast something that required adjudicating -- although she was certainly not the only person to do that sort of thing. But I could see that it was because she was trying to use her spells in the most creative way. As a player, I appreciate seeing another player do that. It's inspiring. Even if in the moment, you're thinking, "Stop playing around and just kill that beholder already!"
I think, to his credit, Matt always rewarded creative way, and, over the long run, it's encouraged all the players to think more creatively about what the resources they have. But, to me, it's pretty obvious that Marisha was leading the way in the Vox Machina campaign.
Really - the crew really shines when chaos is presented. Whether that be due to GM surprises, dice rolls, or player mistakes / risks failing to pay off.
@@arandomnamegoeshere THIS. I ran a session for brand new players today and it took them about 5 minutes to grasp the concept of "interesting things happen when things go wrong, getting in trouble and figuring out how to get out of trouble is FUN".
"We avoided any potential risks, considered all contingencies, everything went according to plan and nothing surprised us" is how you want a corporate strategy for the next fiscal year to go, not an ADVENTURE.
Honestly half the fun of playing a utility caster like a druid is looking at your spell list and figuring out what wild shit you can do with it. How am I going to use Meld into Stone? No idea, but fuck it, we ball.
I support that. I inspire my Players to think outside of the Box. When you do something special, you discribe something realy good, or you use your abilitys in a interesting way, you can see/feel that in return. And when your Spell or ability couldn't work this way, discribe to me what you wanted to do with it and WE can maybe tweak it a bit. And after i did some extra narrating for their extras they got more hooked.
And that is what i saw with Keyleth, later with Caleb, Jester and Cad. And now in C3 with Laudna, Imogen and Fearne. And i love it. My Players now try to make Spell Combos together, and work alot more as a Team than before. And to be honest, it is such a Joy to narrate this and see/hear them getting wild.
The only hate I ever gave keyleth was the "cliff" incident until It was so incredibly comical I had tears 🤣🤣 edit: for clarification it was more me shouting at my screen of "WTF are you doing?!!" 🤣
Same!
In the Vox Machina comics, they do a callback to this bit as a tavern tale and I laughed so hard in my car reading it. Good memories and good times.
To be fair, she kinda did deserve it, given that she literally told Vax he's not immortal back in Westruun, and then decided to brag about being a god right before dying as a goldfish.
@@buddybleeyes I found it hilarious, I'm not sure if Marisha meant for it or was caught off guard.
@@thefiresworddragon927 this is the only legitimate Keyleth criticism I'll listen to, everything else is noise.
Thanks for talking about this. As a woman on the internet, it can be difficult even for me to differentiate between valid subjective opinions about a character versus internalised misogyny leading to dislike of a person. Starting out, I was not a fan of Keyleth for some of the reasons you mentioned (she came off as self-righteous in the Underdark arc before we knew much about her, and it took a while before I had my mind changed but she definitely got there in the end), but I never made any personal attacks on Marisha over it. Still not my favourite character/cast member personally but definitely a vital part.
Thank you so much ☺️ I’m glad you enjoyed the video!
I don’t always agree with everything you say, Mike. Of course not, that would be unreasonable.
But I 100% agree with everything you said in this video.
In terms of the "Shut up, Keyleth" part about one-liners, my response to anyone taking issue with Marisha's wording is clearly forgetting about that one infamous line from Taliesin:
"Life needs things to live". Like, if we can all find a bit of humour in this blunder, why can't we do the same with Keyleth and not give Marisha crap for it.
I think that while Marisha is incredibly smart and a fantastic role player, she's not as quick-witted as Taliesin or as able to cause a complete chaotic mess (in a good way) like Laura or Sam, so her intelligence is not as easy to notice. She is undoubtedly the most attentive player at the table in a plot sense, she's the de facto note taker and the person who always understands the plot first.
This is something that people who are not very smart won't realize, so they project their ignorance unto her.
Omg thank you, Taliesen has his badass memorable one liners specifically because he throws spaghetti at the wall and most of the time ends up with "help, it's again" lmao. Then eventually an absolute banger comes out bc he's willing to risk it being something accidentally super dumb. It says something that fans can laugh at his botched one liners but judge Marisha for hers
Thank you for including Marisha's speech from her episode of Between the Sheets. That episode never fails to make me emotional ❤
If I ever get a chance to meet her, I am going to specifically thank her for that game where she messed up with Windwalk. There was something revelatory for me in watching her make a mistake, one that genuinely seemed to frustrate the other players, and it be okay. Marisha's friends still love her, even when she messes up. My friends love me, and they still will even when I mess up. I KNEW that intellectually, but watching it happen with Marisha in real time made that click in a way nothing else had.
If your hatred of a character bleeds through to the person behind it, I believe it's time to remove yourself from the internet
Keyleth is 23 years old doing her first journey into the world and being both strong of opinion and unsure and scared. Just really sounds like me at that same age. Unsure, making decisions that seem hypocritical. If you're over 30, you know things you've done that matched up.
We all make mistakes. We all do stupid things. And that's why I love how Marisha played Keyleth.
Yeah, she felt like a real person in those scenarios. Something I feel was lacking a bit in the later campaigns. I loved the Mighty Nein, but they killed a lot of people, and they never really talked about it. In a way that made some of the characters who felt grounded in some emotional aspects come across as cartoonish in others. Keyleth didn't feel that way.
And don't even get me started on Campaign 3 in that regard. They've needed someone who isn't scared to speak up, and who is grounded in the world very much in that whole adventure, and it's been tough to watch them flail around without that aspect to the group, especially considering the kind of plot they are engaging with. The closest we have to a Keyleth in that regard is Orym, and Liam is doing something different with him. But they could use a character who just sees that things are wrong, and is uncertain enough to feel conflicted, but has enough conviction to not stay quiet even when everyone tells them to shut up.
Keyleth actually embodies something I think more people should aspire to. The willingness to call out the wrongdoing of herself and others, and reckon with their own actions. It often arises out of immaturity, but it is actually the course of wisdom. Maturity often brings undeserved certitude, and I think more people should be a little less certain they know what's right or wrong. Certainly more should be willing to at least ask the question.
"When is it appropriate to hit children to discipline them? Are they old enough to understand reason? Then use reason instead of hitting them. If they are not old enough to understand reason then they probably will not understand the lesson you are trying to teach by hitting them, so you shouldn't hit them"...
Something about "punishing the player by making them waste their high level spell slot, to teach them a lesson" reminded be of this. Also, in real life: please don't hit children, or people in general.
Doesn't your parable here completely not apply since adults are old enough to understand reason?
@@hawkname1234 right, if your players are "adults old enough to understand reason", why would you choose to literally/metaphorically "hit them to correct their behavior", as opposed to "using reason to correct their behavior"?
I watched at the time and Keyleth was not my favorite. She was playing a spellcaster and really did not understand a surprising number of her spells...and she seemed less "involved" in the story. It was only at the Sun Tree that I noticed that Marisha was a pretty good role player and even then it took me a while to appreciate that she was RPing a relatively low charisma character (+0, whereas even Grog had a +1). So she didn't jump into dialogues in the same way as others. By the end of Series 1, I had a greater appreciation for her acting.
Yes. Sometimes I found Keyleth annoying, especially when she was trying to make speeches. But eventually I realized that that was a character choice and I started to enjoy how inarticulate Keyleth could be. There wasn't a strong distinction between Marisha's natural voice and Keyleth's voice, so that made it harder for me, as a viewer, to distinguish between the two. This is in contrast to Liam, Laura, and Taliesin, who all did variations on a posh British accent, and Travis, who was clearly doing a character voice as Grog.
Having watched as much of all three campaigns as possible, I'm very impressed with Marisha as an actor. Keyleth, Beau, and Laudna are all very different characters. I find Laudna to be the most fascinating, but that takes nothing away from the other two, who are just as fleshed out.
I believe Keyleth had a negative Charisma modifier before she took so e kind of increase. (Via an item or level up)
THANK YOU for pointing out Confirmation Bias Fallacy! 16:11
The world would be a better place if people read that entry on wikipedia. Critical Thinking is slowly dying out 😢 Other good entries are Ockam's Razor and the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
Hearing that Marisha quote from so many youtubers I'm a fan of was incredible! And thanks for putting together such a great defense. You've been a reall roll lately
what's always gotten me is the criticism that keyleth doesn't have a distinctive voice. I've heard it a lot, but ya know who also plays a character who speaks exactly like their normal speaking voice in campaign one? everyone's favorite ad reader!
I think people often underestimate the level of misogyny which was normalised and unchecked in the mid 2000s in "geek" culture (and still today, honestly). I remember struggling a bit in high school (an all-girls school btw) because most of my friends weren't into the same stuff I was, which is fine, but I wanted a group of friends I could bond over video games and TTRPGs with. At that point I had never played dnd but knew a lot about it because of Critical Role, so I was thinking of finding a group to play with. Seeing how the community treated Marisha completely turned me off it for YEARS. I avoided making friends in these kinds of spaces because as far as I could tell, there were far fewer women than men. And no, it wasn't coming from a place of not liking men, it was coming from a place of being afraid that the kinds of men in these spaces wouldn't like me, would take it upon themselves to "quiz" me about my own interests, and would ultimately shut me out for nothing more than being too much of a girl. And man... that's just depressing. I'm so glad as an adult I have a diverse group of friends who all love what I love and are supportive and kind people.
I'm gonna be honest, it was probably a reaction to the fact that the hobbies they were bullied for in their adolescence were suddenly becoming cool. People tend to gatekeep when it occurs. (Outright misogyny was obviously a massive factor as well.)
I'm sure that still happens plenty. Obviously, it's way worse in the BrOSR. But every group will have its own composite personality, and some of them are going to be toxic. All we can hope is that that toxicity results in people shunning those who engage in anti-social behavior. And maybe some of those people will change-but don't count on it.
@hawkname1234 I've seen a shift in just the direction you've mentioned. Toxic and anti-social behaviour is heavily shunned in my city's ttrpg community.
Legit broke into tears about 52:35 or so. If you've seen that part of the video you know why.
Oh, and yay, surprise collab!
Me too
Great episode, I especially love the Marisha quote read by various voices in the fandom. So well done and a great way to share it without having to share the video it was from!
People didn’t like Jester ??? I’m shocked she’s maybe my favorite in a group of my favorites so hearing that people didn’t like her is surprising
I don't get it either. But, every CR character is loathed by someone for some reason.
@@mwhearn1 Understandable I definitely didn’t much care for Tiberius and especially didn’t as those first twenty or so episodes rolled along but like when I did find out what was going on with Orion I’ve definitely cooled on it dude had issues and for sure needed to go but I do appreciate them giving him a send off when VM goes to Draconia to see what Vorugal was up to
It's hard to make a chaotic character liked by D&D funs, let's say it brings traumatic memories, but it sometimes means the tone doesn't remain like people want she isn't my favourite character type but jester is done well for my liking, way too many people confuse not liking a character type to hating the existence of the character
I knew who Jester was before I even heard of Critical Role and I never once got the impression she was unpopular
That is...not true at all lmao. Jester has always been one of the most consistently popular characters from the M9.
2:12 I have to strongly disagree with this take as a big C1 keyleth fan. I feel like LOVM took away a lot of early keyleth’s edge and made her a more sanitized version of the tabletop game. Her self righteous” attitude and how she would stand up to the party to check them were missimg from S1/S2. Her personality was sanded down something more akin to a more modern Disney princess. The rougher parts of her, the frustration, and anger are as much keyleth as the lovestruck, or sillier or awkward keyleth. But I loved that, she felt like the most 3 dimensional in the game but a lot flatter (though still good) in the show
I was a bit shocked when I saw the animated show, because a lot of the characters were different. And it was interesting to me, considering that they were created by voice actors, that the voices were different. Keyleth sounded younger, lighter, and far less sure of herself than campaign Keyleth. Grog seemed far more child-like. Vex added this whole mean girl personna that wasn't there in the campaign, and Pike, who had a sweet melodic voice in the campaign, sounded much tougher, with a bit of a rasp. I'm not knocking it. It all works.
I honestly think that comes down to run time. I think pretty much All the characters have changed and get a lot less opportunities to shine. Especially in season 1, so heavily focused on Percy, the other characters really didn't get a lot of room to show off. It's one of difficult things about adaptation
@@eastersliceI think it makes sense for show Keyleth to seem younger and less sure of herself then campaign Keyleth. We meet campaign Keyleth halfway through her journey (well technically a 1/3 since she’s done 1 of her 3 trials). So she’s already had a chance to grow a bit in the home games. But though it’s unclear exactly what the characters had done before the start of the TV show, it’s pretty clear they were a much newer group that hadn’t been on the same level of adventures as they were completely unknown by the senior members of the kingdom. So she lacks that extra experience. Plus for a dedicated narrative, it makes sense for the character to start at the very start of her arc, not partway through in a way that would be impossible in the campaign without her awkwardly revising her character in the transition to the live stream (which given the early episodes were just them starting out with no idea what was coming would have been a weird choice).
Marisha, juggling a spell list 80+ spells long and three roles in the party, makes a mistake and never lives it down.
Liam, playing arguably the most straightforward class/subclass in the game, BARELY KNOWS HIS OWN ACTION ECONOMY FOR ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN OF GODS OWN EPISODES gets *absolute fucking radio silence*.
I don't recognize the thing you seem to be describing. If you state it more clearly, or in some externally validate-able way, we might agree with you. I can't falsify what Liam knows. What are you claiming he did or didn't do over 115 episodes that deserved hate?
@@hawkname1234 remembering when sneak attack applies, not understanding that just because you get sneak attack doesn't mean you get advantage, mixing up sneak attack with his assassin subclass ability to have advantage on some first rounds of combat...it's literally 3 small paragraphs of text, he could have just memorized it after a few sessions. compared to the absolute walls of text in d&d spells, plus the fact that druids are prepared casters which means they basically need to know _their entire spell list_ in order to be the most effective? but no one ever hates on liam.
I think another point on the Misogyny is related to D20-Emily Axford is the main strategic voice in combat on that show, and she still gets the most Criticism
Its never about play quality
If it was Emily would be untouchable. That woman stacks her abilities in ways I can only dream of. It's like the same problem, opposite spectrum from Keyleth/Marisha. Emily is TOO good at the game so clearly she's just power gaming and doesn't actually care about the story blah blah blah.
ironically Emily has the OPPOSITE critiques from Marisha, they hate that she plays the game nearly too well for their liking.
Oh my God this! Emily is *so good* and builds her characters so well - and all they can focus on is calling her a min maxer... When the problem, if there is a problem, with min maxing is *when it takes away from role play*. And Emily *never* lets it get in the way of her roleplay! She will *utterly decimate* Brennan's villains, usually still using her character voice if she's doing one, and then go right back into what her character is saying/doing. And *still* she gets all the criticism... You just can't win with these trolls if you're a woman or femme in the space.
I've never wandered over to NADDPOD... But now I can't help but wonder if she also gets DMs significant other criticism there, cause she's married to Murph.
@@lolaf1erExactly! When that's *so clearly not true* because like... The number of times we've seen Emily cry at the table clearly says she cares. Fig with Sandra Lynn at the end of Fantasy High Campaign 1 springs to mind. (Or the fact that she *literally talked to Murph about concerns for Gilear* on their drives home. The woman was so invested she talked to her real husband about her concerns for her fictional dad away from the table. You don't *get* more invested than that! 😂)
people got REALLY intense about their dislike of like, one character emily played in an early campaign and i think it's sort of shaped how d20 play player to player tension, really sucks to see
Marisha making mistakes was one of the reasons I found CR1 so entertaining. I still will watch her cliffdive to this day when I want a good laugh. I like Marisha a lot. I never read twitch chat so your channel was actually the first place I learned about the hate, and I was very supprised. I don't get why people who watch something don't want to let it entertain them. Life is more fun that way
Thank fuck you’re putting this out, even back in the day all the harassment of keyleth and Marisha was real off putting and seeing people retcon their explanation of hate to just be of keyleth was bullshit.
Seriously. I remember Season 1 (or as it was call, just "Critical Role") and people were absolutely HORRIBLE. I mean, they had to take the chat off the screen pretty damn quickly.
This is a good channel. I like Mike.
Back in 2022, Matt tweeted that Mariahs as a "bad ass" and I took a screen shot of one of the responses was:
"No one needs to display their enamoresness (sic) to anyone other than the one to which they are enamored. That is your life...not ours. I follow you for shareable stuff. Not personal stuff. Goddammit, it's like you're flaunting. Sorry."
There's an irrationality to many of the people who attack Mariaha that just can't be explained with anything but misogyny.
I am a 30+ year vetran of the game, been playing through multiple editions, AND I STILL MESS UP MY SPELLS. There are tons of spells and they are all rather specific. Messing up spells is NORMAL. She don't deserve the flack she gets for it.
Also Druid is one of the more complicated classes, so there is that.
The weirdest part is that all the examples are from pre the chroma conclave as if it is impossible for a person to grow and get better at a hobby
To be fair, some of that might just be Mike preferring to use examples from episodes he's already covered in Critical Role Demystified. When he uses examples from later in C1, or from C2 or C3, he tends to be vague to avoid spoilers
I was there in the early days and the way Marsha was treated really mirrored my own experiences as a female D&D player, especially because I usually DM. It sucked and I tuned out of the fandom pretty quickly to block it out. I'm so glad there are people like you who can see how unfair the behavior was.
Also, find it interesting that Keyleth gets so much hate for keeping Vox Machina on task and not be totally chaotic, while Jester and presumably Fearne are getting hate for being chaos incarnate.
I really enjoyed Keyleth as a character and Marisha for that manner. One of my best buddies LOATHES her. But that's because we enjoy different types of characters. He really likes Fearne, I don't enjoy Fearne, but I can admit that she is a good character. I love the dynamic she has with the group and Nana Mori, but I don't like the "trope" or archetype she follows. Everyone has different archetypes of characters they like, but that's no reason to bring hate against the person behind the character. Totally agree!
To add, Marisha/Keyleth absolutely had great one-liners and speeches. Just later in the game, when Keyleth was coming into her own as a leader. Her lack of speeches was due to her low charisma. It was a character choice. Marisha is clever and quick and well-spoken, she's proven it so many times since. One of my favorites was her talking back to Raishan, about the colony of ants fighting back against one great diseased foot. Or even in earlier games, Marisha had quick one-liners, just whispered out of character because Keyleth wouldn't say them.
I'm not part of the CR fan community - I found your content from other vectors - so I cannot comment on
...But gods some of what you said definitely resonated with what I've observed elsewhere about how women and other visible minorities are judged more harshly.
What I like to ask in these situations is “Therefore, what?”. When it seems that someone is dancing around what they want/wish they could say. Therefore, what? Usually people clam up real quick or get flustered to the point that their bad faith is pretty plain to see.
Watching C1, Keyleth was one of my favorite characters, and I never understood the hate. At the beginning of C2, I didn't like Beau until episode 26 for spoiler reasons. In C3, I started off hating Chetney so much, but i did warm up to him. There's only 2 times I was ever upset with the cast. One was the Wendy's situation, and the other was at Laura during the centaur fight. The centaur fight in C3 really annoyed me because when it was clear that diplomacy had failed due to bad luck, Laura doubled down on not fighting.
Keyleth's flaws, just like the flaws of every other character, make the story more engaging.
I never understood the hate for Marisha and Keyleth, tbh.
same... when i listened to the first campaign she quickly became one of my favorites
Agreed
Key and laudna caused internal party problems over and over and bo was just annoying until near the end of the 2nd campaign
she trusted a mindflayer over a paladin in some of the first episodes. unironically I believe this was what first cemented a bias against both marisha and keyleth in the audience, I know it did for me.
I realized my problem was with keyleth and not marisha like 15 minutes later though, so I'm not sure what these nerds are doing in terms of internal emotional deliberation but it doesn't seem very effective
I just went back to the Wind Walk episode to watch Marisha and Matt’s reactions again, and I find it hilarious that immediately after being a hard ass to Marisha, Matt immediately turns around and explains to Sam how concentration checks work because he didn’t know. At least we have another counterargument for why Matt doesn’t treat her better because they’re married
He has his moments of favoritism, but I'd say they're mostly person to person and he *mostly* breaks rulings based on rule of cool.
I'd say the most favoritism thing of the entire run was the Cobalt Soul subclass. Shit was busted.
edit: or gunslinger, really. pretty much any homebrew matt makes (blood hunter excluded) is overtuned.
@@hem9483I ran the OG CS subclass, if you have god rolls it’s busted (and from winning the battle royale that was a given) if you don’t have the int you didn’t have many options.
Edit: you see the boost she got the diadem straight up.
@@hem9483 I thought the only thing Blood Hunter was famous for was being an overtuned glass cannon.
@hawkname1234 The first non-published version he had on his DMsGuild page was like that, he then overnerfed it to the point where fighter had higher avg DPR *every level*, but bloodhunter didn't have any burst damage or massively impactful debuffs to make up for it. (plus taking damage to use class features is a *colossal* drawback in megadungeon settings where resting isn't easy)
Sorry. Side topic. I profoundly dislike Elon Musk and all the racist, homophobic and transphobic trolls, but what has SW theory done that is comparable to those guys?
I don't follow him that much, but I have watched some his videos criticising the story and bad world building of most of the Star Wars media produced by Disney (I tend to agree with him that they are quite bad).
Iwhat he has done that warrants putting a target on his back alongside one of the most powerful men in the world?
He just seems to hate the Acolyte for its writing and lore. Did he get misogynistic while criticising the show?
I mean there are so many SW youtubers who are soooo much more toxic.
Keyleth definitely is not my favorite of the characters. That simply comes down to her not being the type of character I enjoy. But I do feel like I should not have read the comments (youtube comments) as I watch critical role episodes, which is hard not to do cause there's not much happening on screen. I definitely started internalising the negativity around keyleth and became more wary of things to dislike about her. Key lesson, don't read the comments.
So full disclosure, when I first started watching the Vox Machina campaign, Percy was my least favorite character. Then the Briarwood arc happened, and my entire attitude changed. Suddenly, I realized that these were players who were on top of things. That made it so any time I had a moment of annoyance with any of the characters, I trusted that the players were on top of things and that this was a moment that was part of their character arc.
Thank you for making this video haven't started much of it yet but I understand the hesitants to make it and I'm glad that we get to see and informed rational explanation of certain people's irrational behavior Love your content keep up the good work!❤❤❤
**Edit: heck you for making me cry at the end! 😅😅😅
JK that was beautifully handled and that is why I continue to support your work and wish you only the best**
I think one of the interesting things about Keyleth is that Marisha likely realized that as a Druid and a leader, Keyleth’s actions and their consequences will always have time to reach her before she dies. She knows that as long as she survives, there’s a chance that someone will come knocking 5 human generations from now because of what she did that day. And that won’t just affect Keyleth, but the whole of the Ashari tribes.
It always bothered me to watch other fans react to CR playing as if it were a professional sporting event. But why? I don't want to dismiss someone's joy. Yet I think this essay touches on exactly what bothers me.
Professional sporting events are all about execution of the game. When players fail to execute well (or even worse - make mistakes), it is accepted as part of the experience to directly attack the player. And I think that's some of what we see covered here.
But "pro player" is never what I saw CR being presented as. CR has always been more about story with some dice-based mechanics. Very little "professional sport" and far more improvised play. So when players did something sub-optimal - I never cared. But it didn't bug me if someone pointed out a more optimal strategy, etc. It did bug me when someone took shots at the players at the table. It's not sports.
well it is 100% fine for them to be criticized. this is not a home game anymore it is a product put out multi million dolor company and they are being payed a shit ton of money to play the game.
@@flameknightdragon I don't follow. Getting paid to let people watch you play a game turns that game in to a sport?
I started watching C1 when it had already finished, and C2 was around E45ish.
I never understood the hate. She was one of my favourite characters right from the beginning.
Hail the Voice of the Tempest!
I'd like to turn the analogy of someone shouting abuse at the batter on its head. I think that it totally _can_ have the same level of impact. Perhaps it doesn't always, but I would suggest that the potential _is_ almost always there. If you're a young kid who loves baseball, being taken to your first baseball match, and the person next to you is shouting slurs at the batter which you know apply to you... I can totally imagine that _could_ put you off (it might also make you more determined to succeed). (Also, yes I'm picking an extreme example to try and demonstrate a point, but that's just because it's easier to empathise with; you can spread out the same abuse over months or years of being in a community, and get the same results).
Either way, I think that the analogy of baseball is more valuable than you give it credit for. I don't think the analogy to sports is flawed, I think the _conclusion_ often drawn from it is. The Critical Role community (and, by extension, a significant portion of the D&D community) shouldn't have to grin and bear it, just because sports people do. _No-one_ should have to grin and bear it!
I think there's a fair question as to the purpose of this comment. This isn't to angry mob, to try and reflect a spotlight, or anything. It just made me feel sad to think that, nah, this isn't just a D&D lesson, this is a broader life lesson.
Kudos on this video man. It's very clear you took your time and made an effort to approach this subject respectfully and thoroughly, adding to the discourse with points I personally haven't heard before (good ones I promise) and taking into account who's voices ought to be heard in this conversation. I remember when Marisha's between the sheets episode came out. I remember how hard her words hit me. If anyone thought she wasn't capable of being well spoken, they should have had the chance to watch that video because she very clearly knows who she is and what she stands for which I think is one of the better qualities of Keyleth's character and is commendable for Marisha as a person. The segment with all those amazing women reading Marisha's words should be getting the same reaction as the scene from Barbie with what was I made for playing in the background. And I think, if there was ever a video on your channel at least someone from CR should watch, it's this one. Cuz that was powerful. I just pray it doesn't fall on deaf ears like so much of this conversation tends to. Anyways, thanks for existing in this space.💚
Keyleth is my favourite of Marisha's characters, but the only character ive associated personally with more is Liam's portrayal of Caleb. Both individuals of huge potential and crippling self doubt. Caleb made me feel comfortable in my knowledge, but Keyleth... Keyleth put in front of a 20-something who had heen thrust into the world with zero knowledge of how to exist in it, that even people with power mess up, and mess up royally.
DnD has been theraputic for me since CR C1. The experiences, wisdom, grief all feel as much my own as they do the players, most likely, because i was robbed of those Lessons and experiences as a child. Keyleth was... key (sorry, I'm a genius, sorry) to that story playing out, and as someone entirely uninterested in the gender binary, had no hate for Marisha herself, and since C2 onwards, ive been thankful to be able to see her be herself, rather than Keyleth a lot more.
People do and be stupid things. Its only by reveling in ignorance and xenophobia that these attitudes persist. Honestly, i say to those people, Go away. You arent wanted here. Keyleth was a fantastic character to those who understood her. If you didnt, ask others, or leave her alone.
I loved what Marisha talked about on her interview with Brian Foster. She wasn't that fazed by the hate, but she knew how the hatred for a nerdy woman was being perceived. The quote "You're not screaming into a void" and going on to explain that hating keyleth/marisha meant that every woman who might want to play the game, but then read all the hatred for her on the internet, meant new players were gatekept out of the game, because who wants to play with a community like that?
Edit: I wrote this before getting all the way through the video, and I'm SO glad these quotes have been included! (And said much better than my hasty recap)
She’s right, I’ve found myself intimidated away from joining a campaign because I didn’t want to deal with a bunch of whiners yelling at me for being a girl and a new player. They’ll tell you that’s not the reason but it is, a lot of people just don’t have the patience to play with newbies and a lot of men have weird hang ups about women who like the same hobbies as them
@amethystimagination3332 I think the difference (anecdotally) between irl and online is *fucking massive* in terms of misogyny. None of the groups I've played with have blinked at any differing identity of any players at the table.
If your only options for IRL DND are with groups that would just, make fun of women? For wanting to play too? Then I'd recommend online groups tbh. Bigots aren't worth *anyones* time.
i despise when people can't separate the actor from the character. also, marisa is also the dm's wife and people will automatically assume favoritism and main character syndrome. people forget character growth involves becoming a "hypocrite" sometimes because you learn and sometimes your morality changes and you may not believe something you used to believe even a couple days ago. people learn through experiences and mindsets change
edit: i made this comment about 2 minutes into the episode so im glad you touched on those topics later in the video
My favorite character is by far Pike, and she would absolutely hate people hating on her friend.
"They make mistakes." After many many years of suffering from "Problem Solver" mentality, I've learned the best thing for a game is to make mistakes, take sub-optimal moves, have your characters act out of passion and personality rather than some hyper-optimized set of Big Brain Logic.
Screwing up is half the adventure. An impulsive risk-taking character who is just terrible at their job is a blessing to DMs and players who want story rather than iWin buttons.
Also good on you for pointing out how... directed the criticisms were based on the presented gender of the player.
Coming into the fandom in 2016, the Keyleth hate was something I noticed quickly, and often led to ignoring the chat and comment sections. I also recognised the character trope Marisha was going for, because I see it all the time in videogames. It was quickly apparent that much of the hate was toxicity about a person and not issues with the character. Marisha was EXACTLY the kind of strong, "outspoken" woman that sexists love to hate, and that SUCKS. I just realized while watching this... did these people like Beau because she's exactly that kibd of woman... but also (initially) a self-admitted "asshole" who the audience isn't supposed to sympathize with? Hm. In any case, it took until Beau, a vastle different character, for people to realize that Marisha was, in fact, a good actor and that all their issues with Keyleth were intentional character flaws. Which also sucks.
Thanks for making this video. Really well-put and researched.
I loved Keyleth, I was new to the game when I started watching Critical Role, and Marisha making mistakes and learning from them made it better for me as I felt that I would be allowed to make mistakes at the table and learn from them myself. I actually based my first character on Keyleth. Thank you for giving this subject a full analysis!
WOW! I was blissfully unaware of the BS thrown around. I had gotten annoyed with keylith (only the character) when she felt everything was the groups fault. (Chroma conclave attack specifically.) I’ve had similar annoyance with other characters (jester C2; dorian C3)
I wouldn't call myself a Keyleth hater but I certainly disliked her, her scenes largely just didn't land for me. All the cast had scenes that went long or felt awkard its essentially hundreds of hours of improv but all the other characters had moments that really hit me in some way but that moment just never really came with Keyleth. Of course thats just my personal taste and anyone who attacked Marisha over her choices in her DnD game is wild and inane to me.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, the venn diagram between people who hate Animorph's Cassie and the people who hate Keyleth/Marisha is a CIRCLE
Holy cow! FOUR Mike episodes in one week?‽ thank palor for our divine inspiration
It's almost like these characters are real people and not idiolised characters or NPC's. Strange huh ...
Personally i'm fine with Keyleth. Marshiaa herself is quite a blunt person and she uses that in her roleplay quite a lot. Beau it's the prime example of this, that character's main thing was being a bit of a blunt dick
Personally i found i had issues with Jester. But i know that's actually a reflection on me; i as a person don't like overly happy people they just rub me the wrong way so with Jester being all bubbly overly happy tends to rub me the wrong way, but i don't hold it against Laura
I'm sorry. What? "These characters are real people and not idoloised characters or NPCs."
What???? What the fuck could you possibly mean by this??? In what world are DND PCs not characters LMFAO? If someone plays a lawful evil necromancer does that mean we should screen them for psychopathy and antisocial personality traits??
You are speaking crazy talk.
Mike, I can't thank you enough for calling out the misogyny of this behavior. I am one of those infrequently found female-presenting TTRPG players who's been in the nerd-sphere since the mid-90s, and I have NEVER encountered this kind of animocity. My groups have been majority male, and even when we had one or two other females, we still had respectful behavior and fun and friendship. I can't imagine being a young, 20- or 30-something-year-old, or even more, a teenaged female, getting in on the online nerdsphere. We are all very lucky there are men like you and Rob Builder and Will Earl and others. Y'all give me hope. Thank you, sincerely!
Tbf, turning into a fish was dumb. But funny. Like 90% of my decisions in D&D. And that's not a bad thing that's just her trying to do something to help in the moment, I have literally rung an alarm bell to try and help my party sneaking into an orc stronghold. It shouldn't have worked, we made it work, but in the end it's a game. And yeah, ngl I don't think i'd jump off a cliff for the lols, but if I did yeah i'd turn into a fish if I thought the sea was beneath and I was just put on the spot
I remember being frustrated with Keyleth in 2 big bits:
Her antagonism towards Lady Kima in the underdark arc felt like Keyleth coming to the wrong conclusion and creating conflict with the person they were meant to rescue from being tortured. It came across as a bit insesitive and miguided in a way that wasn't a fun character flaw for me.
Her actions and attitude when trying to broker a deal with the clasp. Percy put it well when saying that it came across as her looking down on the clasp and the fact they've had to do morally questionable things to survive. With people's lives on the line in Emon, it came across as being on her high horse in a way that didn't help or make the scenes more interesting to me.
I don't think either of them were a slight against Marisha though, and I would never hurl abuse at her over them. These were just a conflict in how I interpretted the situation as a viewer and how Marisha interpretted the scene as Keyleth.
edit: And to talk about SupergeekMike's final bit asking why am i commenting on this; who am I trying to talk to with my comment, I think that's a good point to consider. I guess I'm trying to understand better about why I felt frustrated with Keyleth in a manner that isn't coloured by misogyny. I don't think I've fully suceeded with that though but vocalising/writing up an answer can help to better look at your opinion with fresh eyes and see the poison inadvetidly in my stance.
It always felt like classic toxic masculinity to me, I am almost 100% certain that if a guy did the exact same thing that Marisha did that he would have gotten far less hatred and vitriol.
Far less, but not none. People dog on Tal for taking too long on his turns, they make fun of Liam's edgy monologuing, etc.
Far, far less, but not none. Nobody escapes the ire of the angry nerd.
This video came out the same day as PlayStations State of Play presentation where they announced Ghost of Yotei, the Ghost of Tsushima sequel that has CR guest Erika Ishii as the lead...and predictably the Bros on Twitter aren't happy about it.
The fact that it's so predictable that this will happen is the disappointing part.
I disagree with a lot of Keyleth's choices. Those disagreements have no place in critique. Marisha did her job in making me feel things through her character acting. Thumbs up to Marisha for playing such an evocative character.
The only thing I can think of atm that I have as a valid critique would be when Keyleth and Vax colluded to prevent Percy and Vex from having a romance roleplay scene in retaliation of Vex who had playfully teased them for their own earlier romance scene. They should've found a way to tease/prank back that didn't prevent the scene from happening and I would recommend this to anyone who plays a roleplay heavy game. To me, that felt like an above board consequence for what should've been an in-character beef. To their credit I haven't noticed this ever happening again and there's been a lot of observable, respectful behavior around intimate scenes between characters ever since. I mourn the loss of that scene to this day and I wonder if they regretted it too. (Note, this wasn't a Marisha/Keyleth only issue)
The lost scene you are referring to, was that the night after slaying Umbrasyl, everyone is partying in Westrun and Kerr gives Keyleth therapy?
@@kjj26k That's the one
I came to Critical Role kind of late, people had been suggesting it to me but Campaign 2 was starting up by the time I started watching Campaign one. So I missed a lot of the Fandom nonsense and I really, REALLY liked Keyleth. So realizing afterwards that so many people didn't, I was stunned. Especially when one of the friends who recommended it to me turned out to be someone who disliked her and her choices, when she was easily one of my top characters. I related to her self consciousness and lack of confidence, and I found her sweet and endearing and when she did cool things it brought a smile to my face. I liked her so much I based one of my own player characters off of her.
I made this pretty clear to the friend who said they hated Keyleth, as I was playing with them in that game. "Your character is way more interesting.' "You actually know what the spells do.' "You remember your class features and use your spell slots to heal your wild shape form." and those phrases always stung, rather than encouraged. Because interesting is subjective, and rules are things you learn over time, and I wasn't new to the system playing in front of a live audience. It's not comparable. I mostly just not talk about it anymore to them, because it was just a hassle to talk to them about it.
The part of this video where you had other female creators read out Marisha's words brought me to tears. It's something as a AFAB person that just cuts deep.
Appreciate your work as always, Thank you.
That sucks, sorry to hear that.
I wonder if watching C2 first made it easier to see which parts of Keyleth's lack of confidence and mannerisms were intentional acting? Or did you start with C1?
As someone else commented once, Marisha is such a good actress she fooled (some of) us into believing she was bad at RP / acting.
That's kinda true in my case; I didn't know anything about any of the cast before starting C1, and until seeing Hazel Copperpot (the first non-Keyleth character I'd seen Marisha do), I had assumed she was just weaker overall at RP! Which would be funnier to look back on if a bunch of asshats hadn't made terrible comments about her. It makes me sad that some people can't talk reasonably about things they dislike, and have fun(?) making their words as nasty as possible or even really mean it. (Both sad for the human condition, and sad for the people on the receiving end of that crap.)
As a character, I definitely like Keyleth now (and can appreciate what Marisha was doing with her a lot better in hindsight). It took some time to grow on me I think; I was never on the Keyleth hate bandwagon.
I was initially less impressed with Marisha as a fun player to watch in an actual-play show than others at the table. It definitely didn't help my enjoyment that she would miss important stuff in rules even after reading them, but I get that different people have different learning styles that do or don't work for them. I never had the impression that she was lazy or not trying with the rules and mechanics. (I think Mike makes a great point about Matt being too harsh several times and that making it seem worse for people who aren't really paying attention or who have confirmation bias.)
@@Peter_Cordes I did start with C1 then moved onto C2 after. I think at the time even though I didn't know Marisha from anything but I had assumed they were all actors and that these were just acting roles so it never came across as anything other than the character to me. It may have also come from a point of that when I play player characters a lot of them come from a place of insecurity, or are hiding insecurities, so it really mirrored a lot of my own role playing choices.
In general too Critical role is what I like to put on when I'm working on art so perhaps some of the rule flubs bother me less as I'm not scrutinizing it as a actual play, but as a story which may have coloured my perception in general of the show.
It too makes me sad that folks can't just talk about things reasonably, it really makes it hard to discuss things in general. Some things work for some, some don't, but saying it harshly will always alienate folks. I try to be an advocate of people not lingering in their hate, because life is too short to get hung up over stuff like that.
I didn't even notice at first Matt was being particularly hard on Marisha until Mike here pointed it out, and now I can't unsee it.
I was definitely someone who allowed myself to be annoyed with Keyleth because of misread or misused spells, and in turn became down on Marisha as a player. One of the things that made me stop feeling that way was actually seeing the vitriol towards her in comments online. Seeing people froth at the mouth over things I only found a bit annoying made me re-evaluate. The funny part is, that Beau in Campaign 2, despite being a character who has multiple personality traits I often find annoying in characters, is one of my favorite characters from that season. It made me realize how weird I had been for letting my opinion of Keyleth and some of the choices in game, color my opinion of Marisha as a person.
Big difference between you and them though, you felt annoyance but not a need to tell Marisha all the ways she's "doing it wrong".
When I started watching critical role, I was 16 years old. I loved Keyleth (and Marisha). She felt real to me. She was funny, awkward, and SUPER FUCKING POWERFUL despite the awkwardness. I was a “weird” teen, so see Kiki being weird but still having influence, friends, love, and power made me feel like my awkwardness wasn’t as much of a disadvantage. Now, I’m 23 and she’s still one of my favorite characters from CR to this day and is why I play a morally maternal Druid in my main campaign.
Also, I’ve been watching/playing D&D for 7 years now, and I still make mistakes with my spells. I just learned how Moonbeam worked 😂.
There were plenty of moments where I just sat back and went “Goddammit Keyleth….” Whether she was fumbling socially, complicating the decisions of the party, or reading a spell wrong. Then I realised something:
“That’s the point”
We’re watching a person grow up, and rise to the occasion despite their reluctance. Classic hero’s journey.
(She got hella robbed with the Tsunami ruling in the Thordak fight though. But hey, 8th level spell! That’s the one thing I *really* want fixed in season 3 of Legend)
20:45 Matt Colville's video on retconning is a great companion to this entire section. I really like how you framed this too. Thanks!
Man. I really loved Between the Sheets. They were such good interviews. I absolutely get why they took them down, but they were so insightful. I hope they'll do a new series like that.
Redoing my comment.
I still dont like Keyleth personally, but I understand that's a me thing vs the character archetype (choice paralysis, ND-coded chosen one) that is not unique to Keyleth. I love Marisha and ALL her other characters, and have never been parasocial enough to send her hate.
All told, this is a valuable video that pulls no punches, and is needed in this space. The sexism and pisscourse is THE reason I can't just say 'I just don't like the character', due to all the baggage and unnecessary hate. Hell, as said in the vis, some of it isn't even entirely. Marisha's fault.
So
This is good. Sorry if this comment from a ND Poc and druid enjoyer is a bit weird.
The amount of times I would see comments of people saying they hated Marisha until they realized, "she was just stupid" and proceed with an incel, sociopathic analysis of her entire personality.
Marisha. The creative director for Geek & Sundry at its peak and drove the CR channel to its current success. It is no accident that G&S content collapsed after Marisha stepped down. The amount of behind the scenes work that Marisha has done to produce new shows to a quality that became an industry standard for TTRPG shows. She is incredibly smart and talented. I don't think she gets enough credit for that.
I actually liked Keyleth. I thought Marisha played her with appropriate naivete and allowed her to grow.
Honestly as an outsider looking in, all these years later. And with campaign 3 being my first campaign to start watching from the beginning (though i fell off cuz after not watching one or two episodes when they were out and was suddenly falling behind, which led me to stop watching for a while. Then recently hopped back in cuz the end game of campaign 3 somehow hooked me into now being a fervent monday evening watcher of the new episodes.)
I never quite got the Keyleth hate. Honestly throughout these demystifieds and legends of vox machina and so on, I've found that anything that might have frustrated me about Keyleth I found myself equally getting frustrated by Vax or Percy or Vex. They all had some qualities that did and didn't resonate with me, but I still enjoyed them all, all the same.
Holy cow...I've watched CR since 4Q 2017 and never knew there were any "mass" negative feelings about Keyleth or Marisha for that matter. But I basically watched the series, not the commentary. I watched CR01 Vox Machina after the fact and loved it.
I think one thing that might trigger the misogynistic trolls is the persona Marisha sometimes has, not around Keyleth, but around herself. She's a young (during C1 anyway) woman who happens to be a bit scatterbrained at times. That's a minor flaw shared by much of the population, but she sometimes made jokes at her own expense that cast her as a flaky valley girl straight out of the movie Clueless. We've already established that some in the fandom can't tell the difference between the character and the actor -- and the thought Marisha might actually be that kind of person ENRAGED online sexists. After all, that trope in fiction was basically hand-crafted to annoy everyone, and has since become a huge misogynistic boogeyman. To be clear, it's not Marisha's fault for making such jokes or having such a persona. I for one think they're funny! But when placed in front of the internet, it made her a target. And every time she misunderstood the details of a spell or lost track of what was happening in a scene (or whatever), it triggered the trolls all over again, reinforcing their bias.
Sometimes her fellow cast even played on the same valley girl trope when they teased her. I'm mid-way through C1E75, where Keyleth had to become the face and voice of the party while the rest were disguised as slaves, and Marisha hammed up her insecurity and low charisma score ... and also lost track of exactly what was happening in the scene a couple times, jeopardizing the quest as a result. Travis outright trash-talked Marisha to her face. He does that with everyone, and it's always meant in a friendly way -- but Liam very clearly muttered, "Don't add fuel to the fire," so the players were certainly aware of the toxic dynamic.
Firstly, I whole-heartedly agree with the heart of your statements. A LOT of the criticism was just barely-if-at-all masked misogyny. That said, I liked Keyleth a LOT better on a second viewing than a first, and I think I've figured out why. Surprisingly you didn't explicitly mention it in your video, usually you cover all the points I could make.
I think Keyleth suffered more than most of the other characters by the fact that we were missing a chunk of the campaign. Keyleth's main character motivations come from 1.5 places: First, she is trying to become the leader of her people, doesn't think she's worthy of that, and knows that her own mother failed at this same task. Then an additional 0.5 is from her accidentally killing a kid (I could as 0.5, because it's related to the first). Because it was pre-stream we mostly heard about that as just "keyleth killed a kid" and the players joking about it above-table. It wasn't until later/if you dug in that you found some more context, including just that it was an accident.
Because Marisha/Keyleth is so reluctant to be the focus, and we don't really examine those aspects of her until much later, she can seem to be acting weird for "no real reason" in quite a few places. She puts on a brave face when she can muster it because she thinks that's what a leader is supposed to be, and she wants so desperately to BE a leader. She takes any mistakes extra hard because in the future, as a leader of a tribe meant to protect this world against elemental evils, a mistake could cost ... the plane. She has an incredible amount of stress and expectations on herself that the audience, unless they are paying super close attention and/or doing actual research, may not realize. Without that, switching from bold to cowardly can seem random and whiplash-inducing. But with proper context it makes perfect sense.
On a second viewing of course, I had the benefits of knowing all of this about Keyleth and she struck me as a much better character. Marisha and Matt and all the other players knew all of this at the time, because they played the game before the stream existed. It was just an audience information problem. Even when they came out with the animatic about their pre-stream stuff, I don't think it really struck me how important that was to Keyleth's character.
As for the animated series, I think they very smartly put more of that up front. They don't have Keyleth kill a kid, but we see her freeze in their first real fight and, being a visual medium, it is easier to convey the reason for the freeze. She's not incompetent, she's not ignorant, she's got some sort of real issue with handling pressure. She is immediately sympathetic because we're let in on it more clearly and immediately. Keyleth didn't fundamentally change, but the pacing of our understanding of her got very different in the animated series.
And again, this only really applies to those of us who were operating from good faith and not misogyny.
That's a really great point for the in-fiction narrative side of things.
I've re-watched a few C1 episodes in my time, too, with the benefit of having heard Marisha talk about Keyleth and her motivations. And critically, after having seen Marisha play other characters (like Hazel Copperpot was I think the first non-Keyleth one I saw) as well as talk out-of-character about how she intentionally played Keyleth as not confident and awkward. When I first started C1, I never really knew which parts of Keyleth were intentional acting and ended up not as impressed with Marisha as a role-player as the others at the table. (Not to the level of active dislike.)
So anyway, going back and watching C1, I was able to see the choices Marisha was making and appreciate that even in those early episodes she did already have plenty of the skills and talent that became clearer to me later. You're right that knowing Keyleth's story was key to being able to see that in what Marisha was doing.
A comment I remember from another context was that Marisha was such a good actor she made us believe she was bad at acting / RP.
Another eye-opener for me was detective Beau putting together some big-picture puzzle-pieces in mid-to-late C2, making me realize something Marisha is good at that I'm not, which is big-picture thinking and analyzing themes. I'm a details guy with ADHD, and Marisha is the opposite. She struggles with taking in rules details even when she reads something out loud and sometimes needs to see it in action to get how it works. (Which is fine, I've had my own learning disabilities, just unfortunate for switching game systems as a high-level druid in front of a camera.)
Maybe it says more about me than anything else, but I'd kind of gotten the impression she was just less smart or clever in general than most of the rest of the cast, until that point. Then I started paying closer attention to see her strengths (including re-watching some old C1 episodes) and understand why she'd be good at a job like creative director. Of course I never posted anything about thinking she wasn't smart, just something I can look back on in my memory as an example about keeping an open mind about people that you don't know a lot about.
Personally I'm not a fan of Keylith, but I do not agree or understand the hate she gets. You've made a great video here man, keep up the great work.
Side note: I did not know that Jester and Fearne are so heated in the community. Those are legit some of the best characters in the whole series.
Also, Mike was on fire this episode. Good arguments, mature, interesting insight, well researched, and good comedic timing.
It's entertaining to see you improve every video.
you can dislike a character without sending the actor hate for it. that is plane and simple. people can find keyleth annoying, they can talk to their friends about not particularly engaging in the character, but sending a real life person hate messages is just childish. this fandom is incredibly gross at times, and I hope we've all grown up since then.
Marisha's characters are constantly my favourite characters in the group. You don't have to like them the way I do. But again and again verbalize your hate? Sounds like you're the problem.
Before watching the video : I didnt hate her but I did get annoyed often, part of it was that she often did'nt understand her spells, or the results seemed very often innefective or conterproductive (you know, "thanks Keyleth")
I now think she was unlucky a few times and understand she had a looot of spells , I dont understand the fish transformation thought xD
Also I thought Marisha was unsure and conflicted etc... I didn't realise how much acting was going on until I met Beauregard ^^
(tbh Beau also does get on my nerve for the first half of the campaign but for different reasons... )
I'm sure 1 hour of Mike will help me understand it better^^
Beau got less on my nerves at the beginning and at the end. In the middle though she needed a personality adjustment with a hammer.
Thx I forgot how much I was shocked and learned when watching the between the sheet episode
People who hate keyleth unironically make the same arguments as the people that blame critical role for everything bad with current DnD/the DnD community.
I love this so much! It makes me cry. Thanks to everyone involved! I’m fortunate to play at a safe table - but that’s not the truth for everyone. I hope this video gives every female content creator and every dnd player in general a little bit of love and support! ❤
A recurring issue you may have missed. Modern fans seem to forget that "irritating" and "hypocritical" and flawed characters serve a very important narrative purpose.
Early episode Ashoka, season one Katara, early Keyleth (weird trend here) - all got fan hate for being irritating, but that was because their characters had ROOM TO GROW. Keyleth was awkward and nervous, and that lends dramatic juice to the character.
For some reason, if people don't like everything about a character all the time, that means "bad character" and that's... entirely incorrect.
Second factor - you note the difference between the stream and the cartoon. A factor there is TIME. If livestream Keyleth messes up, it's an hour of impact. Animated Keyleth's mistakes are resolved in minutes because the scene needs to end. As a result, that drama-fueling frustration the character creates is more palatable because we don't need to sit with it for so long.
Note that neither of these has anything to do with the PC or the player. They are audience issues.
I absolutely despise both Keyleth and Yasha while strongly loving Marisha and Ashley interpretation of their characters. Both characters rub me the wrong way because of the anxious akwardness, they are achetypes that I generaly don't like to see. But holy shit Marisha and Ashley nailed them and their developement too. You just have to see how they manage to play Beauregard and Fearn to simply understand that you have to separate the character from the player. Every flaw Keyleth had was intentional and well crafted.
Okay, reading Marisha's quote from a woman's perspective was really well done. A+
I didn't like Keyleth for a while. I did find her self righteous, but I found myself annoyed with some of her choices that might have caused problems. Namely her outright hostility towards Raishan could've led to a fight far sooner than they were prepared. But I thought a lot of her fumbling was more Marisha's inexperience. Then I started Campaign 2 and saw how differently she played Beauregard. I looked back and saw that no, Marisha may have gotten things wrong sometimes, but she also played Keyleth well! She played her as a dorky, inexperienced badass. That's why she panics. Beau, and later Laudna, raised my appreciation for Keyleth.
I just don’t get it 😂 I don’t like watching actual plays, but when I do watch CR sometimes I never see her do anything I don’t see at tables all the time.
No wizard ever has known every spell they have lol same with druids or whatever.
And I guess I’m just not programmed to hate women?
Did you actually mean that about not knowing how to ride a bike?? Can we get a bike learning video please???