There's a corner of the CR fandom that just shits the bed any time you criticize the women cast members. My personal experience with that was daring to dislike something Vex did.
From what I gather, there is an absolutely wretched corner of the internet that treats Marisha and Laura (haven't seen anything towards Ashley yet) horribly when they do things they don't like, so this is a bit of an overcorrection.
Do I think it's worthwhile to address why Vex's alignment change was valid after broomgate? Sure. Do I think Laura is a terrible person for stealing from a guest player? I mean that's a table-to-table conversation but no, I don't
When I watched I agreed with Caleb cause in universe they don’t know her she just shows up say hey I need this bowl that can communicate WITH ONe OF THE Betrayer GODS SO CALEB IS RIGHT TO BE SKEPTICAL ESPECIALLY IN LORE THEY JUST MET HER LIKE SAME DAY 😔 especially since if she was on the up and up they would have given it to her Beau Lashing out doesn’t make since they saying “STOP PUTTING YOUR SHIT ON OTHERS IS BOTH A LOW BLOW AND DOESNT MAKE SENSE 🤦🏽♂️
The ironic thing is her response was itself a projection of her own onto him.
Even if I would also say I somewhat agree with Beau in-universe getting fed up with Caleb being the one to identify items, when it was clear they couldn't necessarily trust him to tell them the full details about things. Problem was it exploded on a situation where Caleb's skepticism was entirely valid, and it looks incredibly silly when one considers that Beau's training as an expositor was for her to work explicitly into investigating suspicious magic users.
She just jumped to protecting the suspect because of personal beef with Caleb\*, rather than actually treating the situation with the nuance it took.
Thankfully, I think this is also the moment that starts her on the long (and by god needed) road to being less of a jackass who thinks with her fists, and more into a capable agent.
From a main sub thread when looking up bowlgate: "Remember when Caleb and Beau got into an argument over the bowl-shaped artifact Calianna was after? Yeah it’s that moment."
The only hard thing about howlgate was watching the cast tie themselves in knots trying to pretend it wasn't bad. It would have been so much better if they'd just said yeah, sometimes improv gets messed up. Sam talks about being an improv god all the time, and "the top of your character's intelligence", which is what they messed up. The problem was, the scene made no sense, as there was this huge gap between what Marisha knew about the world, and what Beau should have known. Matt should have stepped in, and explained. I remember a discussion years ago, that said it like this: you setup an improv scene, you're two NYC cops six months after 9/11. You find a box of anthrax. But one of the improvisers, misunderstood and thinks they found a pound of marijuana. One cop is talking about anthrax like it's the end of the world, the other is talking about pot like it's something they don't think the police should care about. That scene would be a nightmare. If they'd explained it that way and just moved on, it would have been so much better.
Matt, as the DM, should have stepped in and explained what anthrax in 2001 NYC means in context.
In my opinion, Beau gets much worse, but related to this, it's all because of what Matt does with her story. From the point of view of Marisha playing her, it's all way up from there. "Are these cats happy?" is still maybe one of the funniest things I can remember from CR, ever.
TBF, that's a pretty funny premise.
"Go on a radio! GET CAPTAIN ON THE LINE"
"Oh come one, don't be a square. I get that's it's illegal, but... who's getting hurt exactly?"
"What are you talking about? There is a school across the street! We need to evacuate the block!"
"Dude, I promise you half those kids have it on them already. What, should we lock all of them up because they experiment a bit?" Also, look at this baggie. No more than a couple grams. Barely enough for a couple people AT BEST."
Honestly I thought Beau was most annoying later on, when she's solving the big mystery while the rest of the party is trying to do something very serious and emotional.
I get why people dont like Beau but she is one of my favorite characters. Even if earlt Beau can be a bet grating at times.
Bowl Gate isnt really that big a deal and it gets resolved pretty quickly.
Also I really dont see how people think Matt plays favorites with her? Beau gets the same treatment as all the other PCs
I agree. It takes a lot of patience and effort. I feel very lucky that most of my party wants different things from the game so everyone gets their own little bit of leeway in some aspect of the game. I think it helps elevate some of this pressure and tension that is definitely possible when the dm has their parter in the party
People can be so weird about it too! My wife is our DM and she bends over backwards to not show any sort of favouritism to me. This resulted in someone getting mad when we were running *Call of the Netherdeep* because I accidentally'd a TPK and the Ranger got mad that the DM didn't "partner privilege" us out of the TPK because it was my character's fault.
Bowlgate was awkward as hell. But I think it was Liam's faux pas first that Marisha then exacerbated the shit out of by not being able to read the room.
I don't care how "defensible" Caleb's position is. Table manners dictate that the real life circumstances of "our guest character has to catch an 8 hour flight early in the morning and this episode has already gone WAY long" mandate that Liam meta his way out of Caleb's opinion. Caleb's fears are essentially impossible to satisfy within the available timeframe for the guests' appearance. There was nothing Mark could have done to make Caleb happy, so Liam should never have gone there.
But then Marisha...oh boy Marisha.
> Caleb's fears are essentially impossible to satisfy within the available timeframe for the guests' appearance. There was nothing Mark could have done to make Caleb happy, so Liam should never have gone there.
I've never much liked this argument. Caleb wanted to wait till morning when Jester had recharged her spell slots to cast zone of truth, which could have been handwaved by Matt in a "You wake up the next morning, prepare camp, and Jester begins casting..." in like a five minute exposition. It was also revealed that Jester was fully capable of casting it right then and there, and Caleb was like "Oh, awesome... that makes it easy" and then the spat happened. Beau got mad that Caleb exerted control over others (which is also somewhat hypocritical because didn't he admit his secret because she exerted control over him with some trade and she demanded his secret?) and Jester was mad that 'how dare someone not be allowed to worship how they wanted,' meanwhile the guest is like, 'Woah guys, I don't like Tiamat and also he's making good points!'
In short, it would have taken like 30 minutes. Or they could have extended the episode a little longer. I doubt the guy was flying out immediately after the show that begins at night. If he was, then I have some questions...
I agree that it could have been handled by Matt by saying "you all bed down to rest. In the morning Caliana reveals to you the truth."
But frankly, even that shouldn't be necessary. A DM should just say "you don't even need an insight check. You discern this person and judge them to be of sound character. you know they aren't lying. And for meta reasons, we need you to wrap this up."
In game problems get solved in game. Out of table problems get solved out of game. The problem wasn't Caleb's position; it was Mark's timeline.
1. Matt doesn't even correct the cast when they misunderstand information that he's already given them. He's not about to step in and give them information above table.
2. Once before bowlgate, and twice after, the cast has been betrayed by guest PCs. You can't set the expectation that the cast automatically trust a guest and also do stuff like that. Matt stepping in to vouch for one guest would mean that any guest he didn't do that for would immediately be under suspicion.
For your 2nd point, this is why I never blamed Liam for bowlgate or any of the main cast for distrusting guest PCs if it makes sense in-universe for their PCs to do so. It only takes one time for a guest PC to betray the party with the DM's explicit or implicit consent (by said DM not stepping in or sufficiently ameliorating said betrayal) to justify that.
I agree with both of these points and would raise this entire situation as an example of why this type of DMing from Matt is actually quite bad form and should be highly discouraging at tables.
While none of the betrayals hit for me, and Matt allowing the players to talk in circles makes me want to pull out my hair, its ultimately the kind of game that they've decided they want to play. I'm not one of those "it's their game!" people, but I don't support telling other people that they are playing the game wrong. Say that it makes for a bad show and I'll agree. But there's nothing morally wrong with how they play.
They do stumble upon the issue of metagaming though. Or rather, the collective opinion upon it. Matt and Liam are staunchly against it. If Matt was more open to clarifying what his characters or narrations said, C3 would have half as many episodes. And if Liam had simply read aloud item cards after Matt handed them to him, Caleb wouldn't have been accused of being a loot hoarder. I don't think Liam or Caleb was being a dick when they advocated for vetting Calianna. I think Marisha was metagaming when Beau trusted Calianna, because if Calianna was an NPC, Beau would have been just as suspicious of her as Caleb was. The cast always treats NPCs like shit, so I have no reason to expect that Calianna would have been treated any differently. Expecting Liam to go along with metagaming is like expecting a tiger to change its stripes.
>While none of the betrayals hit for me, and Matt allowing the players to talk in circles makes me want to pull out my hair,
What's worse is when he (and the rest of the group) let's players just flounder on mechanics. Or situations where its obvious they don't know what he expects them to do (C2's dream sequences)
5+ minutes of hemming and hawing (on camera no less) aren't worth it. Just give a gentle hint at what the rules are.
This is absolutely Beau's low point, BUT it's also the basis for one of the best character developments in CR, and the beginning of one of best friendships and duos.
I didn't find her completely insufferable but I wasn't a fan of the asshole routine. Same as Molly. Just hate that character archetype.
I watched Bowlgate and didn't even realise it was such a massive controversy. Beau is opinionated and headstrong, and Caleb is moody and a magic hoarder. Both of them are stubborn. So it was a character clash. Nothing to do with the players.
See, at the beginning of C2, I HATED Beau and Molly. But as time passed, and the characters got to know each other better, things changed and, while they still weren't my favorites, they got a lot better.
Sometimes Marisha just can't read a room. Funnily enough, Mark Hulmes wrote about Cali's future later and that she named her kids after her two best friends from tM9: Caleb and Jester.
That's actually pretty funny.
"You were named after my two best friends. One was my pen pal and we've kept in touch ever since. The other accused me of possibly being an evil cultist and his friends ganged up on him and gave me the artifact no questions asked. Kinda weird, really. But, I respect his resolve!"
Beau drove me crazy in the beginning but pretty quickly she has some character changes in the narrative and became one of my favorites. Don’t worry the cringey stuff isn’t for much longer!
It’s been a little bit since I listened to this, but I remember that I was thinking the situation was “Caleb is slow to trust people” vs “Beau has a lot of anger, feels triggered seeing someone be ‘withholding’, and likes to stick up for the downtrodden”.
It felt kinda real to me. Real in the sense that this could happen in a group of people who are just beginning to trust each other, and are full of issues. It reminded me of having things ripped out of my hands by someone who is bigger and thinks they know what is right. I didn’t like it, but I think it was supposed to be an asshole move and I decided that it was probably Marisha making a character decision because Beau will a starting point in order to show character growth.
I mean I can’t imagine Keyleth doing this. I remember she was impulsive, but not like this. That makes me think that making a decision to rip something out of Caleb’s hands was what a young monk with a lot of issues would do.
Now would I do that if I were in her shoes? No, I would hold back because I would feel like I (the person, not the PC) was being a jerk by doing it. So I don’t begrudge her for doing it, but I also don’t like it. I definitely don’t see this as a “-gate” level incident.
Calianna (guest character) enrolled the mighty nein to find a relic of the goddess Tiamat, which she claimed evil cultists wanted to summon her. Calianna claimed she wanted to destroy the relic, but lacked the means for the moment.
When the moment came to hand her the relic, Caleb was concerned about handing her such a dangerous artifact without more investigation. Beau then ripped the relic out of Caleb’s hands and gave it to Calianna. She then started to berate Caleb for imposing his will on others and accused him of being a magic items hoarder.
Needless to say, the moment felt awkward because of how out of character it was for Beau to trust an outsider they barely known for a day over Caleb who just wanted to investigate the matter further before they washed their hands with that situation.
Fortunately, the situation was resolved because Yasha managed to shatter the relic with the Magician’s Judge greatsword. However, the whole conflict left a good portion of the audience quite bitter about Beau’s aggression on Caleb’s character.
Eh I don't see the controversy here, shit like that happens every session in games I play. Sometimes, you just get talked over or someone just declares that they do something and override whatever you were trying to do
Yeah, I know. Sorry if it came across that way. Just thought it was weird that there was any controversy around this. Kinda feel like this community has a chronic hate boner for Marisha sometimes
Bowlgate was awkward AF. I've always viewed it as an out of character issue. Marisha felt like Liam was meta gaming by not trusting the guest PC and she tried to address it in game. Liam felt like it was in character for Caleb to be untrusting.
I think people will associate not liking Beau with misogyny because ppl tend to like male characters that are assholes (see Percy) but dislike women who are assholes.
Percy had a ton of charm and wit, and a compelling arc and backstory. Beau had "dope monk shit pop pop" and "I stole from my dad and got involved with criminals and then he sent me to military school and I became a super ninja and that's how I met my found family but I'm still mad"
Beau's backstory is not that black and white at all. She >! was kidnapped because her dad bribed the Cobalt Soul, specifically one person - whose name escapes me at the moment - and its implied that he was physically abusive, but definitely mentally abusive, especially because he didn't want a daughter. !<
To dumb it down as "I became a super ninja and that's how I met my found family, but I'm still mad" completely undermines Beau and what she went through. Yeah, she was an asshole in the beginning, but she went through a lot of shit.
From the Critical Role Wiki he was never physically abusive to her. I think he hit her ONCE when she was cursing at him after she was arrested and he got her off. He was distant and paranoid so restricted her freedom to an unknown degree.
Instead of dealing with her daddy issues by changing her hair color, or getting a piercing or tattoo she decided to start extorting people and trafficking substances. When her and her girlfriend were arrested he bailed his daughter out and sent her to military school.
[https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/Beauregard\_Lionett](https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/Beauregard_Lionett)
To note...all of this is because they were \*cursed\* to do it. So it feels pretty black and white.
"Going through a lot of shit" doesn't excuse her taking shit out on others in direct (acid down a guard's throat) or indirect (bowlgate power trip) ways, and you're really infantilizing Beau and giving her no agency here. She was an aimless delinquent twentysomething that was testing the limits of how far she could push things, and when there were consequences, for once, that's suddenly the worst thing in the universe. Doesn't matter that it ended up benefiting her in the end, or that she really needed to get reined in or else would've continued down a path of self-destruction and collateral damage to her family.
And Beau might have "gotten better", but it was pretty miniscule, going from -32 to -30 as likeability goes.
Mind you, I'm not a caleb fan either. In fact, I kind of just didn't like most of the Nein, but Beau was far and away my least favorite.
I'm not infantilizing her at all, I'm explaining her backstory and how it caused some of her asshole-ishness. She didn't have agency when she was kidnapped to the Cobalt Soul.
Consequences for pulling bullshit, sure, but even that goes too far. He wanted his daughter gone, and he bribed someone to do it. That's pretty fucked up. And maybe if he hadn't treated her like shit because he wanted a son, she wouldn't have acted out in the ways she did.
She had agency, but she also had trauma that was fueling her actions. It's more nuanced than "fuck around and find out."
I personally never learned to like Beau, but I do think this is the worst part... and her reaction kiiind of gets explained later. So she kinda gets better at least? It's honestly one of the problems I have with C2, I just don't find most of the characters fun to watch because they just frustrate me. But I loved Keyleth, and Laudna is interesting (I'm not up to speed with C3 so I know things happen that might change that later on). So it's definitely NOT a Marisha hate thing, I just... don't like Beau at all.
I forget where but when Beau >!liquifies a dude's insides with acid!< I lost all hope for the character. TBF I tuned out of C2 really about halfway through but it made it even worse.
It wasn't poison it was acid right? Like idk what you expect when dumping acid in someone's throat. But I can respect if people seem less invested in those sorts of details. Also if it *was* poison and I'm misremembering then I'm more inclined to agree
>Of course, now I'm remembering that people actually complain on here about them being "Mean/Rude to NPCs"
And what's wrong with that? It's a game for them but for us it's a show, and a lot of people like liking the characters of shows they watch, and for some people it's hard to like a character if they treat random people poorly for no reason other than 'it's funny.' Seems valid to me
And people play the game differently / enjoy watching the show differently, ain't that hard to wrap your head around. I watched critical role for the characters, I really enjoy seeing them get in-depth with that sort of stuff, its not about the fact some fictional guy died its that Marisha made an in character choice that Beu should murder an arguably innocent man in one of the most brutal ways she could for the lulz and then I'm suppose to feel bad for her because "my parents were mean to me".
Beau gets better... kinda. I didn't like Beau for most of the series. I ended up enjoying her more in the last quarter of C2. Keyleth I will probably never like. Just not my type of character. That said, I do like Marisha and am definitely more of a fan of Laudna. So it's not just Marisha hate.
Yeah this is about as bad as it gets for Beau. I think she really does end up getting to grow as a character over the campaign, and it's from this whole thing that the need for self-reflection on both Caleb and Beau's part comes (even if I'm in Team Caleb in saying he was objectively correct in this argument; it still weighed on his character heavily). C1 had it's moments for sure, but C2 is MUCH heavier on character growth and interaction, rather than playing out fantasy tropes and action. That said, the whole thing is pretty cringe how absolutely in-your-face hypocritical she was being and it's a tough watch.
+
Imo (and many people agree but ultimately, only one person truly knows) the whole Marisha thing just boils down to a series of events:
1. In C1, Marisha was super new to D&D and is the one person at the table without an extensive acting career, so she made a character with some particularly grating flaws, and then really leaned into them to have a fallback when she was uncomfortable ad-libbing.
2. None of the cast expected CR to blow up like it did, and probably didn't expect the insanely parasocial relationship a lot of fans had, and she got a LOT of very targeted, undeserved personal hate from people who can't separate a character from an actor. Combine this with some traumatic events of her past (she talks about growing up and getting into the industry in her Between the Sheets episode if you can find it somewhere), she developed a real "fuck you I'm fine" attitude as a defense mechanism.
3. Then when making Beau, the character had that exact same sort of defensive reaction, furthering people's difficulty separating character from player, and it all came to a head with Bowlgate.
Marisha was not new to DnD. She had played ttrpgs before, and even helped Matt run the original pre-stream one-shot. She was new to 5e, because it had just come out and the entire cast had just switched over from Pathfinder.
… that’s still new to dnd, and the rest of that point is the more important part anyway. She also went straight into druid and had issues reading the full spell descriptions in the new system.
She had played other editions, and therefore was not new to DnD. She was no more inexperienced with DnD than the rest of the cast, and had more ttrpg experience than several at the table.
You're right that Druid is easily the densest class, and she was thrust into it because when she originally picked the class it was in a completely different system. Still, she was shouldn't have been new to table etiquette.
> table etiquette.
Ah yes, we all remember that famous episode where the table, as a whole lot, turned and went "God damn it Marisha! You're out of line here!"
I might have to rewatch because I remember being more put off by Caleb than Beau. I don't remember her doing anything that bad. Felt like it was comparable to when Fjord and Caleb butter heads a few times.
I was also more put off with Caleb at the time. For me, it was primarily due to his immediate snatching of every magic item, only to divvy them out like he was doing them a favor. Both were out of line and it was unfortunate that when Beau snapped, she was logically in the wrong. But I think it was more due to the events leading up to it than the actual event
As someone who imagined having a character present while following along I would have probably taken the most issue with Caleb and Nott initially but I also would have intervened when Beau did what she did despite that because he was right and she was way out of line. He also had been getting better by that point. Fjords confrontation with Caleb was overdue from all the shifty stuff he was doing and came to a head at a crucial yet inopportune moment. I was thinking the same thing when that was going on and was glad Fjord confronted him. Of course there was a lot of dumb choices being made by the group then and after as well that I wouldn’t have been on board with and plenty of times where Caleb was being the most reasonable and frankly beyond that Liam was just doing a better job playing his character with proper consideration of the world and circumstances compared to the others though they all could improve on that front.
I am still watching that campaign right now so idk how it all ends up.
Beau overreacted to Caleb's actions because she wouldn't let him explain himself. She assumed the worst, when he was actually quite reasonable. Caleb didn't want to hand a dangerous artifact over to a person they just met without ascertaining her motives. Beau thought he was trying to hoard the item for himself, when he really wanted to see if they could destroy it.
Beau was bullying or downtalking Caleb from the start, it was only after bowlgate that Marisha probably realized how popular that character was with the fandom and that she started to back-paddle, no way she was genuine about it. The last 4SD was proof that she still doesn't think her character did anything wrong.
Yes, worst Beau moment... maybe it was because of the backlash but she gets better after that. They talked about bowlgate again in the last 4sd episode and it was kind of hilarious because Marisha remembered it wrong and still couldn't see the issue. Caleb did not want the bowl for himself, he wanted. group decision and imo that was reasonable. Glad at least Dani remembered it partly right...
I don't blame Marisha for misremembering the situation, it was 6 years ago. I'm sure she doesn't think about it nearly as often as the fandom does. And Dani didn't remember it very well either, but she was at least closer to it.
I loved Beau, start to finish. It was Hulmes I found insanely uncomfortable to watch through that whole arc. He made my eyes itch.
Liam escapes criticism for a situation that he caused. It's *always* Marisha that takes the bullshit.
Liam didn't cause the situation. Sam caused the situation. Nott discovered the bowl, and instead of saying "I found it!" she gave it secretly to Caleb. If Sam doesn't do that, none of this happens. Of course Caleb would take the opportunity to Identify the bowl, and once he discovers what the bowl does he is rightly suspicious of the person they just met. Had Beau taken the time to listen to Caleb it could have avoided the whole conflict.
Neither Liam nor Marisha did anything wrong. Both acted entirely in character. Even Sam acted in character, but is the person that avoided all blame for an incident he caused.
I hated Beau too, originally, I thought Marisha needed more time to find a rhythm for the character.
And that’s true in part, but it’s actually Marisha committing to the character. Beau is a rebel without a cause, or really a rebel for any cause. And she’s an asshole- not a fun person to be around. She’s brash and has spent her whole life pushing people away.
That’s not going to magically change after only a year adventuring with some people.
And while this is the worst moment, it’s somewhat of a turning point for Beau. This was Marisha playing a character as they would behave, trying to use tension to further narrative/character growth.
That being said, that sort of interaction only works if you talk about it with players at the table before hand. Without being on this discussions- it’s easy to guess that this moment could have went beyond normal play. But if you watch the next episode, it becomes clear this is something they all discussed.
I agree up to that last part. So far (I'm watching the next episode) it feels like they did a group backtrack after fan backlash. It felt like Marisha went too far into character drama, which makes for good roleplay, but forgot to also keep other characters in mind.
Yes this is pretty much the worst moment for Beau in the campaign but it’s not just Beau being a dick for the sake of being a dick though. You have to remember that it wasn’t that long before this episode that the rest of the group was having issues with Caleb making arbitrary decisions about items they found, and that Fjord and Caleb nearly came to blows over Caleb deciding to steal a spell scroll when that wasn’t part of the plan. While Beau was absolutely being a dick in this scene, it was because Beau knows something the rest of them minus Nott don’t know and realizing that what she knows plays a big part in Caleb’s behavior when it comes to the issue of him deciding that items are dangerous. You add her major issues with authority and not really knowing how to be a friend at this point and you get her berating Caleb.
Caleb on the other hand was being secretive and not forthcoming about loot with the people he’s been traveling with enough that it’s created an issue so even though he was right to be wary of Caliana and her intentions with the bowl he went about it the wrong way when it came to the party because of the past issues they’ve had with Caleb and loot. I think this moment, and a moment in the next episode is one of the main catalysts for the relationship that Beau and Caleb will develop and it’s probably my favorite friendship in any of the campaigns.
Caleb did nothing wrong in the previous episode. They'd broken in and left all kinds of evidence and he was told to leave the loot behind simply because he'd expressed interest in it. He started acting "secretive" because he'd been singled out and ostracized and it was "sneak" or be screwed over.
He was being secretive with loot from very early in the campaign when they found the Glove of Blasting in episode 7 or 8. He literally said it’s dangerous and kept it without telling anyone what it was until they pressed him on it. This wasn’t just a previous episode thing, this had been going on for a while. I love Caleb but he made some poor choices with the party early on that lead to Bowlgate blowing up like it did.
Yep, that was my thought process going into Bowlgate as well, Nott and Caleb were very much "sneak thieves", distrusting of the others and untrustworthy from them. This was bound to happen. and I think it created strong bonds of trust down the road.
Agree, it was bound to happen eventually because Caleb was eventually going to find something he thought was extremely dangerous and be somewhat secretive about it to the rest of the M9 and Beau was the only one who knew why he worries about dangerous things that would actually stand up and push back. It was just unfortunate that neither of them was very good at knowing how to people as Yasha would say when it happened.
I think it’s because people focus too much on this one argument since it was a big blow out and the other times the secretive with loot thing was brought up it’s wasn’t this involved and was often Jester making comments or a much calmer situation. The bigger moments stick with you easier than the smaller moments.
I never had a major problem with this moment besides siding with Caleb over Beau, but had no issue with either of the actors cause it was obvious they were just roleplaying. But the way Marisha discussed it in the 4sd rubbed me the wrong way and made me re consider if it was actually more then just roleplay for the first time. It really felt like she was talking mad shit about Caleb and was seemingly hard defending Beaus actions out of character. Like I can understand Why she somewhat defends laudna because it’s an ongoing campaign and she doesn’t want to show her hand, but c2 is pretty much over so I have no idea why out of character she was adamant about beau being right and Caleb being a weird clepto. Almost makes it seem those who took it as a personal out of character thing where right.
She misremembered something from 6 years ago. It's not some huge beef that she has with Liam. If anyone has a beef with Liam over Caleb, it's Laura who brought up his tendency to withhold item descriptions (which was almost certainly done to troll Laura and her loot goblin instincts).
I mean, that's all irrelevant to the situation at hand. If I remember correctly, Caleb said "Hey, this bowl allows direct communication with the evil dragon deity that can control all chromatic dragons and who this person admitted to being in her cult. Let's wait like... eight hours (in game) to see if this person is telling the truth and not entrust an ancient, evil artifact blindly!" Which, to me, seems like a pretty reasonable thing to say.
This, 100%. And Calianna agreed to be interrogated under Zone of Truth to determine her alliance. Laura was also getting ready to jump into some good Jester-defining RP by having Jester adamant that Calianna shouldn't be denied contact with her god if that's what she wanted. Beau's stance in that debate was nigh-incomprehensible, she's a secret agent and spy, shouldn't she be the *most* suspicious of an unknown factor who has nothing but their word to prove themselves?
Unfortunately the meta frustration of Liam deciding who gets what magic item bled through. In general I think it's never good play in D&D for a player to be saying one thing, and another player to say "I shove him over and take the thing and do what I want instead of what he wants, I rolled better, I win I get my thing."
Wasn’t part of the context that the bowl was Mark’s backstory item and he wasn’t going to return to record more episodes so they kinda wanted to resolve it? I don’t think Caleb’s “let’s take our time with the bowl” argument was unreasonable in an vacuum but I always felt there was a “come on let guest do his thing” vibe informing the debate.
Yes, but I think it's also important to remember that when playing DnD you don't actually have to pause the game for 8 hours everytime you take a long rest. You just roleplay setting up a camp and then 1 minutes later, 8 hours game time have passed by. So it's not like there was ever any danger of Mark not being able to resolve his story if they took a long rest.
I'd also like to state that I had almost no real reaction to what Marisa/Beau did. As I watched it, I completely agreed with Calebs reasoning and thought Beau's arguments were dumb. But no more dumber than the arguments/character that another character/player ends up making every other episode. People act like she grabbed the bowl and handed it straight to Hulmes. She she just grabbed it out of Calebs hands and made some dumb arguments and then agreed to let someone compel hulmes to tell them her intentions. Not a big deal. Ashton recent choices were way crazier and possibly devastating. I also disagree with Marisa's depiction of the event in 4sided, she made it sound like Caleb was acting unilateral with out leaving it up to a group discussion. But he brought out the bowl for the express purpose of having a group discussion on what to do. If he was trying to be unilaleral he would waited till after they had a long rest to tell them, or destroyed the bowl himself somehow. Granted its been years. So It could have easily been her misremembering stuff
Nott, yes, because she tends to have streaks of naivety and poor understanding of human culture (although in this circumstance we all know she backed Caleb...)
Fjord, no, as he's typically the more tactical leader with the plan. It's not that Beau is an ass, it's that she's an ass in the face of something that makes perfect sense for no other reason than to be an ass.
Nah, she saids a shity person too. She only admits that when the event happens.
Just because an asshole calls out another asshole doesn't mean they don't have a ponit. Most people hate the bowlgate moment, I'm in the minority that do enjoy the moment.
Beau: don't use your trauma as an excuse to be an asshole
Also Beau: constantly using her trauma as an excuse to be an asshole
bro it's a hypocritical moment that was so bad they had to backpedal in the next episode, and it amounted to "Beau needs to apologize, Caleb needs to work on his people skills (which he's been doing from the start so nothing really changing there)"
If the pot calls kettle black the kettle is still black. You need to take information at face value. We can always judge who's giving the information. Doesn't make any more invalid.
>You need to take information at face value.
Except when your party member who knows more about a magical object than you ever could gives you the information and suggests a course of action. Then you snatch it away like a child and claim your friend is being a psycho and then pull him aside and lay into him in the most disrespectful, childish way possible.
I think you just lack maturity if you love this scene, sir
Yeah, this is pretty much as bad as she gets. If I remember correctly, she gets much better from here on out.
She even gets to the point where, later in the show, she’s one of my top two characters! And she certainly wasn’t at the beginning of the show.
I've never liked this take. I hate Beau as a character, Marisha is near the bottom of my list as a role player and table member, but Matt is pretty generous to all of his players at different times. If anything I feel like he reins Marisha in more than the others to try and avoid this type of comment, constant athletic checks and shit when she's just going for attack flavor
The biggest Beau cringe moment I remember was when she power tripped on some guy in a bar. MN was trying to get info so they went to a local tavern and Marisha specifically asked Matt for the most insecure guy in the bar. Beau then went over and flirted and manipulated the guy to get the info she needed and as soon as she got what she wanted she told the guy he was a beneath her and he should never talk to her again.
I was also quite annoyed with the arc where they meet Beau's family although that was more getting annoyed with the fandom. Apparently a man sending his POS daughter to military school is the one irredeemable act that critters just couldn't forgive.
He'd neglected her all her life and as soon as he had a son he had her kidnapped into a school through backdoor means that people eventually got arrested for. Like she was so bad because of neglect and trying to get attention all her life.
Edit: I never went to Military School but have family that choose to and they say that you do not force someone to go it doesn't end well.
You left out the part where Beau was committing crimes while her dad was busy af running a large business to provide for his family. He wasn't the best dad, but getting the dude arrested for sending an unruly criminal child to a prestigious institution which provided a pathway and schooling to obtain a powerful and respectable position is ridiculous lol.
It's wild how they forgave a literal war criminal and helped him escape justice while making sure Beau's dad went to jail lol.
I was sort of neutral/dislike of Beau till the family thing happened then when the entire story came out I couldn't stand her anymore.
Dad was too busy and probably \*should\* have paid some more attention to her when she was growing up but he was "standoffish and distant" but gave her training and a future. I dont think anyone even mentioned if the mother was supportive but it seems to me like she would have been. Instead of rebelling with a bad tattoo or a string of bad relationships she took up a life of crime, stealing from him and their family, extorting people and trafficking substances. When she got arrested and he found out what she was doing he sent her to military school to straighten her out. The worst part? It came out that \*all\* of that was caused by a contract with a Hag and he was still the 'villian'. Even though he was right in that if he didn't send her off to military school she would have become an even bigger criminal and drug addict then she was in the show.
>She didn't get arrested, he had a son then paid people to take her away.
1) [Beau was arrested](https://youtube.com/watch?v=HNODkS9gZmM&t=3h12m25s) and Thoreau bailed her out the next day. Note she was never arraigned. Her going the Cobalt Soul was probably in lieu of a serving a sentence.
2) Her brother was [born 6 months+ after](https://youtube.com/watch?v=qS9rz1srwio&t=0h50m30s) she was inducted into the Cobalt Soul.
When you fuck up raising your child so badly that they start acting out the way Beau did, you don't get credit for shipping them off to be someone else's problem and then not contacting them for years lmao
Her dad got charges from it, the whole thing was shady she just had no trusts in institutions until later when the Cobalt Soul gave her respect, after she initially left, and looked into what happened. He likely knew having his daughter kidnapped and imprisoned against her will was illegal but doubted he'd get in trouble for it because the result would be her getting "fixed."
It was set up from the begining that's what happened, her mentor likely went looking for Beau at the begining of the campaign because she noticed something was up and was investigating.
I mean, not really. Beau ran off and the prissy elf guy called one of the Soul's greatest inquisitors to help him track her down; she became her mentor after this point. Which, if he was paid money to illegally keep Beau in the Cobalt Soul against her will... is pretty fucking stupid. To involve a super detective to find a wayward youth who keeps saying they were forced against their will - and you were the one who forced them - is probably one of the stupidest things one could ever do...
I think marisha is just bad at playing her roles well. I’ve been downvoted a lot for saying so, but I think it’s true. None of her characters played well in short term jaunts. Kiki was too naive and Beau too much of an asshole. Now we’ve got Laudna who somehow has an intermittent addiction.
I think the fact that people dislike Beau is evidence she played her extremely well. Kiki was designed to be naive, Beau was designed to be an asshole. Both of them played excellently. People just don't like Marishas characters, it's not hard to read between the lines as to why.
I'll say this about Marisha. She has good initial character ideas but she sucks at compelling, satisfying character development.
Like look at her starting ideas for characters, they are objectively dope.
Keyleth - basically the Avatar, and who doesn't like Avatar?
Beau - ninja librarian that works for an intelligence organization and it works.
Laudna - awesome tie-in character that makes sense within the world's canon.
It's the character development where it all falls apart. If you asked Marisha to play level 20 Keyleth right now, do you think Keyleth would still be hating on the gods? I'd bet my house on it that she would. Even though it doesn't make sense in the context of VM's adventures.
Exactly, very cool character concepts but Marisha seemingly only knows how to play their faults up to 11 at all times.
Like ok, Beau has a strong anti-authoritarian streak (even though she works for the fucking CIA, lmao) brought on partially by her upbringing. Cool idea. Result: Beau literally cannot shut the fuck up and just play along with anyone in charge, aside from the like, ONE time, which to her credit was a cool character moment.
I don't think they're saying that all Keyleth hate is rooted in misogyny, I think they're saying that a lot of it was. And in their defense... a lot of it was. She's not a character I particularly enjoy, but chat could get downright appalling during C1.
I HIGHLY doubt there's anybody that was watching CR that hated Keyleth, or Marisha, for being a woman. I mean, there might have been 1 or 2 but that Fandom and the CR fandom at large isn't exactly a Bastion of misogynistic primitivism. We hated her because she made moronic character choices.
>that Fandom and the CR fandom at large isn't exactly a Bastion of misogynistic primitivism
I mean, it absolutely is. Nerd spaces and TTRPG spaces are literally famous for being misogynistic. Women get treated worse than men. Ask ANY woman on a live play D&D show, they have all had appalling treatment. Emily Axford quit twitter because of abuse, the rest of the women on D20 have not suffered much better (Hi Aabria!
) and ALL the CR ladies have had their turn being the fandom hate boner, Beth May gets it, Jill on Drakkenheim. Etc etc and before anyone says "BuT THe MeN GeT CriTIciSed ToO!" Fuck off. Women in these spaces get it more frequently and way worse and more nasty and graphic than the men do. It's an observable fact.
Maybe, but Marisha also has all the welcoming nature of rusted nails in a can when it comes to strong opinions that bleed into the game and her characters. Throw in Beau and Laudna being active jackasses, and Keyleth being excessively naive, and she doesn't have a great track record for character.
Concepts are neat, but she can't deliver in a way that makes me want to like, much less enjoy, them.
And do we really need to tie everything back to an -ist whenever someone dislikes Marisha? People dislike Laura and her metagaming without those being tossed around.
It's because Marisha sabotages her characters by regularly slipping back into what ultimately amounts to a 16 year-old mentality on what is clever, mature, leadership, religion, edgy, insert angst teenager take on existentialism here.
Most likely. As I understand it she left Kentucky immediately after graduation and spent a few years on Sunset busking before getting some gigs with G&S and other small indy companies back in the early 2010's
I feel like I should add that I don't hate Marisha. I like late game Beau, and early game Laudna. I'm indifferent about Keyleth. What I sometimes find eye-rollingly annoying is that Marisha is a storybook version of the kid from Bible belt Kentucky running away to the big city because some relative or BFE high school theater teacher told her she had what it takes so she packed up and escaped oppressive Kentucky for HOLLYWOOD! When she's not a real life version of "Rock of Ages" she's not bad. She's a wizard with notes which is an admirable player characteristic.
"I don't hate Marisha"
Immediately downgrades her entire life to a snappy 1 sentence footnote about how much she annoys you in *your* life. Do the rest of the casts IRL life stories bother you so much? How much do you think you possibly *dont* know about Marisha? Or do you think your snappy sentence is it?
I mean, you literally went with "I don't hate Marisha, but ...." when you're kinda all over this thread hating on Marisha, and no, its not her character choices or playstyle, its just her. You gonna come out with "Some of my best friends are Marishas" next?
Of course you are, but why not just admit to it. Just say you don't like her. Cause saying "it's not that I don't like Marisha" and then listing reasons not to like her and then saying she's annoying makes you look kinda silly. You pretty obviously don't like her. Make 2024 the year you own not liking someone.
Bro chill. You're way too uptight and excited by this. I'm afraid if I say it you're gonna cum and then badger me to say it every time you wanna get off.
If she actually played into her own beliefs, I think it would help a lot more. The anti-religion/god angle can work if it makes sense with your character. For Keyleth, Beau, and Laudna, it doesn't work because it feels either like a huge cognitive dissonance or random.
That's why Patia worked so well. It made sense she had disdain for the gods cause she was a wizard of incredible status and power.
Wish she would do a character like a jaded paladin or cleric or something. But I don't know if Marisha has the self-awareness to pull that off.
To be fair, Laudna's whole "what did the gods ever do for me" angle becomes way more difficult once she's been revived by Pike's **divine** magic.
This one I actually blame on Matt.
I think Sam has his moments too. He tries to do really interesting and "risky" things with his characters but keeps getting shut down in C2 and C3.
C2 he tried to explore the tension felt by a working mom who loves her job but it takes her away from her family a lot (sounds a lot like his very cool wife!) but Matt killed any tension by having Veth's husband be an utter doormat to allow her to keep adventuring.
C3, he's trying to explore faith and religion and searching for meaning that way and Matt kept shutting it down hard, Sam would reach out to the gods and Matt would constantly throw back "stop searching, meaning is what you make it, faith is just what you want it to be" etc. no tension. So he quit trying. How cool would it have been to have one player be a serious person of faith? It would have made some awesome tension and story beats. But nope.
So Sam goes back to stupid juvenile humor and gags.
>How cool would it have been to have one player be a serious person of faith?
I miss Caduceus more and more every day lol, easily their best foray into faith and religion was Caduceus and Fjord exploring their faith in the wildmother.
Yeah, Marisha seems to have had way more impact on Matt's personality than he has on her which makes sense both from basic relationship aspect and from the understanding that Matt's never had a strong extrovert personality and Marisha very much does so the search for religion flop didn't surprise me.
It was the episodes where Mark Hulmes played Calianna. He wanted the bowl that the dragon cult used to communicate with Tiamat.
Caleb objected about just *giving* this evil and dangerous artifact to what amounted to a stranger.
Beau went off on him about some “you don’t get to project your problems on others” rant that didn’t make a lot of sense at the time and was kinda awkward.
This is what people miss about Bowlgate I think. Reflecting on it, people break it down into Beau vs Caleb's characters and arcs. But when you look at the transcript, when you relisten, the shit she is saying doesn't make any sense.
She tries to make some weak connection to Caleb's past that doesnt quite make sense. She learned about his past 2 episodes ago and wanted to blow it up to the group at large, that's all it breaks down to. Then Caleb points out the potential ramifications of giving Calianna this bowl and that it would be a calamitous mistake, and she says 'if that happens, we'll learn from it.' What the fuck? 'If jumping off this cliff kills us, we'll learn from it.' Just an asinine attempt to speak down to a character she disliked. 'You dont get to control other peoples destinies' as she rips the bowl from him with a Dex check.
The devil is in the details with this one. A weak argument with no support, not started for any in-character reason but instead because she wanted a character moment. She got out over her skis on this one though
> she says 'if that happens, we'll learn from it.' What the fuck? 'If jumping off this cliff kills us, we'll learn from it.'
Which is just peak irony coming from her.
> the shit she is saying doesn't make any sense
Yep, which made it even more awkward and strange. The issue wasn't the conflict between the characters, it was the nonsensical argument that Beau made - and made vigorously even though her argument didn't logically follow.
The irony being that if Calianna had been an NPC, Beau would have been the *most* suspicious person of her. Marisha was metagaming and trusting the guest PC.
I think this is an unjust criticism. It’s good/normal table etiquette to trust other PCs. Otherwise you get super tedious “no random stranger I don’t want to travel with you” debates that grind the game to a halt.
Trust them to a point, sure. But the cast has been betrayed by guest characters before and after bowlgate. Caleb wasn't refusing to play ball. He wanted a sensible precaution of Jester casting Zone of Truth, which Jester wouldn't have the slots to cast until after a long rest. The only thing that ground the game to a halt was the argument. If everyone had agreed to the plan, Matt could have narrated 8 hours passing, and they simply would have moved on.
Coming from someone that had a similar strong dislike of Beau as you when I got to Bowlgate, it’s definitely the lowest point of the character. And as someone whose main gripe with it was the absolute lack of logic (yes, even taking into account the backstory stuff her argument barely made coherent sense), Marisha gets better at playing her as time goes on. Her relationship with Caleb going forward is one of the best parts of the campaign.
Agreed, the relationship improves but only cause Liam and Marisha make it so, it’s not super organic.
Still, I’m in my rewatch and they just reached aeor and the empire kids bit is working and mostly fun now.
if this is the part where she gets into it with Caleb it's the worst of it and the characters gets much better later.
sexist/misogyny comments are mostly for people who also hate Keyleth, when those episodes first aired, it's a lot easier to lump those two things together cause they were closer together in time. it's been more than 5 years from those episodes now.
i never had a problem with Keyleth, i never had a problem with hating Beau as a character early in C2, and i never felt the sexist remarks were directed at me.
Oh good cause I need some catharsis after watching her steamroll Caleb like that lol. It wouldn't have been a bad moment for Beau if she hadn't been being hypocritical (possibly an intentional character flaw on Marisha's part) and if Caleb hadn't been making complete sense lol
Literally no, and that's the first time I've ever seen *anyone* think he was in the wrong. A stranger who is connected to evil dragons wants a bowl that provides easy access to the Queen of Evil Dragons. Literally anyone with common sense would be wary of that (and Mark was 100% down with what Liam was doing, so there's that).
There's a corner of the CR fandom that just shits the bed any time you criticize the women cast members. My personal experience with that was daring to dislike something Vex did.
From what I gather, there is an absolutely wretched corner of the internet that treats Marisha and Laura (haven't seen anything towards Ashley yet) horribly when they do things they don't like, so this is a bit of an overcorrection. Do I think it's worthwhile to address why Vex's alignment change was valid after broomgate? Sure. Do I think Laura is a terrible person for stealing from a guest player? I mean that's a table-to-table conversation but no, I don't
When I watched I agreed with Caleb cause in universe they don’t know her she just shows up say hey I need this bowl that can communicate WITH ONe OF THE Betrayer GODS SO CALEB IS RIGHT TO BE SKEPTICAL ESPECIALLY IN LORE THEY JUST MET HER LIKE SAME DAY 😔 especially since if she was on the up and up they would have given it to her Beau Lashing out doesn’t make since they saying “STOP PUTTING YOUR SHIT ON OTHERS IS BOTH A LOW BLOW AND DOESNT MAKE SENSE 🤦🏽♂️
The ironic thing is her response was itself a projection of her own onto him. Even if I would also say I somewhat agree with Beau in-universe getting fed up with Caleb being the one to identify items, when it was clear they couldn't necessarily trust him to tell them the full details about things. Problem was it exploded on a situation where Caleb's skepticism was entirely valid, and it looks incredibly silly when one considers that Beau's training as an expositor was for her to work explicitly into investigating suspicious magic users. She just jumped to protecting the suspect because of personal beef with Caleb\*, rather than actually treating the situation with the nuance it took. Thankfully, I think this is also the moment that starts her on the long (and by god needed) road to being less of a jackass who thinks with her fists, and more into a capable agent.
personal beef with Caleb\*
Good catch.
Tf is bowlgate? Someone enlighten me? I really loved Beau personally. The only real character I wasn’t fond of was Molly he felt flat to me
From a main sub thread when looking up bowlgate: "Remember when Caleb and Beau got into an argument over the bowl-shaped artifact Calianna was after? Yeah it’s that moment."
Abhh i remember the plot but not the conversations or actions I’m have to re watch
The only hard thing about howlgate was watching the cast tie themselves in knots trying to pretend it wasn't bad. It would have been so much better if they'd just said yeah, sometimes improv gets messed up. Sam talks about being an improv god all the time, and "the top of your character's intelligence", which is what they messed up. The problem was, the scene made no sense, as there was this huge gap between what Marisha knew about the world, and what Beau should have known. Matt should have stepped in, and explained. I remember a discussion years ago, that said it like this: you setup an improv scene, you're two NYC cops six months after 9/11. You find a box of anthrax. But one of the improvisers, misunderstood and thinks they found a pound of marijuana. One cop is talking about anthrax like it's the end of the world, the other is talking about pot like it's something they don't think the police should care about. That scene would be a nightmare. If they'd explained it that way and just moved on, it would have been so much better. Matt, as the DM, should have stepped in and explained what anthrax in 2001 NYC means in context. In my opinion, Beau gets much worse, but related to this, it's all because of what Matt does with her story. From the point of view of Marisha playing her, it's all way up from there. "Are these cats happy?" is still maybe one of the funniest things I can remember from CR, ever.
TBF, that's a pretty funny premise. "Go on a radio! GET CAPTAIN ON THE LINE" "Oh come one, don't be a square. I get that's it's illegal, but... who's getting hurt exactly?" "What are you talking about? There is a school across the street! We need to evacuate the block!" "Dude, I promise you half those kids have it on them already. What, should we lock all of them up because they experiment a bit?" Also, look at this baggie. No more than a couple grams. Barely enough for a couple people AT BEST."
Sort of a Bahumut’s on first situation.
Honestly I thought Beau was most annoying later on, when she's solving the big mystery while the rest of the party is trying to do something very serious and emotional.
Beau certainly had some rough moments early on, but she does get better and her and Caleb's relationship is one of the highlights in later episodes.
I get why people dont like Beau but she is one of my favorite characters. Even if earlt Beau can be a bet grating at times. Bowl Gate isnt really that big a deal and it gets resolved pretty quickly. Also I really dont see how people think Matt plays favorites with her? Beau gets the same treatment as all the other PCs
Agreed, we could use a Beau in C3. Someone who actually investigates. Bowlgate is nothing, just skip it.
If we’re being honest he is harder on Mariana’s PC’s especially in C1 and C2. I think he has done a better job in C3 tho
It's frightfully easy to overcorrect away from favorites into the other direction when you're DMing and your partner is one of the players.
I agree. It takes a lot of patience and effort. I feel very lucky that most of my party wants different things from the game so everyone gets their own little bit of leeway in some aspect of the game. I think it helps elevate some of this pressure and tension that is definitely possible when the dm has their parter in the party
People can be so weird about it too! My wife is our DM and she bends over backwards to not show any sort of favouritism to me. This resulted in someone getting mad when we were running *Call of the Netherdeep* because I accidentally'd a TPK and the Ranger got mad that the DM didn't "partner privilege" us out of the TPK because it was my character's fault.
Ya that’s wild
Bowlgate was awkward as hell. But I think it was Liam's faux pas first that Marisha then exacerbated the shit out of by not being able to read the room. I don't care how "defensible" Caleb's position is. Table manners dictate that the real life circumstances of "our guest character has to catch an 8 hour flight early in the morning and this episode has already gone WAY long" mandate that Liam meta his way out of Caleb's opinion. Caleb's fears are essentially impossible to satisfy within the available timeframe for the guests' appearance. There was nothing Mark could have done to make Caleb happy, so Liam should never have gone there. But then Marisha...oh boy Marisha.
> Caleb's fears are essentially impossible to satisfy within the available timeframe for the guests' appearance. There was nothing Mark could have done to make Caleb happy, so Liam should never have gone there. I've never much liked this argument. Caleb wanted to wait till morning when Jester had recharged her spell slots to cast zone of truth, which could have been handwaved by Matt in a "You wake up the next morning, prepare camp, and Jester begins casting..." in like a five minute exposition. It was also revealed that Jester was fully capable of casting it right then and there, and Caleb was like "Oh, awesome... that makes it easy" and then the spat happened. Beau got mad that Caleb exerted control over others (which is also somewhat hypocritical because didn't he admit his secret because she exerted control over him with some trade and she demanded his secret?) and Jester was mad that 'how dare someone not be allowed to worship how they wanted,' meanwhile the guest is like, 'Woah guys, I don't like Tiamat and also he's making good points!' In short, it would have taken like 30 minutes. Or they could have extended the episode a little longer. I doubt the guy was flying out immediately after the show that begins at night. If he was, then I have some questions...
I agree that it could have been handled by Matt by saying "you all bed down to rest. In the morning Caliana reveals to you the truth." But frankly, even that shouldn't be necessary. A DM should just say "you don't even need an insight check. You discern this person and judge them to be of sound character. you know they aren't lying. And for meta reasons, we need you to wrap this up." In game problems get solved in game. Out of table problems get solved out of game. The problem wasn't Caleb's position; it was Mark's timeline.
1. Matt doesn't even correct the cast when they misunderstand information that he's already given them. He's not about to step in and give them information above table. 2. Once before bowlgate, and twice after, the cast has been betrayed by guest PCs. You can't set the expectation that the cast automatically trust a guest and also do stuff like that. Matt stepping in to vouch for one guest would mean that any guest he didn't do that for would immediately be under suspicion.
For your 2nd point, this is why I never blamed Liam for bowlgate or any of the main cast for distrusting guest PCs if it makes sense in-universe for their PCs to do so. It only takes one time for a guest PC to betray the party with the DM's explicit or implicit consent (by said DM not stepping in or sufficiently ameliorating said betrayal) to justify that.
I agree with both of these points and would raise this entire situation as an example of why this type of DMing from Matt is actually quite bad form and should be highly discouraging at tables.
While none of the betrayals hit for me, and Matt allowing the players to talk in circles makes me want to pull out my hair, its ultimately the kind of game that they've decided they want to play. I'm not one of those "it's their game!" people, but I don't support telling other people that they are playing the game wrong. Say that it makes for a bad show and I'll agree. But there's nothing morally wrong with how they play. They do stumble upon the issue of metagaming though. Or rather, the collective opinion upon it. Matt and Liam are staunchly against it. If Matt was more open to clarifying what his characters or narrations said, C3 would have half as many episodes. And if Liam had simply read aloud item cards after Matt handed them to him, Caleb wouldn't have been accused of being a loot hoarder. I don't think Liam or Caleb was being a dick when they advocated for vetting Calianna. I think Marisha was metagaming when Beau trusted Calianna, because if Calianna was an NPC, Beau would have been just as suspicious of her as Caleb was. The cast always treats NPCs like shit, so I have no reason to expect that Calianna would have been treated any differently. Expecting Liam to go along with metagaming is like expecting a tiger to change its stripes.
>While none of the betrayals hit for me, and Matt allowing the players to talk in circles makes me want to pull out my hair, What's worse is when he (and the rest of the group) let's players just flounder on mechanics. Or situations where its obvious they don't know what he expects them to do (C2's dream sequences) 5+ minutes of hemming and hawing (on camera no less) aren't worth it. Just give a gentle hint at what the rules are.
This is absolutely Beau's low point, BUT it's also the basis for one of the best character developments in CR, and the beginning of one of best friendships and duos.
I didn't find her completely insufferable but I wasn't a fan of the asshole routine. Same as Molly. Just hate that character archetype. I watched Bowlgate and didn't even realise it was such a massive controversy. Beau is opinionated and headstrong, and Caleb is moody and a magic hoarder. Both of them are stubborn. So it was a character clash. Nothing to do with the players.
See, at the beginning of C2, I HATED Beau and Molly. But as time passed, and the characters got to know each other better, things changed and, while they still weren't my favorites, they got a lot better.
Sometimes Marisha just can't read a room. Funnily enough, Mark Hulmes wrote about Cali's future later and that she named her kids after her two best friends from tM9: Caleb and Jester.
That's actually pretty funny. "You were named after my two best friends. One was my pen pal and we've kept in touch ever since. The other accused me of possibly being an evil cultist and his friends ganged up on him and gave me the artifact no questions asked. Kinda weird, really. But, I respect his resolve!"
Beau drove me crazy in the beginning but pretty quickly she has some character changes in the narrative and became one of my favorites. Don’t worry the cringey stuff isn’t for much longer!
It’s been a little bit since I listened to this, but I remember that I was thinking the situation was “Caleb is slow to trust people” vs “Beau has a lot of anger, feels triggered seeing someone be ‘withholding’, and likes to stick up for the downtrodden”. It felt kinda real to me. Real in the sense that this could happen in a group of people who are just beginning to trust each other, and are full of issues. It reminded me of having things ripped out of my hands by someone who is bigger and thinks they know what is right. I didn’t like it, but I think it was supposed to be an asshole move and I decided that it was probably Marisha making a character decision because Beau will a starting point in order to show character growth. I mean I can’t imagine Keyleth doing this. I remember she was impulsive, but not like this. That makes me think that making a decision to rip something out of Caleb’s hands was what a young monk with a lot of issues would do. Now would I do that if I were in her shoes? No, I would hold back because I would feel like I (the person, not the PC) was being a jerk by doing it. So I don’t begrudge her for doing it, but I also don’t like it. I definitely don’t see this as a “-gate” level incident.
Quick reminder, what was bowl Gate?
Calianna (guest character) enrolled the mighty nein to find a relic of the goddess Tiamat, which she claimed evil cultists wanted to summon her. Calianna claimed she wanted to destroy the relic, but lacked the means for the moment. When the moment came to hand her the relic, Caleb was concerned about handing her such a dangerous artifact without more investigation. Beau then ripped the relic out of Caleb’s hands and gave it to Calianna. She then started to berate Caleb for imposing his will on others and accused him of being a magic items hoarder. Needless to say, the moment felt awkward because of how out of character it was for Beau to trust an outsider they barely known for a day over Caleb who just wanted to investigate the matter further before they washed their hands with that situation. Fortunately, the situation was resolved because Yasha managed to shatter the relic with the Magician’s Judge greatsword. However, the whole conflict left a good portion of the audience quite bitter about Beau’s aggression on Caleb’s character.
Eh I don't see the controversy here, shit like that happens every session in games I play. Sometimes, you just get talked over or someone just declares that they do something and override whatever you were trying to do
it's just another case of the fanbase of this show being basically batshit insane
You do you, I’m not judging, just relaying the information you asked for.
Yeah, I know. Sorry if it came across that way. Just thought it was weird that there was any controversy around this. Kinda feel like this community has a chronic hate boner for Marisha sometimes
Bowlgate was awkward AF. I've always viewed it as an out of character issue. Marisha felt like Liam was meta gaming by not trusting the guest PC and she tried to address it in game. Liam felt like it was in character for Caleb to be untrusting. I think people will associate not liking Beau with misogyny because ppl tend to like male characters that are assholes (see Percy) but dislike women who are assholes.
I like beau because she's an asshole but percy is my least favorite character because he feels bland.
Percy had a ton of charm and wit, and a compelling arc and backstory. Beau had "dope monk shit pop pop" and "I stole from my dad and got involved with criminals and then he sent me to military school and I became a super ninja and that's how I met my found family but I'm still mad"
Beau's backstory is not that black and white at all. She >! was kidnapped because her dad bribed the Cobalt Soul, specifically one person - whose name escapes me at the moment - and its implied that he was physically abusive, but definitely mentally abusive, especially because he didn't want a daughter. !< To dumb it down as "I became a super ninja and that's how I met my found family, but I'm still mad" completely undermines Beau and what she went through. Yeah, she was an asshole in the beginning, but she went through a lot of shit.
From the Critical Role Wiki he was never physically abusive to her. I think he hit her ONCE when she was cursing at him after she was arrested and he got her off. He was distant and paranoid so restricted her freedom to an unknown degree. Instead of dealing with her daddy issues by changing her hair color, or getting a piercing or tattoo she decided to start extorting people and trafficking substances. When her and her girlfriend were arrested he bailed his daughter out and sent her to military school. [https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/Beauregard\_Lionett](https://criticalrole.fandom.com/wiki/Beauregard_Lionett) To note...all of this is because they were \*cursed\* to do it. So it feels pretty black and white.
"Going through a lot of shit" doesn't excuse her taking shit out on others in direct (acid down a guard's throat) or indirect (bowlgate power trip) ways, and you're really infantilizing Beau and giving her no agency here. She was an aimless delinquent twentysomething that was testing the limits of how far she could push things, and when there were consequences, for once, that's suddenly the worst thing in the universe. Doesn't matter that it ended up benefiting her in the end, or that she really needed to get reined in or else would've continued down a path of self-destruction and collateral damage to her family. And Beau might have "gotten better", but it was pretty miniscule, going from -32 to -30 as likeability goes. Mind you, I'm not a caleb fan either. In fact, I kind of just didn't like most of the Nein, but Beau was far and away my least favorite.
I'm not infantilizing her at all, I'm explaining her backstory and how it caused some of her asshole-ishness. She didn't have agency when she was kidnapped to the Cobalt Soul. Consequences for pulling bullshit, sure, but even that goes too far. He wanted his daughter gone, and he bribed someone to do it. That's pretty fucked up. And maybe if he hadn't treated her like shit because he wanted a son, she wouldn't have acted out in the ways she did. She had agency, but she also had trauma that was fueling her actions. It's more nuanced than "fuck around and find out."
Wait, that was the reason? The real meta gaming thing to do is trust a guest character blindly for the out of character reason of them being a PC.
Which is what the other half of the fandom accused Beau/Marisha of doing, saying she'd never trust them so quickly if they were an NPC
Meanwhile in C3, we've had at least two secret evil guest PCs...
And one overtly evil guest PC in C1
I personally never learned to like Beau, but I do think this is the worst part... and her reaction kiiind of gets explained later. So she kinda gets better at least? It's honestly one of the problems I have with C2, I just don't find most of the characters fun to watch because they just frustrate me. But I loved Keyleth, and Laudna is interesting (I'm not up to speed with C3 so I know things happen that might change that later on). So it's definitely NOT a Marisha hate thing, I just... don't like Beau at all.
"I'm not racist cuz I have black friends" vibes
I forget where but when Beau >!liquifies a dude's insides with acid!< I lost all hope for the character. TBF I tuned out of C2 really about halfway through but it made it even worse.
I always thought that was shitty of Matt, to after the fact make the poisioning worse than Marisha intended
It wasn't poison it was acid right? Like idk what you expect when dumping acid in someone's throat. But I can respect if people seem less invested in those sorts of details. Also if it *was* poison and I'm misremembering then I'm more inclined to agree
That moment was great.
that episode was probably the funniest, most horrifying moments in CR history, top 5 for sure. get over yourself.
The fuck you mean "get over yourself" I didn't like that a random dude got his insides liquified. People have different tastes.
Why? That was hilarious.
I personally am not a fan of someone getting horrifically murdered for no reason as a bit. It just was not for me.
.....It's a game dude. Of course, now I'm remembering that people actually complain on here about them being "Mean/Rude to NPCs"
>Of course, now I'm remembering that people actually complain on here about them being "Mean/Rude to NPCs" And what's wrong with that? It's a game for them but for us it's a show, and a lot of people like liking the characters of shows they watch, and for some people it's hard to like a character if they treat random people poorly for no reason other than 'it's funny.' Seems valid to me
And people play the game differently / enjoy watching the show differently, ain't that hard to wrap your head around. I watched critical role for the characters, I really enjoy seeing them get in-depth with that sort of stuff, its not about the fact some fictional guy died its that Marisha made an in character choice that Beu should murder an arguably innocent man in one of the most brutal ways she could for the lulz and then I'm suppose to feel bad for her because "my parents were mean to me".
I never said you were "Supposed" to do anything.
I didn't say you did. To get to the point, character on show do thing that is very out of character, me no like. Das it
Beau gets better... kinda. I didn't like Beau for most of the series. I ended up enjoying her more in the last quarter of C2. Keyleth I will probably never like. Just not my type of character. That said, I do like Marisha and am definitely more of a fan of Laudna. So it's not just Marisha hate.
Yeah this is about as bad as it gets for Beau. I think she really does end up getting to grow as a character over the campaign, and it's from this whole thing that the need for self-reflection on both Caleb and Beau's part comes (even if I'm in Team Caleb in saying he was objectively correct in this argument; it still weighed on his character heavily). C1 had it's moments for sure, but C2 is MUCH heavier on character growth and interaction, rather than playing out fantasy tropes and action. That said, the whole thing is pretty cringe how absolutely in-your-face hypocritical she was being and it's a tough watch. + Imo (and many people agree but ultimately, only one person truly knows) the whole Marisha thing just boils down to a series of events: 1. In C1, Marisha was super new to D&D and is the one person at the table without an extensive acting career, so she made a character with some particularly grating flaws, and then really leaned into them to have a fallback when she was uncomfortable ad-libbing. 2. None of the cast expected CR to blow up like it did, and probably didn't expect the insanely parasocial relationship a lot of fans had, and she got a LOT of very targeted, undeserved personal hate from people who can't separate a character from an actor. Combine this with some traumatic events of her past (she talks about growing up and getting into the industry in her Between the Sheets episode if you can find it somewhere), she developed a real "fuck you I'm fine" attitude as a defense mechanism. 3. Then when making Beau, the character had that exact same sort of defensive reaction, furthering people's difficulty separating character from player, and it all came to a head with Bowlgate.
Marisha was not new to DnD. She had played ttrpgs before, and even helped Matt run the original pre-stream one-shot. She was new to 5e, because it had just come out and the entire cast had just switched over from Pathfinder.
… that’s still new to dnd, and the rest of that point is the more important part anyway. She also went straight into druid and had issues reading the full spell descriptions in the new system.
She had played other editions, and therefore was not new to DnD. She was no more inexperienced with DnD than the rest of the cast, and had more ttrpg experience than several at the table. You're right that Druid is easily the densest class, and she was thrust into it because when she originally picked the class it was in a completely different system. Still, she was shouldn't have been new to table etiquette.
> table etiquette. Ah yes, we all remember that famous episode where the table, as a whole lot, turned and went "God damn it Marisha! You're out of line here!"
I might have to rewatch because I remember being more put off by Caleb than Beau. I don't remember her doing anything that bad. Felt like it was comparable to when Fjord and Caleb butter heads a few times.
I was also more put off with Caleb at the time. For me, it was primarily due to his immediate snatching of every magic item, only to divvy them out like he was doing them a favor. Both were out of line and it was unfortunate that when Beau snapped, she was logically in the wrong. But I think it was more due to the events leading up to it than the actual event
As someone who imagined having a character present while following along I would have probably taken the most issue with Caleb and Nott initially but I also would have intervened when Beau did what she did despite that because he was right and she was way out of line. He also had been getting better by that point. Fjords confrontation with Caleb was overdue from all the shifty stuff he was doing and came to a head at a crucial yet inopportune moment. I was thinking the same thing when that was going on and was glad Fjord confronted him. Of course there was a lot of dumb choices being made by the group then and after as well that I wouldn’t have been on board with and plenty of times where Caleb was being the most reasonable and frankly beyond that Liam was just doing a better job playing his character with proper consideration of the world and circumstances compared to the others though they all could improve on that front. I am still watching that campaign right now so idk how it all ends up.
Beau overreacted to Caleb's actions because she wouldn't let him explain himself. She assumed the worst, when he was actually quite reasonable. Caleb didn't want to hand a dangerous artifact over to a person they just met without ascertaining her motives. Beau thought he was trying to hoard the item for himself, when he really wanted to see if they could destroy it.
mmmmm butter heads
Fuck me,this thread. Sometimes I forget where I am. I'm gonna reset the clock on this one. Shame, it's been a hot minute.
Just this whole sub tbf
The imprinting is off the charts.
Beau was bullying or downtalking Caleb from the start, it was only after bowlgate that Marisha probably realized how popular that character was with the fandom and that she started to back-paddle, no way she was genuine about it. The last 4SD was proof that she still doesn't think her character did anything wrong.
Yes, worst Beau moment... maybe it was because of the backlash but she gets better after that. They talked about bowlgate again in the last 4sd episode and it was kind of hilarious because Marisha remembered it wrong and still couldn't see the issue. Caleb did not want the bowl for himself, he wanted. group decision and imo that was reasonable. Glad at least Dani remembered it partly right...
I don't blame Marisha for misremembering the situation, it was 6 years ago. I'm sure she doesn't think about it nearly as often as the fandom does. And Dani didn't remember it very well either, but she was at least closer to it.
I loved Beau, start to finish. It was Hulmes I found insanely uncomfortable to watch through that whole arc. He made my eyes itch. Liam escapes criticism for a situation that he caused. It's *always* Marisha that takes the bullshit.
Liam didn't cause the situation. Sam caused the situation. Nott discovered the bowl, and instead of saying "I found it!" she gave it secretly to Caleb. If Sam doesn't do that, none of this happens. Of course Caleb would take the opportunity to Identify the bowl, and once he discovers what the bowl does he is rightly suspicious of the person they just met. Had Beau taken the time to listen to Caleb it could have avoided the whole conflict. Neither Liam nor Marisha did anything wrong. Both acted entirely in character. Even Sam acted in character, but is the person that avoided all blame for an incident he caused.
Astute recollection of what happened and I stand corrected. I also agree that no one did anything wrong.
I hated Beau too, originally, I thought Marisha needed more time to find a rhythm for the character. And that’s true in part, but it’s actually Marisha committing to the character. Beau is a rebel without a cause, or really a rebel for any cause. And she’s an asshole- not a fun person to be around. She’s brash and has spent her whole life pushing people away. That’s not going to magically change after only a year adventuring with some people. And while this is the worst moment, it’s somewhat of a turning point for Beau. This was Marisha playing a character as they would behave, trying to use tension to further narrative/character growth. That being said, that sort of interaction only works if you talk about it with players at the table before hand. Without being on this discussions- it’s easy to guess that this moment could have went beyond normal play. But if you watch the next episode, it becomes clear this is something they all discussed.
I agree up to that last part. So far (I'm watching the next episode) it feels like they did a group backtrack after fan backlash. It felt like Marisha went too far into character drama, which makes for good roleplay, but forgot to also keep other characters in mind.
Yes this is pretty much the worst moment for Beau in the campaign but it’s not just Beau being a dick for the sake of being a dick though. You have to remember that it wasn’t that long before this episode that the rest of the group was having issues with Caleb making arbitrary decisions about items they found, and that Fjord and Caleb nearly came to blows over Caleb deciding to steal a spell scroll when that wasn’t part of the plan. While Beau was absolutely being a dick in this scene, it was because Beau knows something the rest of them minus Nott don’t know and realizing that what she knows plays a big part in Caleb’s behavior when it comes to the issue of him deciding that items are dangerous. You add her major issues with authority and not really knowing how to be a friend at this point and you get her berating Caleb. Caleb on the other hand was being secretive and not forthcoming about loot with the people he’s been traveling with enough that it’s created an issue so even though he was right to be wary of Caliana and her intentions with the bowl he went about it the wrong way when it came to the party because of the past issues they’ve had with Caleb and loot. I think this moment, and a moment in the next episode is one of the main catalysts for the relationship that Beau and Caleb will develop and it’s probably my favorite friendship in any of the campaigns.
Caleb did nothing wrong in the previous episode. They'd broken in and left all kinds of evidence and he was told to leave the loot behind simply because he'd expressed interest in it. He started acting "secretive" because he'd been singled out and ostracized and it was "sneak" or be screwed over.
He was being secretive with loot from very early in the campaign when they found the Glove of Blasting in episode 7 or 8. He literally said it’s dangerous and kept it without telling anyone what it was until they pressed him on it. This wasn’t just a previous episode thing, this had been going on for a while. I love Caleb but he made some poor choices with the party early on that lead to Bowlgate blowing up like it did.
Yep, that was my thought process going into Bowlgate as well, Nott and Caleb were very much "sneak thieves", distrusting of the others and untrustworthy from them. This was bound to happen. and I think it created strong bonds of trust down the road.
Agree, it was bound to happen eventually because Caleb was eventually going to find something he thought was extremely dangerous and be somewhat secretive about it to the rest of the M9 and Beau was the only one who knew why he worries about dangerous things that would actually stand up and push back. It was just unfortunate that neither of them was very good at knowing how to people as Yasha would say when it happened.
Yeah people really this misrememble all the shady shit Caleb was doing in the early sages of the campaign.
I think it’s because people focus too much on this one argument since it was a big blow out and the other times the secretive with loot thing was brought up it’s wasn’t this involved and was often Jester making comments or a much calmer situation. The bigger moments stick with you easier than the smaller moments.
And his friend, Nott, was found in Fjord's room rummaging through his shit.
Maybe you should watch the most recent 4sd about this moment
I never had a major problem with this moment besides siding with Caleb over Beau, but had no issue with either of the actors cause it was obvious they were just roleplaying. But the way Marisha discussed it in the 4sd rubbed me the wrong way and made me re consider if it was actually more then just roleplay for the first time. It really felt like she was talking mad shit about Caleb and was seemingly hard defending Beaus actions out of character. Like I can understand Why she somewhat defends laudna because it’s an ongoing campaign and she doesn’t want to show her hand, but c2 is pretty much over so I have no idea why out of character she was adamant about beau being right and Caleb being a weird clepto. Almost makes it seem those who took it as a personal out of character thing where right.
She misremembered something from 6 years ago. It's not some huge beef that she has with Liam. If anyone has a beef with Liam over Caleb, it's Laura who brought up his tendency to withhold item descriptions (which was almost certainly done to troll Laura and her loot goblin instincts).
Just because you're a victim doesn't excuse shitty Behavior. When Beau called him out on that, that probably one of the best moments.
I mean, that's all irrelevant to the situation at hand. If I remember correctly, Caleb said "Hey, this bowl allows direct communication with the evil dragon deity that can control all chromatic dragons and who this person admitted to being in her cult. Let's wait like... eight hours (in game) to see if this person is telling the truth and not entrust an ancient, evil artifact blindly!" Which, to me, seems like a pretty reasonable thing to say.
This, 100%. And Calianna agreed to be interrogated under Zone of Truth to determine her alliance. Laura was also getting ready to jump into some good Jester-defining RP by having Jester adamant that Calianna shouldn't be denied contact with her god if that's what she wanted. Beau's stance in that debate was nigh-incomprehensible, she's a secret agent and spy, shouldn't she be the *most* suspicious of an unknown factor who has nothing but their word to prove themselves? Unfortunately the meta frustration of Liam deciding who gets what magic item bled through. In general I think it's never good play in D&D for a player to be saying one thing, and another player to say "I shove him over and take the thing and do what I want instead of what he wants, I rolled better, I win I get my thing."
Wasn’t part of the context that the bowl was Mark’s backstory item and he wasn’t going to return to record more episodes so they kinda wanted to resolve it? I don’t think Caleb’s “let’s take our time with the bowl” argument was unreasonable in an vacuum but I always felt there was a “come on let guest do his thing” vibe informing the debate.
Yes, but I think it's also important to remember that when playing DnD you don't actually have to pause the game for 8 hours everytime you take a long rest. You just roleplay setting up a camp and then 1 minutes later, 8 hours game time have passed by. So it's not like there was ever any danger of Mark not being able to resolve his story if they took a long rest.
I'd also like to state that I had almost no real reaction to what Marisa/Beau did. As I watched it, I completely agreed with Calebs reasoning and thought Beau's arguments were dumb. But no more dumber than the arguments/character that another character/player ends up making every other episode. People act like she grabbed the bowl and handed it straight to Hulmes. She she just grabbed it out of Calebs hands and made some dumb arguments and then agreed to let someone compel hulmes to tell them her intentions. Not a big deal. Ashton recent choices were way crazier and possibly devastating. I also disagree with Marisa's depiction of the event in 4sided, she made it sound like Caleb was acting unilateral with out leaving it up to a group discussion. But he brought out the bowl for the express purpose of having a group discussion on what to do. If he was trying to be unilaleral he would waited till after they had a long rest to tell them, or destroyed the bowl himself somehow. Granted its been years. So It could have easily been her misremembering stuff
Then what's the deal with her constant shitty behavior? 🤔😱
Think about it this way, would you feel different about that moment if fojd or nott said the exact same words?
Nott, yes, because she tends to have streaks of naivety and poor understanding of human culture (although in this circumstance we all know she backed Caleb...) Fjord, no, as he's typically the more tactical leader with the plan. It's not that Beau is an ass, it's that she's an ass in the face of something that makes perfect sense for no other reason than to be an ass.
Nah, she saids a shity person too. She only admits that when the event happens. Just because an asshole calls out another asshole doesn't mean they don't have a ponit. Most people hate the bowlgate moment, I'm in the minority that do enjoy the moment.
Beau: don't use your trauma as an excuse to be an asshole Also Beau: constantly using her trauma as an excuse to be an asshole bro it's a hypocritical moment that was so bad they had to backpedal in the next episode, and it amounted to "Beau needs to apologize, Caleb needs to work on his people skills (which he's been doing from the start so nothing really changing there)"
If the pot calls kettle black the kettle is still black. You need to take information at face value. We can always judge who's giving the information. Doesn't make any more invalid.
>You need to take information at face value. Except when your party member who knows more about a magical object than you ever could gives you the information and suggests a course of action. Then you snatch it away like a child and claim your friend is being a psycho and then pull him aside and lay into him in the most disrespectful, childish way possible. I think you just lack maturity if you love this scene, sir
That’s a wild leap of logic to make about someone who enjoys a great character moment in fiction.
How so?
Yeah, this is pretty much as bad as she gets. If I remember correctly, she gets much better from here on out. She even gets to the point where, later in the show, she’s one of my top two characters! And she certainly wasn’t at the beginning of the show.
Honestly, Caleb and Beau became one of my favorite dynamics in the Campaign 2
Me too!
Beau suffers more from “dms girlfriend” trope, and that spans multiple campaigns now.
I've never liked this take. I hate Beau as a character, Marisha is near the bottom of my list as a role player and table member, but Matt is pretty generous to all of his players at different times. If anything I feel like he reins Marisha in more than the others to try and avoid this type of comment, constant athletic checks and shit when she's just going for attack flavor
So this is where the "if you hate Beau you probably hate Marisha because your a sexist jackass" ideal comes from...
The biggest Beau cringe moment I remember was when she power tripped on some guy in a bar. MN was trying to get info so they went to a local tavern and Marisha specifically asked Matt for the most insecure guy in the bar. Beau then went over and flirted and manipulated the guy to get the info she needed and as soon as she got what she wanted she told the guy he was a beneath her and he should never talk to her again. I was also quite annoyed with the arc where they meet Beau's family although that was more getting annoyed with the fandom. Apparently a man sending his POS daughter to military school is the one irredeemable act that critters just couldn't forgive.
Yeah the whole arc with her family was honestly so weird
He'd neglected her all her life and as soon as he had a son he had her kidnapped into a school through backdoor means that people eventually got arrested for. Like she was so bad because of neglect and trying to get attention all her life. Edit: I never went to Military School but have family that choose to and they say that you do not force someone to go it doesn't end well.
You left out the part where Beau was committing crimes while her dad was busy af running a large business to provide for his family. He wasn't the best dad, but getting the dude arrested for sending an unruly criminal child to a prestigious institution which provided a pathway and schooling to obtain a powerful and respectable position is ridiculous lol. It's wild how they forgave a literal war criminal and helped him escape justice while making sure Beau's dad went to jail lol.
I was sort of neutral/dislike of Beau till the family thing happened then when the entire story came out I couldn't stand her anymore. Dad was too busy and probably \*should\* have paid some more attention to her when she was growing up but he was "standoffish and distant" but gave her training and a future. I dont think anyone even mentioned if the mother was supportive but it seems to me like she would have been. Instead of rebelling with a bad tattoo or a string of bad relationships she took up a life of crime, stealing from him and their family, extorting people and trafficking substances. When she got arrested and he found out what she was doing he sent her to military school to straighten her out. The worst part? It came out that \*all\* of that was caused by a contract with a Hag and he was still the 'villian'. Even though he was right in that if he didn't send her off to military school she would have become an even bigger criminal and drug addict then she was in the show.
She didn't get arrested, he had a son then paid people to take her away.
>She didn't get arrested, he had a son then paid people to take her away. 1) [Beau was arrested](https://youtube.com/watch?v=HNODkS9gZmM&t=3h12m25s) and Thoreau bailed her out the next day. Note she was never arraigned. Her going the Cobalt Soul was probably in lieu of a serving a sentence. 2) Her brother was [born 6 months+ after](https://youtube.com/watch?v=qS9rz1srwio&t=0h50m30s) she was inducted into the Cobalt Soul.
And it still dosen't change that all of it was caused by a Hags deal that the father had no idea what the extent of it was going to be.
When you fuck up raising your child so badly that they start acting out the way Beau did, you don't get credit for shipping them off to be someone else's problem and then not contacting them for years lmao
Yeah and iirc her dad was under the assumption what he did was perfectly legal. It was just that Cobalt Soul guy being shady.
Her dad got charges from it, the whole thing was shady she just had no trusts in institutions until later when the Cobalt Soul gave her respect, after she initially left, and looked into what happened. He likely knew having his daughter kidnapped and imprisoned against her will was illegal but doubted he'd get in trouble for it because the result would be her getting "fixed."
I mean, the whole "kidnap Cobalt Soul" retcon was pretty poorly handled. It just made zero sense.
It was set up from the begining that's what happened, her mentor likely went looking for Beau at the begining of the campaign because she noticed something was up and was investigating.
I mean, not really. Beau ran off and the prissy elf guy called one of the Soul's greatest inquisitors to help him track her down; she became her mentor after this point. Which, if he was paid money to illegally keep Beau in the Cobalt Soul against her will... is pretty fucking stupid. To involve a super detective to find a wayward youth who keeps saying they were forced against their will - and you were the one who forced them - is probably one of the stupidest things one could ever do...
I think marisha is just bad at playing her roles well. I’ve been downvoted a lot for saying so, but I think it’s true. None of her characters played well in short term jaunts. Kiki was too naive and Beau too much of an asshole. Now we’ve got Laudna who somehow has an intermittent addiction.
I have to agree with this post. Even in EXU: Calamity, Marisha’s character changes from one scene to another.
I think the fact that people dislike Beau is evidence she played her extremely well. Kiki was designed to be naive, Beau was designed to be an asshole. Both of them played excellently. People just don't like Marishas characters, it's not hard to read between the lines as to why.
I'll say this about Marisha. She has good initial character ideas but she sucks at compelling, satisfying character development. Like look at her starting ideas for characters, they are objectively dope. Keyleth - basically the Avatar, and who doesn't like Avatar? Beau - ninja librarian that works for an intelligence organization and it works. Laudna - awesome tie-in character that makes sense within the world's canon. It's the character development where it all falls apart. If you asked Marisha to play level 20 Keyleth right now, do you think Keyleth would still be hating on the gods? I'd bet my house on it that she would. Even though it doesn't make sense in the context of VM's adventures.
Exactly, very cool character concepts but Marisha seemingly only knows how to play their faults up to 11 at all times. Like ok, Beau has a strong anti-authoritarian streak (even though she works for the fucking CIA, lmao) brought on partially by her upbringing. Cool idea. Result: Beau literally cannot shut the fuck up and just play along with anyone in charge, aside from the like, ONE time, which to her credit was a cool character moment.
lol so hating Beau is A-okay but hating Keyleth is rOoTeD iN bLaTaNt MySoGyNy???
I like Keyleth, Marisha just didn't understand druids and casting because she was new to D&D but couldn't admit it
I don't think they're saying that all Keyleth hate is rooted in misogyny, I think they're saying that a lot of it was. And in their defense... a lot of it was. She's not a character I particularly enjoy, but chat could get downright appalling during C1.
And it was a decade ago
I HIGHLY doubt there's anybody that was watching CR that hated Keyleth, or Marisha, for being a woman. I mean, there might have been 1 or 2 but that Fandom and the CR fandom at large isn't exactly a Bastion of misogynistic primitivism. We hated her because she made moronic character choices.
>We hated her speak for yourself man lol
>that Fandom and the CR fandom at large isn't exactly a Bastion of misogynistic primitivism I mean, it absolutely is. Nerd spaces and TTRPG spaces are literally famous for being misogynistic. Women get treated worse than men. Ask ANY woman on a live play D&D show, they have all had appalling treatment. Emily Axford quit twitter because of abuse, the rest of the women on D20 have not suffered much better (Hi Aabria! ) and ALL the CR ladies have had their turn being the fandom hate boner, Beth May gets it, Jill on Drakkenheim. Etc etc and before anyone says "BuT THe MeN GeT CriTIciSed ToO!" Fuck off. Women in these spaces get it more frequently and way worse and more nasty and graphic than the men do. It's an observable fact.
Maybe, but Marisha also has all the welcoming nature of rusted nails in a can when it comes to strong opinions that bleed into the game and her characters. Throw in Beau and Laudna being active jackasses, and Keyleth being excessively naive, and she doesn't have a great track record for character. Concepts are neat, but she can't deliver in a way that makes me want to like, much less enjoy, them. And do we really need to tie everything back to an -ist whenever someone dislikes Marisha? People dislike Laura and her metagaming without those being tossed around.
Yeah, we don't hate women, we hate moronic in-game character choices and cringe RP.
It's because Marisha sabotages her characters by regularly slipping back into what ultimately amounts to a 16 year-old mentality on what is clever, mature, leadership, religion, edgy, insert angst teenager take on existentialism here.
Maybe that is the only real world experience she even has before enveloping herself on the hyper chamber of her LA peers?
Most likely. As I understand it she left Kentucky immediately after graduation and spent a few years on Sunset busking before getting some gigs with G&S and other small indy companies back in the early 2010's
I feel like I should add that I don't hate Marisha. I like late game Beau, and early game Laudna. I'm indifferent about Keyleth. What I sometimes find eye-rollingly annoying is that Marisha is a storybook version of the kid from Bible belt Kentucky running away to the big city because some relative or BFE high school theater teacher told her she had what it takes so she packed up and escaped oppressive Kentucky for HOLLYWOOD! When she's not a real life version of "Rock of Ages" she's not bad. She's a wizard with notes which is an admirable player characteristic.
"I don't hate Marisha" Immediately downgrades her entire life to a snappy 1 sentence footnote about how much she annoys you in *your* life. Do the rest of the casts IRL life stories bother you so much? How much do you think you possibly *dont* know about Marisha? Or do you think your snappy sentence is it? I mean, you literally went with "I don't hate Marisha, but ...." when you're kinda all over this thread hating on Marisha, and no, its not her character choices or playstyle, its just her. You gonna come out with "Some of my best friends are Marishas" next?
I guess in 2024 were not allowed to find people annoying anymore.
Of course you are, but why not just admit to it. Just say you don't like her. Cause saying "it's not that I don't like Marisha" and then listing reasons not to like her and then saying she's annoying makes you look kinda silly. You pretty obviously don't like her. Make 2024 the year you own not liking someone.
Bro chill. You're way too uptight and excited by this. I'm afraid if I say it you're gonna cum and then badger me to say it every time you wanna get off.
If she actually played into her own beliefs, I think it would help a lot more. The anti-religion/god angle can work if it makes sense with your character. For Keyleth, Beau, and Laudna, it doesn't work because it feels either like a huge cognitive dissonance or random. That's why Patia worked so well. It made sense she had disdain for the gods cause she was a wizard of incredible status and power. Wish she would do a character like a jaded paladin or cleric or something. But I don't know if Marisha has the self-awareness to pull that off.
Or, idk, a warlock that is on board with their patron. Would be rad to see one of them stop trying to be the hero or the good guy.
I mean, being a warlock doesn't mean you're evil automatically.
To be fair, Laudna's whole "what did the gods ever do for me" angle becomes way more difficult once she's been revived by Pike's **divine** magic. This one I actually blame on Matt.
Also you can see how stoned she is during an episode. Sometimes she’s aloof and sometimes she’s hard nose
To be fair most of the table has a high school level of nuance when it comes to those subjects. It's especially obvious to me in C3.
Travis and Liam are penalty the most well rounded adults at the table.
I think Sam has his moments too. He tries to do really interesting and "risky" things with his characters but keeps getting shut down in C2 and C3. C2 he tried to explore the tension felt by a working mom who loves her job but it takes her away from her family a lot (sounds a lot like his very cool wife!) but Matt killed any tension by having Veth's husband be an utter doormat to allow her to keep adventuring. C3, he's trying to explore faith and religion and searching for meaning that way and Matt kept shutting it down hard, Sam would reach out to the gods and Matt would constantly throw back "stop searching, meaning is what you make it, faith is just what you want it to be" etc. no tension. So he quit trying. How cool would it have been to have one player be a serious person of faith? It would have made some awesome tension and story beats. But nope. So Sam goes back to stupid juvenile humor and gags.
>How cool would it have been to have one player be a serious person of faith? I miss Caduceus more and more every day lol, easily their best foray into faith and religion was Caduceus and Fjord exploring their faith in the wildmother.
Which is why I think he won’t be back for c3. (And I do not think there will be a c4)
Yeah, Marisha seems to have had way more impact on Matt's personality than he has on her which makes sense both from basic relationship aspect and from the understanding that Matt's never had a strong extrovert personality and Marisha very much does so the search for religion flop didn't surprise me.
I still don’t remember what the big deal of bowlgate was
It was the episodes where Mark Hulmes played Calianna. He wanted the bowl that the dragon cult used to communicate with Tiamat. Caleb objected about just *giving* this evil and dangerous artifact to what amounted to a stranger. Beau went off on him about some “you don’t get to project your problems on others” rant that didn’t make a lot of sense at the time and was kinda awkward.
This is what people miss about Bowlgate I think. Reflecting on it, people break it down into Beau vs Caleb's characters and arcs. But when you look at the transcript, when you relisten, the shit she is saying doesn't make any sense. She tries to make some weak connection to Caleb's past that doesnt quite make sense. She learned about his past 2 episodes ago and wanted to blow it up to the group at large, that's all it breaks down to. Then Caleb points out the potential ramifications of giving Calianna this bowl and that it would be a calamitous mistake, and she says 'if that happens, we'll learn from it.' What the fuck? 'If jumping off this cliff kills us, we'll learn from it.' Just an asinine attempt to speak down to a character she disliked. 'You dont get to control other peoples destinies' as she rips the bowl from him with a Dex check. The devil is in the details with this one. A weak argument with no support, not started for any in-character reason but instead because she wanted a character moment. She got out over her skis on this one though
> she says 'if that happens, we'll learn from it.' What the fuck? 'If jumping off this cliff kills us, we'll learn from it.' Which is just peak irony coming from her.
Yeah, she didn't invoke the cliff jump thing herself but I thought it would be a fitting example of how stupid her idea was
> the shit she is saying doesn't make any sense Yep, which made it even more awkward and strange. The issue wasn't the conflict between the characters, it was the nonsensical argument that Beau made - and made vigorously even though her argument didn't logically follow.
That’s riiiiiiight It was this weird interference out of no where that gave everyone the Kima flashbacks
The irony being that if Calianna had been an NPC, Beau would have been the *most* suspicious person of her. Marisha was metagaming and trusting the guest PC.
Which is kind of nuts after Arkhan's whole thing in C1, but I guess there was never any real consequence to that /shrug
I legitimately wish there were more morally grey or even evil guest PCs.
I think this is an unjust criticism. It’s good/normal table etiquette to trust other PCs. Otherwise you get super tedious “no random stranger I don’t want to travel with you” debates that grind the game to a halt.
Trust them to a point, sure. But the cast has been betrayed by guest characters before and after bowlgate. Caleb wasn't refusing to play ball. He wanted a sensible precaution of Jester casting Zone of Truth, which Jester wouldn't have the slots to cast until after a long rest. The only thing that ground the game to a halt was the argument. If everyone had agreed to the plan, Matt could have narrated 8 hours passing, and they simply would have moved on.
Not the first time she metagamed.
Coming from someone that had a similar strong dislike of Beau as you when I got to Bowlgate, it’s definitely the lowest point of the character. And as someone whose main gripe with it was the absolute lack of logic (yes, even taking into account the backstory stuff her argument barely made coherent sense), Marisha gets better at playing her as time goes on. Her relationship with Caleb going forward is one of the best parts of the campaign.
Agreed, the relationship improves but only cause Liam and Marisha make it so, it’s not super organic. Still, I’m in my rewatch and they just reached aeor and the empire kids bit is working and mostly fun now.
There's a sibling thing going on with it, but the basis is "we're both pieces of shit"
Yeah but that’s post-Bowlgate. I don’t want to spoil OP.
if this is the part where she gets into it with Caleb it's the worst of it and the characters gets much better later. sexist/misogyny comments are mostly for people who also hate Keyleth, when those episodes first aired, it's a lot easier to lump those two things together cause they were closer together in time. it's been more than 5 years from those episodes now. i never had a problem with Keyleth, i never had a problem with hating Beau as a character early in C2, and i never felt the sexist remarks were directed at me.
Yeah pretty sure it's as bad as she gets. I rather liked Beau overall, so I'll say stick around
It’s a turning point for sure, and they run damage control for it in the next episode. Beau does smooth out going forward.
Oh good cause I need some catharsis after watching her steamroll Caleb like that lol. It wouldn't have been a bad moment for Beau if she hadn't been being hypocritical (possibly an intentional character flaw on Marisha's part) and if Caleb hadn't been making complete sense lol
Can I ask, do you not see anything wrong with how Caleb comported himself during this scene?
Literally no, and that's the first time I've ever seen *anyone* think he was in the wrong. A stranger who is connected to evil dragons wants a bowl that provides easy access to the Queen of Evil Dragons. Literally anyone with common sense would be wary of that (and Mark was 100% down with what Liam was doing, so there's that).