So not this most recent Thursday but the Thursday before was my birthday. And that evening, the first episode of Critical Role’s fourth campaign premiered.

Critical Role is a show where nerd actors play DnD essentially live to tape with zero editing. So each campaign (basically a season) is released weekly in four hour chunks over the course of 3 years. It’s… a lot.

I’ve been off the bandwagon for multiple years. Because of life and because I have a LOT of criticisms about the way they produce their show and how it makes for a terrible viewing experience. But a great parasocial experience which… isn’t really my thing.

Anyways, we invited some folks over to our place and watched the premiere of the first episode, which was good and fun. But also it was four and a half hours long and it starts at 7pm. So for the last 45 minutes my partner, my boyfriend, and I (everyone else smartly left) were writhing on the floor begging for the sweet release of the show’s end. It sounds like suffering, but genuinely it was very fun.

Aaaaaaannnnnnyyyyyy ways. One of the ‘fun’ things about critical role is that the online community is……… Something. Like they’re so much. And not always in a good way.

There’s a LOT of misogyny towards the female cast members. My personal favourite was someone on the reddit who wrote a “Minor educated rant” — in which they criticized one of the female cast members (Ashley Johnson) because when she rolls dice which famously are intended to generate random numbers, she “rolls the worst rolls.” The poster went on to write “You can see this as some times where the other members make small jokes about Ashley rolls. When she needs to roll anything, I get goosebumbs [sic] fearing the worst everytime.”

I cannot emphasize this enough. This poster thought that Ashley was a worse player because she didn’t care enough to learn how to roll her dice. I am not even exaggerating. “I do think some of them learned some ways to better roll the dice,” one of the user’s comments said. “It seems that Travis and Liam” — two of the male cast members — “get in general good roles [sic], and I think if they didnt [sic] learn a better way to roll their dices [sic].”

Not to keep bashing this person, but: “depending on the dice size you use, people can maybe understand how to roll a bit better sometimes.”

Anyways, that digression is just to say there’s a lot of misogyny in the Critical Role fandom, and I thought it would be funny to take the characters in the new campaign and predict how people are going to be misogynistic towards them.

The Women

Thimble

Thimble has a big connection to the character at the centre of the campaign’s spiderweb of interpersonal connections (Thjazi Fang). Namely she is his “companion and partner in everything,” following her being gifted (not in a weird ownership way apparently but as a symbol of the protection of the fae?????) to him before his wedding. So there’s definitely some home wrecker misogyny at play there (but tbh what really messed up Thjazi’s marriage was his being a revolutionary).

Also the community might not let Thimble be her own person and only think of her in relation to Thjazi and his death (he got hung by the church+state).

Murray Mag’nesson

“And even though it is a funeral, you know, she has to show off her proudest asset, which is her big ol' rack and as she likes to say, you know, lanterns are lit, so are the tits.”

Beyond just the general Marisha Ray hate (again, I must emphasize. all the women of critical role get hit with so much of this shit — Marisha first and hardest), there’ll be misogyny about how Murray approaches her appearance. Why does she care so much about her tits, the like. Also woman with a beard. People might be weird about that.

Tyranny

I’m so interested to hear second hand about how things go with Tyranny because she has such a… charged dynamic with one of the other cast members. She’s a demon who is being brought up in a church of light that isn’t not christianity coded. So it’s like, there’s definitely a greater real world historical context to children being brought up in an indoctrination sort of way in the church and I’m soooooo intrigued by how CR is going to navigate that. (I’m sure it’ll be great. Brennan is incredible)

On misogyny, people are going to think she’s sooooooooooo annoying. And are probably gonna infantilize her a LOT.

Vaelus

Okay Vaelus is so incredibly cool Ashley did so well playing her. She only came in the last like twenty minutes of the episode, but she absolutely stole the show. Simply so much presence she absolutely rocked it.

She’s gonna be called so bitchy and bossy and sassy, and such a know it all. The critical role fandom hates an opinionated woman, and Vaelus is strongly opinionated about her god being killed.

Thaisha Lloy

People are gonna be so misogynistic to her for so many reasons. Honestly she’ll get the most misogynied. Truly the biggest one is that the person who plays Thaisha — Aabria Iyengar — is strongly disliked by a vocal subset of the community. I’m not saying that it’s because she is a Black woman but like…………… I hate to say it, but people are in fact going to say that she’s taking up too much space at the table and talking too much.

Thaisha is also an older woman and a motherly figure. But not in a super traditional way. In the ol’ backstory she had kids with another character in the main cast then went to travel the world on her own so like…. yeah honestly? People just hate Aabria which is really sad.

[Editor’s Note: There is already Aabria Iyengar drama. They’re so predictable ]

The Nonbinary Folks

yup.

The Men

okay there’s gonna be less misogyny here but still some. Some of them I just want to say things about them.

Teor Pridesire

He might get some “always being right” privilege in the eyes of the community.

Also, y’all. He’s a lion guy and his last name is Pridesire. This is literally so funny. It could only be topped by someone doing something like putting the word wolf in their pet wolf’s name.

Occurs Tachonis

I talked with someone else who watched the episode about this newsletter before publishing, and I wrote down two words on Occtis from our conversation: fox sex.

ALSO HE HAS A THIGH HOLSTER FOR A NEEDLE THATS CRAZY

Wicander Halovar

A priest of the light church. This guy literally yelled at a woman (Tyranny) in the first episode. He’s doing pretty good for himself on the old misogyny front.

Halandil Fang

Hal is such a tradwife. And I love that for him. I wish I were more of a tradwife. (I told my partner a while back that I’d try to tradwife and cook/clean more and instead I spend all my time with my mistress the ubyssey). It remains to be seen whether the critters are going to make that a thing about his masculinity. I think maybe not because they’re much more forgiving of men’s characters having flaws.

Not naming names but a straight man we were watching the premiere with mayyyy have pointed out Hal’s crotch, noting the amount of detail in the illustration. Again, I would never leak the name of whoever said this. Oh look, there appears to be some sort of bug in the beehiiv system — it bolded a bunch of random letters. Weird.

Sir Julien Davinos

You can just tell that he’s such a wanker. That’s a man who will talk about how he’s a centrist and both sides are getting extreme but also he voted for Trump and loves Elon Musk and hates trans people. The misogynists are going to love this man for all the wrong reasons.

Bolaire Lathalia

I think Bolaire is going to get actual misogyny because it’s not exactly as though his presentation is man-maxing. But also his hair goes so fricking hard.

Kattigan Vale

People are going to lose their shit over Kattigan (horny). The man is literally in a third of all extant critical role campaign 4 fanfics.

Also the wolf? Wulfric. Truly such a silly little name.

Azune Nayar

Not to end on a weak note but I don’t have much for Azune right now. Probably just the general getting the benefit of the doubt and being allowed to be a flawed character in a way the women aren’t able to.

Other News

The podcast, it exists

I’m so hyped. Aisha talked about making vegetarian lasagna in this first episode and I got the recipe and am making it on Tuesday I’m so hyped. (Aisha can’t join us for dinner though which is very sad.) I’m such a lasagna enjoyer but I don’t like cooking with meat so I’m so excited to vegetarian lasagna.

Also I have a segment at the end of the podcast. I was very clever and called it Since 1918. But I didn’t name it until the fifth episode so oops. Everyone pretend that at the end of my segment I said “I thought we agreed not to talk about my vilest rag since 1918.”

I haven’t actually watched my segment yet, but I was shown a three second clip and my hands were moving like crazy. We did in fact move the microphone so I could do More Hands.

Also it’s been very unnerving to have been writing this section and anytime I glance up Aisha is staring directly into my soul.

Biking to work goes so hard

Who knew that exercise was good for you? I’m like so awake every day it’s great. It makes me very happy :D.

And also it’s literally faster and more enjoyable than taking the bus so like… what’s not to love. The only days I don’t really bike to work now are when I need to go directly from the office to the newsroom. Like it’d honestly take the same amount of time but there’s a massive hill on my way to campus and I’d like not to show up drenched thank you very much.

(NB: Going forward, I’ll be distinguishing the locations for paid computer work and unpaid journalism work by calling the computer work “the office” and the journalism work “the newsroom.”)

I was also very brave and yesterday I put my bike on one of the bus bike racks and it didn’t fall off :).

The Daily Buzz

Listen, I know I’m not publishing daily anymore, here at the Icosatetra-Yearly Twice-Weekly Daily Nightly Buzz. But there is someone who is sending nightly emails out: The Ubyssey. You can subscribe over on their homepage (Ubyssey.ca or ubussy.ca).

AND THEY HAVE A SECTION CALLED THE DAILY BUZZ

this is big, huge even. thank god someone on campus is filling the daily buzz space

Hades II

I’ve been so excited for this game and I’m so glad she’s finally here. I have in fact lost full days to this game. It’s just intoxicatingly easy to go on one more run. I got the first ending but am currently working towards the true ending. And also towards Night’s Champion III.

Video games are so fun I need to play more. But also there’s so much other stuff that I need more, more. But some day I’m gonna be such a (video) gamer girl. Just you wait.

Presumably, a column or two or maybe three will exist

Watch this space:

Also not to get hyped but I heard there was maybe discussion about potentially some columns having boutique graphics which I would in fact be very happy about but I also love the current one and I think it’s really funny to completely take over the opinion section with a bunch of them in a row

From the Archive

Actual factual real life Noam Chomsky (that one) wrote in to The Ubyssey in November 2010.

That’s All!

I’m wayyyyyy more a fan of this schedule y’all. Having time to think about/write these goes hard.

Also watching CR in person with folks was incredibly fun. I want to do it again some time. Not Critical Role because that’s abusive but something else. I was kind of thinking an Arcane watch would be fun. Would probably run it on non-Council Wednesdays. Idk I think it could be fun :p. If you’re not employed by the AMS and are interested let me know :). Or I’ll let you know 👀. One of the two.

I love the sitcom fantasy of just like… friends showing up to each other’s homes unannounced and then just having dinner and spending the evening with each other. That goes so hard. I’m not like… mentally there quite yet. But I’d love to be. Anyways this is my way of saying I want more people at our house :p. Also my partner has been collecting a bunch of plants and making the place look really cool and I think more people should see it :D.

See y’all in a fortnight (Oct 26) at 10:03 pm. Until then, buzz on, my busy bees!

6pm is lunch, 9pm is afternoon since 2025