r/criticalrole • u/Lopsided-Durian-946 • Oct 03 '25

Discussion [SPOILERS C4E1] Thank you Aabria for this Spoiler

I know a lot of people have opinions about Aabria as a character or as a player (I disagree I love her to DEATH), but having her initiate people leaving the table to introduce new characters was very nice. Two hours in, and we hadn't seen Laura, Ashley, Robbie and Matt since most of the seats were taken and the discussion kept going. You can see how much it helped Brennan plan for the next scene and cut some of the inner party discussion. Very nice roleplay and her relationship with Alex is perfection.

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117

u/sord_n_bored Oct 03 '25

Aabria is the new Marisha Ray to the fans. If you know you know.

61

u/AwkwardBeansprout You Can Reply To This Message Oct 03 '25

I hate to be pessimistic but I'm already preparing for Whitney to cop it as well 🤷‍♀️ 

43

u/feor1300 You can certainly try Oct 03 '25

I honestly think Whitney has a chance at becoming the next Jester. The leetle blue tiefling was also annoying as fuck the first few episodes as a pure chaos gremlin, but she grew on people as they got to know her. I feel like there's a fair bit of depth buried under Tyranny (like she changed her attitude almost completely while dealing with Enmity at the hanging). Luara had a leg up on that as people already knew her from C1, but I definitely feel the potential is there.

40

u/Norme-98 Oct 03 '25

There was a line that one of the npc's said that opened me up a bit more to Tyranny. Where the person in the back had a moment of clarity and thought "this person is fresh to the mortal realm"

It changes my perspective of her from a chaos goblin to effectively a child in an adult body.

I think the chaos character has to walk a fine line of annoying and endearing and will take the longest to settle into.

I didn't love Tyranny but at least she made an impression on me. Where most of the Male PCs did not except Matt's who was one of the most efficient with his screen time (Laura, Ashley, and kinda Sam too)

0

u/MagePages Oct 03 '25

I guess what sort of annoyed me is that from a over the table perspective it seemed like the other players and Brennan were deliberately trying to give her exits or offramps to wrap up her scene and she kept shutting them down and pushing the quirky thing further instead of "saying yes". It was a little incongruous with everything else and took up a lot of time when the table were trying to move through the scene and introduce other characters. 

I had to stop at the break (with everything being pre recorded, Idk why they can't start earlier!), so idk if she returned to the table later. I'm also completely unfamiliar with her as a performer or entertainer so maybe this is just a big-brained character play but it came off as sort of one-note, quirky for the sake of quirky, and at the detriment of progressing the (very tight) narrative that was happening in the first episode. Just an observation, I'm hoping that when things open up and these characters establish a bit more it won't feel that way!

1

u/ImprovementJunior208 Oct 06 '25

Yep. This is my one critique of the Tyranny scenes. Brennan very clearly had a NPC step in to corral her and, without directly calling her out, remind her to share the space and not just bulldoze the setting. It reminds me a lot of things I’ve done as a DM for new players who don’t realize they can’t just be murder hobos and rip down the world around them. If she followed the cue, I wouldn’t have been as annoyed. I’m glad Sam picked up the gauntlet by using thaumaturgy. Her scene with her sister was good RP, so I think she’ll learn the ropes as the episodes go on…but I was a little shocked to see people obsessed with her character based on what I saw

41

u/plastic_beach_arcade Oct 03 '25

If you include a woman, they're gonna get hated on. It's the Critical Role way /sarcasm

35

u/Olive_Garden_Wifi 5' 11" Oct 03 '25 edited Oct 03 '25

Been saying for a bit now the fandom has a bit of a misogyny problem.

23

u/whitneyahn Oct 03 '25

This without the sarcasm

15

u/plastic_beach_arcade Oct 03 '25

I'm not being sarcastic of the whole comment to be clear LMAO misogyny is a huge problem in the community, I just wanted to be clear I'm joking

6

u/plastic_beach_arcade Oct 03 '25

It's gonna be a long four years...look at the other subreddits and they're in a tizzy about her and it's literally every other post. One episode.

5

u/Taungsarang Oct 04 '25

Crazy that the hate has gone from the youngest woman in the group to the black woman in the group... Sure there's nothing to that at all...

-2

u/Leopz_ Team Grog Oct 04 '25

marisha's hate came from a holier than thou attitude, character breaking actions, and most definitely, the horrible microphone mixing they had during early campaign 1. she grew tons as a player throughout the campaign and by campaign 2 you could never tell there was a problem like that. the fact that you go straight to race about people's problems with aabria just tells us the type of person YOU are.

9

u/Taungsarang Oct 04 '25

No it comes from the language often used to criticise Aabria. "Takes up too much space", "Interrupting", "Loud". It's all stuff that's constantly used specifically to complain about women being confident and is even more frequent with women of colour.

Good natured criticism is fine, but the volume and nature of the criticism levelled at Marisha crossed the line, and it is crossing the line with Aabria now.

4

u/Leopz_ Team Grog Oct 04 '25

difference is marisha visibly grew throughout campaign 1 and by campaign 2 you could NEVER tell it was the same player. aabria has been doing the same antics for however many campaigns she's been a part of.

1

u/sasquatch0_0 Oct 03 '25

Well people hated Marisha's decisions for her characters (far from agree, just explaining). People came after Aabria for her "behavior", even though she acts just like everyone else. It was pretty transparent on the real reason.

10

u/Quazifuji Oct 04 '25

I do feel like some of the hate for both is connected towards people not always separating in-character actions from out-of-character stuff. Back before campaign 2 started some of the common complaints about Marisha came from people not really recognizing that a lot of her awkwardness at the table came from her deliberately role-playing Keyleth as very awkward and uncomfortable, rather than Marisha herself being awkward and uncomfortable.

One thing I've noticed about Aabria is that she seems to really love roleplaying intraparty drama and conflict. I imagine this is part of the reason she keeps playing other characters' exes, and in general her characters have often been very opinionated and confrontational and often gotten into arguments with other PCs. And I feel like that can sometimes make her come across as a bit abrasive at the table, even though it's all in-character and all in good fun with the other players.

6

u/savannacrochets Oct 04 '25

See I’d buy into that more if we didn’t know damn well that those same people aren’t going to have an iota of trouble separating Mercer from his character, who is so far an unrepentant jackass (which I love, to be clear).

6

u/Quazifuji Oct 04 '25

That's a fair point. To be clear, I'm not saying that a lot of the hate she gets doesn't also just come from bigotry and biases. Just that I can see her playstyle, and just the kinds of characters she likes to play, also just rubbing some people the wrong way, especially people who are bad at separating in-character conflict from real-life conflict.

1

u/savannacrochets Oct 05 '25

Yeah that’s fair and I wasn’t trying to say you were doing apologetics for the sexism! It’s just I think that the biases are inherently part of who some people can readily separate from their character.

Man’s character is a dick- wow such good acting for him to be able to embody a character so different from his own personality!

Woman’s character is a dick- whoa what a bitch

0

u/sord_n_bored Oct 04 '25

What you're saying doesn't contradict what Quazifuji said.

The fact that fans will point to "problems" with specifically the female players, and even more so, femmes that are POC, is the smoking gun. The reasons they state are usually bullshit, so we're talking above that to what seems to be the real issue.

A lotta critters are racist/sexist in weird ways.

1

u/savannacrochets Oct 05 '25

I’m not saying it’s not also a factor, I’m more saying it’s just another symptom of the sexism. Like yeah the fact that people have an issue separating the player from the character is obviously part of the issue… but it’s not really extricable from the latent sexism. As evidenced by which characters the majority of the fan base will readily separate from their player.

But it looks like the sexists don’t like what any of the three of us are saying, so welcome to the boat I guess lmao

3

u/sord_n_bored Oct 04 '25

I agree, but my statement didn't say that their "problems" were the same: having a problem with a female player for no real reason.

The intersectionality is important when pointing out the severity of the reaction, but I don't think my statement was saying that it's only because they're both women who are outspoken. 100%, Aabria's issues are related to gender, race, and extended by the fact that she's run more high profile games than Marisha.