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Author Topic: Vox Machina - From the Same People Who Brought You Critical Role  (Read 23591 times)

RandyB

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Re: Vox Machina - From the Same People Who Brought You Critical Role
« Reply #15 on: January 29, 2022, 03:19:17 PM »
Money talks.

And the Kickstarter to develop a full-fledged CR animated series blew past its goal like it was on rockets. They asked for $750k, and raised over $11.5 million.

Now, you can interpret this as 'market demand' or 'fools and their money are soon parted'. Your call. But they had the money to make this thing. Whether it'll be any good... well, that may be another story.

I interpret that as "astroturfing" and "money laundering".

HappyDaze

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Re: Vox Machina - From the Same People Who Brought You Critical Role
« Reply #16 on: January 29, 2022, 04:46:32 PM »
Money talks.

And the Kickstarter to develop a full-fledged CR animated series blew past its goal like it was on rockets. They asked for $750k, and raised over $11.5 million.

Now, you can interpret this as 'market demand' or 'fools and their money are soon parted'. Your call. But they had the money to make this thing. Whether it'll be any good... well, that may be another story.

I interpret that as "astroturfing" and "money laundering".
Try just accepting that things you don't like can still be successful. And, even then, you still don't have to like it.

BoxCrayonTales

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Re: Vox Machina - From the Same People Who Brought You Critical Role
« Reply #17 on: January 29, 2022, 05:22:51 PM »
Yeah, Twilight was hugely successful. Has a 4.7 rating on Amazon Prime. I wouldn't be surprised if VM is successful and highly rated despite mediocre writing quality.

Nowadays it's pretty normal for hugely successful franchises to quickly pop up and then equally quickly burn themselves out due to a lack of any longstanding value.

Omega

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Re: Vox Machina - From the Same People Who Brought You Critical Role
« Reply #18 on: January 29, 2022, 07:01:16 PM »
But they had the money to make this thing. Whether it'll be any good... well, that may be another story.

It looks good. Other than the inexplicable use of CGI monsters. It the writing and reliance on crass jokes that drags it down. I'd expect this from Acquisitions Incorporated. But Critical Role I expected better from.


Omega

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Re: Vox Machina - From the Same People Who Brought You Critical Role
« Reply #19 on: January 29, 2022, 07:04:05 PM »
Try just accepting that things you don't like can still be successful. And, even then, you still don't have to like it.

I just see it as the votes are initially coming from backers who are getting what they payed to see.

But the crassness of it unfortunately edges me out. Also not helped that some of the CR crew have been less than stellar people in the last year or two.

Omega

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Re: Vox Machina - From the Same People Who Brought You Critical Role
« Reply #20 on: January 29, 2022, 07:07:38 PM »
Yeah, Twilight was hugely successful. Has a 4.7 rating on Amazon Prime. I wouldn't be surprised if VM is successful and highly rated despite mediocre writing quality.

Nowadays it's pretty normal for hugely successful franchises to quickly pop up and then equally quickly burn themselves out due to a lack of any longstanding value.

Part of the looking askance at the ratings is that for the last decade at least companies have been increasingly seeding online reviews with shills and sock puppets. You can usually tell the ones as they tend to all use the exact same buzzwords like "it is true to the source material" when the movie is anything but.

Shrieking Banshee

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Re: Vox Machina - From the Same People Who Brought You Critical Role
« Reply #21 on: January 30, 2022, 07:08:17 PM »
The amount of people with no taste vastly outnumbers those that do. Looks completly expected.

Wrath of God

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Re: Vox Machina - From the Same People Who Brought You Critical Role
« Reply #22 on: February 07, 2022, 11:19:39 AM »
Quote
Of all of the stupid tropes running through this cartoon, the thing that is the most jarring is the constant use of the word "fuck" - not because it is "bad language" but because if you want to create the illusion of a magical fantasy realm then using a modern swear word constantly is not the way to do it.

The thing it's not modern swear word.
It's like 700 years old at least, and probably older. It's shared between North Germanic and part of West Germanic origin.
One of most conservative Nordic languages - Faroes - has swear word "fukka".
Of course it evolved and shifted through those centuries, but saying this is one thing that break illusion to you in this show is very boomer of you :P

So what people raised on whitebread American culture considered truly old, is often very very misguided, and their illusions of magical fantasy as skewed as Scottish attires in "Braveheart" :P

Quote
I kinda wonder why Critical Role went with such a big group rather than the more usual 4-6.

I think it grew organically in their voicac community, and then Geek and Sundry offered them to make it stream.
I think they shifted to 5e, precisely because their PF sessions were usually very long due to amount of crunch in PF1e.

Like I think Vox Machina stream started about 1/3 half into their campaign.

Quote
It looks good. Other than the inexplicable use of CGI monsters. It the writing and reliance on crass jokes that drags it down. I'd expect this from Acquisitions Incorporated. But Critical Role I expected better from.

Really? I watched like 10 streams of them, and I think it's to be expected. They are quite crass, at least part of them.
"Never compromise. Not even in the face of Armageddon.”

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With great vengeance and furious anger"


"Molti Nemici, Molto Onore"

SHARK

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Re: Vox Machina - From the Same People Who Brought You Critical Role
« Reply #23 on: February 07, 2022, 05:39:44 PM »
Greetings!

Yeah, the term *Fuck* is actually pretty old, derived from old Germanic and Norse slang. The idea of using vulgar words being modern is simply a reflection o American whitebread prudishness. Dark Ages people used vulgar and coarse language all the time.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK
"It is the Marine Corps that will strip away the façade so easily confused with self. It is the Corps that will offer the pain needed to buy the truth. And at last, each will own the privilege of looking inside himself  to discover what truly resides there. Comfort is an illusion. A false security b

jeff37923

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Re: Vox Machina - From the Same People Who Brought You Critical Role
« Reply #24 on: February 07, 2022, 06:50:38 PM »
Quote
Of all of the stupid tropes running through this cartoon, the thing that is the most jarring is the constant use of the word "fuck" - not because it is "bad language" but because if you want to create the illusion of a magical fantasy realm then using a modern swear word constantly is not the way to do it.

The thing it's not modern swear word.
It's like 700 years old at least, and probably older. It's shared between North Germanic and part of West Germanic origin.
One of most conservative Nordic languages - Faroes - has swear word "fukka".
Of course it evolved and shifted through those centuries, but saying this is one thing that break illusion to you in this show is very boomer of you :P

So what people raised on whitebread American culture considered truly old, is often very very misguided, and their illusions of magical fantasy as skewed as Scottish attires in "Braveheart" :P

Greetings!

Yeah, the term *Fuck* is actually pretty old, derived from old Germanic and Norse slang. The idea of using vulgar words being modern is simply a reflection o American whitebread prudishness. Dark Ages people used vulgar and coarse language all the time.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

If you two are done short stroking your pretentiousness, kindly list all the medieval fantasy books, stories, comic books, movies, TV shows, and anime that use the same amount of "fuck" in them as Vox Machina because this whitebread American never encountered its use so heavily in media (if at all).

Is "fuck" an old word? Yes. No tell me where it shows up in Canterbury Tales or Beowolf. For estra credit, you can tell which of Shakespeare's works the word appears in.

Why am I dying on this hill? Because the word "fuck" was just used for shock value in Vox Machina, a cheap way for the writers to show that they are edgy and cool - not that they can present a story with compelling characters.

Oh, and  :P
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Wrath of God

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Re: Vox Machina - From the Same People Who Brought You Critical Role
« Reply #25 on: February 07, 2022, 08:24:25 PM »
Word "fuck" was used in Legend of Vox Machina, because Critical Role players use it a lot in game. Simple as that. This show is redux of gaming session, not new Shakespeare or new Tolkien.

Quote
Is "fuck" an old word? Yes. No tell me where it shows up in Canterbury Tales or Beowolf. For estra credit, you can tell which of Shakespeare's works the word appears in.

Yeah, because obviously one can accept from high culture - like plays that can be watched by Queen, or works of Geoffrey Chaucer to use coarse language of contemporary soldiers, peasants and fisherfolk. That makes sense.

From Wiki: "Otherwise, the usually accepted first known occurrence of the word is found in code in a poem in a mixture of Latin and English composed in the 15th century. The poem, which satirizes the Carmelite friars of Cambridge, England, takes its title, "Flen flyys", from the first words of its opening line, Flen, flyys, and freris ('Fleas, flies, and friars'). The line that contains fuck reads Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk. Deciphering the phrase gxddbou xxkxzt pg ifmk, here by replacing each letter by the previous letter in alphabetical order, as the English alphabet was then, yields the macaronic non sunt in coeli, quia fuccant vvivys of heli, which translated means, 'They are not in heaven, because they fuck the women of Ely'. The phrase was probably encoded because it accused monks of breaking their vows of celibacy;[13] it is uncertain to what extent the word fuck was considered acceptable at the time. The stem of fuccant is an English word used as Latin.[24] In the Middle English of this poem, the term wife was still used generically for 'woman'.[‡ 1]

William Dunbar's 1503 poem "Brash of Wowing" includes the lines: "Yit be his feiris he wald haue fukkit: / Ye brek my hairt, my bony ane" (ll. 13–14).[25]

The oldest occurrence of the word in adjectival form (which implies use of the verb) in English comes from the margins of a 1528 manuscript copy of Cicero's De Officiis. A monk had scrawled in the margin notes, "fuckin Abbot". Whether the monk meant the word literally, to accuse this abbott of "questionable monastic morals", or whether he used it "as an intensifier, to convey his extreme dismay" is unclear.[26]"

That's about written word. But probable Nordic origin puts it's few centuries earlier. I'm sorry that Chanson de Roland is not a good source about how French peasants swore in XI century :P

Quote
Yeah, the term *Fuck* is actually pretty old, derived from old Germanic and Norse slang. The idea of using vulgar words being modern is simply a reflection o American whitebread prudishness. Dark Ages people used vulgar and coarse language all the time.

Indeed. Judging overall language from written language in countries and times where only elites often clergy could read and write is not a good methodology.
"Never compromise. Not even in the face of Armageddon.”

"And I will strike down upon thee
With great vengeance and furious anger"


"Molti Nemici, Molto Onore"

jeff37923

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Re: Vox Machina - From the Same People Who Brought You Critical Role
« Reply #26 on: February 07, 2022, 09:32:57 PM »
Word "fuck" was used in Legend of Vox Machina, because Critical Role players use it a lot in game. Simple as that. This show is redux of gaming session, not new Shakespeare or new Tolkien.

Quote
Is "fuck" an old word? Yes. No tell me where it shows up in Canterbury Tales or Beowolf. For estra credit, you can tell which of Shakespeare's works the word appears in.

Yeah, because obviously one can accept from high culture - like plays that can be watched by Queen, or works of Geoffrey Chaucer to use coarse language of contemporary soldiers, peasants and fisherfolk. That makes sense.

From Wiki: "Otherwise, the usually accepted first known occurrence of the word is found in code in a poem in a mixture of Latin and English composed in the 15th century. The poem, which satirizes the Carmelite friars of Cambridge, England, takes its title, "Flen flyys", from the first words of its opening line, Flen, flyys, and freris ('Fleas, flies, and friars'). The line that contains fuck reads Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk. Deciphering the phrase gxddbou xxkxzt pg ifmk, here by replacing each letter by the previous letter in alphabetical order, as the English alphabet was then, yields the macaronic non sunt in coeli, quia fuccant vvivys of heli, which translated means, 'They are not in heaven, because they fuck the women of Ely'. The phrase was probably encoded because it accused monks of breaking their vows of celibacy;[13] it is uncertain to what extent the word fuck was considered acceptable at the time. The stem of fuccant is an English word used as Latin.[24] In the Middle English of this poem, the term wife was still used generically for 'woman'.[‡ 1]

William Dunbar's 1503 poem "Brash of Wowing" includes the lines: "Yit be his feiris he wald haue fukkit: / Ye brek my hairt, my bony ane" (ll. 13–14).[25]

The oldest occurrence of the word in adjectival form (which implies use of the verb) in English comes from the margins of a 1528 manuscript copy of Cicero's De Officiis. A monk had scrawled in the margin notes, "fuckin Abbot". Whether the monk meant the word literally, to accuse this abbott of "questionable monastic morals", or whether he used it "as an intensifier, to convey his extreme dismay" is unclear.[26]"

That's about written word. But probable Nordic origin puts it's few centuries earlier. I'm sorry that Chanson de Roland is not a good source about how French peasants swore in XI century :P

Quote
Yeah, the term *Fuck* is actually pretty old, derived from old Germanic and Norse slang. The idea of using vulgar words being modern is simply a reflection o American whitebread prudishness. Dark Ages people used vulgar and coarse language all the time.

Indeed. Judging overall language from written language in countries and times where only elites often clergy could read and write is not a good methodology.

So you can quote Wikipedia, big deal.

Now tell me all the times "fuck" is used in medieval fantasy media over the last few decades.

"Fuck" doesn't show up in a lot of the medieval fantasy media that we consume, so when it does like this it is jarring. Yeah, it is meta because Vox Machina is a medieval fantasy cartoon based on a group of players paid to act like they are having fun playing D&D in an attempt to maximize the advertisement budget of WotC/Hasbro. So instead, the cartoon ends up looking like a bunch of cosplayers trying to tell an episodic story.
"Meh."

SHARK

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Re: Vox Machina - From the Same People Who Brought You Critical Role
« Reply #27 on: February 08, 2022, 02:40:26 AM »
Quote
Of all of the stupid tropes running through this cartoon, the thing that is the most jarring is the constant use of the word "fuck" - not because it is "bad language" but because if you want to create the illusion of a magical fantasy realm then using a modern swear word constantly is not the way to do it.

The thing it's not modern swear word.
It's like 700 years old at least, and probably older. It's shared between North Germanic and part of West Germanic origin.
One of most conservative Nordic languages - Faroes - has swear word "fukka".
Of course it evolved and shifted through those centuries, but saying this is one thing that break illusion to you in this show is very boomer of you :P

So what people raised on whitebread American culture considered truly old, is often very very misguided, and their illusions of magical fantasy as skewed as Scottish attires in "Braveheart" :P

Greetings!

Yeah, the term *Fuck* is actually pretty old, derived from old Germanic and Norse slang. The idea of using vulgar words being modern is simply a reflection o American whitebread prudishness. Dark Ages people used vulgar and coarse language all the time.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

If you two are done short stroking your pretentiousness, kindly list all the medieval fantasy books, stories, comic books, movies, TV shows, and anime that use the same amount of "fuck" in them as Vox Machina because this whitebread American never encountered its use so heavily in media (if at all).

Is "fuck" an old word? Yes. No tell me where it shows up in Canterbury Tales or Beowolf. For estra credit, you can tell which of Shakespeare's works the word appears in.

Why am I dying on this hill? Because the word "fuck" was just used for shock value in Vox Machina, a cheap way for the writers to show that they are edgy and cool - not that they can present a story with compelling characters.

Oh, and  :P

Greetings!

"Short Stroking pretentiousness!" *Laughing*

Nice, Jeff! Well, I don't really mind the whoever cartoon people saying *Fuck* really. Of course, I think it can be used excessively, perhaps, but it doesn't really bother me.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK
"It is the Marine Corps that will strip away the façade so easily confused with self. It is the Corps that will offer the pain needed to buy the truth. And at last, each will own the privilege of looking inside himself  to discover what truly resides there. Comfort is an illusion. A false security b

SHARK

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Re: Vox Machina - From the Same People Who Brought You Critical Role
« Reply #28 on: February 08, 2022, 02:44:59 AM »
Word "fuck" was used in Legend of Vox Machina, because Critical Role players use it a lot in game. Simple as that. This show is redux of gaming session, not new Shakespeare or new Tolkien.

Quote
Is "fuck" an old word? Yes. No tell me where it shows up in Canterbury Tales or Beowolf. For estra credit, you can tell which of Shakespeare's works the word appears in.

Yeah, because obviously one can accept from high culture - like plays that can be watched by Queen, or works of Geoffrey Chaucer to use coarse language of contemporary soldiers, peasants and fisherfolk. That makes sense.

From Wiki: "Otherwise, the usually accepted first known occurrence of the word is found in code in a poem in a mixture of Latin and English composed in the 15th century. The poem, which satirizes the Carmelite friars of Cambridge, England, takes its title, "Flen flyys", from the first words of its opening line, Flen, flyys, and freris ('Fleas, flies, and friars'). The line that contains fuck reads Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk. Deciphering the phrase gxddbou xxkxzt pg ifmk, here by replacing each letter by the previous letter in alphabetical order, as the English alphabet was then, yields the macaronic non sunt in coeli, quia fuccant vvivys of heli, which translated means, 'They are not in heaven, because they fuck the women of Ely'. The phrase was probably encoded because it accused monks of breaking their vows of celibacy;[13] it is uncertain to what extent the word fuck was considered acceptable at the time. The stem of fuccant is an English word used as Latin.[24] In the Middle English of this poem, the term wife was still used generically for 'woman'.[‡ 1]

William Dunbar's 1503 poem "Brash of Wowing" includes the lines: "Yit be his feiris he wald haue fukkit: / Ye brek my hairt, my bony ane" (ll. 13–14).[25]

The oldest occurrence of the word in adjectival form (which implies use of the verb) in English comes from the margins of a 1528 manuscript copy of Cicero's De Officiis. A monk had scrawled in the margin notes, "fuckin Abbot". Whether the monk meant the word literally, to accuse this abbott of "questionable monastic morals", or whether he used it "as an intensifier, to convey his extreme dismay" is unclear.[26]"

That's about written word. But probable Nordic origin puts it's few centuries earlier. I'm sorry that Chanson de Roland is not a good source about how French peasants swore in XI century :P

Quote
Yeah, the term *Fuck* is actually pretty old, derived from old Germanic and Norse slang. The idea of using vulgar words being modern is simply a reflection o American whitebread prudishness. Dark Ages people used vulgar and coarse language all the time.

Indeed. Judging overall language from written language in countries and times where only elites often clergy could read and write is not a good methodology.

So you can quote Wikipedia, big deal.

Now tell me all the times "fuck" is used in medieval fantasy media over the last few decades.

"Fuck" doesn't show up in a lot of the medieval fantasy media that we consume, so when it does like this it is jarring. Yeah, it is meta because Vox Machina is a medieval fantasy cartoon based on a group of players paid to act like they are having fun playing D&D in an attempt to maximize the advertisement budget of WotC/Hasbro. So instead, the cartoon ends up looking like a bunch of cosplayers trying to tell an episodic story.

Greetings!

They're just trying to be edgy and cool! *Laughing*

I suspect you are probably right, Jeff. ;D

As an aside, I can't say I have high expectations of a cartoon based on Critical Role.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK
"It is the Marine Corps that will strip away the façade so easily confused with self. It is the Corps that will offer the pain needed to buy the truth. And at last, each will own the privilege of looking inside himself  to discover what truly resides there. Comfort is an illusion. A false security b

jeff37923

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Re: Vox Machina - From the Same People Who Brought You Critical Role
« Reply #29 on: February 08, 2022, 04:51:42 AM »
Now with "fuck" out of the way, I watched the next block of three episodes of Vox Machina (night shift induced insomnia, you are a bitch). These episodes were not nearly as repulsive as the previous three, some parts were actually engaging - especially the undead attacks. The gnome bard was still annoying, but had fewer lines.

I may have to revise my opinion.
"Meh."