User blog comment:DiscipleOfNein/Sick of it/@comment-89.154.92.51-20190617175518

Oh, she's definetily singled out with some real toxic nonsense. I certainly noticed that in the early days, I was under the impression it had died down, but yeah, it's there.

Personally, I think criticising people is fine and I find the sort of fawning, drooling sacarine fanboy stuff to be off-putting, but I'll take that over toxicity any day. And frankly, Marisha doesn't need even the defense you put up of her. We don't need to argue for Marisha's qualities. I have some opinions about a cast member (not Marisha), but I keep them to myself because even if I were to write critically, I wouldn't want to make stuff personal. My rule is, you wanna criticise that's fine, just criticise the work, not the worker.

For instance, I personally tend to go back and forth on Beauregard: sometimes she's fun, other times she's just incredibly obnoxious. She's a self-righteous bully and monumental hypocrite who treats pretty much every interaction - including moments like Caleb's revelation of his past - like a struggle she has to come out on top of.

Now you can say whatever you want about her background explaining why she is the way she is... but that's just an author's choice. It's like when one of those cheesy fantasy art purveyors justifies another woman in a chainmail bikini by saying "oh, she's just comfortable with her sexuality" or some other BS. Beau is a fictional character, not a real person, and making her the way she is was just a decision that seems to have no particular merit or accomplish anything of value. We got Beauregard, we could have gotten someone else.

But - and this is important - that doesn't mean Marisha is not intelligent, or a bad actress or any of that. All that stuff's just nonsense. I don't know her outside of Critical Role, but she comes across to me as smart, cool and a nice person. She's playing an a-hole, doesn't make her one. The same can't be said of all the people who single her out.

Just one last thing: thinking the Critical Role gang makes no mistakes - that even the mistakes are just in-character - is going too far. Thing is, while they are all actors, we're not watching a method acting clinic. They're playing DnD - yes, their acting skills come into it, and yes they're doing it for an audience, but they're still playing DnD, and yeah, they make mistakes. Of course they make mistakes, who the hell doesn't? Doesn't make them bad players, nor bad actors. Honestly, I think in a way it belongs in the same category of mistake people make when they go after the players because of the characters: it's assuming that everything we see is either just some in-so-deep method acting, or that it's all a sign of the personality flaws the players are imagined to have.