tanoraqui:

I wish we’d gotten more interaction between Anna Ripley and Keyleth? because I don’t think Ripley would get Keyleth, on some fundamental level(s). Like, with enough time (cough a month and a half eavesdropping cough), Ripley could pretty much figure out all of Vox Machina, which buttons to press to get the responses she wanted – but not Keyleth. Oh, there are obvious buttons to press – guilt, responsibility, compassion. And Ripley wouldn’t dismiss her as not a threat, because of course she’s a huge threat – her power is great and, to our oh-so-human gunslingers, completely incomprehensible and uncontrollable. I mean, Ripley (and to a lesser degree Percy) has some arcane magic, but that’s so different from the natural forces Keyleth wields.

(Note: I like to think that Ripley told Kynan to specifically target Keyleth in the fight on Glintshore, for reason of Keyleth’s worrying potential in battle, plus being VM’s best healer with Pike gone.)

But that’s sort of the point? This is not the place for me to sob desperately into my hands about all the ways Percy and Keyleth are totally opposite people but it is, because that’s what would fuck Ripley up, thrice over. First because Keyleth just thinks so differently from her: heart versus head, all that guilt and compassion – the reason Ripley consistently plays Percy like a violin, after all, is that they’re all but the same person; Keyleth is very much not. But that’s manageable – most people aren’t.

But Ripley thinks most people are idiots, not worth her time or attention, and Keyleth, aside from the aforementioned precautions for power, would fall so firmly into that category. Which is Ripley’s mistake, obviously, underestimating the advantages of, like, wisdom-based skills and being kind to people.

More interestingly, Ripley wouldn’t get why Percy and Keyleth are best friends? Because she and Percy so usually think the same way; what does he see in this girl? Is it just a fixation of his infuriating moral conscience? (Yes. That’s certainly what Ripley would conclude.)

And yes, that’s pretty correct. But what Ripley would miss, I think, is all the ways Percy and Keyleth are actually alike? Ripley would see the ditzy, sentimental druid, acknowledge that being driven more by her emotions means Keyleth can sometimes be provoked to rage – but she’d miss the fire and vengeance with which Keyleth once threatened an ancient green dragon. She’d miss the willingness, ultimately, to make difficult decisions – not make that Keyleth would make them the way Percy or Ripley would, but that Keyleth knows they’re difficult, and considers them carefully. She’d miss the unbreakable steel with which Keyleth holds to her morals and works to do so, and the sheer force of determination and personality with which she literally brought Percy back from the dead.

It’d be good interaction for Keyleth, too. There’s a reason she clashes so violently with Raishan – she’s good against these head-over-heart people who don’t regret a single decision they make, scoff at ethics and non-self-interest, avoid responsibility for anything resembling mistakes. They make Keyleth shine, and not in the way Percy has to fight to rise away from it – Keyleth’s problem is always her lack of self-confidence, self-esteem, and putting her against people like Raishan and Ripley not only tempts her with her darker side (the vengeance, the violence, the righteousness and rage), but forces her to see her kindness and self-doubt as the strengths they are, or can be in moderation. Tempered steel.

So with Ripley instead of Raishan, it’s all of that but with the bonus complication of Percy’s relationships with them both. There’s some level where Ripley is just jealous that Percy shows interest in people other than her, and I love it. They’re fighting over his soul, of course. Not literally. (Potentially literally.) It’s Keyleth and Percy being best friends and working together in ways Ripley would never expect, and foiling her as smoothly as they did Garmelie with the “piece of a threshold crest.” It’s Keyleth starting out all button-pressable but growing up a little and really earning that underestimation. 

…if anyone wanted to, like, write a fic…