aminil:

technoturian replied to your post: Thoughts on Scanlan & VM

I think the main reason people are angry at him is not because they think he had no reasons for his behavior, but that *regardless* of the reasons for his behavior, his behavior was hurtful, and he doesn’t seem to think there’s anything wrong with that. Furthermore, he claims to have changed yet began the encounter with them being just as manipulative and deceitful as always. I haven’t seen most people mad at Scanlan misunderstand WHY he left, just criticize HOW he left.

If people truly understand the why, then the ‘how’ is logical.

How he left is by becoming angry, which is logical if you understand what VM have unknowingly been doing all this time. Of course he set them up for misunderstanding him since he deflected any casual questions, but did anyone actually really try?  

Let’s focus on the how. How he left is that he basically just verbally berated them for;

1) Showing his dead body to his daughter, which is the one thing he didn’t want her to see.

2) Putting him in a night gown and smearing him in pudding, thus making his death a joke. An affirmation that they never truly understood him. 

3) Not caring about him. They only care about this false joker image he pretends to be. 

4) Not knowing the real him, and not taking the effort to get to know the real him. 

He used very harsh words, but none of the things he said was truly 100% bullshit. Some of the arguments/techniques he used were very unfair, but he even dialled it down quite a lot in the end, by saying that most of their counter-arguments are also valid and saying it’s actually ‘all right’ and that he’s ‘just hungover from having died’. VM are basically encouraging him to spend time with his daughter at the end of that conversation, and when he turns around and does just that, they feel betrayed and abandoned. 

Regarding having changed: Scanlan says he feels he has a better purpose being who he is now. He HAS changed. Perhaps to the person he actually is, instead of someone who always tried to make everyone happy, following them around and doing whatever the group decides.
It’s just that that is not who VM want him to be. 

A list of things he said that were truly, 100% bullshit:

• We went into the 9 hells for Pike. Wrong. You went to the elemental plane of fire for a vestige. Getting the plane wrong, okay, fine. The City of Brass was pretty hellish when you haven’t seen the actual place.
• We fought Goliaths for Grog. No, you fought them for the vestige, and that just happened to tie into Grog’s backstory. The plan wasn’t even to fight the goliaths, but you intervened because Grog alone wasn’t strong enough.
• We fought vampires so Percy could feel good about himself. Wrong. You fought vampires to clear your name after fucking up your diplomatic standing in Emon. To free Uriel from their influence. And then stuck to it because the group decided it was the right thing to do.
• We went into the Feywild so the twins could fix their daddy issues. Wrong. You went into the Feywild to get a vestige. You wouldn’t even have gone to Syngorn without Garmelie. The encounter with Syldor happened to get the guards off your back.

Also I’m especially pissed off about this one, because it is just the most mean spirited thing he has said during that encounter. The ethics of accusing someone looking up to you as a substitute dad of daddy issues notwithstanding, Vex is by far the most vulnerable to this kind of gaslighting, because she doesn’t believe herself worthy of having her emotions taking seriously to begin with.

•    You never did anything for me.

Wrong. You brought up the scene with breaking Kaylie out of jail before as not mattering, so all I’m going to say is that Percy sure wasn’t nice about it, and there was a petty revenge factor to it, but Scanlan took him along so he can throw his title around. Of course that’s going to involve classism and lots of it. But until Scanlan started hitting him, it was actually working.

Any time Scanlan wanted to do something, especially in regards to Kaylie, the group was completely ride or die for it. Of course we’re taking this 3 day detour so you can fight her. Of course I’ll run through the sewers with you. They were similarly ride or die for the fake drug deal he made, the twins especially, Vex in particular.

So yes, they helped him whenever he asked for it. It’s not like they did much more than that for anyone else. Hell, they did offer to help him find Kaylie or something like that a lot even without him asking.

The real point here is that Scanlan was just handed his vestige with no quest attached to it. And that the episodes with Kaylie he did get were all the character arc Matt had prepared for him. Which is unfortunate (though still kind of more than Pike and Vex got at that point. Still kind of is.) but just how the game goes.

Speaking of which, in-universe, Scanlan either brushed them off or lied whenever anyone tried to see through him. Which Vax, Vex, and even Keyleth did on several occasions. He then rolled 30+ on deception, and what they did in not imploring further was either follow game rules (trying to roll again or not believing him would be meta-gaming, something these characters especially get accused of a lot anyhow) or accept his boundaries. He essentially got mad at them for doing what he wanted them to do.

Now, I get that it feels to him like they never even tried. But what Scanlan did was blaming them for never disrespecting his boundaries, never seeing through him when he tried everything he could to keep that from happening. So sure, there’s some truth to the claim that they don’t care about the “real” him. They never, ever got to see the real Scanlan, and still probably haven’t. He never let them, they never had the chance. Blaming them for that and twisting facts around to attack them personally is unfair, it is gaslighting, it is an abuser technique.

(Which is not even going into the age differences here, personal pet peeve of mine, because holy fuck does that get uncomfortable.)

I’m, btw, perfectly with you on the points about the prank. I get where Percy and Pike were coming from, but even with someone who would have been okay with something like that (if such a person exists at all), it still would have been in horrible taste. They were two very drunk and very upset people, but that too is an explanation, not an excuse.

I’m less with you on the point about not showing Kaylie his dead body. First of all, the group did not know about his hang ups with that at all, unless it was in the letter, and then it was on Pike who wasn’t present. And then I am of the persuasion that it is less damaging to someone to get to participate in the resurrection of their father than it is to be informed that oh, btw, he died. They even gave Kaylie the choice of going to see him. Hell, even when she didn’t believe in resurrection magic, she did want to see his body to get closure.

Sure, it’s against wishes Scanlan never really expressed as far as we know. But in a real-life analogy, they essentially asked her to maybe donate blood or a kidney to save him and she agreed to do it. And I’m with VM in that when someone dies and you can keep that from happening, you do whatever it takes to keep that from happening.

Also, they didn’t feel betrayed by him wanting to spend time with his daughter. Or at least, that’s nothing they accused him of, and wouldn’t. Feeling that way can’t be helped, but they would have let him go, without a fuss, if he’d said he needed a break or to retire and to spend time with his daughter. They all would have encouraged that. Instead, he made this as vicious as possible by twisting facts around to hurt them for things they have little to no accountability for (besides the prank, done by two people who definitely didn’t get the worst from him).

And he didn’t say I’m leaving to be with my daughter, he said I’m leaving because you don’t care about me enough or in the way I want you to. Which is an entirely different can of of worms.

(Sidenote: Scanlan wasn’t even going to go away with Kaylie, Sam later said. Percy and Vex talked him into that.)

And VM literally still have no idea who he is. There are valid reasons not to buy this new persona of his that has popped up, from saying what he clearly believes they want to hear to deceiving to mind-erasing, he’s not exactly made for a very changed or trust-worthy picture. Oh well. Here’s hoping that once everyone has calmed down, they can all have a reasonable discussion and sort out all of the bullshit on all sides. It’s just going to take a while.