I will fight Percival Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski De Rolo the Third behind a Denny’s at 2am for even thinking about harming my son, Scanlan Shorthalt, because he can’t deal with his own goddamn emotions
Yeah, never mind Percy understands his anger is unchecked as a direct result of his personal trauma. Not an excuse but Sarenrae forbid that Percy actually feels angry at Scanlan instead of sad over his leaving.
Percy is a man who doesn’t let anyone in easily. The last people that were let in easily slaughtered his entire fucking family and took Cassandra as their little pet. So for someone he considered not only a friend, but a part of this rag-tag family just sit there and spit venom (some of it truth, most of it lies) at him and the rest of their friends and then fuck off?
and then have that friend come back a year later, in a disguise, and learn that friend decided to steal one of the very inventions he is absolutely ashamed of ever creating, asking for more bullets? And even then dawdle when it came to dishing out apologies?
Percy has every fucking right to have uncontrolled anger at Scanlan, he’s allowed to have a moment where he can’t deal with his emotions and turns to Vex, someone who has seen him at his literal worst, and persuade him to not act on them.
yeah i’m not real impressed with all this discourse about how terrible percy is for having a plan to deal with scanlan if he needed to be dealt with. he never acted on it, and literally the whole point of percy is having really terrible thoughts. he’s the guy in the group who thinks of the worst shit, which you need because he can think like the enemy. but suddenly he’s the total worst for it.
Reminder that Percy came up with this plan during the year break, not after Scanlan came back and helped save the world (although not before returning in the worst way possible).
Percy came up with this plan to kill Scanlan while he knew exactly four things about his former friend:
1. Scanlan was an almost absurdly powerful magic user and in possession of at least one particularly dangerous artifact (Mythcarver).
2. Scanlan was familiar with Percy’s guns (I don’t think Percy knew at the time that Scanlan actually had one of Ripley’s guns) and that was plenty dangerous enough since all Ripley had to work with regarding to the guns was hearsay and second or thirdhand stories.
3. Scanlan was a known drug addict (Vex knew this for certain and I doubt she would have kept it from Percy) and had left with his alcoholic daughter.
4. Scanlan had left on VERY bad terms with Vox Machina, screaming quite a lot of bullshit at them and saying they had never cared about him.
When you put all of this together with Percy’s history of being brutally betrayed and having dangerous things stolen from him to be unleashed on the world against his wishes, it’s not hard to see why an angry Percy would start formulating a plan to deal with Scanlan (whether through Scanlan’s death or just taking his dangerous/powerful items away from him) in the event that it became necessary.
It’s also not hard to see why Percy, who knows himself very well and knows he can be blinded by his anger and need for vengeance, ran the whole thing by Vex first to get a second opinion and to let someone else tell him it was a bad idea. Percy obviously never went through with it but you know what’s really the most telling thing of all to me?
Vex never warned Scanlan about it. Take that as you will.
Yeah, I mean, if Percy actually wants to do fucked up shit, he doesn’t exactly run that by anyone first. He’s been very consistent in that. Whenever he asks for opinions on his plans, it’s because he knows they’re wrong or at least questionable in some way. If he wants to sell his soul because that’s easier than dealing with losing someone, he’ll just secretly have the contract on him. If he wants to stab a green dragon in the back, he’s just gonna do it. The things he can be stopped from with a simple “darling, how about no?” are not actually things he planned on going through with anyway.
Overdressed & Underappreciated 