So how
likely is it that Percy and Vex have actually been wearing rings ever since
half-way through the time skip, but the entirety of VM just rolled shit on
their perception rolls and hasn’t noticed so far?
…How likely
is it that they could pull that off with an entire pregnancy?
Alright,
guess I’m not gonna fanfic this any time soon, so here we go.
Pike
dragging Scanlan for calling her magic fucked up is great. So gratifying. But
you know what should truly be addressed at some point about the things he said,
and the things Pike specifically should be upset about?
When
Scanlan made the point of listing off how everyone’s got someone, and he got no
one on VM, he started with Pike and Grog who would always have each other.
Which is, as far as we know, a purely familial bond. That’s fair.
And then he
went on and listed the couples? How they’d always have each other? When I’m not
even sure Percy and Vex were all that official with everyone yet (dragons kind
of made them have bigger concerns), and also, you know, twins?
Like, real
talk. Romantic relationships come and go. I don’t see either of them going any
time soon, or ever, but how is that any more significant than, you know,
twins?!
Not to
mention that Percy and Keyleth had a very platonic to familial relationship
going on as well.
The point
is, in that speech, Scanlan’s priorities were somewhat skewered towards
romantic relationships. I don’t have someone romantically, and that’s part of
the reason why all this is happening. Which places a really, truly unfair
burden on Pike, seeing how the entire proposal thing went down.
So, if she’d
just said yes, he’d have stayed? If she’d just taken one for the team and
accepted his proposal and advances, so he could have someone, too?
That’s just
gross. So gross. Up there with calling someone who’d been looking up to you as
a father figure out for daddy issues kinds of gross, if not worse.
And the
fact that he seems to be okay now that he has people “rooting” for him doesn’t
make this any better. Someone used the Tyra Banks gif in response already, VM
was already rooting for Scanlan. They all did have each other’s backs
unconditionally, and independently of romantic or blood relationships, it’s just
that apparently, Scanlan didn’t value anything else.
He had fair
points about being treated differently for his height and Vax being bad about
his personal space, and also leaving him alone after dying was not a good move,
even without the prank which was… Welll, an entirely different cup of tea. VM
needs like an aftercare ritual after intense fights, so no one has to spend the
night alone, also independently of the romantic relationships, so the burden
doesn’t fall to one person specifically. Like Pike. Poor Pike.
(…and selective memory, confirmation bias, Keyleth-hate, and the everlasting adoration of villains)
Yes, I am going to rant about youtube comments on critical role again. It’s what I do. Here’s your regular reminder not to talk to the Fourth Reich Nazi in the comments, please.
Anyhow, getting that out of the way, way back when, I posted a youtube comment on how I, too, adore Raishan and would have loved to see her Vegeta her way into reluctant ally and party member indefinitely, but that that just wasn’t happening, ever. For reasons entirely unrelated to Keyleths totally unfounded, not justifiable hate for her over not really killing people Keyleth had no personal connection to at all, ever, #ThanksKeyleth. How dare she object to mass murder in the second degree or whatever the English legal terminology is here. (It’s Mittelbare Täterschaft in German. I’ll stop now, this is not about law.)
That post recently sparked a discussion with someone about Raishan, and how the “smart” thing for VM to do would have been to let her do as she pleased and never bother with her again.
And, I mean, sure. Attacking her with only three people present and the entire party pretty much depleted was not a “smart” choice. Hell, Liam himself acknowledged that on several occasions.
And this isn’t even about the morality of deal breaking. I agree on that front, deal breaking is not good, and would make me as a DM consider adjusting alignments at some point.
I do, however, see no moral failure in not letting a genocidal egomaniac get away unscathed with the knowledge of how to be an even more powerful genocidal egomaniac in the future.
And taking into account only player knowledge, things that have been established in-game, down to the very moment when Raishan pulled out the probably Speak with Dead scroll, that’s what they knew.
Raishan quite literally broke the world and the barriers between planes of existence to find a cure for herself. People give Keyleth shit for blaming the decimation of the fire Ashari on Raishan when in reality, Thordak was the one who actually destroyed things, but Raishan is still to blame. She did release the mad dog, in the middle of the civilization she infiltrated to learn how to do that in the first place.
Hell, she didn’t just do that and shrug at everything Thordak did after. She actively brokered an alliance between five chromatic dragons with the explicit goal of subjugating the centers of human civilization, killing thousands in the process.
Her goddamn introduction was her breathing poison into a panicked crowd and cackling about how she enjoys the taste of fear, for fuck’s sake.
And at no point during the brokering of the deal with VM did she ever say she’d stop doing that. Sure, she promised to leave VM and maybe even all of Tal’Dorei alone, but first of all, wow, promises, amazing. Words are wind.
Second of all, this entire plan happened because Raishan wanted to return to her happy existence of subjugating people and ransacking temples and spreading terror throughout her own domain. That’s how she got that curse in the first place.
So even if we take VM never thinking about what Thordak could actually tell her at face value because they only briefly discussed it on-screen, I’d say there’s still a bit of a moral conundrum to just let her go and keep on keeping on in what she’s been doing before she was cursed.
And I mean, VM does discuss briefly that whatever knowledge Thordak could have for her would at the very least make her a bigger threat than she already was. If he’d played her all along, boom goes the dynamite. You can’t tell me Raishan wouldn’t destroy shit just to blow off steam after that.
If he told her a straight-up cure, she’d be a bigger threat to humanity due to her cure making her more powerful and more long-lived.
But considering how decades of research didn’t do shit in helping her, given how D&D universes work, the only reasonable options Thordak could have had for her would be 1. a wish spell, 2. direct access to a deity, 3. dracolichdom. That’s kind of all what’s left when Greater Restoration or Remove Curse don’t do the trick.
All of which are not things you want unleashed upon the world, especially not by a being who has already proven that it will go to ridiculously destructive lengths for its own benefit alone.
Also, just throwing that out there, it’s not like VM didn’t agree that Raishan should not, under any circumstances, access the knowledge Thordak might have for her. Vax didn’t exactly act not according to plan, the plan just could have been executed better.
(Also Raishan did kind of shoot first, but that’s neither here nor there.)
So, no, attacking her, hell, following her at all wasn’t “smart”. Three people died as a result. But, and I’m bringing this up because I just rediscovered @out-there-on-the-maroon post on that topic, these people do not play a “smart” game. Or an efficient one. Or anything that has anything to do with the path of least resistance and going the easy way because it’s smart.
Even if Raishan kept true to her word not to bother VM ever again, she’d go off and terrorize people with her newly regained powers, even before lichdom came into play. That’d be blood VM would have had on their hands in any case.
And that’s just assuming Matt would break his long-standing trend of consequences biting the players in the ass eventually. And letting a now possibly all powerful or lichified dragon out into the world is something that can’t just let go like that. She’d be back in some way, shape, or form. A
nd it’s not like Raishan was remorseful about the fight breaking out in the first place, just about the effort and resources she’d burn in fighting them off, because Raishan is a “smart” player.
Also, just throwing that out there, if you think breaking a deal is enough to bring down alignments and make VM the most evilest and revolting people ever, what’s releasing a dragon o certified mass destruction into the world? Yeeaah, I see no moral high ground here.
fun facts:
So we already established that Percy isn’t allowed on death trap islands near female villains whose names start with R anymore, right? Or just islands will do, really, the rest is weirdly specific.
Well. Between the lava and tonight, I propose that Keyleth is permanently banned from jumping. In any way. In any context. Forever.
Look at all the fanfic I’ll never finish. Except for maybe the last one, because canon can’t screw that up anymore.
(Though to be fair, some of these are actually finished and can be found here.)
Every time someone mentions how bad the Raven Queen armor smells, you can see Taliesin dying a little inside. Percy worked on that clasp for like ten episodes, and everyone else just goes ahead and keeps forgetting about it.
(Also whatever Percy put into that thing probably smells way better than lavender)
Like, I wouldn’t even have been worried about a Perc’ahlia break up and could have written essays about why not, but y’all went ahead and put the idea in my head.
And now I still think a Perc’ahlia break up is unlikely. And the only way it’ll happen is Taliesin Jaffe’s perpetual need to torture Percy. Dammit.
So by now
we’ve all reached the conclusion that objectively, outside of the guns Percy
may or may not know about, nothing Scanlan has or Percy said he wants is
actually “his“ – the earring was a gift either by Tiberius or Allura because
Tiberius asked her to make it (they get the very last earring from Allura in
the earlier episodes), and the gate stone was technically gifted by Lilith to
the whole team.
And while I
think you could argue that both of these things were made “for the members of
Vox Machina,” so arguing that you lose all claim to them when leaving the team
isn’t that far out of it, that is really, really not what the entire thing was
about.
To quote
Taliesin himself from the subsequent Talks Machina episodes, Percy has anger management
issues and abandonment issues. He also fancies himself a very logical person,
the voice of reason, the only adult in the room at any given time. What he’s
trying to do here is attempting to rationalize the hurt he feels about Scanlan
leaving, by making it not about feelings but about material, tangible things. Something
you can build a logical case for or against.
That case
might be lacking in some way, as in the earring was a gift to each person
specifically and Vex gave the gate stone to Scanlan of her own volition with
the rest of the team agreeing, but Percy wasn’t there for that part of the conversation.
And it’s not really about having a waterproof case that would hold up in a
court of law here, it is, again, about redirecting the hurt and anger he feels about
what Scanlan has done.
Same goes
to his argument about how “useful” Scanlan would have been in hell or while
fighting the Kraken. First, this is objectively true. You can literally see Sam
silently panicking during the Kraken fight because Tary is useless and Scanlan
would have done so much better. You know who else was completely useless and
helpless during that fight? Percy. Just by design. He had to watch everything
go to shit, Vax dying, and not only was he completely incapable of doing
anything about this, there was also the nagging awareness that with Scanlan
there, things would have gone so, so much better.
Which, by
the way, also ties in back with his argument about stuff: Having the gate stone
and an earring for Tary would, objectively, have made every single adventure
they’ve been on after Scanlan left easier.
Of course,
feeling like he was only “useful” to the team and nobody cared about him beyond
that was one of the major points that made Scanlan upset enough to leave. Of
course thinking about people in terms of usefulness to a team is pretty blasé and
dehumanizing and inconsiderate and just not a very nice thing to do. But it’s the
term Percy has always been thinking in. And, again, a coping mechanism to avoid
dealing with feelings.
(Also,
objectively verifiable. That makes it an attractive way of thinking when you’re
trying to avoid actually feeling stuff.)
Another
thing to keep in mind is that Percy knows this about himself. He knows he’s not
really a very nice person. He knows he thinks about people strategically rather
than emotionally most of the time, especially where their adventuring lifestyle
is concerned, especially when it comes to keeping the largest number of people
alive as possible. Hence why he checks in with people he considers “nicer” or “better”
than him.
Exhibit A: Having
that conversation about stuff with Vex in the first place, and listening to
what she has to say here. Vex herself tends to err on the side of being rational
rather than emotional (in stark contrast to her brother), but she’s a lot more
in touch with her feelings and empathy comes easier to her. Which, by the way,
makes her uniquely equipped to understand where Percy is coming from, but also
to make him consider things from a less utilitarian standpoint.
Exhibit B:
Checking in with Pike and Kerrek before pulling the prank on Scanlan after the
resurrection, another scene that is quite frequently misinterpreted. Percy was
in a very bad place, hurt, had also just died for the second time, and he was
fully aware of his own mental state. He was fully aware that he was being
spiteful and that this is probably not a good idea, but Pike and Kerrek, at
least to him objectively better people than Percy himself, agreed that it was
okay.
Now, of
course, it wasn’t, and would have been in poor taste under any and all
circumstances, but up to when Scanlan woke up and it all went down, Pike
herself was convinced it would be okay. I’ve seen someone argue, I believe in
this tag, that if Scanlan had mentally been where the party thought he was, he’d
have found it hilarious. I think that’s stretching it a bit, and that the joke
was carried a bit too far in any case, but I can see why Pike and Percy wouldn’t
think so until it was too late. Scanlan did do a great job of hiding where he
was actually at, and the characters literally weren’t allowed to know any
better because of die rolls and meta gaming, making the entire scene so much
more infuriating on so many levels, but heeeey… Not really what I am here to
talk about.
andtheblueberrymuffin said:
This really made it clear that Wildmount
and Draconia are/were some really screwed up places, tbh
Oh, yeah, right, Draconia was on Wildmount, too. So we can add intraracial slavery to the list of fucked up things happening in Wildmount.
And I mean, individually, Zahra and Lilith’s family problems, the Briarwoods and Ripley, Opash, selling your kids into slavery, and what happened in Draconia could have been isolated incidents. But all of that happening on the same fucking continent? Yeeaaah… The next part of the campaign should be fun.
Overdressed & Underappreciated 