bettykissme - Tumblr blog

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Tired of the slander - Vex'ahlia Vessar was born haughty, but that runaway survivalist mercenary didn't transform into a completely proper lady overnight just because she has swag! She's nouveau riche as hell!

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thinking about the scene between vex and percy at the end of campaign one where after over a hundred episodes of the two of them as snarky assholes (affectionate but factual) helping to fight dragons and gods, they both buckle under the weight of just. missing their families in a way that’s fresh to both of them in different ways, where percy finally has the room to admit what’s been taken from him and what he let himself lose in his commitment to vengeance (the ability to actually Grieve) and where vex just watched her brother walk into death off towards their mother. and it’s been a horrible day, and percy confesses that he was going to be a clockmaker, once.

and then, three decades later, we see the two of them elevated to a less accessible status through the eyes of bell’s hells, where they’re to be the judges whether laudna gets to come back, where The De Rolos™ are leaders and percy is a hardass and vex is a lady, except there’s an intricate clock tower in this Whitestone’s cityscape, except ashton goes to punch a statue bust and several brown bears occupy his surrounding environment. and vex sees a face not unlike her own that was killed precisely for that fact and commits to helping her and percy sees a face too much like his own and gives them a hard time until he’s standing surrounded by the crushed glass of his home and offering genuine advice about how to move forward.

and to me what was so compelling about vex and percy both as individuals and as two people who fell in love with each other was that they both had walls for different reasons that functioned in very similar ways where they didn’t have to admit the things they knew/felt were missing in themselves. but by the end of their campaign those walls aren’t gone but they have, like, doors and windows now or something. and that’s present when we see them again from the more removed view of campaign 3, percy’s harshness softens for his daughter, vex helps bell’s hells but also ensured that should laudna bring delilah back then whitestone was protected and, god!!!! they’re perfect delicious characters genuinely and the way that matt makes the duality that defines those characters (and their relationship and whitestone itself) where they are stoic and cold and harsh but they’re also warm and kind and silly. that’s narrative that’s character creation and development that’s environmental storytelling that’s to be loved (and to love) is to be changed.

sorry but tonight’s 4sd has been fantastic and the group talking about the inherent shittiness of whitestone’s geographic and historic placement and the resonance of seeing vex and percy and percy’s advice to ashton has me thinking so many thought’s because. what if whitestone was already tending towards uninhabitability and what if it got worse when the briarwoods diminished even the warmth the sun tree could provide but. what if the last son of the ruling family returned and what if he fell in love and that was enough not to cancel out the harshness of whitestone but to amend it and add something to it. something something the mistress of the grey hunt protects whitestone from the harshness of the parchwood, something something percy’s speech to vex about why he gave her the one title she’d have to earn, something something vex was already doing the work of the mistress of the grey hunt simply by caring about and standing by percy — even before it was love — in the face of orthax and the briarwoods and death blast coffins and deals with devils.

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we’ll help

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I’ve connected some dots.

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"Matilda"

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something about how laudna was desecrated in her first death, how her body was violated for the purposes of the briarwoods’ twisted games, and how this time she’s surrounded by love, by grief, by imogen insisting with tears in her eyes that laudna’s body be treated with dignity

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If you think about it the imodna slow burn is actually the funniest thing because every second of it is like

Laudna: Imogen I would tear my unbeating heart from my chest and wrap it in my very skin and give it to you if I thought you might want it

Imogen: oh that’s sweet :)

The rest of the Hells: …????

Imogen: time to go stare silently into space with tears pricking at my eyes for 19 minutes because I know she means it platonically and it’s awful for me to want anything else 😔💔

The rest of the Hells: …???¿?????¿?!!!!?????

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loving to the point of ruin is my favorite type of love. you’d sacrifice everything for them? watch the world burn? that’s the pinnacle of love

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so im getting to the end of my finally watching exu calamity

for the most part i haven't really made posts on my reactions here bc most of what i'd have to say has already been said, i've been seeing those meta posts around since calamity came out

but god the one unexpected thing about loquatius and laerryn i can't get over is just all of aabria's little reactions to quay's choices here

like. i know laerryn loves him as much as he loves her, but she's not good at showing it. she's deeply pragmatic, which means while loquatius is having huge moment after huge moment illustrating just how much he's willing to sacrifice for her, she's making sure she can do her job. because she has to. even if that means leaving him to die in the calix chamber, because she couldn't have saved him, and if she died trying then the whole world would be lost

but at the same time, she did all of this for him. it was so important to her to finish the leywright that solstice, because she has a longer lifespan than quay, and he wouldn't be with her to see the next one. she was distraught when she felt him slip away from her over the telepathic bond, even though she'd chosen to let it happen

part of the reason their marriage failed the first time is they just don't talk. there's so little communication between the two, not just on laerryn's side. quay has the big moments, yes, but how many of those does laerryn even know happened? she doesn't know that he fired elena to protect her from being blamed for evandrin. she doesn't know he prerecorded a broadcast to be played in the event of his death, that would tell the city not about laerryn's mistakes, but that it was loquatius himself who failed them, and laerryn tried everything she could to save the city. she doesn't know that he turned down a call from his queen and his family to come home and be protected from the apocalypse, bc he'd rather die trying to save laerryn, avalir, and his new family, than live without them

but aabria does.

and that gives way to the tiniest most hard hitting fourth wall breaks

like when quay turns his back on the seelie queen's offer - aabria immediately gives a small "no, no, you have to go"

laerryn needs him here. the story needs him here. there is no benefit to quay leaving, except that quay would be alive, and that's what laerryn desparantly wants, so it comes out in aabria

when we get to the climax, too, the big fight where all they're trying to do is keep laerryn alive long enough to activate the leywright, and it gets to quay's last turn? the first thing aabria says is "run. run."

laerryn is pragmatic. aabria knows this is a tragedy, and has been so far the most gung ho about playing into the tragedy. from a pragmatic perspective, loquatius should stay with laerryn, it gives the world a better chance of survival. narratively, loquatius should stay with laerryn bc that's how this story is supposed to go. and personally, loquatius should stay with laerryn because he can't bear to do anything else

but twice, she tells him to leave. because in this story where every single character is forced to reckon with which they love more, their city or their family - laerryn chose the city once. more than once. here at the end of all things, she won't do it again

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Exandria Reddit: If you could have sex with one person in all of history, who is your ultimate lay?

Vex: I would not choose something so crass, but if I could simply spend the day with one person long gone; I would choose my brother, Vax, who was taken from this world too early.

Keyleth: For the lay, I also choose this woman’s dead brother.

Percy: Seconded, and I’m married to her.

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Vex: Percy, we'll find her. Percy: That's what I'm worried about.

These two just need to kiss already.

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de rolo kids in order of how good they are about being fed when they're babies, from best to worst:

-leona and wolfe (the sooner they eat whatever it is the sooner they can get back to smacking each other with their stuffies)

-gwen (points docked for investigating the carrots instead of eating them)

-charlie (makes quite a mess but he eats it all, bless him)

-vesper (will only eat vegetables on the condition that she may give her parents the most condescending look a baby is capable of)

-vax (here to cause problems on purpose and will not eat the green beans and shan't ever eat the green beans. will accept fruit but only if offered with supplication)

yes percy has made scatter plots. no they don't make sense to anyone but vex, including himself

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Mastermind by Taylor Swift is such a perc’ahlia song omg

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Vax and Vex are an expert inversion of gender roles without having to stereotype and act like the opposite gender in this essay I will—

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Vax'ildan meeting Percy for the first time: ugh ew what a psycho

Vex'ahlia meeting Percy for the first time: *twirling her hair and plotting how often she can be naked around him till he gets it* I know right~

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Y’all can we just take a minute and imagine a modern/high school au where Korrin, Keyleth’s dad, owns like a big ass important company but is so lowkey barely anyone knows and like Keyleth meets and gets to know the twins right? They hang out in her home and Korrin can tell somethings wrong so their home becomes like a safe place for the twins but one day Syldor comes looking for them (maybe he can track their phones?) walks straight up to the house but when Korrin opens the door he fuckin freezes because like Syldor has a high up important job but Korrin is straight up his bosses boss, the whole ass CEO of the company he works for and it’s an entire ‘oh shit’ moment with Korrin throwing hints taht he knows he’s an ass and being passive aggressive as all hell once it clicks that Syldor is the twins father.

Yes I am still wanting to read a fanfic where Korrin rips into Syldor what makes you ask?

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Beau: Our only hope right now is this kind, selfless, amazing nerd.

Caleb: Do you have to call me a nerd so much?

Beau: I said a lot of other really nice things, okay? Toughen up, nerd.