I know he’s kind of a polarizing character, but I have to say, Elias Bouchard truly is Iconic. When you hear the twist of “the boring middle manager was actually secretly an evil eldritch monster the whole time!” you sort of assume that the boring middle manager persona was just a facade, but no, he really does seem to just enjoy dull administrative work. He’s both exactly as boring as he seems on the surface and profoundly fucked up in ways you couldn’t imagine. He’s practically omniscient and playing 4-D chess with everyone, but he responds to even slight hiccups in his elaborate scheme with acts of extreme violence. He beats an old man to death with a metal pipe and when someone brings it up later he goes, “Yeah I may have overreacted there.” His employees are constantly trying to murder him. He broke out of prison just so he could give a dramatic monologue. He had a weird gay thing going on with seemingly every man he met in the past 200 years. He loves scheduling.
Reminding myself that I’m only 20 and I still have plenty of time to march on Rome and establish myself as dictator no matter how much it feels like I’m catastrophically and irreparably behind my peers
I finished my rewatch/relisten of the Vox Machina campaign in mid-December (although I recently re-embarked on the second half of the Chroma Conclave arc hoping season 3 of TLVOM will be announced (released?? 🤞) by the time I reach "A Bard's Lament"). Predictably, I bawled, AGAIN, but by then I'd already been scribbling and sketching ideas for this for... a couple of weeks? Hence the little WIP preview last month.
I'll never shut up about this moment. It's just as beautiful as it's heartbreaking, in- and off-game, especially taking into account all the context of characters/people involved.
Also, bonus, because after I finished sketching that 6th frame I thought a hug was needed.