#did Percy’s lines about being okay break me emotionally? yes

[mo-mode]

Everyone Else: screaming over percabeth in the Tunnel of Love storyline

Me cheering on Timothy Omundson:

[your-turn-to-role]

hi okay i hate sending asks to people without knowing them but you seem kind so im trying: during the break, i’ve been working my way through VM, and i’m at episode 75. my question, because i’ve read some of your more recent meta, is “what’s Percy’s deal?” i know he’s loved by the fandom, but i can’t find myself relating to him, and i find his assertions that he’s the only one with a plan offputting. is there more context you can give to me about percy’s character that explains his motivations?

aww, thank you!

(and yeah, asks like this are totally fine, i totally get that anxiety, good job on sending this!)

i mean, first off, you don't have to like a character everyone else does? if you don't relate to percy you can just, not relate to percy, that's fine

(and to be fair, as much as i love him as a character, i would not want him as a friend, because he's a very flawed person that has a lot to work on, but in fiction those traits are interesting to watch rather than difficult to deal with)

but, percy's deal! the short answer is people generally like him because taliesin's funny and charismatic and he does morally grey right, which is rare and a fun thing to explore (also in his relationships with other people, the entire vex-vax-percy-keyleth square is full of neat parallels and opposites and interesting things and i have whole essays in my head on all six combos there)

i don’t know which posts you’ve read so i’ll link this one here too, just to cover a couple more of the generally unnoticed aspects of his character, and things i like about percy

he’s also far from perfect, as you’ve noted, he does tend to believe he’s the smartest person in any given room, because he’s young and clever and used to being that, which you’re allowed to find off putting, but i will say i find he does that less than a lot of characters of his general archetype? he listens to pike, he listens to keyleth, he listens to vex, he respects when they have more knowledge than him on a particular subject, he’s not above asking for help. and generally most of the arguments he has with keyleth on that subject aren’t him asserting he knows more than her, but more a matter of principles and values (they’re a really interesting pair that way, they have similar backgrounds, both children of royalty running away from the crown, but they’re such opposites. percy is a natural leader who would rather anyone rule than him, keyleth fumbles her way through all of it but sticks to it because she doesn’t want to let anyone down, percy is a pragmatist, keyleth is an idealist, they both are too focused on the big picture but in two completely different ways, i could write a whole other post on this, but to get to my point, they wouldn’t be such good balances for each other if percy didn’t absolutely respect where keyleth is coming from)

for the long answer, i’m gonna break this down into parts and try to get to the core of percy's character and why he is the way he is

(under the cut bc this gets long)

1 - heavy trauma

like... this is the really really big one. percy, at age 17 or 18, had his entire life up to that point completely destroyed. his family was killed, his friends were killed, people he trusted like family (professor anders, who was a more present figure in percy's life than his actual parents) betrayed him and helped the briarwoods, he was imprisoned in his own castle's dungeons and tortured for information, they threw his siblings' bodies in there with him to make a point, cassandra helped him escape but as far as he knew she died helping him. he has two years of his life after that he straight up doesn't remember, his hair turned white from the stress of it. 

trying to go after ripley the first time didn't work, he was captured and left to starve in a prison cell, for the first few months of travelling with vox machina he genuinely believed it wasn't real, because realistically no one was gonna come save him, this was just a hallucination of his dying mind. returning to whitestone he was forced to confront the fact that literally everyone he ever knew growing up (with the sole exception of archibald) was either dead or working with the briarwoods, and even after retaking the city there's a lot that can never be repaired. 

and he's just... never really dealt with any of this? like, he gave vox machina the technical details of what happened to him in the briarwood arc, because they needed to know that information, but the first time he actually started processing his trauma, the first time he admits it out loud to anyone, is the final episode of campaign one. before then it had been occasional snide or handwavey comments, and like, he'll let himself feel the anger over it (in the beginning of the story he encouraged it, because then he didn't have to feel anything else), but he's never processed the grief, never admitted to himself how badly that affected him

which means he's got a lot of pent up emotions in there that he just keeps burying, and sometimes they come out in unhealthy ways. having so much taken from him also makes him really motivated to keep the things he does have - he’s got some deep set abandonment issues and takes any kind of betrayal really badly, don’t know if you’ve got up to the scanlan stuff by the time i post this, but that’s something to keep in mind as to why he acts the way he does there. (and it’s not more explicit because percy was raised nobility, keeping a brave face through anything is part of who he is, he tends to cover emotions he’s insecure about in snark or indifference or, for the intense ones, anger, because those are the things he thinks he’s allowed to show, but the real emotions show up occasionally, when they’re particularly strong, or if you’re reading between the lines. he really does care a lot about vox machina)

2 - legacy and loyalty. 

speaking of nobility, it's hard to do a character study on percy without mentioning whitestone and the house of de rolo. this is the number one thing to percy. he was raised to respect title and name, and most importantly, raised to respect the people he represents - both the townsfolk of whitestone and also percy's ancestors and future de rolo generations. whitestone is more important than any one life, he has a duty to protect and serve it, and that comes before any personal wants he may have. it's also important to him for family reasons - he was a pretty lonely child, but he loved reading about the history of the city, all the weird ghost stories whitestone had even before the briarwoods. it probably made him feel more connected to all of that, this is the place he belongs. and after his family dies, it becomes even more important, because this is his connection to them. the soul of a city lives as long as its people, by protecting what's left, he keeps a little bit of what came before

(and also in just tidbits to understand percy's character, he sees all cities and man-made things the same way - in a world where some races live for centuries or millennia, their history exists mostly by word of mouth, you can physically talk to people who were around 500 years ago and get their take on things - humans don't have that, they get 100 years at most, so the things they build are vital to their heritage. this is how you keep people alive long after they're gone, by honouring what they created. and especially for someone so concerned with legacy and history, percy literally says abandoning westruun would be blasphemy, because the place people grew up is important, yes it's better that they live, but letting the city be abandoned and destroyed would be an irreparable act of violence.) 

this is the number one thing on percy's mind when evaluating anything about himself, where do i come from, and what do i leave behind? which is a question that has a lot of moments to be tested, because of my next point...

3 - pragmatism and terrible thoughts

when it comes down to it, percy is a very ends justify the means kind of person. he finds it very easy to square away any kind of collateral damage as long as it gets him to his end goal. see: trial of the take, where he's fine to catch his friends in the blast radius of a new bomb design because he's so excited that it worked, preparing to fight vorugal and resigning himself to potentially having to kill innocent people to kill the dragon (he wasn’t okay with that, but he would do it), also his conscious decision to let ripley go, knowing she would lead to the deaths of thousands because it was her or the briarwoods and he wanted revenge 

(this is by his own admission his lowest point and worst mistake, because as mentioned, he thinks about the consequences of his actions near constantly, he knew she would reproduce his guns and they would lead to a whole new form of warfare. but in that moment he was just blinded by grief and way too emotionally burnt out and did not have the capacity to care. and he spends the rest of the campaign and honestly probably the rest of his life trying to make up for that one)

he's also, by his own admission, someone who has a lot of bad thoughts he doesn't act on, he's very clever and creative and ideas for ways to use those skills for violence or vengeance come easily to him (like, percy as an actual villain would be ripley but worse, ripley's intelligent but a very direct point a to point b kind of thinker, percy has multiple times criticised her lack of imagination, a percy with her lack of morals would be terrifying)

(honestly this is why i was seeing percy so much in taliesin's narrative telephone, because "sometimes i wake up having dreamed of a terrible thing, and normally i just file that away for things that i would never do, because i wanna maintain friendships, but then LIAM did something to me." and the whole being absolutely fine with throwing the rest of the cast under the bus just to enact revenge on liam was quintessential percy)

but we’ve seen the pragmatic anti hero everywhere, anyone can be a terrible person, and have reasons for it, that alone doesn’t make an interesting character (at least not for me)

what does, is my last point

4 - trying to be good

i still vividly remember when i first watched campaign one, being really surprised at how much percy asked for help? like, i went in expecting the usual full on demon possession storyline, i expected percy to hide how bad it was, i expected him to make poor decisions without realising he was doing it until he was in too deep to back out

and like, he had some of that. but at the first sign of things being out of his control, he asked his friends for help. he let pike greater restoration him. he told vax to kill him if things ever got too out of hand. he was really, genuinely scared about what he got himself into and what he might do because of it. there was never a point where he pretended, even to himself, that making a deal with orthax was okay. the minute he realised there was a demon involved, he was working to stop it. and yeah, by the time he realised it was already a bit too late, there were already some things out of his control (and also taliesin kept having the worst rolls against the whitestone corruption which was really fun on a meta level), which is how things got as bad as they did. but honestly, all things considered, there’s very little to criticise about the way percy handled himself in the briarwood arc. 

and he keeps doing that, trying to get better. he struggles with it, he struggles a lot, against his anger issues, against all the trauma, against the fact that he really doesn’t want to be here and things would be so much easier if he were dead. but he recognises he holds grudges too easily, so he starts actively trying to forgive those who’ve wronged him (this is something he and vex have in common, and something they were working on together before they were together, which probably helped a lot in getting them to that point as well). he recognises he makes poor decisions when he’s angry, so he starts learning to step back in those moments and leave the decisions to someone else. he has never not owned up to his mistakes, he takes responsibility for everything he’s done, and if he notices a problem he can’t solve himself, he asks for help.

and i find that fun to explore. like, percy’s been likened to hamlet in the actual show, and i was the kid who got super obsessed with hamlet when i was like 15 because i was in that same mental space of suicidal self hatred and existential melancholy but also thinking i was the smartest person in any given room and being too young to have gotten over the arrogance that makes you ignore everyone else’s needs for the sake of indulging your own problems. and then i got older and realised there are smarter ways to go about things, like having empathy and appreciating the light in the world and not being a dickhead to people because it makes you feel better, and maybe hamlet can be justified and in the wrong at the same time. and while there’s some stuff i won’t spoil for you, percy after ripley kills him is definitely starting to learn that, which you rarely see in the hamlet archetype, bc everyone’s like “ah yes so Deep so Important who cares what bad things this person did they had Trauma and are Clever”

well, percy cares about the bad things he did, and cares about not doing those anymore. so like, he’s still a disaster of a person bc he’s like 23 and no one has their life together at 23, especially not someone in percy’s situation, and honestly i find that fun to watch as well bc i like watching characters make stupid mistakes and do stuff i’d never approve of in real life, and as i mentioned at the start, taliesin makes captivating and funny characters. but yeah, that’s generally where percy’s at, most of the time

[notwhelmedyet]

Younger

I will edit this later! I will post this properly on ao3! I will (probably) write a part 2. But in the meantime, before I go to bed: CYWHIRL WEEK DAY 1: THERE ARE NO PROMPTS BECAUSE I INVENTED CYWHIRL WEEK MYSELF, RIGHT NOW

Title: Younger, Part 1 Relationships: Cywhirlgate, Cywhirl Summary: Whirl decides it would be easier to go back in time and witness Cyclonus’s past than get him to spill his secrets. Warnings: Violence, Feelings

“You can’t just say that and then not explain!”

Cyclonus smiled, glancing over at Whirl with mischief sparkling in his optics. Of course he could not explain. This was the mech who had once promised Whirl that “Nobody is telling anyone anything, ever.” He was the grandmaster of not telling people things.

“Why did you even say anything, then?” Whirl groaned. He crowded into the windowseat beside Cyclonus and caught his chin with one claw so Cyclonus couldn’t coyly look away. “You’d tell Tailgate if he asked.”

“Tailgate would never,” Cyclonus said. “He’s from a time back when people had manners.”

“I would never!” Tailgate agreed. The fucking traitor. “Cyclonus doesn’t like talking about his past. Except for the songs. He loves talking about the songs.”

“And the arts,” Cyclonus put in.

“Oh yes! And the architecture! All the good things in life,” Tailgate said happily, climbing in between them on the windowseat, treating Cyclonus’s chest like a pillow. He batted at Whirl’s claw until Whirl released their conjunx and settled down between them and the hot glass of the windowpane.

Cyclonus hummed thoughtfully. “It’s better to remember the good things.”

“Yes, yes, I agree and all but blue?”

“I wasn’t aware it was a scandalous color,” Cyclonus remarked, with a straight face because he was a bastard who lived to torment the curious bots of the world and Whirl in particular.

“You huffed disapprovingly when I mentioned people swapping out their faceplates the other day. You have a legit scar on your leg, like a prehistoric urchin who’s never heard of a medic. And it’s not like you got a paint job - I’ve seen you with your arm torn off, you’re purple down to your base plating. Come ooooon, Cyclonus. I’m curious. It’s in my nature.”

“I think it’s better this way,” Tailgate said. “It’d look funny if we were a matched set. People would tease us. Just think of what Brainstorm would say - just awful! Plus, you’re so handsome in purple,” he said into Cyclonus’s chest, because his tiny frame belied what a massive flatterer he was.

“Do you really want to know?” Cyclonus asked.

“Yes.”

“Galvatron had me changed when I became his Warrior Second,” Cyclonus said, face suddenly serious. And aw, fuck it. Those were the magic words that unlocked the secret palace of ‘Whirl never getting to know anything about Cyclonus’s past’. Whirl didn’t even understand what a Warrior Second fucking was, though Rewind and Nautica both promised him it was a translate for ‘bodyguard’ or ‘retainer’ in ancient texts. Not that he’d asked. Whirl would never snoop in Cyclonus’s secret palace of secrets.

“You know, sometimes I think it would be easier to ask Brainstorm to make me a time machine and check for myself than to get you to explain anything about where you come from,” Whirl said.

“That would be a terrible idea,” Cyclonus said.

“Does that mean you’ll explain?” Whirl asked.

“No.” Cyclonus leaned over and pressed a kiss to the side of Whirl’s face. “I love you, but no.”

------------

“Brainstorm, if I asked nicely, would you make me a time machine?” Whirl asked. “Cyclonus refuses to tell me anything about his days before he was old and mysterious.”

Brainstorm raised his hand in a ‘please do not continue’ motion. “You really think it’s easier for me to build you a time machine than you to talk to your conjunx?”

“For sure.”

Brainstorm looked over at Perceptor, focused on his data analysis on the other side of the lab, then looked back at Whirl. “Yeah okay. But we’re not making more alternate timelines. Once was enough. Gonna need some sort of temporal lock so anything you splinter off vaporizes after the jump...hey, Percy! Want to go over some purely theoretical time machine plans?”

Perceptor looked at Whirl, then looked at Brainstorm, then back at Whirl. “You do know I can hear you, right? Even when you’re not talking to me?”

“Well Primus-damn-it you should have mentioned having a superpower at some point before now, Percy,” Brainstorm said. He scooted back on his lab stool until they were sitting side by side. “Come on, it’ll be fun. And you get to safety check me so we don’t kill everyone or destroy the universe!”

“And if that isn’t the definition of fun, what is,” Perceptor said dryly. He shook his head. “It’d be nearly impossible for Whirl to go unnoticed in the past; you’d need to build him an attention deflector suit like Ravage used or he’d get himself killed by an angry mob.”

“And by ‘you’ you mean ‘we’,” Brainstorm agreed. “Come back next week, buddy, we’ll get right on it!”

“I was actually not agreeing,” Perceptor pointed out, with the air of a mech was used to losing a lot of stupid arguments.

--------------------------------

Brainstorm had promised the case would take him to an “emotionally resonant moment”, no guarantees which one. Whirl had turned the dial almost all the way to the red, which Brainstorm had helpfully labeled “Long Time Ago”. He hadn’t been sure what to expect. Mostly he’d been expecting the thing to explode and Brainstorm to pop out of the woodwork to give him a PSA on why you shouldn’t ask your friends to make you time machines. He hadn’t expected a war.

He ducked under a sword swing and staggered back, shocked by the sheer noise of it. It looked like Brainstorm’s attention deflector whatsit was working, nobody was swinging at him on purpose. Still, he didn’t want to be accidentally killed either. He transformed and took off, spotting a nearby outcrop of rock where he could spectate.

From that vantage point he could see it wasn’t a war at all. It was the end of a losing battle. There was an army, arrayed in ranks of purple and gold across the field. And then there were the last survivors of some local militia bunched at the center of the mass. Their shieldwall was three bots deep and domed like a forcebubble but it was slowly being crushed between the mass of the army surrounding it. The mechs who hadn’t made it to the retreat to the shieldwall were outnumbered ten to one, poorly armed, and dying quickly.

And Cyclonus was down there somewhere.

It went on for longer than it had any right to. Whirl alternated between pacing and muttering “Just fucking surrender!” at the losing side. He didn’t like routs unless he was on the winning side.

A jet swooped down towards the field and the army pulled back to clear a space for him as he landed and transformed. Finally someone he recognized! And wherever Galvatron was, Cyclonus was sure to be nearby.

Galvatron signaled to his troops - because they were definitely his troops and the fighting stopped. “Defenders of the lower temples!” Galvatron bellowed. His voice seemed to shake the very rocks of the valley. “There will be no victory for you here today! If any of your leaders yet live, let them come forth and bargain for your lives.”

The shieldwall rippled, then broke. They dug their shields into the dirt in front of them, sheathed their swords and brought their lances to rest behind their shields. Two mechs stepped out from the front line. One was tall and slender, with white finials and absurdly pointy shoulders. The other was Cyclonus.

Oh, he looked different, but it was unmistakably him. His frame was a lush velvet blue, except for his arms smeared purple with gore. His bearing was proud, rigid, unforgettable.

Galvatron turned to the white mech. “Your name, soldier.” Whirl had to adjust up the gain on his audials to hear him, the near-silent movements of the crowd increasing like the roar of a river.

“Montalon.”

“I give you a choice, Montalon. Promise me your loyalty. Swear to me your spark and prove your use. If you do this I will spare your soldiers.”

The white mech ground their spear into the ground and answered in defiance. “My only loyalty is to the Lower Temples!”

The point of their spear clattered to the ground as Galvatron struck it down with his axe. Whirl glanced away before the beheading but he couldn’t mistake the sound. When he looked back Galvatron had shifted to point his axe at Cyclonus.

“And you. Is your loyalty also only to the lower temples? You cannot save them. You can still save your soldiers.”

Cyclonus stood silent for one awful moment. He looked to the head of his fellow commander, greying in the dirt at his feet. “Tell me the price, Lord Galvatron, and I will meet it.”

A great wailing rose up from the defeated soldiers behind him. Cyclonus hunched his shoulders, but did not turn to look. One of the soldiers tried to break away, a jet in black and gold, before being hauled back by his fellows.

“Peace, soldiers of the lower temples!” Galvatron called. His soldiers moved to circle them, weapons braced and shields raised. “I offer you mercy, for his sacrifice. Do not waste it.”

Whirl couldn’t tear his optic away from the black and gold jet, held up by three mechs and sobbing in their arms, all military composure gone.

Cyclonus stood like a statue, like an icon of an old god cast upon a plinth. But when Galvatron asked his name he answered in a voice ravaged by grief. First love, perhaps.

“I offer you the same bargain. Become my Warrior Secondus. Prove your worth and then swear to your spark to me, in fealty until death. If you do this I will offer your soldiers mercy, Cyclonus of Upper Tetrahex.”

“Who will I face, and when?” Cyclonus asked.

“You will face me. Now.” Galvatron said, voice warm with mirth.

If he hadn’t been looking so closely Whirl would have missed Cyclonus flinch. “Very well, Lord Galvatron,” Cyclonus said the name like a snake spitting venom. “Arms?”

Galvaton waved dismissively at Cyclonus. “Keep both swords. If you can cut me, the battle ends.”

“Understood.” Cyclonus said.

“Back three paces!” Galvatron bellowed. He raised his axe and dropped the pommel against the ground three times, the ranked soldiers retreating in an answering stomp-stomp-stomp. A matched set of guards with tall shields pushed their way to the front, forming a circle to mark the battlefield.

Galvatron hefted his axe and said, “Draw your weapon and attack, Cyclonus of Tetrahex. May you not disappoint me.”

Cyclonus stepped back, then back again, dropping his hands to the sword on his left. Then he was off, springboarding off a shield to swing his sword at the back of Galvatron’s neck. Galvatron moved the haft of his axe to block the cut and the blade rang out, shattering.

Whirl had taken Galvatron’s challenge to be a duel to first cut. He realized his mistake on the first swing of Gavatron’s axe, which caught Cyclonus across the shoulders as he landed. Cyclonus staggered away, broken sword in hand and pink streaming down his back like a cloak. The fight did not end.

It wasn’t that Cyclonus was a poor fighter, though Whirl expected he’d already been beyond exhaustion when the duel started. It was that the blades he was using were fucking useless. Cyclonus landed a stroke across Galvatron’s braced forearms and didn’t make a scratch, though the blade squealed in protest.

“A smart swordfighter never lets his blades grow dull,” Galvatron commented, as he rammed the pommel of his axe against Cyclonus’s helm, knocking him to the ground. Galvatron strode forward and raised his axe to make the final, fatal blow. Cyclonus lay there, releasing both his swords to sink his fingers into the dirt. He looked up at Galvatron and made no plea to stop.

The axe swung down and Cyclonus finally lurched into motion. His legs kicked out, throwing his body onto his side and knocking Galavtron off his feet. The axe buried itself in Cyclonus’s shoulder but his other arm was snapping up to grab Galvatron by the neck and drag him down onto his own axe.

The crowd couldn’t have been quieter if you knocked them all dead.

Galvatron’s knees hit the ground and he wrenched himself upright, revealing a cut half the length of his chest, gushing pink. Galvatron touched his hand to the cut and then took hold of the axe handle. Cyclonus’s left arm lay limp on the ground, the shoulder nearly severed. When Galvatron tore the axe free Cyclonus made his first noise of the fight, a ragged moan.

Whirl had seen corpses in better shape.

But slowly, oh so slowly, Cyclonus raised himself to his knees. Galvatron passed his axe off to some other soldier and took Cyclonus by the chin. “You may prove useful after all, Cyclonus of Upper Tetrahex. Now swear yourself to me.”