#and vax background

[timaeusterrored]

(Vax’s mommy issues)

((Tw: mentions of addiction))

“I just think it’s a little convenient is all. She’s not there for nearly 33 years and suddenly she’s interested after he reveals his face? Do we even know if she’s his mother?” Vik asked, following Guadeloupe around the kitchen until she turned.

“Oh I’m quite sure. Even chromed up, V looks exactly like her. And trust me, Vik, I don’t like it either but he deserves to meet his mother at least once. Then he can chose to do as he pleases after.” She explained calmly, then shoved a spoon of soup into Vik’s mouth to shut him up.

Vax showed up a few hours later, trying to not look too excited and failing miserably. The sight hurt Vik’s soul. There was a feeling deep in his chest that this wasn’t going to end well.

“Is she here?” He asked, he sounded like a kid on Christmas asking if Santa came that night. Luckily, Guadeloupe best him to the punch to go with him. Vik watched from the kitchen as Melissa Kane stood to greet her son for the first time. She couldn’t even come sober?

Vik sat at the table, Guadeloupe joining him after a few minutes with a beer. They clinked their bottles together and waited, hearing the soft talking going on in the living room.

It too all of 30 minutes for Vax to go storming out. And Vik’s suspicions were confirmed. He watched Melissa try to follow, stopping just outside. She didn’t come for Vax, she came for V Eurodyne. Husband of a rock legend and a legend himself in the underworld of Night City.

“If you ever contact my son again, I will not hesitate to contact the police. I’d deal with you myself but I raised too much of a good person.” Vik couldn’t help but add that last bit. But it was true.

He was there when Vex had her baby, he was there when Vax woke up screaming from nightmares at an age too young to be having them, he was there for Vax’s first boxing match, taught him to shoot a gun and how to drive. And Guadeloupe was there to house him when V was too scared to talk to Vik about his own addiction. They raised V into the man he was today, not her.

He should call Kerry.

Vax was glad for one thing in the Villa, and that was the bar and the fact that Kerry only stayed here when he was making a new album, which luckily wasn’t now. He downed his second drink and went to pour another when a hand stopped him, silver wedding band sticking out against the golden jewel he normally wore.

He let the bottle get taken from him and sighed, feeling defeated. And hurt. And extremely vulnerable right now.

“She asked for money. Knew her all of 30 minutes, and she asked me for money.” He had hoped Vex would be wrong about her, that their mother would be an amazing woman who just made a rough decision. But no, she barely cared about Vax, only his last name and status.

“I’m so sorry, baby…” Kerry kissed his temple and led V to sit on the couch, then moved to make him an actual drink. Something he’d actually enjoy instead of just drowning in self pity for ever thinking his mother would be a good woman.

“I just… is it so bad that I hoped my mother would be a good person?” He asked when Kerry came back over with drink and made V look at him.

“Your mother is a good woman. That woman is not your mother, your mother is Guadeloupe Welles. And that is the best mother ever right there.” Kerry wrapped his arm around V’s shoulders and gave him a knowing look.

“She’s missin’ out on the most amazing, talented, kindest, and sexiest man alive. And if she was gonna use you for money, then fuck her. She doesn’t deserve to know Vax. She’s lucky she got to him. And she’s extremely lucky I wasn’t there.” She probably was, V had no idea how overprotective Kerry could be when they first met.

V took a drink and sighed. Fuck Kerry knew him too well this was amazing. He rested his temple on Kerry’s forehead, feeling him rub his shoulder.

“Still hurts… I spent years looking for her… wanting to meet her. And turns out she didn’t care about me or Vex at all…” he whispered. “I know I have Vik and Mama but damn I was so excited to meet her.”

Kerry nodded, simply listening to rant because he knew that’s what V needed. His merc didn’t need advice he needed someone to hear him. And Kerry would listen to him for hours if that’s what it took.

[liltaireissocute]

[PERC'ILDAN]

What are they doing? Option A: they are getting ready to play TTRPG; option B: they are actively assembling an Ikea table.

I picked secret third option

[shorthaltsjester]

sorry to say but i do actually think the focus tlovm puts on showing the workings and backgrounds of npcs is actively taking away from one of the main things that made campaign 1’s story compelling (notably. vox machina and their bonds with each other beyond the people they’re in love with)

[libby1080]

Vax Land of fangs, pitch and bones = Lofpab

consorts: termites

[natreidess]

They’re going out and Keyleth is better at make up 

[deadrocks]

Full disclosure, I watched the first two or three episodes of The Legend of Vox Machina and decided it wasn't really for me, so I'm well behind, but did they really not do the " you know I'm in love with you, right?" Vaxleth kiss?

[suaimhneas-gairid]

I'm usually pretty good at skipping past posts with spoilers but there is... so much content that even pictures of current cast feel like I'm seeing something I'm not ready for yet 🥲

I'll see you guys in the present in like a year

[handbellanon]

.

[batshit-auspol]

So a bit of background first for our international followers: Clive Palmer is one of Australia's many mining billionaires who like to meddle in our country's politics, and as such he is utterly despised by all of Australia.

Picture for context:

He is most commonly known online by the title "Fatty McFuckhead", (problematic as it may be) because he tried to sue a youtuber for $500,000 for calling him that - and he lost. So the name stuck.

Up until his most recent foray into parliament, the legally certified Fuckhead was best known for his batshit business ventures, such as attempting to build "The Titanic 2" (failed) and trying to build a dinosaur theme park (also failed, but at least nobody got eaten by a T-Rex in this one).

For a very long time Clive played the role of sugar daddy to Australia's largest conservative party, the ironically named Liberal Party, until they had a falling out in 2012 after Clive claimed there was too much money influencing politics (lol), at which point he started his own party, days after saying he totally quit and wasn't fired and he only left because he didn't want to be a distraction.

His initial run at parliament was actually kinda successful, with Palmer's group winning 4 seats, plus a member from the "Motoring Enthusiasts Party" joined them too after accidentally getting elected and not knowing what the fuck to do.

Despite this initial success however, Palmer's party (which ran on basically no platform other than "I'm rich") hit an iceberg (titanic 2 achieved) and seven elected state and federal politicians quit within the first year.

By the time the next federal election rolled around, only one Palmer party candidate was still running for re-election. The most successful of this group - Jaquie Lambie - quit to sit as an independant and is still in parliament today.

Here she is with a painting of herself strangling Clive (she sells signed copies of this)

And here the senator is posting about liking sausage:

Anyway, we're getting to the point: which is the yellow posters. By the 2016 election, just two years after forming, the party was in complete freefall. It won just 0.01% of the vote at their second election, and it was announced shortly after that Clive was quitting politics and the party was being shut down. Australia breathed a sigh of relief.

It was, of course, short lived.

Clive, in desperate need of attention, restarted the party for the 2019 election, fielding candidates in every seat and spending $60 million in advertising in an attempt to win votes.

Every single candidate lost.

It was in this campaign however that Australia really started to fall out of love with Palmer, because most of that $60 million went towards putting up the world's least compelling marketing billboards on almost every single free space in the country.

For a good six months this was basically the only thing you would see in Australia if you went outside:

Clearly Graphic design is his passion. And yes, the genius did just straight up try and copy Trump's homework while changing a few words, hoping nobody would notice.

Very quickly these all got vandalised and it seemed the ad companies didn't care enough to replace them.

We could go on posting examples, there are thousands, but the best is definitely the one Ikea put up shortly after Clive lost the election:

In 2022, Clive's party contested the election AGAIN, this time also opting to send millions on spam text messages to every person in Australia begging for people to vote for him, as well as buying almost every youtube ad for a year, at the cost of $100 million.

He won a whopping one seat.

During this election Clive ran on an anti-lockdown, anti-vax platform with the slogan "freedom, freedom, freedom". That message, however, was slightly undermined when his goons, dressed in 'Freedom!' shirts, made national news for trying to beat up a protester who turned up at a rally dressed as an annoying text message, shouting "pay your workers" at Clive.

As if that wasn't bad enough, at another rally Clive knocked himself unconscious while trying to jump up on stage, and then a few weeks later was rushed to hospital with covid, while his anti-vax ads were still in regular rotation on TV, at which point it was also leaked to the press that Palmer had been alledgedly trying to buy Hitler's car.

Utterly humiliated, the party deregistered again shortly after the election.

Can't wait until he runs again in 2025.

Anyway, on the other "Clive tweeting Miss Kobayashi's Dragon" thing, we have no idea what that means but here's a screencap:

[thespoonisvictory]

the backgrounds and shot compositions for tlovm continue to stun me, they consistently knock it out of the park with such lush, magical environments. the dragon animation on the other hand...

[as-i-watch]

Vax in the background like 'we are in a foreign palace jesus get a room'

[liltaireissocute]

[PERC'ILDAN]

midnight conversations during the night watch can make you closer than anything in the world

[ginalongillustrations]

Vox Machina

I'm done. Holy shit y'all I'm fucking done (barring Tary and the several NPCs I wanna do)

Made all seven of these while going through the campaign and I just finished the campaign a few days ago and I'm in that mourning phase that I don't get anymore story with these characters who I couldn't help but come to love with all their strengths and weaknesses.

The prints look so amazing side by side. I'm happy that I got to make all these while the inspiration lasted.

Now watch me go back and just watch through campaign 1 again instead of campaign 2 because I'm I am going to miss these characters too much. I know campaign 2 is super beloved and I'm sure I'll get there eventually, but for now.. I mourn.. and admire these prints on my wall.

Also, to the random person in my tiktok comments when they saw me watching ep 4 in the background of a video while painting Anakin. That I would love Vax and Percy the most because it would be similar to Anakin and I laughed it off... you were half right, because Vax is so Anakin coded in the ways I adore Anakin and it was fate I was going to love Vax and adore him and all his rights and wrongs.

[drawsmaddy]

[ID: A digital illustration of Vax'ildan from Critical Role. He is facing to the left but his head is turned and he's looking off to the right. He's smiling and his hair moves in the wind, shifting to the left. Vax has an overall purple tint to him and the background is a light blue. End description.]

Vax!

[burr-ell]

Putting Terms on the High Shelf: Main Character Syndrome

As I'm watching C2, one thing I've noticed about Caleb's various sidebars to talk to different people is that he's still very much involving them—the conversations reveal various different priorities not just for Caleb, but for the people he's talking with. Liam's RP is often geared toward encouraging character work out of the other players at the table; it's something you see with Vax early on, and it's very present with Caleb.

So I find the accusations and warnings of Liam having Main Character Syndrome, which started during C1 but really ramped up in C2, to be rather shallow. Look at the contrast between the tables during this:

and this:

In C1x27, Orion adds pressure to the cast's already-frayed nerves with him, compounded from previous incidents of bad behavior, by taking up several minutes of time purely to himself—his only interaction with anyone else at the table is to ask Keyleth for help with alchemy mechanics (fun fact, early Keyleth was into alchemy!). This included:

An attempt to buy 1500 mirrors to build a light array;

A request to his father to send in his home country's army to Whitestone; and

An attempt to combine a fog spell and a sleep spell after being told point blank that it was mechanically impossible

This was all very obviously an attempt to make himself the hero in what is clearly set up to be a Percy-centric arc. (Worth noting, for the record, is that up to this point Percy had actually had very little focus and largely kept himself in the background, while Tiberius had been in focus for most of the show's run up to that point.) Laura snarks that he's like the giant eagles in Lord of the Rings and can just do everything, and if you actually watch the clip that I've giffed above, Travis's tone is genuinely aggravated. This, by the way, is all after Tiberius was notably not present for Percy revealing his backstory to the rest of the party in episode 24; while everyone else voiced concerns for him and went down to his workshop to check on him, Tiberius largely ignored this and went off to do his own business.

That is a selfish player. That is selfish behavior and a clear example of someone who thinks the story should revolve around them. There are several reasons Orion was asked to leave, not just because he fudged his dice rolls.

C2x62 is a completely different story. None of the conversations Caleb has within that episode are just a way for Caleb to gain information; he's engaging with what the other people are doing. When he asks Nott and Jester about the letter they wrote to Astrid, he reveals a little about himself—something he is particularly reluctant to do with Jester—and they are given an opportunity to respond. His conversation with Beau gives time for both of them to check in on each other and where they're at and lets Beau give her own perspective on the politics of the Empire, the Cobalt Soul, and Xhorhas. The discussion with Fjord lets them both level with each other a little and does more work for Fjord's character, letting him open up about his insecurities and issues, than it does for Caleb's. Caleb is still initiating these conversations and he still gets something out of them, but both the players and the audience still get the benefit of the other characters pushing and pulling against that in response.

Like many terms that get thrown around in this circle ("player agency", "manipulating", "metagaming", "going dark", to name a few), Main Character Syndrome has been so misconstrued and warped to fit a heavily biased perspective as to be almost meaningless. Main Character Syndrome is not when a character initiates a lot of conversations, even if you personally don't like the conversations for whatever reason. Main Character Syndrome is not when a character chooses to take a risk or push a big red button, even if you personally don't like the choice for whatever reason. Main Character Syndrome is not when a character has an arc or aspect of lore heavily focused on them, even if you personally don't like the character for whatever reason. (Particularly considering that arc focus is entirely out of the player's control; Taliesin, Liam, and Laura did not in fact force Matt to focus a significant portion of each campaign's lore on Percy, Caleb, or Imogen's backstories respectively.)

Main Character Syndrome is specifically about player selfishness—it's a player inserting their character into scenes or roles where they do not logically belong in order to make them the center of the story, as we see with the example of Tiberius. The camaraderie at the current table versus what was going on back in 2015 does not suggest that anyone currently sees anyone else like that; everyone is laughing at the jokes made at someone's expense, and everyone is getting something to do. Your favorite character may not always be flashy or in focus all the time, but then again, you wouldn't want them to have Main Character Syndrome, would you?

[demigoddessqueens]

I was thinking of a scenario like the end of DDHAT - have you seen it? **SPOILERS FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NOT SEEN D&D Honor Among Thieves**

Percy x Reader - at the conclusion of a big baddie battle, everyone is checking in, except for Reader. They finally find them - they’ve been struck by the baddie’s poison weapon, to which there is no cure, sorry Pike, not even you. Death is imminent and painful. Percy IS in possession of a resurrection tablet (in this version Cassandra didn’t survive the Briarwoods) that they just quested for and that Percy was intending for his sister. As they’re drawing their last pained breath the reader says their only regret was not telling Percy about their feelings sooner. Percy is a mess. Vox is devastated and even a few members beg an already conflicted Percy to bring them back. He brings them back. Happy happy confessions love angsty romantic bliss 🤭🥰

Long convoluted idea - sorry!!- love all your stuff!!!

This was such a guilty pleasure movie for me! I loved it and now this idea makes me sad 💔

Cw slight mention of death

FOUND ON MASTERLIST 9 HERE

After the final blow was delivered, Percy’s immediate reaction is to check on you

he sees you hunched over as you hold your wounded side, a hand covering the fatal gash

Vex��ahlia is to your other side, holding you upward, and fighting back the heartbreak she feels encroaching

behind him, he can hear Keyleth, Vax, Grog gasping in shock just as they realize what’s happened

You look at him with a bittersweet expression. Either you accept your fate or regret not making the most of what the gods had offered you in life, but somehow focusing on Percy takes away the burden of what feel’s impending

“…that was a hell of a fight, wasn’t it? At least I made this one count…”

Denial and every other emotion of bargaining overwhelms Percy, and he comes to your

there’s no joy in the song that Scanlan whispers along with you to offer as a small comfort when he holds your hand

Percy can see the hope dwindling out of Pike’s eyes as her magic fades, she can’t heal you and even if there was a chance to revive you…it couldn’t…

every thing feels as if it’s crashing down and they’re helpless to stop it

With his trembling hands, Percy tries to hold onto you as he’s begging through breathy sobs. You grip back as much as you can as your strength wanes.

one. Two. Three agonizing seconds go by until he realizes you are still with a parted smile on your face.

He looks to the tablet. To you. The memories of his family, Cassandra; that all start to blend with you and Vox Machina and the new life he’s started to form. You’ve been there; all of you, from you and Vex to everyone and he can’t imagine a life without any one of you. As he speaks the words, Percy offers one final plea despite the years of pain before

The quiet pleas from the rest of the party are all but background noise to him as he watches you for any sign.

you look around in amazement at seven pairs of tear-stained eyes widening as you realize what’s happened

“Don’t tell me you used that on me….” is all you can manage as you gasp in amazement and shock

Percy holds you close to him before you get a chance to utter more words

“I was a fool to not tell you sooner than later…”

you look at him in disbelief laced with the same love that he holds for you, not realizing the tears that are falling on your face

“Percy…I’ve always loved you too,”

now there are seven pairs of of arms around you, just holding you a little tighter than normal after a close encounter they don’t want to repeat