(Dead) Occtis Tachonis

points at Ethrand Tachonis. I need that man HAUNTED

[halluciocctis]

pushing my "Ethrand Tachonis should be Haunted no matter how guilty he may or may not feel" agenda. put that man in horrible situations (main: @skeletonsofstars)

[kalgalen]

there has always been something wrong with you.

[wastrelwoods]

I just fucking love love love when a narrative shows me a character who is an insufferable and badly behaved bully being propped up by an even shittier familal authority figure assuring them that they are a Special Princess who deserves to walk all over everyone else, and then the narrative pulls back a little and shows me that in fact the love and support of that authority figure is Deeply Conditional and Finite and this bully is both aware of it and haunted by that knowledge. Their Special Princess Swagger is PAPER thin

[kalgalen]

Sobs. I doodled noir au ethrand yesterday as a way to unwind and now my dash is conspiring to drag me deeper into being interested in that guy. I don't WANNA

[kalgalen]

Well .

[jadeandquartzes]

[id: two sketches of ethrand tachonis, both done in black and white with added shades of red. in the left-hand one, he wears a long black tailcoat and has blood dripping down his front. he holds up occtis's heart in one hand, and a curved knife in the other. in the right-hand one, his hair is back in a ponytail, and he wears a noir-style trench coat. the lapels and sleeves of the coat are covered in blood, as are his hands and face. he is walking forward with a dour expression, holding occtis's heart in one hand and a bloody bowie knife in the other. end id.]

[chipthekeeper]

"You had a rock thrown at your head by your brother? That's not nice."

[seelieyoulater]

Don’t talk to me. I’m thinking about Aranessa seeing little eight-year-old Occtis walk in and Ethrand following behind him, tugging on his hair and whispering insults. And then years later being in the same room watching Ethrand brutally murder Occtis and tell him that he’s never fit in and never been enough

[halluciocctis]

younger Ethrand and Occtis no one even talk to me

[your-turn-to-role]

but for real i'm still thinking about the knife mark in the wood, because what a fucking way to translate the fact that occtis' 50 damage instant death was technically mechanically split across two attacks

the second attack is where ethrand actually did the job he was there to do, and cut your heart out

the first is him stabbing down hard enough to pin you to the table

(frankly occtis is lucky he made it out of that with his spine intact, because if that was one of his non-healable wounds things would have gotten considerably more difficult a lot quicker)

[your-turn-to-role]

(in response to my tags about how the more we see other tachonis respond to occtis with apathy and irritation rather than rage and betrayal the more ethrand's behaviour - the violence beyond what the situation calls for, the sabotaging your own plan to make sure the last thing occtis hears before he dies is how much you hate him - stands out)

legally obligated to also tag @skeletonsofstars in on this one bc of one line in his fic about that that has never left my mind

but @shobogan yeah, like the two are a lot closer in age than occtis is to most his siblings, we know that! and the degree to which ethrand is full of hate, like. either it's as you both said, a previously positive relationship turned sour

or, as was also kinda touched on in the fic, the only other thing i can think of to drive that is jealousy (whether ethrand realises it or not - because there's nothing about occtis' situation that's supposed to be enviable, but he did get 5 years of being his own person away from the house)

the other reason it might have some element of the latter, is i think this is new to occtis. i don't think necessarily they were super close at any point, or occtis would have been able to find a happy memory somewhere, but whatever's making ethrand so angry happened (or became amplified) within the last five years

bc (to go on a minor tangent) something alex has been trying to make clear along the way - everyone else views house tachonis as a unified front, a singular entity acting towards a singular purpose - but occtis doesn't. how can he, those are all the people that raised him. and if you think about it, if you get in a fight with one of your siblings, you don't immediately assume your other siblings are now mad at you just because you all share a surname, you take those relationships on a case by case basis. by explicit word of alex, he wanted to talk to frons instead of attack because even though it does seem like all his siblings are being mobilised against them, the only people occtis knows for sure at that point want him dead are ethrand and his dad, everyone else could just be following orders. he has no reason to assume they all hate him as much as ethrand does - whatever made their relationship so terrible that ethrand would want to hurt him like this, occtis understands that that's not orders, that's personal

but he doesn't know why. so many of his final thoughts were confusion over what would make ethrand act like this, and i don't think that's just a general why does my family want me dead, i think that's specifically why does ethrand want to hurt me this badly?

so while occtis may have put pause on his relationships with his family for five years, and assumed they'd be the same whenever they next met, those relationships behind the scenes were definitely changing

[skeletonsofstars]

5, 7, 9 for wip asks?

I will do this for tell me I remind you of someone you used to know

5: talk about the scene from a wip that you're most excited about

the scene I started the entire fic for, the scene I am most excited for, AND the scene I have been stuck on for multiple weeks because I was travelling and then fell out of the writing groove: Ethrand stumbling across not-actually-(fully)-dead Occtis in the wild (random inn on the Dvalmar Pass) and. confronting him? having a crisis at him? both. I have some really insane ideas for how that conversation's gonna go and one day I'll for sure actually write it (shakes my brain around. PLEASE)

7: describe a wip in five words or less

Ethrand Tachonis gets haunted. yay!

9: share 4 out of context images that you feel represent a wip

(source for image 2)

wip ask game

[your-turn-to-role]

now like this doesn't necessarily mean that's the room occtis was in, we know there was other fighting going on in the house we didn't see in ep 4

but also if that's a knife mark from ethrand that's fucking BRUTAL

[your-turn-to-role]

okay! good good! good to have confirmation on that one! ethrand tachonis what the fuck is wrong with you

[fryuitcup]

Bad nights ahead (wip)

[jadeandquartzes]

[id: a wip art piece in shades of grey and green, showing occtis laid out on the palazzo table. his mouth is open in pain and his head is thrown back as he struggles with a garotte around his neck. ethrand stands above him, one leg on the table to hold him down, reaching towards his chest with bared teeth. end id.]

[kalgalen]

lamb to slaughter

pretty okay for a first real attempt at painting with gouache :)

[your-turn-to-role]

tw blood/gore

at long last, my pet project of several months is done! really peak me to go "hey i loved this episode, should i draw it?" and going "no, i'm gonna draw it 7 times from increasingly difficult angles", but it was absolutely a labour of love

(you can actively witness me learn to draw foxes because this is the first time i'd ever done so)

image split into thirds so tumblr doesn't wreck the quality, but closeups and full image under the cut, because there's a lot of fun details in here!

[kerosene-in-a-blender]

I was thinking about Tertia's final words being to ask Occtis, "Did I do a good job?", and how that indicates that she was tasked with being a sacrifice. This was a role, a job, a thing she could do for her family to make them stronger. And the life she lived and the way she grew up meant that she wanted to do this well and she wanted to do this right, so much so her last moment of lucidity was spent asking if she'd become a monster in a way that had served the family. It's a tragedy.

But it's also not unique to Tertia, much of what we've learned about House Tachonis indicates this is what they all grew up with, this innate understanding that their purpose in life and death is to serve the House. It's in Occtis equating being accepted by the family as having a role and a job. It's in his arguments to Primus about why he should be allowed to attend the Penteveral centering the idea that doing this will allow him to finally be of use. It's in Frons yelling, "Why won't you serve?" at his dead little brother like it's Occtis' fault he didn't accept being murdered with obedience and grace. It's in Segundus writing how he'll miss his daughter in the same journal entry where he detachedly describes how the experiments on her failed. It's in Primus asking, in regards to Occtis, "What's the point of having something if it is not loyal?" The tragedy of Tertia Tachonis is that she represents this understanding taken to its furthest extreme: a young woman was told that her place was to die in service to her family and she accepted it, and wanted to do a good job of it. In the end to be a member of House Tachonis is not to be a person, it's to be a tool, and one that exists heart and soul to serve the family.

[sovka18]

I haven’t seen anyone discuss this moment from episode 4. It’s a blink and you will miss it, but it ads a layer of complexity to Ethrand’s character.

The important line here is

Ethrand looks cowed and afraid.

Ethrand is about to engage in a fight with Thaisha and he’s grinning! But then Primus calls out to him and suddenly Brennan describes him as afraid. This switch happens because he’s talking to his father.

Ethrand is as afraid of Primus as Occtis used to be. He follows his father’s every command and he subscribes to the notion that being a Tachonis is a great privilege, but he is scared. I wonder just how much are his actions driven by duty and belief in what he/his family are doing and how much by fear of Primus. And if Primus were removed from the equation would he continue to follow in his fathers footsteps or would he feel remorse/regret and be finally free.

On top of that (and now I’m properly speculating) I believe he hates Occtis with his whole heart, but not because Occtis cannot do magic and is “a disappointment to the family”, but because Occtis got out. For the past 5 years Occtis has been able to do whatever he chooses, free of Primus and the whole family. Ethrand didn’t get that. He has to live up to the Tachonis name and do everything thats asked of him. And mybe thats why it was so easy for him to kill Occtis.

[yvasartsparagus]

////SPOILER////

For Critical Role Campaign 4. I just had to draw this scene with Occtis. Love the campaign so far and looking forward seeing more of the seekers table <3

[kerosene-in-a-blender]

Something about the massive difference between Primus saying of Occtis, "I don't know if he can even be called a son" and her father writing of Tertia, "I will miss her dearly" and how that difference didn't matter in the end because they both decided their child needed to die for the good of the family