Nothing Much

[twinklestarss]

“I'd like to kill your father, if that's all right with you. Get in line. Yeah, but I'm going to do it with his own knife.”-Wick/Occtis

(C4E7) (C4E31)

Huge thank you to this post by @slayerscake for reminding me of this.

[smallishdoggo]

sometimes people will talk about Occtis and Wick as if they receive equivalent treatment in fandom, and it's just

[screechfoxes]

CRITICAL ROLE 4.31 Trick of the Light

[smallishdoggo]

I spent a huge chunk of my ten hour shift thinking about how Wick and Hal's relationship could play out, and now I'm home and too tired to write it all out. Something something, Wick as the Halovar in charge of interfacing with Hal and the Hallowed Round, something something, the two of them being allies on the same page working together but also at the same time Wick is a Halovar asking him to work for Halovar interests. Wick is THE Halovar, the face and hands of Hal's oppressor, and this resentment just growing and growing til it bursts. Wick a man who already thinks the honorable thing to do is just take it and is freshly feeling the horror of not taking it. Something something, toxic yaoi, something something, whump. You understand.

[smallishdoggo]

Petra and Ryah mention that Wick's engagement to Ebecca is unusual, which could mean a lot of things, but they mention that her family is one of the lesser noble houses immediately after and I really like the idea that she's unfashionably close to lower class. I think it would be really interesting for her to be an ambitious, opportunistic social climber who was granted an opportunity that nobody could have ever reasonably expected her to get, and she's just holding onto it with both hands.

[drawsmaddy]

[ID: A digital illustration of Wicander Halovar from Critical Role. His head is turned to the left, there is blood spray around his eye over his filament tattoos and across his mantle. Wick's expression is one of horror. End description.]

Local scion having a nice normal time

[smallishdoggo]

I love the fucking lip service paid to the fact that we don't know Armas' race just dying bitterly three paragraphs in so op can go ahead and call people whose headcanons they disagree with racist.

[smallishdoggo]

joining the war on gay Wick on the side of gay Wick.

[smallishdoggo]

I really dislike how people will point to Wick's capacity to get angry and lash out as proof that he's a dom, cause, like. That's not how that works. Tyranny gets angry and lashes out and she vocally enjoys the idea of being tied up and bossed around, cause as it turns out subs and doms alike have access to the full spectrum of human emotion.

[smallishdoggo]

I think Wick staying over at Hal's is kinda an easier sell than a lot of people are imagining it to be. At the Sundered Houses meeting, when Zebani brought Yanessa the news of Hal's betrayal, Wick already sided with him. He was angling to be the one to handle Halovar's response to the play, and the track he took was that Hal was a good and honorable man mislead by scoundrels like Kattigan. He has a preexisting relationship with Hal that Yanessa has said she wished she's paid more attention to. Him going over there to get his side of the story is entirely in line with what Yanessa would expect from him.

If he needs to, Wick can make a show of being disappointed at having to admit he was wrong about Hal, but he also could take umbrage with how heavy a hand they took with dealing with him and the theater, cause it was plainly a strategic blunder. Wick can make a very easy case for a gentler approach as strategy. Similar to the one he made for sparing Thjazi at the start of the campaign.

[battletailors]

Wick 🕯️ P.S. Sorry, I might've gone too crazy with this one. Something possessed me

[smallishdoggo]

The thing about Wick is that he's been running in to help, all heart no thoughts, since the start. Happened with Teor at the tailor, happened with Tyranny in Sloak, happened with Thimble in the petrification basement. It's broken bad several times before, but I think the lesson Wick's taken away from it is mostly that he needs to try harder to be of use. I think it's mostly hit him in his feelings of being useless and burdensome, and I don't think he's put much thought into how he can actually change that. He just keeps bashing his head against the wall like what he's lacking is effort.

And, man, it's sooo. It's wild. Cause he's been so reckless! He's been so adamant that he's not special and the risk of him dying is worth it and that it won't matter if he's killed, when the risk is abstract he's been so careless about his life. And when death is staring him in the face, he caves. Man.

[smallishdoggo]

Man, I think Tyranny's plan is pretty bad, I think it would be nuts to have this lie work, but also. Kattigan lost a finger for this stupid ass plan. Brennan may or may not respect that idk.

[smallishdoggo]

Last minute guesses/wishes for Teor's death boon to Wick; I think Divine Sense is the most practical choice. I think it's something Teor used often enough that it would feel very much like a piece of him, and also it's very useful in its own right regardless of where Wick ends up. I do not think "Find Steed" would be either thematically relevant or useful for a character who seems like he's gonna be doing subterfuge for the next while, however. I do want Teor to give Wick a horse.

[smallishdoggo]

I really hope that Tyranny doesn't end up a Schemer with Wick for a number of reasons, but chief among them is that I just don't think she has a good set up for what they do at that table.

Like, the Schemers are people with some level of authority and autonomy over their own domains, yeah? They have people they have to answer to, but those people are largely antagonistic forces controlled by the DM whom the Schemers are meant to leverage their personal power to undermine. Wick fits in here perfectly! But Tyranny has no authority or connections that aren't granted to her by Wick. Were this a novel, this would be a fun and interesting thing to explore. As a game of DnD, i think this would be incredibly stiffing for Whitney as a player.

Like! What can she do independently of Wick? Without his permission? It's a weird and unpleasant vibe to navigate, and I don't want to see them try. It seems neither like a fun time for Whitney nor a particularly interesting use of Tyranny as a character.

[smallishdoggo]

my unpopular opinion is that Zebani deserved to get dunked on by her punk ass little brother. She threatened to kill his crush if he ever disappointed their grandma again, and guess what? Now he's behaving exactly like Grandma wants him to. Sucks to suck, i guess.

[smallishdoggo]

With the caveat that Wick is a significantly quieter character than people tend to recognize, he's always been very concerned about Cyd and Teor's feelings regarding him and I wonder how much that has to do with Lioran.

his interaction with him in ep 29 felt very weighty to me. Wick almost certainly at least feels some measure of responsibility for how Lioran feels about the Creed, and there's a real horror to looking at this kid talk about striking down bad people, knowing his notion of what good and evil are if perverse in a way you had a hand in. And it's not something easy to save him from. There are larger concerns that mean Wick has to at least for now go along with his family. The effort of deprogramming Lioran and getting him out of there is complicated and difficult and perhaps not worth it in the grand scheme of things.

I just wonder how much being an older brother means to Wick and how much it has affected his perspective on Teor.