the third floor is not important

Nic / Phoenix | he/she | aussie ttrpg enjoyer and artist

[smileytzimisce]

Hi, I'm Nic! I'm an aussie student animator and a very big TTRPG enjoyer. You'll see a bunch of stuff about Critical Role, Project Ghostlight, New York and LA by Night, Dimension 20, as well as posts about my home games, too! Asks are open, but I have a tendency to take a while to respond so please don't think you're being ignored.

My MCYT blog is @ethosiab, you'll see a couple posts from before I made this blog on there. I've tried to reblog them all here as best as I could.

Links: Commissions | Ao3 | Artfight

Post tags: Talking, Art, Writing, WIPs

Reblog tags: Clips, Art, VtM, DnD, CritRole, Project Ghostlight, NYBN, LABN

<- reminder to my future self to put a little info about my characters here ->

[kalgalen]

Occtis: i don't care about you at all

Julien:

Julien: [voice breaks] whatever i don't care about you either

[iamdeadfish]

alba davinos? should it please the court

[your-turn-to-role]

i've also been enjoying lately a) how much people are into alex committing to occtis being hurt in the background, and b) how much everyone who's seen la by night agrees it's the pinnacle of this type of alex acting (it is), so you know what, have a compilation i made for a friend a while ago of various background moments in the episode following jasper getting very hurt bc it's such a treat!

(for those who might need context, they just rescued him from an attempted execution, and vampires being able to survive a massive stab wound to the heart and lung doesn't mean it's a pleasant experience!)

[your-turn-to-role]

being very precise with my gif timing here, the captions are exactly where they should be, bc i need to illustrate something i haven't stopped thinking about

which is that alex/occtis (and only him) clocked the exact word that was gonna kill hannan before brennan switched characters to primus

you really do know your dad when he's in a bad mood!

[tiraminksu]

we did all we could

[kerosene-in-a-blender]

In light of the most recent episode showing us exactly what it looks like when Primus loses his shit, and Alex very deliberately and on purpose having Occtis react very viscerally to that (as a victim of Primus' abuse, as Alex has been pretty clearly playing him since day one), I've been thinking about the fact that Brennan has also made it very clear that the abuse wasn't limited to Occtis, despite his very limited screentime it's incredibly apparent that Ethrand was also abused. Brennan was most clear about this in the most recent episode, having Primus screaming at Ethrand while jabbing a finger in his face, but the signs were there as early as episode 4. Ethrand was gleefully asserting himself in the Palazzo, reveling in the murder of his brother and the soon-to-be-murder of the Lady Royce, until Primus showed up, at which point Ethrand was immediately cowed and diminished himself. The way Brennan portrayed that moment made it clear Ethrand is afraid of Primus, which is not the reaction of a man whose father treated him well.

What's also interesting is the contrasting ways this abuse effected Occtis and Ethrand's behaviour. One of the very first phrases Alex uses to describe Occtis is that he is "small in presence", and that's be been borne out by how he plays him. Occtis is constantly trying to be as unobtrusively and inoffensive as possible in order to stay out of any potential lines of fire from other people, and indeed growing frustrated with doing this is part of why he blew up at Julien the way he did. One notable example of Occtis avoiding potential conflict with others is when Amadah and Ingrid arrive at Castle Torch and Occtis declines going out to meet them despite Thaisha insisting that druids are cool with him now; he's unsure and avoids a potential confrontation by avoiding the interaction entirely. While Ethrand also displays this behaviour when around Primus, see again the aforementioned scene in episode 4 as well as his quiet guilt in the Sundered Houses meeting where he did not say a single word, when around people he has some power over he completely turns this around, and revels in making people feel as small as his father makes him. We've only seen this directly in interactions he's had with Occtis (throwing rocks at his head when they were children; taunting him while murdering him), but I wouldn't doubt he's also like this around the peasantry and anyone else deemed "lesser", taking the hurt that has been inflicted on him and turning it on others.

Not that any of this absolves Ethrand of the choices he has made. He still murdered his brother and told him there had always been something wrong with him as he did so. Him being made into what he is by his father's abuse explains this, it does not excuse it (and I strongly suspect that this will be a generational pattern with House Tachonis, once we come to learn more about Nullus and his relationship with his own children). But it does tap into one of the overarching themes of the campaign: becoming something more than what you were shaped to be by those that made you. While I suspect we won't see Ethrand become anything other than what he is, by virtue of being a PC, Occtis has a chance to.

[screechfoxes]

CRITICAL ROLE 4.31 Trick of the Light

+ bonus live Laura reaction

[berryinnit]

t-shirt with the words “high-functioning corpse” printed on it

[twinklestarss]

Critical Role via Twitter: “SONGS TO SHAKE YOUR BONES ☠️ ✨ Dance in the dark with @/alexward777's's Occtis Tachonis! His official playlist features 16 magnificently macabre tracks hand-picked by Aramán's favorite Necromancer, including Nine Inch Nails, Type O Negative, My Chemical Romance, and more! 🥀

Campaign 4 Character Playlist: Occtis Tachonis | Critical Role

Campaign 4 Character Playlist: Occtis Tachonis | Critical Role

[captainofthetidesbreath]

Thjazi being in Julien's shadow and staying there keeps him protected from the Tachonis's forced servitude is like, okay, so, if Julien dies, there's a VERY SIGNIFICANT problem in the way of, not only is Julien dead, but Nullus is immediately nabbing Thjazi. unfortunately, Julien's entire mechanical build can be flippantly summarized "passively suicidal adrenaline junkie"

[aeoris4lovers]

can we talk more about azune (who just recently came to the realization that he is in fact A Person and not A Thing) seeing bolaire’s painting and his reaction to it and asking him “do things dream? can they create?” and then bolaire thanking azune for their conversations and asking if he’ll be the one that takes bolaire back to his apartment. their narrative parallels of “i thought i was perfectly content living my life as An Object until the guy who always treated me as An Object died and then my long lost sister showed up and my life blew up in my face” are so delicious to me, they’re coming at the “learning if they’re even a person and, if so, how the fuck to be one” thing from such different angles but they’re also SO in it together. and of course i haven’t forgotten how azune found out what bolaire was and immediately reached out to touch the mask (to touch Him, not just his vessel) and wanted to try to cast mending on him (to make him Remember what he really is — an object that gets fixed or a person that has to be healed?)

there’s just something about bolaire starting the episode saying he’s more alone than he’s ever been and ending it standing there in his apartment looking at a flip book about the cat that escaped the story that was written for it, made by a young wizard who attributes everything he has to bolaire and didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye, and when brought to tears by it, presumably crying from the eyes of the man who first found out what he really is and instinctively pushed in closer while everyone else, to some extent or another, pulled away.

like, i’m pretty we’ve heard bolaire talk with other people about his own views on his personhood (or lack thereof), but azune is the first who really seems to have his own thoughts on it — he believes bolaire is a person, even if bolaire doesn’t, and he’s started sort of…softly but firmly making it clear that he believes that. azune was shaped by thjazi into the man he is now in so many ways, but where thjazi called bolaire “it” and refused to even look at him, azune reaches out to touch him and insists on looking for signs of personhood where even bolaire himself can’t see them. being shaped by someone doesn’t mean becoming them — in a lot of ways, bolaire was shaped by thjazi too, and they came out of that experience feeling very differently about the man but very similarly about themselves in ways that they’ve now been able to start untangling together: the man who watches other people having moments of closeness and joy from afar and then sits in front of a mirror privately making himself look like the man who was almost his father, and the one watching life through plays and stories and seeing the truth in it but assuming himself to be incapable of being a real participant in that truth and then withdrawing into his mind to privately play out a better version of recent events where his sister loves him and is glad to have him back.

god i’m gonna miss having them at the same table…i need them to be insane about each other forever

[undead-knick-knack]

Not even in death 😔

[faethfort]

the late realization that Thjazi only started trying to kill Julien as soon as they left Lady Aranessa is so funny. Man fuck this guy, bring me back to my wife.

[kerosene-in-a-blender]

Primus: It has taken two years and the deaths of two members of my House and yet I have sadly failed in creating a celestial 😔

Thaisha:

[your-turn-to-role]

"would you like me to fix that?" HANNAN BEST CHARACTER

[your-turn-to-role]

just. goes up to the impossibly deadly tachonis manor. says hey you want me to fix your undead problem? traps them in social convention. they LET HIM DO IT.

i've spent like the last ten minutes just going "YOU CAN DO THAT????" at my laptop

[your-turn-to-role]

i love that brennan made this mechanic and then rolled 100% of the ones on it