Ask meme: 4 & 6 for a critical role character of your choosing
[ask meme]
Percy remains my heart's blorbo, so...
4. What would happen to a houseplant in their care?
He tries to take care of it, he really does. He erratically remembers to water it. Keyleth eventually kidnaps it out of mercy and adds it to her hoard thriving collection.
6. How do they achieve a fully-assembled piece of IKEA furniture?
With disturbing and arguably unhealthy levels of focus, and absolute refusal to read the instructions because "I can get this!"
(rambled about it in the group chat sounds like a subset of not written, yes)
Then I shall share one of those... a group of friends and I once ideated an absolute bop of a Critical Role (Vox Machina) au in which Percy was a classic Faerie Prince(TM) who narrowly escaped the destruction of his homeland in Under Hill by fleeing all the way to the mortal world...where he fell in with a bunch of weirdos, and discovered that the modern mortal world was uncomfortably full of iron but most of the day-to-day objects with which one interacted were actually made of this new thing called "plastic."
Including these things called "guns", which actually can shoot iron, far faster and harder than even the finest archer of old.
(Though it wouldn't help more or less than anything else on Ripley. She was an ordinary mortal, who made a deal to help some Fair Folk take over a rival's land in return for the exchange to run some experiments on the losers.)
It's a very long time before he tells any of his new friends his name, for fear that they'll use it against him.
Keyleth was the heir of an ancient clan of druids whose traditional duties included guarding the borders between this realm and the Other, and making sure that only the right sort of people cross from There to here.
It’s been over 4 years since CR C1 ended and tumblr culture has shifted for the stupider, so before The Legend of Vox Machina airs, let me make one thing clear:
Not only do I think Percy and Ripley should kiss (bitingly), but I think they should have competitive, rage-fueled Character Foil hatesex full of intellectual oneupmanship and a really excessive number of loaded guns.
And if you’re not at least tolerant of that, you should probably unfollow me now. (If you want to hear more of that, check out this fic I wrote way back when—there’s no hatesex but there ARE Foils.)
Edit for further clarification: I’m not going to be talking about the hatesex at length or anything here—I have more private chats for that. But just so you understand the baseline at which we’re approaching this. Also, the Briarwoods have ALL the rights.
i know this is super old, but for the crit role/lotr crossover you wrote, what was your plan for percy? (my instant thought on who he might be was saruman, but more reasonably i'm guessing he would have been eowyn?)
[the AU in question]
I was going to give Cassandra half a break, actually, and let her be Eowyn.
It’d go a lot like this:
…
It’s difficult to travel incognito across open plains with a bear, so they didn’t try. They stopped before the Riders could get to them and let themselves be circled, and when Vex put her hand on her bow and Vax fingered a dagger hilt, Keyleth put her hands on both their shoulders and stepped forward. “Riders of Rohan! What news?”
The blond young man at the head of the company kept his hand on his sword, and leaned forward over his horse’s neck only warily. “I should ask the same of you. What brings two elves, a bear, and a woman to the Western mark of Rohan?”
“Hunting orcs,” said Keyleth, unflinching despite the warlike stares of the riders. “They’ve taken a couple of our friends. We want them back.”
“And who are you, to hunt orcs on our lands?”
“I am called Minxie,” she said, “and I am from the North. My companions hail from Mirkwood.” Her eyes sharpened upon a brooch on his shoulder, and armor that would be white, were it cleaner. “What brings a warrior of the Paleguard to the Western mark? Should you not be tending upon King Fredrick?”
“Fredrick is dead,” the captain said bluntly. “Percival now sits the throne, and-”
He swallowed some speech, and continued roughly, “I am Kynan. Lady Cassandra bid us here. To hunt orcs, in fact, which we have done.”
…
Whitestone was beautiful in the afternoon light. In the morning, once could suppose the pale stone that gave the city its name would sparkle with dew; in the afternoon, the sun turned them to gold and fire, so that the whole king’s palace of Rohan seemed alight.
The guards at the door held strange weapons, stocks of wood attached to cylinders of dark metal, triggers as though for crossbows where they joined. They were much like the weapons the orcs had carried, which shot pellets of metal and sounded like thunder.
“What are those damn devices of Isengard doing here?” Vex murmured to her friends.
“Maybe they’re allied after all, and we’re all about to die,” Vax murmured back. Keyleth just grimaced.
The guard they were passing, it turned out, had sharp ears. “Percival invented these weapons,” he said sharply, “who is now king. The Lady of Isengard is an ally, but how the orcs began making them, we do not know.”
“Is that the word, in Whitestone,” Gilmore said darkly. The guard blanched, but Gilmore still looked grimmest of all.
…
The Lady Cassandra was pale; the darkest thing about her the dark hair that fell in ringlets around her shoulders, and even that seemed faded, and streaked with white. She did not move upon the bed; she barely seemed to breathe.
“As I said, it was her own foolish fault,” said Percival. He was less frenetic, staring at his sleeping sister rather than the inventions of his laboratory, yet it did nothing to ease the wanness of his own face. “She raced out to the Westfold, even though I bid her stay here, and a Black Rider fell upon them. They brought her home four days ago, and she has not woken since.”
“Another grave loss,” murmured Anders. “All the more reason to keep our forces-”
“Nonsense,” Keyleth said briskly, and pushed him to the side. “Percy - that is, sire, do you have any athelas? Or kingsfoil, or-”
…
“Percival son of Fredrick, esteemed King of Rohan,” called the wizard, and her speech was proud but respectful, melodious and warm. “Why do you attack me? I have only created great works - and you have done the same! In this we are matched, and I consider it with pride, for I have only ever admired and supported the ingenuity of man. The other races, Percival, and you know thisin your heart, they lack your dynamic ability to adapt, to build upon failure so quickly that success becomes an inevitability.”
Vex and Vax rolled their eyes in mirrored motions; Keyleth pursed her lips; Kima shifted her axe with a growl and might have drawn it were it not for Allura’s hand on her shoulder. All seemed to wait on Percival, who did not speak.
Ripley continued, a hand outstretched. “If you leave this place in peace - or better, if you will come and discuss your plans with me, your thoughts for the future - I have faith that you will all succeed in your mission. And I am glad - for I have no interest in the tyranny of Mordor.”
Her words were reasonable - a mentor to a promising but wayward student, a queen to a beloved ally. Forgiving of the past and burning with passion for the future. To those who fell under its spell, it seemed inevitable that Percival would nod and ascend the steps of the tower; to those who hadn’t, it seemed equally inevitable. Gilmore watched without a word.
Percival scoffed, and looked past Ripley to where Anders crouched on the roof. “You really follow her? Are you an idiot?”
…
Get up, Vex whispered to herself, in the silence of her own mind. Quiet seemed to have fallen over the battlefield as well, or at least her small corner of it. The terrible black beast and its dark Rider demanded it. Get up, daughter of Mirkwood. Daughter of Imladris. Get up, or the idiot king you promised to protect is going to die, and so will everyone else. Vax is in that city somewhere; get up.
But it was not her hand that drew a ringing sword; it was not her voice that declared, “Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, queen of carrion! Leave the dead in peace!”
A voice as cold as a night on Weathertop hissed back, “Come not between the Nazgûl and her prey! No mortal man may hinder me, and any who try shall be borne away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shrivelled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye.”
And then Vex did look up, for what answered the Nazgûl was a laugh, bright and clear and nearly as cold, and yet bearing in it the echo of sunlight. What she saw was a young woman, standing between the Witch-Queen and the fallen steed and body of the young king of Rohan, and her sword was steady as she removed her helm to reveal dark hair streaked with white.
“But I am no man! I am Cassandra, de Rolo and shieldmaiden. I have looked on your kind before and I fear you not - but I do swear, you shall not touch my brother, for living or dark undead, I shall smite you where you stand!”
5 is my lucky number and I haven’t said anything about it yet, so…”bit of a crit thing” is my, I dunno, 2/3-written? fic in which an assassination attempt leads to Cassandra being Feebleminded, which leads to Percy and Kynan going on a search through the castle for her.
I had a nice narrative device (I think?) in which I alternated scenes with close pov to Percy with an exterior, omniscient narrator keeping track of Cassandra with line like, “Keep in mind that she has been here before - this familiar maze of stone and swords and shadow, but also: this scared, this trapped, this furious and flinching and helpless.”
There was something going on, metaphorically, with Percy being important to Cassandra’s past and Kynan important to her future (I still kinda ship it, or at least friendship it), but it wasn’t entirely working.
I also wanted to suggest, in the omniscient narration and then clearer at the end once they find and Greater Restoration her (Pike is around, fortuitously), that Delilah did this to her at least once, and probably more than once, as a punishment and teaching tool. (It’s much easier to retrain someone’s instincts when instincts are all they have.)
I’m almost certainly not going to finish it, so I’ll spoil it: they find her in Percy’s workshop, because it’s the only room in the castle that never belonged more to the Briarwoods’, or to their people, than it did to its original occupant. Ripley mostly worked elsewhere, and that room was so firmly Percy’s, growing up, that it was a neutral spot for all the other siblings.
the best modern Whitestone is Whitestone the small mining town that’s the brochure-perfect company town of Whitestone Mining&Lumber, “A Family Business since 1824.” It’s in the Appalachian mountains in southern Pennsylvania, right next to the mine where 1/3 of the town earns the money they spend in the other 2/3 of the town. The de Rolos, aforementioned “Family”, have a summer house a ten-minute drive further up the mountain, built to honor the fact that this is the very mine where FuckifIknow de Rolo I first started mining coal. There is absolutely promotional material for Whitestone M&L featuring pictures of the town, including one where a handful of de Rolos are arm-in-arm with an assortment of smiling miners and some lumberjacks, precisely one (1) of whom is African-American and one (1) of whom is a woman.
The mine is mostly empty by now, but the town has taken up tourism as a side business, “The Last Real Mining Town in America!” Especially since Percival and Cassandra won their company back from the hostile takeover/septuple homicide. The Briarwoods were the sort of people who demanded federal subsidies for their poor, faltering industry while simultaneously cutting safety standards as much as legally possible, and more. Percy and Cass have actually been working on retraining their people, not just in Whitestone but throughout the company, shifting away from coal and into biofuel, and even a serious investment in Pelor Solar. (Aided by the Ashari Environmental Lobbying Group?)
My favorite version of this would be in one of those aus where Percy and Cass won the company back somehow before meeting VM, so the gang can be looking to lay low for a while, maybe on vacation or maybe from the law, and Percy is like, “I, um, have a town...” “You can’t ‘have’ an entire town,” scoffs Scanlan.
[hard cut to VM standing in front of the Whitestone City Hall, which is a real government building but has the Whitestone M&L logo above the door]
Scanlan: I take it back. Percy owns a town.
Percy: I don’t own the town. It’s a municipal entity.
Percy, under his breath: We just employ approximately one third of the people, and own most of the housing.
[passerby keep obviously recognizing Percy. A couple have addressed him as “Mr. de Rolo.” He responded with polite nods, bc they’ve been addressing him as such since he was about 10 years old and clambering all over the mining equipment to see how it worked.]
Instead of “rebellions”, Cassandra led, and VM re-initiated, labor strikes. The Briarwoods were...not kind in putting them down.
Percival “stares at his sister’s unconscious form and doesn’t say anything as the rest of his team sorts out this horrifying mess, too busy experiencing violent flashbacks to the last time she was so still, bloody, and pierced by arrows; the last time he ran away from home and abandoned her to horror and death, the Briarwoods and the god they served” de Rolo
