When it came to Percy's list, I was thinking more of Arya Stark's own revenge list than the one from Kill Bill (mainly because I've never seen that particular Tarantino movie)
I've said it other places but the thing I absolutely love about Percy is that he's a man who made a deal with the devil to invent the worst thing in the history of the world. Like, there's a moment in episode 1 of Mighty Nein where Matt talks about how guns have become more prevalent and are especially being used by the worst kinds of people, and Talesien's face just falls.
It's one of my favorite aspects about the entire world Critical Role takes place in. One mans single minded quest for vengeance gave birth to the firearm. Any time a gun is introduced it can be traced back to Percival's darkest moments. It's so cool.
Tal outright said Percy KNEW he was killing the world when he made the deal. When he saw the first gun in the wild he thought "That took longer than I thought".
My own take on Percy's revenge arc in the animated series is that it's an extended metaphor for how you can use anger and hate as a, very literal in his case, mask to hide fear, grief, and pain. Percy's whole character is built around keeping all these painful emotions as far away as possible, or actively concealing them. He flees Whitestone and abandons his name. He creates a weapon, based on cold logic and science, that deals damage at a distance. Anytime before the finale, whenever he actually comes face to face with anyone related to the original list he puts on the mask, until the person is no longer in any condition to do him any harm. When the mask is finally removed we see not an expression of rage, but one of fear and grief.
[pauses video and raises hand] I played a warlock with a mutually beneficial and healthy relationship with her patron! But I chose a celestial warlock for a party that otherwise had very little healing capability, and the pact was with a unicorn (who was played as a delightful mix of Pinkie Pie and Twilight Sparkle). It was a lot of fun. My warlock was a high-ranked and deeply traumatised member of House Phiarlan in an Eberron-set campaign, and she needed a friend. The unicorn's liege had gone missing, and my d'Phiarlan unknowingly had a connection to the person responsible. It was GREAT. The storyline ended with the unicorn liege rescued and my warlock released from her pact to be remade from the ground up as a bard, which is all she'd ever wanted from life. ANYWAY! Back to the video. :)
This! My lawful evil tiefling warlock was in love with her patron and just wanted to Make Her Wife Happy. This involved a lot of murder, but she wasn't bothered by it.
@@Readus101 Aw, thanks, La'Ron! I really enjoyed the entire video, too! Also, the campaign was so much fun. Lots of adventure, intrigue, big emotions, all that. Plus the Eberron campaign setting is my favourite.
I too had a great relationship with my hexblade and his patron the raven queen, he was her champion and defender of the sanctity of death, the hexblade has an ability at lvl 6 that let's u turn a downed enemy into a zombie, but since that an antithesis to what she stands for (within the CR lore) we homebrewed an ability that would let him shield his party with spectral raven wings (this was b4 fizbans was published but it acted much like one of the dragon gift feats) he would help rid the world of undead, and brought light to a misunderstood godess and by the end of the campaign was right by her side with her other champion a familiar half elf rogue...
Part of the reason I love Percy's story is because he gets pulled out of that typical revenge narrative by the end of it by friends and family---albeit a bit kicking and screaming, but able to process and move past his trauma by the end of the campaign. Sometimes it's impossible for someone to see past what's right in front of them beyond their traumatic experiences. In those cases it takes a nudge from an outside source, that being the support group Percy wasn't necessarily aware he had in Vox Machina and later Cassandra. I feel like his revenge arc could have very easily gone the way you described regarding male characters--Percy was supposed to be "irredeemable" according to Taliesin--but ends up splitting down the middle and teaching a valuable lesson as a result of the other players' actions.
"[...]ends up splitting down the middle and teaching a valuable lesson as a result of other players' actions." Yes, thank you! Structurally I get why the team made the choices that they did re: ending this arc, but it feels a little jumbled. Using The Power of Friendship to overcome the literal demon eating away at Percy is a great play at the table, but it felt a little rushed that he went from screaming in emotional agony to cooly dismissing Lady Briarwood's taunting. I get the moral they were going for but the whiplash was just a bit too rapid. Percy was more someone being fought over by a manifestation of his own hatred & the people who became his found family, rather than someone who was exercising healthy agency , and I wish the episode made room for that. I seriously worried about Cassandra's long-term health - she got her revenge, but her support network seemed a lot more diminished than Percy's. She repeated that the locals of Whitestone distrusted her, and she'd also gone through the torments both physical & mental of the Briarwoods. I'd have thought she'd be in a more precarious state after the fact, and this would compound from Percy leaving immediately after dealing with the BBEGs of the arc. It makes sense from a TTRPG stance (don't split up the party!) but it also felt like it was setting her up for failure. Despite these structural beefs with Vox Machina, I get why they happened and I enjoyed the show a lot. Adapting 38 four-hour episodes of a dense arc down to 12 episodes 30 minutes long is hard and the inherent D&D tropes & quirks are hard to pull into a streamlined narrative. The show is quite good overall! But MAN, there are.some implications to the events that are messy
@@dylanehooverlibrarian7026 These are some really interesting points that I think future parts of the campaign and wrap ups there after touch on, so I hope they have to get them into later episodes of the show
@@purplelikefire I later read the wiki and it seems that we're far from having left Whitestone behind. As well, I'm pleased to see that so much of the issues I had were ones of adaptation - the campaigns had much more room to breathe and let characters decompress at a festival or spend half a four hour episode talking about their feelings. I suspect the show continues to be good, but it is primarily an animated action series - we'll see if we have enough time to handle All That without condensing the hell out of everything
I think what makes Percy different from other characters seeking revenge is that he absolutely knew from the beginning that getting his revenge would destroy him. He never thought healing and moving on was possible, the only option was to repress the trauma and take as many as he could down with him. He foresaw he would become a serial killer. That's why he intentionally left a blank barrel on the List, to symbolize that the list never ends. AND he knew that guns would spread across the world, which he would also be responsible for. Taliesin was playing with the idea of an irredeemable character. It's baffling how people think Vax is the edgelord of that group. But then again, a lot of people like to ignore the fact that Percy was practically a villain and that's why he hated himself.
Percy has always been my favorite character from campaign 1, and I absolutely loved the Briarwood Arc! I want to say I love the final “fight” with Orthax, and how they changed it from the original. (Spoilers for the end of The Briarwood Arc in original CR) Originally, Percy doesn’t have this big battle in his head, but instead Orthax manifests as a shadow demon monster and all of Vox Machina fight him together. But honestly, Percy battling with himself was a lot cooler than the actual fight, and I also like it more from a story perspective (plus that amazing animation of Orthax!)
Now I'm starting to wonder if Deadpool (from the movies) is the most well-adjusted man seeking revenge. There's a statement from Percy to Orthax they couldn't fit in to the animated series that I really love: "Did I even want revenge before I talked to you? Did I? I don't remember anymore. What does she die for? What do I even need? I want my country. I want my sister! I've killed two of those who have wronged me and nothing is better. Nothing feels better, nothing is avenged." That said, as you saw from that watchalong, Percy never really reaches a healthy state of mental health. That said, a few of the other members of Vox Machina are on their own revenge paths, so we'll see how they deal with that in future seasons.
I need to clarify to you that Orthax came to him in a dream and that Percy wasn't even aware that he was in a pact since he half-assumed he just agreed to a made up entity made up in his head. In addition, he is a fighter class not warlock. He only took the Magic Initiate feet so that he can use Hex and minor illusion without further contradicting the rules given to the fighter class
While it is a revenge narrative, I love how it is also an allegory to mental health issues. The struggle of trying to remain human while battling inner demons nobody else can see. The importance of having a support group.
Here's the interesting thing about Percy's revenge narrative that the other stories you mentioned lack - the credits on Percy's story haven't rolled yet. We'll get to see him coming to terms with his new identity, absent the thirst for revenge, in future seasons. Cassandra may have gotten there first, but Percy's apotheosis is still coming.
I find it a bit odd to expect a warlock pack to be mutual (not that Percy was a warlock exactly). Usually it’s a vastly powerful thing offering help to a desperate thing willing to sacrifice something for help. Unless it’s boredom or amusement on the powerful things’ part, why did it help? I do love the fact that Percy is not a helpless lady, I really like to sympathize with “Prince Charmings”. It’s very rare to do well, there’s self-inflicted hardship in holding oneself aloof. But I also think Cass and Percy are the same. Percy just isn’t finished with his list yet, wait until the end of the series. What about… Zorro?
In many ways, the opposite of what you describe as why a warlock patron would make a pact would be shown through clerics and others who gain power through divine worship. The god or similarly-powerful being grants power to spread the good/bad word, defend their worshippers, and vanquish their foes, and that power can easily be taken away if they go against the wishes of that god. There are a lot of interesting things you can do with clerics who lose faith or paladins that break their oath, and I feel like that punishment is analogous to the assumed punishment for warlocks; if you don't do what Demon Daddy tells you to, you will find your soul taken much sooner than you expect. So I'd argue that mutually-beneficial warlock patrons are completely reasonable and in fact could be super interesting. The fact that a lot of D&D players are interested in edgy backstories where they lose everything (which is fine, gives your characters interesting flaws and allows for a lot of growth) fuels the endless hordes of stories where someone almost dies but sells their soul at the last minute, but that doesn't mean it should be the default or expected. The same zeal can be found in those who give themselves to religion after asking for aid. Only big difference, outside of the default flavor ofc, is that one is an unspoken contract and the other is an explicit one.
@@daniellewasdelayed8921 I’ve seen it done well with mutually beneficial warlock patrons. It’s fun too. But I still feel like the core concept of warlock and the default for even current 5E is the obligations and requirements from the entity inflicted upon the warlock. There is cost. Service. Demand. Imposition. These are words lifted directly from the handbook. Cleric gods require the player to do same things as well but it’s implied generally speaking they’re already on the same page as worshippers. But it’s all fun and possible in D&D.
I didn't entirely see it from this pov, but having watched a lot of female-led horror movies...you're right! I've honestly loved it, but this also explains why I love The Count of Monte Cristo as well. I like revenge stories where the end is like 'revenge is okay sometimes, under the right circumstances'.
Really thou im tired of the "sometimes you just have to be better then the person that wronged you" yeah that's all fine and good but.... That really only works in petty slights like stepping on someones shoes NOT when taking out the person your taking revenge on is better died then alive like im sorry your gonna kill your way to the person who lets say for instance mass slaughters people and then you just... Not kill then and spare them which just makes the person who wimped out seem selfish as its kinda seems like its a "Oh dont worry im not gonna kill you even thou i slaughtered my way thru your guards you may now go back on your way killing people since i personally got over it oh yeah no it had nothing to do with you killing people you just happened to wrong me personally and i got mad it had nothing to do with greeter justice byeeeee!!!!"
Interesting to note that there was one person on Percy's original list that did not get killed but instead managed to make an opportunistic escape so his revenge story might not be quite over but more just taking a back seat for now. It'll be interesting to see how they handle that in the show.
Funny that you show that shot of Delilah Briarwood when saying "like that of how warlocks form pacts with their patrons in 5th edition dungeons and dragons." Was that intentional because you've been watching campaign 3? Or was that a happy accident? :o I've never considered this difference between revenge stories with men and women. It's very interesting! But now that you mention it, the framing does tend to be very different. With women it comes across as almost wish fulfillment, but with men the revenge is typically framed as a cautionary tale. I think I'll check out Melina Pendulum's video after this. The topic is just so dense you could easily make several hours of video comparing the differences between men and women's emotional journeys in media. I think compared to most revenge stories, Percy also had the advantage of having a close group right there with him to keep him on track. He 1000% would NOT have thrown out that gun if Scanlan hadn't done it for him. In fact, in campaign 2 when Fjord drops his sword from U'kotoa into the lava, Taliesin makes the comment that Percy never could have done what Fjord did. Had he been more isolated, like what usually happens in revenge stories, that could have turned out very differently.
I’ll admit, I wasn’t sure I was going to agree with you and your assessment of Percy and Cassandra till the end, and I think it is something I need to think on for my own story. I think there is one thing that is missing from your assessment though. Spoliers below: Cassandra’s trauma is not completely dealt with by the end of the Briarwood arch. There is actually a point after Campaign 1 that Percy has to take over managing Whitestone for a year because Cassandra hasn’t been dealing with her trauma. I think that due to what happens in campaign one she has to push her trauma back so she had handle what’s happening in the world. However, I think your point still stands, it’s just that Cassandra still needs help after this point.
I was wondering if anyone else would remember that about Cassandra. If you've only seen the LoVM and not the live stream, then you're missing some relevant information about her mental health.
I played a warlock with a healthy patron relationship! =) My character was a satyr who outlived their human mother. The patron acted as a father figure after she passed. I never did manage to find out if he was their father.
Funny, for about a year I played a celestial warlock, tiefling. His whole goal was to defeat a great evil and regain his half elf body. Positive relationship, and he was a vegetarian.
I am currently playing a halfling genie warlock who's relationship with his patron is made that he gets to go on indiana jones artifact finding adventures, and the genie owns the museum. A win win.
Genie Warlock lends itself well to a healthy patron relationship :) My own character's Genie patron is her ancestral grandfather, and she herself is an entertainer (and, secondarily, a Storm-Genie Sorlock) who collects stories to tell to his court while his power enhances her storytelling and keeps her safe
With your take on "Women in media don't often lose themselves in their search for revenge," you'd be really interested in the plot of The Last of Us 2 on the PS4. As much criticism as the game gets for its pacing, the game falls *right* into this idea.
Hey man I don't know if anybody will care but all this talk about vengeance reminded me of the guy gliding from rooftops cosplaying as a bat. You know the one with the awful "enough prep time to beat God memes". That's another story of cathartic vengeance through acknowledging your trauma and grief. He did that through effort, helping people by becoming a Zorro-esque superhero and finding his own support structure of adopted kids and family
Percy reminded me of Ishida, the (then) last Quincy, from Bleach, but my favourite revenge arc is still "She-Devil"! The way she crosses of the list of her cheating husband's life goals, after destroying them, evolving personally yet staying true to herself is imo empowering and still hilarious;o)
Interestingly I've had mostly mutually beniftal warkocks in my campaigns A fiend warlock how is payed by a devil to keep demons out of the world (something that helps both of them). An Archfey warlock whose patron is their mother who gave them a fraction of her power to protect her. My hex blade has a mutual revenge goal with his patron as well as both of them having a vested interest in keeping the body they share "alive".
Oh I hope to play my warlock who is married to his patron, an archfey. Basically the stipulation with his pact is to go out in the world and bring back stories. His husband is perfectly fine staying at home in the Feywild, but he does love hearing about other planes.
I think it's how people handle emotions. Women tend to be more in tune with it. Men tend to ignore or repress it. If you've watched Q&A earlier eps too, Taliesin mentioned Percy's just been repressing everything & didn't really deal with it until the end of campaign (oof. But so true.) If you repress emotions, you won't experience catharsis. Neither heal or move on unless you start dealing with it. It's easier to lose yourself too (and become the cold blooded killer needed to be able to enact vengeance.) So perfect for a demon who wants him to self-destruct & give in to him. I think the only time he lets his grief out is when he's behind the mask (as mentioned by Tal in Q&A that he's a total mess behind it.) But when he's hiding, he's also vulnerable and his demon goes on the forefront and exerts more influence & control.
Two of my players have mutually beneficial patron bonds. One made a pact with a Couatl, who helps her augment her paladin powers in exchange for help with its own mission (taking down the BBEG). The other has a more subconscious familial pact; she found a phoenix egg and swore to raise it, and in return the phoenix subconsciously grants her power with which to protect it.
I love the fact that they chose to make Percy's mask a plague doctor's mask. It not only invokes Orthax, but also how Percy uses an aloof and angry exterior to hide the deeply traumatized boy whose mind is stuck in time at the moment his family was murdered, and him and his remaining sister were tortured for information they ultimately didn't have. It also represents how he sees the Briarwoods and their co-conspirators: As a plague, one that wiped out his family and infested his city, and that he must cure that plague with the medicine he made via a pact with the demonic.
I listen to your vids while i do chores around the house and i swear i got through this vid alone and had cleaned the house it made me mad that it was so fast and easy
So I LARP, and have been larping for almost a decade now, and as the joke goes, "LARPing is cheaper than therapy!" so I have either seen or been actively apart of several male friends/characters getting their revenge plots on. Granted it's FAR more intense and hands on then say rping around a table, but I can tell you some of them do actively work on their character's trauma, and often use it as a means to work on their own trauma. And usually results in a group of friends in a cuddle pile crying in a field at 1am. Good times! :D
Orthax feeds off the revenge. He doesn't create it. That was All Percy. Percy... My favorite character... Was not a good person up until his breakthrough in the final episode of CR. He knew he would be helping thousands of people kill thousands of people when he made the deal (even now it's not entirely clear which one designed the gun btw) and it was a good deal to Percy. Early Percy saw people as disposable fools. They weren't REAL people to him. (The prolonged mental breakdown) He was not a victim of orthax... He WAS in a mutually beneficial agreement with him up until Percy had a family again. Then .. Percy changed the agreement. To do so, he had to confront himself and what he was inside. It was Revenge as a catalyst for man vs himself. Which is why catharsis is still reached when Percy isn't the one to kill either of the briarwoods. It's reached when Percy finally decides and fights to become a BETTER. Person. He's more of a reformed villian.
I have a similar arc for the MC of my cousin and I's comic, "Oracles of Odroia." She seeks revenge against her parents for abandoning her, but she ultimately realizes that she's not too different from her hated mother, in that they both run away from their problems in their own little way. In fact, I'm running two concurrent revenge arcs, with two protagonists wanting to get even on someone who wronged them in the past. Pipi (the MC) and Gladly are both motivated by revenge (Pipi wants revenge on her parents for abandoning her, Gladly wants revenge on the main villains for killing her fiancée and razing her kingdom). While Pipi gives into revenge, almost bringing herself to the dark side as she proceeds to bludgeon her mother, Gladly sticks true to her principles, and no matter how many demons she kills, she retains her nobility by sparing and protecting the innocent and putting personal loyalties above vendettas.
Percy was not the only one in a non-consensual relationship with their patron. Delilah Briarwood, in order to save her husband Sylas from death, made a pact to The Whispered One in order to turn Sylas into a vampire. In return, Delilah had to perform the ritual to bring The Whispered One back to Exandria. In order to do that, Delilah needed a Ziggurat, a structure built to communicate with the gods, a relic of Pre-Calamity times in Exandrian history. The Ziggurat that The Whispered One showed to Delilah was deep underneath Whitestone Keep, the ancestral home of the De Rolo family. So Delilah's pact led her to cross paths with Percy and his family. And Percy in turn made an unconscious pact with the shadow demon Orthax in order to craft his Pepperbox, the first firearm in Exandria. Both The Whispered One and Orthax had their own motives, and did not care for the well being of their servants. Delilah committed unspeakable acts in her quest to fulfil her pact, and Percy nearly lost his soul, and unleashed the technology of firearms onto Exandria in the process. In the end, Percy was able to overcome the influence of Orthax with the help of his friends and Cassandra. Delilah lost Sylas, and in the end realized that The Whispered One had used her, and that all that she had worked for had been shattered. Of course, Delilah unleashed The Whispered One onto Exandria, and the fallout from that forever changed Exandria, as well as other worlds in the Dungeons & Dragons multiverse, as a part of The Whispered One was harvested by an evil champion of the goddess Tiamat, and taken to the world of Toril to be used for evil purposes. In Campaign 1 of Critical Role, The Whispered One is named Vecna. Vecna is an evil archlich who became a deity. However, Vecna is a copyrighted name and is the property of Wizards of the Coast, the company that owns Dungeons & Dragons. So in The Legend of Vox Machina, Vecna is called The Whispered One in order to avoid copyright issues. I enjoyed your analysis of Percy's revenge story, and the comparisons to other revenge stories in popular media. I think the reason that women have much better outcomes in revenge tales is that there is a stereotype that unlike women, men are closed off from their emotions and feelings, and that by never acknowledging them, they can stoically go forward to complete their goal. While this stereotype is very much a trope of fiction, it unfortunately does exist in the real world, and is part of the discussion centered around toxic masculinity, this need to cut oneself off from emotions in order to be a real man. And by this way of thinking, a real man does not need help. He can stand on his own, as seeking help is a sign of weakness. Well, as a man in his 40s, I can tell you that nobody, man or woman, can always function on their own. Everyone needs help sometime, and anyone who does not believe that is a fool. I've needed help many times in my life, and I am so glad I got the help that I needed. I have also seen several people, including my own family members, refuse help even though it was obvious they were in crisis, and the results were never good. So I will say to anyone who reads this: You are precious and you have value. Never be afraid to ask for help. If you think you are alone, think again. There is always someone willing to help, or to talk to. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign of wisdom. Never keep emotions bottled up, they will build and build until the pressure forces them out of you. Keeping feelings and emotions in is how resentment begins, and resentment easily turns into hate. Much love to all of you.
i wonder if it has anything to do with the emotional labor and maturity women are expected to be experienced in. like a male fronted revenge tale is about the monsters we become and maybe we are just as bad or something something. often they aren't even getting revenge for a wrong done to them but to a woman or child close to them. on the other hand the woman is seeking catharsis and safety. she is more likely doing this in response to an evil done to her. if she doesn't do this she is in danger of it happening again. i swear there were more thoughts but i guess that's all i've got lol (to note my comment is more to the general thoughts of male vs female revenge tales not to percy in particular. i don't feel comfortable discussing him since the show still has a ways to go in completing VM's emotional journey)
I liked Sylvie's arc in the first season of Loki because it broke type - she's offered a path toward love and redemption, but rejects it in order to carry out the revenge she's been working toward her entire life. That made sense to me.
The count of Monte Cristo is THE masterpiece of written literature. Take the time to read it at least once in your lifetime. The movies are not bad ,per say, they are just lacking in the nuance and the exploration of emotions that the masterful book provides.
My patron was my angel dad, who was helping me on my divine mission. As for other players, 1 was a mutal here's a weapon in exchange for kill a lich, and really didn't ask for much except make him a god of the moon, as it fell out of the sky so you know. Currently same player different campaign may become a a warlock to a book, she's very motherly and he's 9...so you know. But she's also gives very advice and answers all his questions, if she can. Helped the party summon a puccan, and have a fun dance party and get much needed protection before the mage hunter Paladins came running in, lucky we were save by a squire paladin npc who stopped and claimed they had it under control before things got waaaay worse.
About the one where the revenge story is followed through with a male protagonist and they have a cathartic resolution without breaking down that I can remember is... Gun X Sword, an anime about a drifter who made it his life's goal to kill one particular person responsible for killing his bride to be. There's a lot of stories happening, and he's a pretty chill dude with his own quirk, but the vengeance is still his main and primary goal. He'll be VERY animated, to the point of manic, if the goal is within sight. But throughout the show he at least shows capacity to be do something beside vengeance, often actually helping people even if he complains or grumbles about it, so I honestly can believe him to still function pass the deed. Did I also mention its a mecha anime?
In one of my d&d campaigns that I DM, there is a warlock who's patron is a hag, and the hag acts like a highly morally questionable grandmother who is really supportive and caring of her warlock but also seriously not a good role model. She'll bake cookies for the warlock, but at the same time encourage the warlock to poison the cookies and hand them out to passers by.
I almost forgot but the movie, the Adventures of TinTin and Captain Haddock's whole arc. The generational trauma and the generational connection to the bad guy and his family. I don't want to spoil anything but for an adventure romp with no main female characters, there is a lot of heart and emotion and talks about overcoming life's lows to achieve who you are meant to be. It's not a "you killed my father" type of story but it is a "you and yours have constantly been trying to kill my family's legacy" type of thing and Captain Haddock has to realize that he has always had the reigns to steer that truth however he wants and it's really cool.
Well. New subscriber here. Sometimes the YT algorithm does its thing and gives the best gems at the most random times. That's why I am here as always late to the party. I've heard of Critical Role almost 10 years ago while strolling the Gamescom. For some weird reason I never dug deep into this despite being interested. I learned more about DnD and let my joy for voice acting grow (because I got to "know" Matts voice) and lived on as a nerd for many things. Until shortly ago when UA-cam gave me a "best of" Percy and something clicked in me and I binged Legend of Vox Machina (S1 at one evening, S2 the next). So I am here now warping every CR content YT gives me into myself. I really should start watching all the storys coherently for all the context I guess.... But yeah. That is how I landed here without really anything to call me a critter but as a big fan of cinema, films, manga, anime and cartoon. Because of this I get your point about revenge plots. I even think they get a little bit boring because mostly they play out the same. So I would say a good example for something different even opposite to the 2 surviving de Rolos could be a view at prince Zuko and his sister Azula. These two (without a literal demon) go a similar route but the other way around. Azula is completely lost in surviving through pleasing Ozai (I guess that's how Cas slipped through the Briarwood) while Zuko is at first completely locked in killing his father for what he did (unjustified) to him but learns (thanks to Iroh and the Gaang) that a simple life where you help others can be way more fulfilling than the path of revenge. Yeah, there are differences, of course. But also it is really fitting especially with the sibling switch. Percy and Azula where REALLY lost. Only Percy realized it and tried to make it and him better.
In defense of my archfey warlock - would an accidental pact with the Queen of Air and Darkness be a beneficial relationship for anyone but the Queen in that situation? Needless to say a solid part of my warlock's story involves her getting a different patron. Also as one of the many who backed the kickstarter for Legend of Vox Machina, I was very happy with the result! I love the Briarwood arc, and they made the confrontation with Orthax far more satisfying than the streamed version. I look forward to seeing season 2 for sure.
(1:22) I try to bounce around but rarely is it too unhealthy. My first character ended up working for his patron's boss, who was the overseer of time in the multiverse.
Mutually beneficial warlock pacts have always been a thing at my table so it's not too unusual here. For an old character I'd be reworking if played again, his original pact was half unknown like Percy's, but it fell more along the lines of "this kid is smart enough to play with dangerous shit and foolish enough to try this again if he doesn't get what he wants, and this will be far worse for him if I don't help out". On the subject of Vox Machina though, I really did adore it more than I thought I would. I watched it with friends and we all got really into it. Percy did become a house favorite though we all branch off (I'm personally invested in Vex and Vax the most), and I was super excited to see him discussed on your channel!
I got a bugbear warlock whose patron is a swamp hag he does errands for. Finding magical items to send her, he calls her "Mom" with all the energy of the Kurgen in Highlander. He's called Fetch
I specifically shied away from warlocks because I don't like the idea of being indebted to a powerful being that can coerce you to do their bidding. But I finally did end up making a satyr warlock with a genie patron whom he rescued from enslavement. So the genie rewarded him with powers - with the request that, should he come across others being forced into similar servitude, he do what he can to help them too. I basically made Aladdin, but if he was a goat boy twink who cares more about adventure than romance.
I like your larger gender analysis of how revenge stories are written. Personally, I really liked how TLoVM avoided the whole 'no MC! Don't reduce yourself to the villain's level by killing them!' which appears in a lot of recent kid's media (on a meta level because uh, well, S&P would have an issue with teaching kids It's Okay To Kill People Sometimes), SU had a bad case of this. Because unlike a lot of other 'don't reduce yourself to the villain's level' narratives it doesn't really demonstrate /what that means/ like okay MC killing Emperor McEvil would be like bad karma but what does that actually mean in terms of consequences? TLoVM on the other hand makes it very clear that it's not so much that revenge against the Briarwoods would morally put him on their level or whatever, but instead that Oh If I Do What Orthax Wants Me Too I Will Turn Into An Unstoppable Killing Machine That Dismembers People With Guns If They Get In My Way? No thanks. tl;dr TLoVM does a better Don't Sink to their Level narrative because the consequences are actually clear.
Battlestar Galactica (2003) has the cycle of revenge as a reoccurring theme. The arc words of the series are "All this has happened before, and all this will happen again."
No, La'Ron, most people don't play Warlocks with Good or even Neutral aligned patrons. Though it is a deeply underrated concept tbh to have a patron that is actually on your side. Also, sometimes the drama of fighting against the situation you are in via any means available is good? Like, I enjoyed Gideon the Ninth, that's pretty much the same dynamic on a more mundane level... comparatively of course.
‘Mandy’ starring Nicholas Cage came to mind when comparing Percy with non-animated characters who seek revenge and risk getting consumed by it. ‘Mandy’ even has a revenge-fueled protagonist who forges his own weapons and consorts with dark forces. Plus it’s a crazy-awesome performance by Nicholas Cage and as visually stunning as ‘Vox Machina.
It's possible to gave a warlock patron that doesn't ask anything from you at all. They invest a portion of their power in you when you're low level, then as you level up they're basically accruing interest on their investment. As long as you become more powerful by following your destiny, they come out ahead. I've never liked the too-common thing of "you can choose any of these classes, but if you choose that one, the DM will fuck you over and make your character's life hell." The player should be the one who decides if they want to go that route. The DM should be willing to give them as little or as much patron or deity interference as they're up for. That said, Taliesin consistently trusts Matt with making a lot of choices about his character for him.
Thank you! People look at me so crazy when my warlock is in some sort of mutually beneficial thing (wasn't that supposed to be the point?) For Percy, there seems to be a lot of Orthax as a manifestation of PTSD, but I'm not totally happy with how they're handling all the tangential things as a result
@@rachelv673 Yea, but percy's pact mainly came to him by a dream, he technically didn't even know he signed a pact. Orthax pretty much tricked him into the pact. Mutually beneficial pacts seem to be far more common then the pact percy was in.
My kobold warlock’s Fiend patron has a prominent interest in keeping his great grandson (my kobold’s tiefling boyfriend) alive for some currently unknown reason. My kobold made the pact because both individuals want the tiefling to be protected, so it’s mutually beneficial (though there’s a layer of mistrust on the kobold’s part).
my warlock was in a weird spot with her patron because she was literally raised to be the dark messiah of a devil worshipping doomsday cult... and then accidentally signed her soul over to an angel that was forcing her to be a good person instead of the supervillain she had been brought up to be. She was me trying to figure out a fun way to make a celestial warlock by subverting the usual "good person, evil patron" trope. Though eventually she got character development and has since become more chaotic neutral/chaotic good but goes about it like she's still a supervillain, while basically befriending everyone she meets and having learned to hold her found family close also she managed to break away from the control of her angel and is now a swarmkeeper ranger who throws crows at people! Turns out she's not the half devil she thought she was, but is actually a "shadow fae", which is why she has crow powers
I agree with you about the wonderful role playing options with a beneficial pact I love playing worlocks that are friends with the being giving them power
In season 2 of Daredevil, there is the flashback scene where Elektra brings Matt Murdock to the mansion where the mob guy who ordered the hit on Jack Murdock so that Matt can kill him. The mob guy is tied up by Elektra and Matt wails on him for a bit, but then tells Elektra, "that's it. That's all I got," and doesn't finish him off. IIRC, Elektra tries to kill him with a kitchen knife, but Matt stops her. And that's my example of a male character beyond Edmond Dantes reaching a revenge catharsis without killing the person who wronged them.
Coming off of Wuthering Heights. I learned that Revenge for men Either goes Three ways. Unsatisfactory Vengeance, Continued Justifications for Vengeance, or Death. And often times Death becomes the Redeeming aspect of a Character’s revenge. Heathcliff by the end of the Novel Dies after letting go and is seen with his beloved as a ghost. But instead of going to heaven, they wander the land in a sort of purgatory.
Wow this feels like a more fleshed out version of the story of one character in League that I always really liked (Pyke) (only halfway thru the video just noticed the resemblance xD)
The Red Dead Redemption series showcases one of its protagonists (John) being able to have his cake and for a short while eat it too. At the end of the prequel he gets his revenge on the final villain for dismantling his former gang and does it primarily out of the security and welfare of his family. The reasonings for going after the other gang members who betrayed him in the first RDR is still the same but this male protagonist doesn't let revenge overtake him and make it his life's goal, he knew what he wanted to do afterwards and move forward without hesitation, his son's character arc maybe has yet to be finalized though.
Joe Abercrombie's Best Served Cold is a female protagonist's revenge novel that subverted many recent themes. At the same time having classic list structure, and the acts of revenge taking not just what you had but what you gained during the journey.
Pretty sure the last male-lead revenge story that I saw where the man was satisfied in the revenge was when Vax felt satisfied at the death of the blue dragon, Brimscythe. I'm not sure how attached he was to that child, but it was still a revenge story. I have a character in my D&D game who began his story in the Curse of Strahd campaign, and I made as part of my character's background story that Strahd had killed my character's mother, and so he took on the attitude that he wasn't trapped with Strahd, Strahd was trapped with him. By the end of it, Strahd was dead and my character has been trying to move on, but he can't move past the fact that his mother is still dead, and so now he's looking for a way to bring her back. So I can't say he was fully satisfied with his revenge, but he hasn't been empty, either. He has grown as a character through his struggle and he has begun to move on from it, but he still has that lingering desire to undo what had been done.
Oh, this was so interesting to watch. I've never seen Kill Bill and now I want to watch it. Also love the Princess Weeks shoutout. Her channel is awesome and i don't think i have watched the video you mentioned. Will be getting on that. I really enjoyed Vox Machina and was glad there was a focus on Percy because almost every story I have read or watched with a character named Percy they have been one of my fave characters. Why are characters named Percy so likeable or charming? I've come to call it the Percy phenomenon.
The one revenge story I want to see in media is the revenge of Olga of Kiev, before she received her Sainthood. I recommend looking into it because she gets her cake and enjoys it in the best way possible and I'm surprised there isn't a movie or series out about this woman.
LOVE YOUR Analysis. I think it has something to do with how we generally view how men handle their trauma in reality. I'm currently(-ish) writing a story where the main character is "passively" haunting his ex-slavers and kidnappers. He's a bit neurotic about everything he does, and I think that along is because we generally think of successful men being unusually or unhealthily obsessive while at the same time handling mental trauma poorly that it's hard to imagine men going back to relatively normal afterwards. The only way I some what fix it is because my main character isn't only absorbed in revenge (which he acknowledges is completely unhealthy), and another character constantly challenging his pessimistic world view.
This was such a cool analysis and I hope to see more critical analysis of Vox Machina. Well done. I personally don't focus on the revenge story with Percy as much as the Oppenheimer narrative. Yes, revenge informs it, but actually Orthax just gave him the tools according to Percy's creativity and genius. He already had a cruelty problem based on his privileged upbringing. Percy imagined the perfect revenge machine, The Pepperbox. A GUN in a literal fantasy world. He's the inventor of all the chaos a gun MEANS. He's the first. He brought mass warfare into a world of bows and arrows. He's already a villain. Percy imagined revenge and brought guns to this world. THAT is what interests me. Percy is a creator admitted bad person. It's Orthax figuring out how to suck the most devastation out of Percy's mind and smarts that seals the deal. Percy was privileged in every way, and even his revenge is treated as privilege. And his education is used ultimately not only to self destruct, but destroy others in the creation of a new weapon of mass destruction. Guns didn't exist in Matt's world before Percy. I wish they had said so explicitly in the show. But it has informed everything about the world. From how there are defensive capabilities of cities to how there are now...other uses for residuum. Canons. Fireworks in Hupperdook. It's actually shown that the creation of guns is actually the worst revenge on the world. This manifests in (spoilers) Ripley duplicating his technology. And that's what he agreed to subconciously that makes Percy culpable and all the more grey and interesting. I don't think of him as Hamlet or the Bride. Hamlet and the Bride are sympathetic. I see him more like Oppenheimer..."I am (accidentally, on purpose,) become Death." I like to compare Percy to my favorite example of an Oppenheimer analog, the heartbreak of Topher Brink from Dollhouse (spoilers for Dollhouse) after he accidentally destroys the world with his weaponized technology genius sitting in his cell knowing he has destroyed the world and knowing nobody can match him and the world is irrevocably changed for the worse all because of personal curiosity and trauma.
I really would like to see your take on Percy in CR, but I understand that that would take far too much time. Still I find it really interesting how Percys revenge story is different in CR. Spoiler for CR 1: One moment I liked a lot in CR was a scene near the end of the Briarwood arc where Percy talked to Orthax and turned away from his revenge telling Orthax that he had killed some of those on his list, but he doesnt feel better. His revenge didnt make his pain go away. This realisation then lead to them all fighting Orthax together.
Most Warlock patrons, excluding homebrew, aren't good things. Demons are beings of Chaos and would likely just have their Warlock sow chaos wherever they go. Devil's are crafty tricksters who should be seen as corporate salesmen trying to trick you into a contrast that SOUNDS good on the surface but if you read the fine print, it just benefits them. Old ones gonna old one and you will never have a good relationship with one. Archfey have a better chance at being nice but are also usually out of touch with emotions outside of vanity and personal interest. Lich? Evil. Fathomless? Krakens and Leviathans are usually evil. Celestials are your best bet honestly, they're of good alignment, they're moral, they care about humans. Just good all around if not vague and cryptic. Genies depends on the genie but could definitely be good. So out of 9 choices you have, non homebrew setting aside, 3 to choose from for a healthy relationship.
Mutually beneficial doesn't mean the patron is "Good". It means both parties share goals/ beliefs. Vengeance Paladin makes a pact with a fiend for power to aid in his hunting of bad people because lives cut short increases the chance that those who would die end up in hell as currency. Demon makes a pact with someone to kill a fiend because that fiend is fucking up that Demon's terf. Then once they gets their terf back, they don't care what the benefactor does. Kraken/Leviathan hires land dwellers to keep the oceans safe from a local wizards conclave. Old One's are described as ancient forgotten godlike beings. Maybe one just wants to learn what's happening and gifts their benefactor power to keep them safe? I don't know what goes into making a Lich, but I don't see why minds can't change over the thousands of years they've been alive. They also could have a vassal to just protect their phylactory, and your role-playing that vassal.
I really enjoyed watching your take on Percy's revenge story and the differences between male/female leads in revenge plots overall. I wonder if part of the difference that comes between the two is that a lot of narratives in which men handle their trauma have them doing so alone while women as a whole are often seen as more social and less prone to spiraling as a result. I personally like when this gets flipped around a bit because even self-destructive characters can be very compelling and I wish more edgy female characters got a chance to loose their shit in a story. (A great example would be the isolation and breakdown of Azula in AtLA) If you are alone and are only driven by your revenge plots with nothing positive to look forward to afterwards the cathartic revenge end doesn't work because there is no end past the initial trauma to feel cathartic about. I'd like to see a good male lead get their cathartic vengeance and pick up farming or something afterwards. 🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄
The reason there is a difference between a male lead revenge story and female lead revenge story is that their goals are different. Female lead revenge stories are often about dealing with and moving past the trauma that spawned the revenge quest so that they do have a life on the other side because they often have a reason to live beyond taking their revenge. However, for male's, by the time they get to the point where they seek revenge they have often lost everything. Since they often view themselves as partially responsible for their loss, they have nothing left to live for other than putting everyone responsible for that loss in the ground, which includes themselves, and thus there is no reason for them to deal w/that trauma since they will be dead by the end of their quest. When Percy, unwittingly, made his pact w/Orthax he had nothing left but his pain. No home, no friends, no family (to his knowledge) and thus no reason to not throw his life away in order to destroy those who had taken everything from him. But by the point he finds himself in a position to take his revenge, his situation has changed. He has friends who care about him (and whom he cares about despite himself). He has a home that might yet be saved. He has a sister he thought lost. Unlike when he started the path he has reasons to want to deal with that trauma in a way that doesn't end in his destruction. In the animated series Cassandra says Percy forgave Delilah but that isn't really true. He didn't forgive her, it's just that at that point the price of carrying out his revenge would have been far higher than he wanted to pay.
I like Payback,because we understand from early on that he's in the gunhand game anyway. He is justified in feeling betrayed sure,but it's all simply an extension of the life he's already living.
"you know, the type that actually hates themselves but that doesn't stop them from thinking they are the smartest person in the room" I though we were here to talk about characters, not to be violent with your audience, specifically me
Great vid, love the literary analysis! In short, I think it valid to say that differences in catharsis lies in socialization and specifically gendered-ness. Emotional catharsis is not really something that is taught well to anyone, but especially distant to men. I speak in generalities, this does not apply to ALL men, or ALL cultures. However, in America what we see is that aggression and repression are the culturally accepted/preferred way of dealing with emotion/trauma. I highly recommend 1999 Film Tough Guise, as an example of socialization. I think what is interesting is watching Vox Machina and looking at each character and what their arc is. Then describe it in a sentence. What does each character achieve?
I liked the revenge narrative. Its one of the only good edgelord things ive seen in while. Could just be my age but if the demon wasn't corrupting him and pushing him to pull away from ppl and be so rude, i would not have enjoyed it at all
Oh yup, you were right, I have a problem with your Count of Monte Cristo comment! I love that story *because* the protagonist fails to overcome their trauma. It is one of the first bad-ending stories I witnessed~ In the end, he has a choice to spare his innocent fiancée and be healed, or to fall to senseless vengeance and cruelty (which he chose). The end of the book is him running off, forever changed into a cruel, selfish individual with his newest armcandy.
Problem is, the clip he showed is from the movie. In the movie he gets his revenge, then has a happy ending with his fiancée and their son. Who wasn't actually his son in the book.
@@DrLipkin So few people are okay with there being a failure to overcome story, and so many adaptions (like that movie, or Revenge) decide to lose that aspect. Which I blame for why so many people think the Hunger Games trilogy is a successful romance story rather than the failure to overcome ptsd one~
Great video as always and I don’t say this as a correction because I agree with your conclusion that men don’t get a healthy growth focused catharsis in revenge narratives. So let me suggest the Man from Nowhere as an interesting take on the revenge film. Don’t want spoil but curious how it fits your theory. Keep up the classes!
CR Campaign 2 almost have a character with healthy warlock & patron relationship. I don't know how far along in your watch of C2. So I guess I will leave it at this for now. Also, your first impression of Percy weren't wrong. Taliesin once said about Percy that he think he's the only adult in the party.
a simple lense for the gender difference It's important to empower women with our stories so we survive the hells we're going through. It's important to not empower men who think they are owed something (usually from desired women or rival men).
the only male revenge story i can think of where the male hero doesnt go through what you describe is Inigo Montoya from "The Princess Bride". that may be because his story is a subplot also, maybe John Wick? and/or Taken? i havent seen the entirity of either series, so im not sure, but i would GUESS those two may be able to count?
I don't really think the first John Wick is about revenge. It's about John's grief. He begins the movie wanting to grieve his wife in peace, and he ends the movie in the same place. His rampage is a distraction. A place to aim his rage that otherwise doesn't have a home. When his rampage is over, he doesn't feel any accomplishment, because he hasn't gotten to do what he wanted to yet. The second movie *is* about revenge. But we don't really get to know John's mental state once he gets it, because upon getting it he immediately has to flee/fight for his life. The third movie is all John just trying to stay alive, though he does say that he wants to stay alive to keep alive the memory of the love that he shared with his wife. Movie 4 (and 5?) will be a revenge movie, as 3 ended with him joining forces with someone to bring down an entity that wronged them both. But all these events have only stood to stand in the way of John simply honoring his wife's memory and moving on with his life. He knows he has emotional labor to do, but the events of the movies keep getting in the way. The plot is an obstacle for him to overcome, not a means to an end.
I think true grit has a good revenge narrative maybe it’s because she’s a kid but she has to let go and give up on her revenge to survive there isn’t a catharsis
I enjoyed vox to the fullest. But I was disappointed that all those mythical characters in the group and we had to explore the regular human. But it was good
I think that while you headed in the right direction you didn't reach the logical end conclusion. The below are generalizations and not specific to any particular person's experience. The current state of men's mental health is atrocious. We are not prepared for anything emotional. Instead we are expected to be pinnacles of stoicism. The only emotion we are permitted is anger, but it must be perfect anger. As Aristotle said, “Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.” When the only emotion you are permitted is anger, but even that is only permitted in limits, and then you are given a cause for revenge it is easy for a man to go all-out on it, thus "losing themselves" in the desire for revenge. What else do they have? This is all that is allowed. Forget about temperance anymore. The male protagonist is tired of "dieting" on emotion. They want to binge it because they've been starving up to this point. This is catharsis for the male viewer as they finally get to indulge in all the pent-up experience they've had. Rarely it's the same as the story's protagonist, but it has the same *kind* of things. But merely killing the target of revenge isn't a resolution to a story. We need to see the after effects. And what is the after effect of binging on revenge? Where that's all you've been capable of expressing for so long? Being lost. Empty. They are no longer a man because they no longer have a role within the world. Go browse r/AskMen for a while and you'll see the same story over and over. Be stoic or angry, but in your anger do not sin, and do so alone. Have all the tools but no one tells you what tools you need, how to get them, or how to use them. Those times men actually do open up, usually at the insistence of a significant other, they are immediately viewed as "lesser" - the SO loses interest in them or even uses it for gossip at a dinner party with the man present. Opening up to other men often ends up with the listener frozen, unsure of how to handle this because, again, we don't know what tools exist much less how to use them properly. But we can't be imperfect so we do our best and treat everything as a nail. "Man up." "It'll get better." "There's no reason for that." Etc. So we seem cold even to each other. Meanwhile women are (again, generally speaking) not only permitted a fuller scope of emotions but also given a support network for it. Women support women during tough times. Men (often, not always) support women during tough times. Women are taught how to express themselves throughout the experience so that it's never "dieting" on emotion but instead a well-balanced "meal." So when a female revenge protagonist shows up in media we are seeing a reflection of how women deal with their emotions: they're better prepared and able to see the end of revenge with a possibility of seeing what happens afterwards. A revenge story may be a big emotional meal for them to consume, but they are able to put it down to focus on other things. Perhaps the best example of a male revenge story with a more balanced ending *isn't a revenge story*: Taken. This man is prepared for when things happen, both mentally and physically. He's had the training and knows what happens after the mission is over. We don't recognize it as a revenge story, though, because he's not out for revenge. He just wants to rescue his daughter. Once she's returned he can move on with the rest of his life - going back to having a BBQ with his old military buddies and getting birthday gifts for his daughter. He knows what life is without the adventure. Most male revenge stories require a complete dismantling of the man's life in every where - anything of value must be taken from them. Job. House. Spouse. Child. Dog (John Wick). Whatever is of value is taken, leaving nothing left for them to temper themselves for and thus they binge. In Taken it's the restoration of the "normal" that is the goal and thus it comes across different. Percy's story reflects this story at the end, too, because once he finds out Cassandra's alive he's not solely out for revenge but the restoration of "normal" in the form of having Whitestone renewed and led by a deRolo.
I think the dissonance comes from the confusion between the narratives you're talking about. Yes, they all deal with revenge, but the thing with most of the women led narratives you discussed is that it's also about justice. with a lot of stories led by men that focus on revenge, they're almost all focused on how he who was wronged. He needs to kill the person who took his family away and will burn the world down to resolve that. It's not about how bad the person who wronged him is, they're usually terrible like the briarwoods, and almost always they deserve to die, but it's about Percy killing them because of what they did to him not what they are doing to the world. With more women led narratives it's about slaying a dragon, this person hurt me and they'll never hurt anyone ever again. With Cassandra, she endured the same torture that Percy did along with years more of it along with mental torture and brainwashing to the point where she calls Delilah mother. She kills Delilah when she is about to blast them with a spell, adding self defense to the action, even though it's not necessary, but it doesn't matter to her because the people who hurt her are all dead, maybe she'll have a breakdown later, but the important thing is that they'll never hurt her or anyone else again. Which is how a lot of revenge/justice stories about women are focused on, slaying the dragon instead of killing the mob boss who gunned down your family. One more modern story about revenge that is crafted differently than the normal revenge is empty story, is John Wick, the first movie at least. He is a man who had a dark past and was able to get out of it due to the love of his wife. When she's gone, she dies from a disease, not being killed by the mob boss or his son that would later serve as the villains of the story, so she's not there for him to go on a rampage over, he just wants to mourn her in peace with the dog that is the last gift she was able to give to him to keep him company when she was gone. The mob bosses son kills the dog and steals his car because he's an asshole and that kicks off the story. obviously he gets his revenge, kills the asshole mobster son, than kills the father who tries to kill him after that. The second movie kind of messes with that narrative, but in the first one he seems content to let things go, he was willing to do a lot to get to the mobster's son, but he never harms innocent people, he doesn't want to destroy the mobster's family root and stem, he just wants to kill the guy who killed his dog and people, most of whom are very bad people, get in his way. The revenge narrative isn't framed as good, but it's also not acting like he's a monster, just a force of nature in the form of a man who wants to hurt the person who interrupted his mourning and is forcing him to fall back into the life he left behind
the only Male led story in which catharsis is gained by self examination and actual exploration of the reason for the pain and trauma was the "John Wick Trilogy" from the murder of the dog given to him by his dead wife. which made him go back on a promise he made to himself for her. then to declaring he was back to seek full revenge. (vol 1) to his marker holder contacting him. to cash in a favor that was meant to never come back at him, cause he was retired. and dealing with the choices of kill the marker holder's sister (a former lover) to settle a debt. having to make that choice then to see him at the continential, and make a another trauma based decision in killing him(vol 2). which then excommunicated him. which puts him on the run to see Sophie. who he is a marker holder for, while coming to grips with his hand in her trauma. then finally giving up the one thing that reminds him of why this all started. (chopping his ring finger off with the wedding band attached in sacrifice) finally unburdened and ready to let her go he heads back to do what he does best. gets played again and the cycle repeats it self....... and that's where we end with most women stories. we don't see them as violent. they are aggressive when need be and only by circumstances.. were assume John just wants to kill. but not look at the overall system we/he are/is born into. he was orphan taken in and trained to do a job. like anyone you see authority tell you to do something and you do so cause you are greatfull for being "saved". look at religion, government, parents, coaches anything that rest on a power paradigm. there is no room for catharsis mainly because women are written always as being driven to violence. and men are for the most part seen as being inherently violent. which is why they usually always use said argument as a reason for a woman president (which I am totally for) but it shows how much they themselves think they are violent. the carthsis never comes because it was never meant to come......."so long as there are men, there will be wars" - Albert Einstein. it is how we are preconceived..... when making bras they never once consider how they would fit men. because they "know" that is not their target audience.
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When it came to Percy's list, I was thinking more of Arya Stark's own revenge list than the one from Kill Bill (mainly because I've never seen that particular Tarantino movie)
A small detail I enjoyed in the series is at the campfire. They ask who the final slot on the list is for. Percy's shadow has the gun to his temple
I've said it other places but the thing I absolutely love about Percy is that he's a man who made a deal with the devil to invent the worst thing in the history of the world. Like, there's a moment in episode 1 of Mighty Nein where Matt talks about how guns have become more prevalent and are especially being used by the worst kinds of people, and Talesien's face just falls.
It's one of my favorite aspects about the entire world Critical Role takes place in. One mans single minded quest for vengeance gave birth to the firearm. Any time a gun is introduced it can be traced back to Percival's darkest moments. It's so cool.
Tal outright said Percy KNEW he was killing the world when he made the deal. When he saw the first gun in the wild he thought "That took longer than I thought".
My own take on Percy's revenge arc in the animated series is that it's an extended metaphor for how you can use anger and hate as a, very literal in his case, mask to hide fear, grief, and pain. Percy's whole character is built around keeping all these painful emotions as far away as possible, or actively concealing them.
He flees Whitestone and abandons his name.
He creates a weapon, based on cold logic and science, that deals damage at a distance.
Anytime before the finale, whenever he actually comes face to face with anyone related to the original list he puts on the mask, until the person is no longer in any condition to do him any harm.
When the mask is finally removed we see not an expression of rage, but one of fear and grief.
[pauses video and raises hand] I played a warlock with a mutually beneficial and healthy relationship with her patron! But I chose a celestial warlock for a party that otherwise had very little healing capability, and the pact was with a unicorn (who was played as a delightful mix of Pinkie Pie and Twilight Sparkle). It was a lot of fun. My warlock was a high-ranked and deeply traumatised member of House Phiarlan in an Eberron-set campaign, and she needed a friend. The unicorn's liege had gone missing, and my d'Phiarlan unknowingly had a connection to the person responsible. It was GREAT. The storyline ended with the unicorn liege rescued and my warlock released from her pact to be remade from the ground up as a bard, which is all she'd ever wanted from life. ANYWAY! Back to the video. :)
This was amazing to read! And the campaign just sounds like it was fun overall! 😃
This! My lawful evil tiefling warlock was in love with her patron and just wanted to Make Her Wife Happy.
This involved a lot of murder, but she wasn't bothered by it.
@@Readus101 Aw, thanks, La'Ron! I really enjoyed the entire video, too! Also, the campaign was so much fun. Lots of adventure, intrigue, big emotions, all that. Plus the Eberron campaign setting is my favourite.
I too had a great relationship with my hexblade and his patron the raven queen, he was her champion and defender of the sanctity of death, the hexblade has an ability at lvl 6 that let's u turn a downed enemy into a zombie, but since that an antithesis to what she stands for (within the CR lore) we homebrewed an ability that would let him shield his party with spectral raven wings (this was b4 fizbans was published but it acted much like one of the dragon gift feats) he would help rid the world of undead, and brought light to a misunderstood godess and by the end of the campaign was right by her side with her other champion a familiar half elf rogue...
@@ticozayas6430 I love this *so much*. That sounds really wonderful. Especially the pre-Fizban's raven wing protection!
Part of the reason I love Percy's story is because he gets pulled out of that typical revenge narrative by the end of it by friends and family---albeit a bit kicking and screaming, but able to process and move past his trauma by the end of the campaign. Sometimes it's impossible for someone to see past what's right in front of them beyond their traumatic experiences. In those cases it takes a nudge from an outside source, that being the support group Percy wasn't necessarily aware he had in Vox Machina and later Cassandra.
I feel like his revenge arc could have very easily gone the way you described regarding male characters--Percy was supposed to be "irredeemable" according to Taliesin--but ends up splitting down the middle and teaching a valuable lesson as a result of the other players' actions.
"[...]ends up splitting down the middle and teaching a valuable lesson as a result of other players' actions."
Yes, thank you! Structurally I get why the team made the choices that they did re: ending this arc, but it feels a little jumbled. Using The Power of Friendship to overcome the literal demon eating away at Percy is a great play at the table, but it felt a little rushed that he went from screaming in emotional agony to cooly dismissing Lady Briarwood's taunting. I get the moral they were going for but the whiplash was just a bit too rapid. Percy was more someone being fought over by a manifestation of his own hatred & the people who became his found family, rather than someone who was exercising healthy agency , and I wish the episode made room for that.
I seriously worried about Cassandra's long-term health - she got her revenge, but her support network seemed a lot more diminished than Percy's. She repeated that the locals of Whitestone distrusted her, and she'd also gone through the torments both physical & mental of the Briarwoods. I'd have thought she'd be in a more precarious state after the fact, and this would compound from Percy leaving immediately after dealing with the BBEGs of the arc. It makes sense from a TTRPG stance (don't split up the party!) but it also felt like it was setting her up for failure.
Despite these structural beefs with Vox Machina, I get why they happened and I enjoyed the show a lot. Adapting 38 four-hour episodes of a dense arc down to 12 episodes 30 minutes long is hard and the inherent D&D tropes & quirks are hard to pull into a streamlined narrative. The show is quite good overall! But MAN, there are.some implications to the events that are messy
@@dylanehooverlibrarian7026 These are some really interesting points that I think future parts of the campaign and wrap ups there after touch on, so I hope they have to get them into later episodes of the show
@@purplelikefire I later read the wiki and it seems that we're far from having left Whitestone behind. As well, I'm pleased to see that so much of the issues I had were ones of adaptation - the campaigns had much more room to breathe and let characters decompress at a festival or spend half a four hour episode talking about their feelings.
I suspect the show continues to be good, but it is primarily an animated action series - we'll see if we have enough time to handle All That without condensing the hell out of everything
I think what makes Percy different from other characters seeking revenge is that he absolutely knew from the beginning that getting his revenge would destroy him. He never thought healing and moving on was possible, the only option was to repress the trauma and take as many as he could down with him. He foresaw he would become a serial killer. That's why he intentionally left a blank barrel on the List, to symbolize that the list never ends. AND he knew that guns would spread across the world, which he would also be responsible for. Taliesin was playing with the idea of an irredeemable character. It's baffling how people think Vax is the edgelord of that group. But then again, a lot of people like to ignore the fact that Percy was practically a villain and that's why he hated himself.
Percy has always been my favorite character from campaign 1, and I absolutely loved the Briarwood Arc! I want to say I love the final “fight” with Orthax, and how they changed it from the original. (Spoilers for the end of The Briarwood Arc in original CR) Originally, Percy doesn’t have this big battle in his head, but instead Orthax manifests as a shadow demon monster and all of Vox Machina fight him together. But honestly, Percy battling with himself was a lot cooler than the actual fight, and I also like it more from a story perspective (plus that amazing animation of Orthax!)
Now I'm starting to wonder if Deadpool (from the movies) is the most well-adjusted man seeking revenge.
There's a statement from Percy to Orthax they couldn't fit in to the animated series that I really love: "Did I even want revenge before I talked to you? Did I? I don't remember anymore. What does she die for? What do I even need? I want my country. I want my sister! I've killed two of those who have wronged me and nothing is better. Nothing feels better, nothing is avenged." That said, as you saw from that watchalong, Percy never really reaches a healthy state of mental health.
That said, a few of the other members of Vox Machina are on their own revenge paths, so we'll see how they deal with that in future seasons.
Well-adjusted is not a term I would have used to describe Deadpool...
I need to clarify to you that Orthax came to him in a dream and that Percy wasn't even aware that he was in a pact since he half-assumed he just agreed to a made up entity made up in his head. In addition, he is a fighter class not warlock. He only took the Magic Initiate feet so that he can use Hex and minor illusion without further contradicting the rules given to the fighter class
Which is really alluded to by the level of his class that he chose.
While it is a revenge narrative, I love how it is also an allegory to mental health issues.
The struggle of trying to remain human while battling inner demons nobody else can see. The importance of having a support group.
Here's the interesting thing about Percy's revenge narrative that the other stories you mentioned lack - the credits on Percy's story haven't rolled yet. We'll get to see him coming to terms with his new identity, absent the thirst for revenge, in future seasons. Cassandra may have gotten there first, but Percy's apotheosis is still coming.
I find it a bit odd to expect a warlock pack to be mutual (not that Percy was a warlock exactly). Usually it’s a vastly powerful thing offering help to a desperate thing willing to sacrifice something for help. Unless it’s boredom or amusement on the powerful things’ part, why did it help? I do love the fact that Percy is not a helpless lady, I really like to sympathize with “Prince Charmings”. It’s very rare to do well, there’s self-inflicted hardship in holding oneself aloof. But I also think Cass and Percy are the same. Percy just isn’t finished with his list yet, wait until the end of the series. What about… Zorro?
In many ways, the opposite of what you describe as why a warlock patron would make a pact would be shown through clerics and others who gain power through divine worship. The god or similarly-powerful being grants power to spread the good/bad word, defend their worshippers, and vanquish their foes, and that power can easily be taken away if they go against the wishes of that god. There are a lot of interesting things you can do with clerics who lose faith or paladins that break their oath, and I feel like that punishment is analogous to the assumed punishment for warlocks; if you don't do what Demon Daddy tells you to, you will find your soul taken much sooner than you expect.
So I'd argue that mutually-beneficial warlock patrons are completely reasonable and in fact could be super interesting. The fact that a lot of D&D players are interested in edgy backstories where they lose everything (which is fine, gives your characters interesting flaws and allows for a lot of growth) fuels the endless hordes of stories where someone almost dies but sells their soul at the last minute, but that doesn't mean it should be the default or expected. The same zeal can be found in those who give themselves to religion after asking for aid. Only big difference, outside of the default flavor ofc, is that one is an unspoken contract and the other is an explicit one.
@@daniellewasdelayed8921 I’ve seen it done well with mutually beneficial warlock patrons. It’s fun too. But I still feel like the core concept of warlock and the default for even current 5E is the obligations and requirements from the entity inflicted upon the warlock. There is cost. Service. Demand. Imposition. These are words lifted directly from the handbook. Cleric gods require the player to do same things as well but it’s implied generally speaking they’re already on the same page as worshippers. But it’s all fun and possible in D&D.
I didn't entirely see it from this pov, but having watched a lot of female-led horror movies...you're right! I've honestly loved it, but this also explains why I love The Count of Monte Cristo as well. I like revenge stories where the end is like 'revenge is okay sometimes, under the right circumstances'.
Really thou im tired of the "sometimes you just have to be better then the person that wronged you" yeah that's all fine and good but.... That really only works in petty slights like stepping on someones shoes NOT when taking out the person your taking revenge on is better died then alive like im sorry your gonna kill your way to the person who lets say for instance mass slaughters people and then you just... Not kill then and spare them which just makes the person who wimped out seem selfish as its kinda seems like its a "Oh dont worry im not gonna kill you even thou i slaughtered my way thru your guards you may now go back on your way killing people since i personally got over it oh yeah no it had nothing to do with you killing people you just happened to wrong me personally and i got mad it had nothing to do with greeter justice byeeeee!!!!"
My favorite warlock pacts are actually the patron is more like an overbearing parent that is just very proud of their magic murder child.
Interesting to note that there was one person on Percy's original list that did not get killed but instead managed to make an opportunistic escape so his revenge story might not be quite over but more just taking a back seat for now. It'll be interesting to see how they handle that in the show.
*Jester voice* Technically
Funny that you show that shot of Delilah Briarwood when saying "like that of how warlocks form pacts with their patrons in 5th edition dungeons and dragons." Was that intentional because you've been watching campaign 3? Or was that a happy accident? :o
I've never considered this difference between revenge stories with men and women. It's very interesting! But now that you mention it, the framing does tend to be very different. With women it comes across as almost wish fulfillment, but with men the revenge is typically framed as a cautionary tale. I think I'll check out Melina Pendulum's video after this. The topic is just so dense you could easily make several hours of video comparing the differences between men and women's emotional journeys in media.
I think compared to most revenge stories, Percy also had the advantage of having a close group right there with him to keep him on track. He 1000% would NOT have thrown out that gun if Scanlan hadn't done it for him. In fact, in campaign 2 when Fjord drops his sword from U'kotoa into the lava, Taliesin makes the comment that Percy never could have done what Fjord did. Had he been more isolated, like what usually happens in revenge stories, that could have turned out very differently.
I’ll admit, I wasn’t sure I was going to agree with you and your assessment of Percy and Cassandra till the end, and I think it is something I need to think on for my own story. I think there is one thing that is missing from your assessment though.
Spoliers below:
Cassandra’s trauma is not completely dealt with by the end of the Briarwood arch. There is actually a point after Campaign 1 that Percy has to take over managing Whitestone for a year because Cassandra hasn’t been dealing with her trauma. I think that due to what happens in campaign one she has to push her trauma back so she had handle what’s happening in the world. However, I think your point still stands, it’s just that Cassandra still needs help after this point.
I was wondering if anyone else would remember that about Cassandra. If you've only seen the LoVM and not the live stream, then you're missing some relevant information about her mental health.
I played a warlock with a healthy patron relationship! =) My character was a satyr who outlived their human mother. The patron acted as a father figure after she passed. I never did manage to find out if he was their father.
Funny, for about a year I played a celestial warlock, tiefling. His whole goal was to defeat a great evil and regain his half elf body. Positive relationship, and he was a vegetarian.
I am currently playing a halfling genie warlock who's relationship with his patron is made that he gets to go on indiana jones artifact finding adventures, and the genie owns the museum. A win win.
Genie Warlock lends itself well to a healthy patron relationship :)
My own character's Genie patron is her ancestral grandfather, and she herself is an entertainer (and, secondarily, a Storm-Genie Sorlock) who collects stories to tell to his court while his power enhances her storytelling and keeps her safe
With your take on "Women in media don't often lose themselves in their search for revenge," you'd be really interested in the plot of The Last of Us 2 on the PS4. As much criticism as the game gets for its pacing, the game falls *right* into this idea.
Hey man I don't know if anybody will care but all this talk about vengeance reminded me of the guy gliding from rooftops cosplaying as a bat.
You know the one with the awful "enough prep time to beat God memes".
That's another story of cathartic vengeance through acknowledging your trauma and grief. He did that through effort, helping people by becoming a Zorro-esque superhero and finding his own support structure of adopted kids and family
Percy reminded me of Ishida, the (then) last Quincy, from Bleach, but my favourite revenge arc is still "She-Devil"! The way she crosses of the list of her cheating husband's life goals, after destroying them, evolving personally yet staying true to herself is imo empowering and still hilarious;o)
The mage errant book series uses this style of warlock bond!
I'll have to give them a read, then!
@@Readus101 You really should, I thoroughly enjoy them. Pretty great magical progression/academy story.
Interestingly I've had mostly mutually beniftal warkocks in my campaigns
A fiend warlock how is payed by a devil to keep demons out of the world (something that helps both of them).
An Archfey warlock whose patron is their mother who gave them a fraction of her power to protect her.
My hex blade has a mutual revenge goal with his patron as well as both of them having a vested interest in keeping the body they share "alive".
Oh I hope to play my warlock who is married to his patron, an archfey. Basically the stipulation with his pact is to go out in the world and bring back stories. His husband is perfectly fine staying at home in the Feywild, but he does love hearing about other planes.
I think it's how people handle emotions.
Women tend to be more in tune with it. Men tend to ignore or repress it. If you've watched Q&A earlier eps too, Taliesin mentioned Percy's just been repressing everything & didn't really deal with it until the end of campaign (oof. But so true.) If you repress emotions, you won't experience catharsis. Neither heal or move on unless you start dealing with it. It's easier to lose yourself too (and become the cold blooded killer needed to be able to enact vengeance.)
So perfect for a demon who wants him to self-destruct & give in to him.
I think the only time he lets his grief out is when he's behind the mask (as mentioned by Tal in Q&A that he's a total mess behind it.) But when he's hiding, he's also vulnerable and his demon goes on the forefront and exerts more influence & control.
Two of my players have mutually beneficial patron bonds. One made a pact with a Couatl, who helps her augment her paladin powers in exchange for help with its own mission (taking down the BBEG). The other has a more subconscious familial pact; she found a phoenix egg and swore to raise it, and in return the phoenix subconsciously grants her power with which to protect it.
My warlock is an employee that sells post mortem life insurance. His retirement comes from how good of a salesman he was during his life
1:20 prudence from oxventure has cuthulu as her patron and its like a father - daughter relationship and its soo wholesome, funny and lots of death
I love the fact that they chose to make Percy's mask a plague doctor's mask. It not only invokes Orthax, but also how Percy uses an aloof and angry exterior to hide the deeply traumatized boy whose mind is stuck in time at the moment his family was murdered, and him and his remaining sister were tortured for information they ultimately didn't have. It also represents how he sees the Briarwoods and their co-conspirators: As a plague, one that wiped out his family and infested his city, and that he must cure that plague with the medicine he made via a pact with the demonic.
I listen to your vids while i do chores around the house and i swear i got through this vid alone and had cleaned the house it made me mad that it was so fast and easy
So I LARP, and have been larping for almost a decade now, and as the joke goes, "LARPing is cheaper than therapy!" so I have either seen or been actively apart of several male friends/characters getting their revenge plots on. Granted it's FAR more intense and hands on then say rping around a table, but I can tell you some of them do actively work on their character's trauma, and often use it as a means to work on their own trauma. And usually results in a group of friends in a cuddle pile crying in a field at 1am. Good times! :D
Orthax feeds off the revenge. He doesn't create it. That was All Percy. Percy... My favorite character... Was not a good person up until his breakthrough in the final episode of CR.
He knew he would be helping thousands of people kill thousands of people when he made the deal (even now it's not entirely clear which one designed the gun btw) and it was a good deal to Percy. Early Percy saw people as disposable fools. They weren't REAL people to him. (The prolonged mental breakdown) He was not a victim of orthax... He WAS in a mutually beneficial agreement with him up until Percy had a family again. Then
.. Percy changed the agreement. To do so, he had to confront himself and what he was inside.
It was Revenge as a catalyst for man vs himself. Which is why catharsis is still reached when Percy isn't the one to kill either of the briarwoods. It's reached when Percy finally decides and fights to become a BETTER. Person. He's more of a reformed villian.
I have a similar arc for the MC of my cousin and I's comic, "Oracles of Odroia." She seeks revenge against her parents for abandoning her, but she ultimately realizes that she's not too different from her hated mother, in that they both run away from their problems in their own little way.
In fact, I'm running two concurrent revenge arcs, with two protagonists wanting to get even on someone who wronged them in the past. Pipi (the MC) and Gladly are both motivated by revenge (Pipi wants revenge on her parents for abandoning her, Gladly wants revenge on the main villains for killing her fiancée and razing her kingdom). While Pipi gives into revenge, almost bringing herself to the dark side as she proceeds to bludgeon her mother, Gladly sticks true to her principles, and no matter how many demons she kills, she retains her nobility by sparing and protecting the innocent and putting personal loyalties above vendettas.
Percy was not the only one in a non-consensual relationship with their patron. Delilah Briarwood, in order to save her husband Sylas from death, made a pact to The Whispered One in order to turn Sylas into a vampire. In return, Delilah had to perform the ritual to bring The Whispered One back to Exandria. In order to do that, Delilah needed a Ziggurat, a structure built to communicate with the gods, a relic of Pre-Calamity times in Exandrian history. The Ziggurat that The Whispered One showed to Delilah was deep underneath Whitestone Keep, the ancestral home of the De Rolo family. So Delilah's pact led her to cross paths with Percy and his family. And Percy in turn made an unconscious pact with the shadow demon Orthax in order to craft his Pepperbox, the first firearm in Exandria. Both The Whispered One and Orthax had their own motives, and did not care for the well being of their servants. Delilah committed unspeakable acts in her quest to fulfil her pact, and Percy nearly lost his soul, and unleashed the technology of firearms onto Exandria in the process. In the end, Percy was able to overcome the influence of Orthax with the help of his friends and Cassandra. Delilah lost Sylas, and in the end realized that The Whispered One had used her, and that all that she had worked for had been shattered. Of course, Delilah unleashed The Whispered One onto Exandria, and the fallout from that forever changed Exandria, as well as other worlds in the Dungeons & Dragons multiverse, as a part of The Whispered One was harvested by an evil champion of the goddess Tiamat, and taken to the world of Toril to be used for evil purposes.
In Campaign 1 of Critical Role, The Whispered One is named Vecna. Vecna is an evil archlich who became a deity. However, Vecna is a copyrighted name and is the property of Wizards of the Coast, the company that owns Dungeons & Dragons. So in The Legend of Vox Machina, Vecna is called The Whispered One in order to avoid copyright issues.
I enjoyed your analysis of Percy's revenge story, and the comparisons to other revenge stories in popular media. I think the reason that women have much better outcomes in revenge tales is that there is a stereotype that unlike women, men are closed off from their emotions and feelings, and that by never acknowledging them, they can stoically go forward to complete their goal. While this stereotype is very much a trope of fiction, it unfortunately does exist in the real world, and is part of the discussion centered around toxic masculinity, this need to cut oneself off from emotions in order to be a real man. And by this way of thinking, a real man does not need help. He can stand on his own, as seeking help is a sign of weakness. Well, as a man in his 40s, I can tell you that nobody, man or woman, can always function on their own. Everyone needs help sometime, and anyone who does not believe that is a fool. I've needed help many times in my life, and I am so glad I got the help that I needed. I have also seen several people, including my own family members, refuse help even though it was obvious they were in crisis, and the results were never good. So I will say to anyone who reads this: You are precious and you have value. Never be afraid to ask for help. If you think you are alone, think again. There is always someone willing to help, or to talk to. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign of wisdom. Never keep emotions bottled up, they will build and build until the pressure forces them out of you. Keeping feelings and emotions in is how resentment begins, and resentment easily turns into hate.
Much love to all of you.
i wonder if it has anything to do with the emotional labor and maturity women are expected to be experienced in.
like a male fronted revenge tale is about the monsters we become and maybe we are just as bad or something something. often they aren't even getting revenge for a wrong done to them but to a woman or child close to them.
on the other hand the woman is seeking catharsis and safety. she is more likely doing this in response to an evil done to her. if she doesn't do this she is in danger of it happening again.
i swear there were more thoughts but i guess that's all i've got lol
(to note my comment is more to the general thoughts of male vs female revenge tales not to percy in particular. i don't feel comfortable discussing him since the show still has a ways to go in completing VM's emotional journey)
This is Percy's redemption arc, not revenge.
I liked Sylvie's arc in the first season of Loki because it broke type - she's offered a path toward love and redemption, but rejects it in order to carry out the revenge she's been working toward her entire life. That made sense to me.
The count of Monte Cristo is THE masterpiece of written literature. Take the time to read it at least once in your lifetime. The movies are not bad ,per say, they are just lacking in the nuance and the exploration of emotions that the masterful book provides.
I saw that in history class and really enjoyed it i tried reading the book but i couldnt get into it as much as i did the movie
Also, Precy's revenge story isn't completely over yet. Dr. Anna Ripley is still out there. xD
My patron was my angel dad, who was helping me on my divine mission.
As for other players, 1 was a mutal here's a weapon in exchange for kill a lich, and really didn't ask for much except make him a god of the moon, as it fell out of the sky so you know.
Currently same player different campaign may become a a warlock to a book, she's very motherly and he's 9...so you know. But she's also gives very advice and answers all his questions, if she can. Helped the party summon a puccan, and have a fun dance party and get much needed protection before the mage hunter Paladins came running in, lucky we were save by a squire paladin npc who stopped and claimed they had it under control before things got waaaay worse.
About the one where the revenge story is followed through with a male protagonist and they have a cathartic resolution without breaking down that I can remember is... Gun X Sword, an anime about a drifter who made it his life's goal to kill one particular person responsible for killing his bride to be. There's a lot of stories happening, and he's a pretty chill dude with his own quirk, but the vengeance is still his main and primary goal. He'll be VERY animated, to the point of manic, if the goal is within sight. But throughout the show he at least shows capacity to be do something beside vengeance, often actually helping people even if he complains or grumbles about it, so I honestly can believe him to still function pass the deed.
Did I also mention its a mecha anime?
In one of my d&d campaigns that I DM, there is a warlock who's patron is a hag, and the hag acts like a highly morally questionable grandmother who is really supportive and caring of her warlock but also seriously not a good role model. She'll bake cookies for the warlock, but at the same time encourage the warlock to poison the cookies and hand them out to passers by.
I almost forgot but the movie, the Adventures of TinTin and Captain Haddock's whole arc. The generational trauma and the generational connection to the bad guy and his family. I don't want to spoil anything but for an adventure romp with no main female characters, there is a lot of heart and emotion and talks about overcoming life's lows to achieve who you are meant to be. It's not a "you killed my father" type of story but it is a "you and yours have constantly been trying to kill my family's legacy" type of thing and Captain Haddock has to realize that he has always had the reigns to steer that truth however he wants and it's really cool.
Well. New subscriber here. Sometimes the YT algorithm does its thing and gives the best gems at the most random times. That's why I am here as always late to the party. I've heard of Critical Role almost 10 years ago while strolling the Gamescom. For some weird reason I never dug deep into this despite being interested. I learned more about DnD and let my joy for voice acting grow (because I got to "know" Matts voice) and lived on as a nerd for many things. Until shortly ago when UA-cam gave me a "best of" Percy and something clicked in me and I binged Legend of Vox Machina (S1 at one evening, S2 the next). So I am here now warping every CR content YT gives me into myself. I really should start watching all the storys coherently for all the context I guess....
But yeah. That is how I landed here without really anything to call me a critter but as a big fan of cinema, films, manga, anime and cartoon. Because of this I get your point about revenge plots. I even think they get a little bit boring because mostly they play out the same. So I would say a good example for something different even opposite to the 2 surviving de Rolos could be a view at prince Zuko and his sister Azula. These two (without a literal demon) go a similar route but the other way around. Azula is completely lost in surviving through pleasing Ozai (I guess that's how Cas slipped through the Briarwood) while Zuko is at first completely locked in killing his father for what he did (unjustified) to him but learns (thanks to Iroh and the Gaang) that a simple life where you help others can be way more fulfilling than the path of revenge.
Yeah, there are differences, of course. But also it is really fitting especially with the sibling switch. Percy and Azula where REALLY lost. Only Percy realized it and tried to make it and him better.
In defense of my archfey warlock - would an accidental pact with the Queen of Air and Darkness be a beneficial relationship for anyone but the Queen in that situation? Needless to say a solid part of my warlock's story involves her getting a different patron.
Also as one of the many who backed the kickstarter for Legend of Vox Machina, I was very happy with the result! I love the Briarwood arc, and they made the confrontation with Orthax far more satisfying than the streamed version. I look forward to seeing season 2 for sure.
(1:22) I try to bounce around but rarely is it too unhealthy. My first character ended up working for his patron's boss, who was the overseer of time in the multiverse.
Mutually beneficial warlock pacts have always been a thing at my table so it's not too unusual here. For an old character I'd be reworking if played again, his original pact was half unknown like Percy's, but it fell more along the lines of "this kid is smart enough to play with dangerous shit and foolish enough to try this again if he doesn't get what he wants, and this will be far worse for him if I don't help out".
On the subject of Vox Machina though, I really did adore it more than I thought I would. I watched it with friends and we all got really into it. Percy did become a house favorite though we all branch off (I'm personally invested in Vex and Vax the most), and I was super excited to see him discussed on your channel!
I'd like to think Guts from Berserk would have had the good revenge.
I got a bugbear warlock whose patron is a swamp hag he does errands for. Finding magical items to send her, he calls her "Mom" with all the energy of the Kurgen in Highlander. He's called Fetch
I love the idea of a wholesome Warlock Patreon relationship
I specifically shied away from warlocks because I don't like the idea of being indebted to a powerful being that can coerce you to do their bidding. But I finally did end up making a satyr warlock with a genie patron whom he rescued from enslavement. So the genie rewarded him with powers - with the request that, should he come across others being forced into similar servitude, he do what he can to help them too. I basically made Aladdin, but if he was a goat boy twink who cares more about adventure than romance.
"Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."
I like your larger gender analysis of how revenge stories are written. Personally, I really liked how TLoVM avoided the whole 'no MC! Don't reduce yourself to the villain's level by killing them!' which appears in a lot of recent kid's media (on a meta level because uh, well, S&P would have an issue with teaching kids It's Okay To Kill People Sometimes), SU had a bad case of this. Because unlike a lot of other 'don't reduce yourself to the villain's level' narratives it doesn't really demonstrate /what that means/ like okay MC killing Emperor McEvil would be like bad karma but what does that actually mean in terms of consequences? TLoVM on the other hand makes it very clear that it's not so much that revenge against the Briarwoods would morally put him on their level or whatever, but instead that Oh If I Do What Orthax Wants Me Too I Will Turn Into An Unstoppable Killing Machine That Dismembers People With Guns If They Get In My Way? No thanks. tl;dr TLoVM does a better Don't Sink to their Level narrative because the consequences are actually clear.
Not to forget that the consequences of failing to kill a villain will also become very clear in Season 3.
Battlestar Galactica (2003) has the cycle of revenge as a reoccurring theme. The arc words of the series are "All this has happened before, and all this will happen again."
No, La'Ron, most people don't play Warlocks with Good or even Neutral aligned patrons. Though it is a deeply underrated concept tbh to have a patron that is actually on your side. Also, sometimes the drama of fighting against the situation you are in via any means available is good? Like, I enjoyed Gideon the Ninth, that's pretty much the same dynamic on a more mundane level... comparatively of course.
‘Mandy’ starring Nicholas Cage came to mind when comparing Percy with non-animated characters who seek revenge and risk getting consumed by it. ‘Mandy’ even has a revenge-fueled protagonist who forges his own weapons and consorts with dark forces.
Plus it’s a crazy-awesome performance by Nicholas Cage and as visually stunning as ‘Vox Machina.
It's possible to gave a warlock patron that doesn't ask anything from you at all. They invest a portion of their power in you when you're low level, then as you level up they're basically accruing interest on their investment. As long as you become more powerful by following your destiny, they come out ahead.
I've never liked the too-common thing of "you can choose any of these classes, but if you choose that one, the DM will fuck you over and make your character's life hell." The player should be the one who decides if they want to go that route. The DM should be willing to give them as little or as much patron or deity interference as they're up for.
That said, Taliesin consistently trusts Matt with making a lot of choices about his character for him.
Thank you! People look at me so crazy when my warlock is in some sort of mutually beneficial thing (wasn't that supposed to be the point?)
For Percy, there seems to be a lot of Orthax as a manifestation of PTSD, but I'm not totally happy with how they're handling all the tangential things as a result
Really? I've had mostly mutually beneficial warlocks at the tables I've played at.
@@an8strengthkobold360 I swear that's the way to play it, but I've had people think it's weird
@@rachelv673 Yea, but percy's pact mainly came to him by a dream, he technically didn't even know he signed a pact. Orthax pretty much tricked him into the pact. Mutually beneficial pacts seem to be far more common then the pact percy was in.
This was actually a very insightful video and I enjoyed it greatly, fantastically put.
My kobold warlock’s Fiend patron has a prominent interest in keeping his great grandson (my kobold’s tiefling boyfriend) alive for some currently unknown reason. My kobold made the pact because both individuals want the tiefling to be protected, so it’s mutually beneficial (though there’s a layer of mistrust on the kobold’s part).
my warlock was in a weird spot with her patron because she was literally raised to be the dark messiah of a devil worshipping doomsday cult... and then accidentally signed her soul over to an angel that was forcing her to be a good person instead of the supervillain she had been brought up to be. She was me trying to figure out a fun way to make a celestial warlock by subverting the usual "good person, evil patron" trope.
Though eventually she got character development and has since become more chaotic neutral/chaotic good but goes about it like she's still a supervillain, while basically befriending everyone she meets and having learned to hold her found family close
also she managed to break away from the control of her angel and is now a swarmkeeper ranger who throws crows at people! Turns out she's not the half devil she thought she was, but is actually a "shadow fae", which is why she has crow powers
I agree with you about the wonderful role playing options with a beneficial pact I love playing worlocks that are friends with the being giving them power
Homework: While not a protagonist in the story, I think Arcane's Silco effectively deals with his trauma while getting revenge for his betrayal.
In season 2 of Daredevil, there is the flashback scene where Elektra brings Matt Murdock to the mansion where the mob guy who ordered the hit on Jack Murdock so that Matt can kill him. The mob guy is tied up by Elektra and Matt wails on him for a bit, but then tells Elektra, "that's it. That's all I got," and doesn't finish him off. IIRC, Elektra tries to kill him with a kitchen knife, but Matt stops her.
And that's my example of a male character beyond Edmond Dantes reaching a revenge catharsis without killing the person who wronged them.
Coming off of Wuthering Heights. I learned that Revenge for men Either goes Three ways.
Unsatisfactory Vengeance, Continued Justifications for Vengeance, or Death.
And often times Death becomes the Redeeming aspect of a Character’s revenge.
Heathcliff by the end of the Novel Dies after letting go and is seen with his beloved as a ghost. But instead of going to heaven, they wander the land in a sort of purgatory.
Wow this feels like a more fleshed out version of the story of one character in League that I always really liked (Pyke) (only halfway thru the video just noticed the resemblance xD)
The Red Dead Redemption series showcases one of its protagonists (John) being able to have his cake and for a short while eat it too. At the end of the prequel he gets his revenge on the final villain for dismantling his former gang and does it primarily out of the security and welfare of his family. The reasonings for going after the other gang members who betrayed him in the first RDR is still the same but this male protagonist doesn't let revenge overtake him and make it his life's goal, he knew what he wanted to do afterwards and move forward without hesitation, his son's character arc maybe has yet to be finalized though.
Joe Abercrombie's Best Served Cold is a female protagonist's revenge novel that subverted many recent themes. At the same time having classic list structure, and the acts of revenge taking not just what you had but what you gained during the journey.
Pretty sure the last male-lead revenge story that I saw where the man was satisfied in the revenge was when Vax felt satisfied at the death of the blue dragon, Brimscythe. I'm not sure how attached he was to that child, but it was still a revenge story.
I have a character in my D&D game who began his story in the Curse of Strahd campaign, and I made as part of my character's background story that Strahd had killed my character's mother, and so he took on the attitude that he wasn't trapped with Strahd, Strahd was trapped with him. By the end of it, Strahd was dead and my character has been trying to move on, but he can't move past the fact that his mother is still dead, and so now he's looking for a way to bring her back. So I can't say he was fully satisfied with his revenge, but he hasn't been empty, either. He has grown as a character through his struggle and he has begun to move on from it, but he still has that lingering desire to undo what had been done.
Oh, this was so interesting to watch. I've never seen Kill Bill and now I want to watch it. Also love the Princess Weeks shoutout. Her channel is awesome and i don't think i have watched the video you mentioned. Will be getting on that. I really enjoyed Vox Machina and was glad there was a focus on Percy because almost every story I have read or watched with a character named Percy they have been one of my fave characters. Why are characters named Percy so likeable or charming? I've come to call it the Percy phenomenon.
The one revenge story I want to see in media is the revenge of Olga of Kiev, before she received her Sainthood. I recommend looking into it because she gets her cake and enjoys it in the best way possible and I'm surprised there isn't a movie or series out about this woman.
LOVE YOUR Analysis. I think it has something to do with how we generally view how men handle their trauma in reality. I'm currently(-ish) writing a story where the main character is "passively" haunting his ex-slavers and kidnappers. He's a bit neurotic about everything he does, and I think that along is because we generally think of successful men being unusually or unhealthily obsessive while at the same time handling mental trauma poorly that it's hard to imagine men going back to relatively normal afterwards. The only way I some what fix it is because my main character isn't only absorbed in revenge (which he acknowledges is completely unhealthy), and another character constantly challenging his pessimistic world view.
This was such a cool analysis and I hope to see more critical analysis of Vox Machina. Well done.
I personally don't focus on the revenge story with Percy as much as the Oppenheimer narrative. Yes, revenge informs it, but actually Orthax just gave him the tools according to Percy's creativity and genius. He already had a cruelty problem based on his privileged upbringing. Percy imagined the perfect revenge machine, The Pepperbox. A GUN in a literal fantasy world. He's the inventor of all the chaos a gun MEANS. He's the first. He brought mass warfare into a world of bows and arrows. He's already a villain.
Percy imagined revenge and brought guns to this world. THAT is what interests me. Percy is a creator admitted bad person. It's Orthax figuring out how to suck the most devastation out of Percy's mind and smarts that seals the deal. Percy was privileged in every way, and even his revenge is treated as privilege. And his education is used ultimately not only to self destruct, but destroy others in the creation of a new weapon of mass destruction.
Guns didn't exist in Matt's world before Percy. I wish they had said so explicitly in the show. But it has informed everything about the world. From how there are defensive capabilities of cities to how there are now...other uses for residuum. Canons. Fireworks in Hupperdook.
It's actually shown that the creation of guns is actually the worst revenge on the world. This manifests in (spoilers) Ripley duplicating his technology. And that's what he agreed to subconciously that makes Percy culpable and all the more grey and interesting.
I don't think of him as Hamlet or the Bride. Hamlet and the Bride are sympathetic. I see him more like Oppenheimer..."I am (accidentally, on purpose,) become Death."
I like to compare Percy to my favorite example of an Oppenheimer analog, the heartbreak of Topher Brink from Dollhouse (spoilers for Dollhouse) after he accidentally destroys the world with his weaponized technology genius sitting in his cell knowing he has destroyed the world and knowing nobody can match him and the world is irrevocably changed for the worse all because of personal curiosity and trauma.
I really would like to see your take on Percy in CR, but I understand that that would take far too much time.
Still I find it really interesting how Percys revenge story is different in CR.
Spoiler for CR 1:
One moment I liked a lot in CR was a scene near the end of the Briarwood arc where Percy talked to Orthax and turned away from his revenge telling Orthax that he had killed some of those on his list, but he doesnt feel better. His revenge didnt make his pain go away. This realisation then lead to them all fighting Orthax together.
I got the opposite of the last request, Haunting of Hill House has like a woman gets revenge and never reaches catharsis storyline
This video is so excellent & brilliant recommendations for those who haven't seen these films
Have you done a Count of Monte Cristo video? I'd love to hear your take on book vs movie.
A healthy mutually beneficial relationship sounds like a cleric, rather than a Warlock.
Jester is a prime example.
Pretty much, Jester is technically a warlock but using cleric spells.
Most Warlock patrons, excluding homebrew, aren't good things.
Demons are beings of Chaos and would likely just have their Warlock sow chaos wherever they go.
Devil's are crafty tricksters who should be seen as corporate salesmen trying to trick you into a contrast that SOUNDS good on the surface but if you read the fine print, it just benefits them.
Old ones gonna old one and you will never have a good relationship with one.
Archfey have a better chance at being nice but are also usually out of touch with emotions outside of vanity and personal interest.
Lich? Evil.
Fathomless? Krakens and Leviathans are usually evil.
Celestials are your best bet honestly, they're of good alignment, they're moral, they care about humans. Just good all around if not vague and cryptic.
Genies depends on the genie but could definitely be good.
So out of 9 choices you have, non homebrew setting aside, 3 to choose from for a healthy relationship.
Mutually beneficial doesn't mean the patron is "Good". It means both parties share goals/ beliefs.
Vengeance Paladin makes a pact with a fiend for power to aid in his hunting of bad people because lives cut short increases the chance that those who would die end up in hell as currency.
Demon makes a pact with someone to kill a fiend because that fiend is fucking up that Demon's terf. Then once they gets their terf back, they don't care what the benefactor does.
Kraken/Leviathan hires land dwellers to keep the oceans safe from a local wizards conclave.
Old One's are described as ancient forgotten godlike beings. Maybe one just wants to learn what's happening and gifts their benefactor power to keep them safe?
I don't know what goes into making a Lich, but I don't see why minds can't change over the thousands of years they've been alive.
They also could have a vassal to just protect their phylactory, and your role-playing that vassal.
I really enjoyed watching your take on Percy's revenge story and the differences between male/female leads in revenge plots overall. I wonder if part of the difference that comes between the two is that a lot of narratives in which men handle their trauma have them doing so alone while women as a whole are often seen as more social and less prone to spiraling as a result. I personally like when this gets flipped around a bit because even self-destructive characters can be very compelling and I wish more edgy female characters got a chance to loose their shit in a story. (A great example would be the isolation and breakdown of Azula in AtLA) If you are alone and are only driven by your revenge plots with nothing positive to look forward to afterwards the cathartic revenge end doesn't work because there is no end past the initial trauma to feel cathartic about. I'd like to see a good male lead get their cathartic vengeance and pick up farming or something afterwards. 🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄🐄
The reason there is a difference between a male lead revenge story and female lead revenge story is that their goals are different. Female lead revenge stories are often about dealing with and moving past the trauma that spawned the revenge quest so that they do have a life on the other side because they often have a reason to live beyond taking their revenge. However, for male's, by the time they get to the point where they seek revenge they have often lost everything. Since they often view themselves as partially responsible for their loss, they have nothing left to live for other than putting everyone responsible for that loss in the ground, which includes themselves, and thus there is no reason for them to deal w/that trauma since they will be dead by the end of their quest.
When Percy, unwittingly, made his pact w/Orthax he had nothing left but his pain. No home, no friends, no family (to his knowledge) and thus no reason to not throw his life away in order to destroy those who had taken everything from him.
But by the point he finds himself in a position to take his revenge, his situation has changed. He has friends who care about him (and whom he cares about despite himself). He has a home that might yet be saved. He has a sister he thought lost. Unlike when he started the path he has reasons to want to deal with that trauma in a way that doesn't end in his destruction. In the animated series Cassandra says Percy forgave Delilah but that isn't really true. He didn't forgive her, it's just that at that point the price of carrying out his revenge would have been far higher than he wanted to pay.
You could say that Sylas Briarwood got burnt in a
H I G H N O O N.
I like Payback,because we understand from early on that he's in the gunhand game anyway. He is justified in feeling betrayed sure,but it's all simply an extension of the life he's already living.
"you know, the type that actually hates themselves but that doesn't stop them from thinking they are the smartest person in the room"
I though we were here to talk about characters, not to be violent with your audience, specifically me
Great vid, love the literary analysis! In short, I think it valid to say that differences in catharsis lies in socialization and specifically gendered-ness. Emotional catharsis is not really something that is taught well to anyone, but especially distant to men. I speak in generalities, this does not apply to ALL men, or ALL cultures. However, in America what we see is that aggression and repression are the culturally accepted/preferred way of dealing with emotion/trauma. I highly recommend 1999 Film Tough Guise, as an example of socialization. I think what is interesting is watching Vox Machina and looking at each character and what their arc is. Then describe it in a sentence. What does each character achieve?
I liked the revenge narrative. Its one of the only good edgelord things ive seen in while. Could just be my age but if the demon wasn't corrupting him and pushing him to pull away from ppl and be so rude, i would not have enjoyed it at all
tbh i didnt even know that percy was a warlock and had a patron
I just thought it was a curse or personification of his grief and venegence
Mechanically, he's not a warlock, but a fighter who took a feat. Thematically, he accidentally made a deal with a demon while having a nightmare.
Oh yup, you were right, I have a problem with your Count of Monte Cristo comment! I love that story *because* the protagonist fails to overcome their trauma. It is one of the first bad-ending stories I witnessed~
In the end, he has a choice to spare his innocent fiancée and be healed, or to fall to senseless vengeance and cruelty (which he chose).
The end of the book is him running off, forever changed into a cruel, selfish individual with his newest armcandy.
Problem is, the clip he showed is from the movie. In the movie he gets his revenge, then has a happy ending with his fiancée and their son. Who wasn't actually his son in the book.
@@DrLipkin So few people are okay with there being a failure to overcome story, and so many adaptions (like that movie, or Revenge) decide to lose that aspect.
Which I blame for why so many people think the Hunger Games trilogy is a successful romance story rather than the failure to overcome ptsd one~
The King's Man is an excellent and literally brand new example of Cathartic vengeance from a man!
I'll definitely have to give it a watch, then!
Great video as always and I don’t say this as a correction because I agree with your conclusion that men don’t get a healthy growth focused catharsis in revenge narratives. So let me suggest the Man from Nowhere as an interesting take on the revenge film. Don’t want spoil but curious how it fits your theory. Keep up the classes!
CR Campaign 2 almost have a character with healthy warlock & patron relationship. I don't know how far along in your watch of C2. So I guess I will leave it at this for now. Also, your first impression of Percy weren't wrong. Taliesin once said about Percy that he think he's the only adult in the party.
a simple lense for the gender difference
It's important to empower women with our stories so we survive the hells we're going through.
It's important to not empower men who think they are owed something
(usually from desired women or rival men).
the only male revenge story i can think of where the male hero doesnt go through what you describe is Inigo Montoya from "The Princess Bride". that may be because his story is a subplot
also, maybe John Wick? and/or Taken? i havent seen the entirity of either series, so im not sure, but i would GUESS those two may be able to count?
I don't really think the first John Wick is about revenge. It's about John's grief. He begins the movie wanting to grieve his wife in peace, and he ends the movie in the same place. His rampage is a distraction. A place to aim his rage that otherwise doesn't have a home. When his rampage is over, he doesn't feel any accomplishment, because he hasn't gotten to do what he wanted to yet.
The second movie *is* about revenge. But we don't really get to know John's mental state once he gets it, because upon getting it he immediately has to flee/fight for his life. The third movie is all John just trying to stay alive, though he does say that he wants to stay alive to keep alive the memory of the love that he shared with his wife.
Movie 4 (and 5?) will be a revenge movie, as 3 ended with him joining forces with someone to bring down an entity that wronged them both. But all these events have only stood to stand in the way of John simply honoring his wife's memory and moving on with his life. He knows he has emotional labor to do, but the events of the movies keep getting in the way. The plot is an obstacle for him to overcome, not a means to an end.
I think true grit has a good revenge narrative maybe it’s because she’s a kid but she has to let go and give up on her revenge to survive there isn’t a catharsis
I enjoyed vox to the fullest. But I was disappointed that all those mythical characters in the group and we had to explore the regular human. But it was good
I think that while you headed in the right direction you didn't reach the logical end conclusion. The below are generalizations and not specific to any particular person's experience.
The current state of men's mental health is atrocious. We are not prepared for anything emotional. Instead we are expected to be pinnacles of stoicism. The only emotion we are permitted is anger, but it must be perfect anger. As Aristotle said, “Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.” When the only emotion you are permitted is anger, but even that is only permitted in limits, and then you are given a cause for revenge it is easy for a man to go all-out on it, thus "losing themselves" in the desire for revenge. What else do they have? This is all that is allowed. Forget about temperance anymore. The male protagonist is tired of "dieting" on emotion. They want to binge it because they've been starving up to this point. This is catharsis for the male viewer as they finally get to indulge in all the pent-up experience they've had. Rarely it's the same as the story's protagonist, but it has the same *kind* of things. But merely killing the target of revenge isn't a resolution to a story. We need to see the after effects. And what is the after effect of binging on revenge? Where that's all you've been capable of expressing for so long? Being lost. Empty. They are no longer a man because they no longer have a role within the world.
Go browse r/AskMen for a while and you'll see the same story over and over. Be stoic or angry, but in your anger do not sin, and do so alone. Have all the tools but no one tells you what tools you need, how to get them, or how to use them. Those times men actually do open up, usually at the insistence of a significant other, they are immediately viewed as "lesser" - the SO loses interest in them or even uses it for gossip at a dinner party with the man present. Opening up to other men often ends up with the listener frozen, unsure of how to handle this because, again, we don't know what tools exist much less how to use them properly. But we can't be imperfect so we do our best and treat everything as a nail. "Man up." "It'll get better." "There's no reason for that." Etc. So we seem cold even to each other.
Meanwhile women are (again, generally speaking) not only permitted a fuller scope of emotions but also given a support network for it. Women support women during tough times. Men (often, not always) support women during tough times. Women are taught how to express themselves throughout the experience so that it's never "dieting" on emotion but instead a well-balanced "meal." So when a female revenge protagonist shows up in media we are seeing a reflection of how women deal with their emotions: they're better prepared and able to see the end of revenge with a possibility of seeing what happens afterwards. A revenge story may be a big emotional meal for them to consume, but they are able to put it down to focus on other things.
Perhaps the best example of a male revenge story with a more balanced ending *isn't a revenge story*: Taken. This man is prepared for when things happen, both mentally and physically. He's had the training and knows what happens after the mission is over. We don't recognize it as a revenge story, though, because he's not out for revenge. He just wants to rescue his daughter. Once she's returned he can move on with the rest of his life - going back to having a BBQ with his old military buddies and getting birthday gifts for his daughter. He knows what life is without the adventure. Most male revenge stories require a complete dismantling of the man's life in every where - anything of value must be taken from them. Job. House. Spouse. Child. Dog (John Wick). Whatever is of value is taken, leaving nothing left for them to temper themselves for and thus they binge. In Taken it's the restoration of the "normal" that is the goal and thus it comes across different. Percy's story reflects this story at the end, too, because once he finds out Cassandra's alive he's not solely out for revenge but the restoration of "normal" in the form of having Whitestone renewed and led by a deRolo.
Its heros Journey vs the heroin journey i think
I think the dissonance comes from the confusion between the narratives you're talking about. Yes, they all deal with revenge, but the thing with most of the women led narratives you discussed is that it's also about justice. with a lot of stories led by men that focus on revenge, they're almost all focused on how he who was wronged. He needs to kill the person who took his family away and will burn the world down to resolve that. It's not about how bad the person who wronged him is, they're usually terrible like the briarwoods, and almost always they deserve to die, but it's about Percy killing them because of what they did to him not what they are doing to the world.
With more women led narratives it's about slaying a dragon, this person hurt me and they'll never hurt anyone ever again. With Cassandra, she endured the same torture that Percy did along with years more of it along with mental torture and brainwashing to the point where she calls Delilah mother. She kills Delilah when she is about to blast them with a spell, adding self defense to the action, even though it's not necessary, but it doesn't matter to her because the people who hurt her are all dead, maybe she'll have a breakdown later, but the important thing is that they'll never hurt her or anyone else again. Which is how a lot of revenge/justice stories about women are focused on, slaying the dragon instead of killing the mob boss who gunned down your family.
One more modern story about revenge that is crafted differently than the normal revenge is empty story, is John Wick, the first movie at least. He is a man who had a dark past and was able to get out of it due to the love of his wife. When she's gone, she dies from a disease, not being killed by the mob boss or his son that would later serve as the villains of the story, so she's not there for him to go on a rampage over, he just wants to mourn her in peace with the dog that is the last gift she was able to give to him to keep him company when she was gone. The mob bosses son kills the dog and steals his car because he's an asshole and that kicks off the story. obviously he gets his revenge, kills the asshole mobster son, than kills the father who tries to kill him after that. The second movie kind of messes with that narrative, but in the first one he seems content to let things go, he was willing to do a lot to get to the mobster's son, but he never harms innocent people, he doesn't want to destroy the mobster's family root and stem, he just wants to kill the guy who killed his dog and people, most of whom are very bad people, get in his way. The revenge narrative isn't framed as good, but it's also not acting like he's a monster, just a force of nature in the form of a man who wants to hurt the person who interrupted his mourning and is forcing him to fall back into the life he left behind
the only Male led story in which catharsis is gained by self examination and actual exploration of the reason for the pain and trauma was the "John Wick Trilogy" from the murder of the dog given to him by his dead wife. which made him go back on a promise he made to himself for her. then to declaring he was back to seek full revenge. (vol 1) to his marker holder contacting him. to cash in a favor that was meant to never come back at him, cause he was retired. and dealing with the choices of kill the marker holder's sister (a former lover) to settle a debt. having to make that choice then to see him at the continential, and make a another trauma based decision in killing him(vol 2). which then excommunicated him. which puts him on the run to see Sophie. who he is a marker holder for, while coming to grips with his hand in her trauma. then finally giving up the one thing that reminds him of why this all started. (chopping his ring finger off with the wedding band attached in sacrifice) finally unburdened and ready to let her go he heads back to do what he does best. gets played again and the cycle repeats it self....... and that's where we end with most women stories. we don't see them as violent. they are aggressive when need be and only by circumstances.. were assume John just wants to kill. but not look at the overall system we/he are/is born into. he was orphan taken in and trained to do a job. like anyone you see authority tell you to do something and you do so cause you are greatfull for being "saved". look at religion, government, parents, coaches anything that rest on a power paradigm. there is no room for catharsis mainly because women are written always as being driven to violence. and men are for the most part seen as being inherently violent. which is why they usually always use said argument as a reason for a woman president (which I am totally for) but it shows how much they themselves think they are violent. the carthsis never comes because it was never meant to come......."so long as there are men, there will be wars" - Albert Einstein. it is how we are preconceived..... when making bras they never once consider how they would fit men. because they "know" that is not their target audience.