A non-exhaustive list of shattering little details in The Mighty Nein Origins: Caleb Widogast in no particular order, bc I haven’t thought about anything else in the past two days (spoilers below):
Frumpkin running after the cart that is taking Bren away from home for the first time
Bren fidgeting with various objects while studying and concentrating until Wulf grabs his hand and stops him
Wulf with one arm around Astrid’s shoulder and one hand in Bren’s pocket
With long hair and no beard, Caleb looks like a splitting image of Una. Do you think after he shaved in Rosohna, he stared in every mirror because he could finally see her face again? Did he avoid his reflection altogether?
Bren baring his arms at the Ikithon estate but keeping them covered with bandages and bracers back at home so his parents could not see the evidence of what was being done to him. Him keeping the bandages on in bed so even Frumpkin was none the wiser
Wulf with a literal wolf – or at the very least a large dog – next to him when we meet him first. Bren apparently falling for a dog person
The hair cuts that make three teenagers look like grown-ups, like the soldiers they are being trained as
The slow escalation of the residuum experiments. The looks of the other students, how they must have wondered what was happening to these three. How competition and Academy indoctrination probably made them feel envy more than anything else
Trent altering Bren’s memory to him holding Frumpkin when he overhears his parent’s betrayal. Trent knowing Frumpkin. Trent not nearly caring enough to recognize his fey successor 16 years later
Wulf doubting that his parents would ever betray the empire. Astrid wondering how they could have ever been so stupid. Bren not doubting at all. “I was so sure. I was so sure… until I wasn’t.”
The broken furniture in Wulf’s house where he strangled his parents with his bare hands, his mother first. His father must have seen it, must have watched his son kill his wife before he was overpowered himself
Una and Leofric dancing in the living room when flames and smoke starts to appear around them
Frumpkin’syooowl
Astrid and Wulf leaving Bren in Blumenthal and returning with one empty horse. His neighbors, the people he grew up with, finding him nonresponsive next to his burned down house. Them likely finding the corpses of the Grieves and Beckes during the day. One small town with an scorch mark on their history, the ugly story of its three most gifted children turned harbingers. No one finding out the full story until Trent is captured and tried, years and years later
Astrid coming to Bren’s cell at the Sanatorium to show him her burn scar, desperate for any kind of reaction, not getting so much as an eye blink
The overturned bench in Bren’s cell that stays overturned for 11 years until he is woken up
Caleb fresh out of the Sanatorium gathering his sparse coins to buy a copy of Der Katzenprinz. Caleb trading the book with a little girl for a scarf to stay warm on the road
The matching bandages on Caleb’s and Nott’s arms when they first meet, both of them trying to hide what was done to them
To end on a slightly lighter note, a (possibly incomplete) list of Vox Machina easter eggs:
Percy and Vex dancing at the Biergarten
A Trinket figurine on a shelf at the Ermendrud house
Statues of a male half-elf with a snake and a female half-elf with an arrow next to the bath
You are a supervillain who has just captured your rival’s child. Rather than being afraid, they’re begging you to let them stay.
Frankly, you’d known those idiots had had a kid for years now. You’d pretended not to, because while you’d committed a lot of atrocities in your life, you weren’t willing to face the moral quandary of whether you would knowingly kill a child just to spite its parents.
They probably thought they were being clever though, what with the blaming you for an injury you knew damn well you’d never given keeping one of them out of commission for a few months, then references to what they would ‘leave behind’ or ‘could not follow’ when in the latest death trap. One of them had accidentally pulled a pacifier out of their utility belt once, and tried to pass it off as being prepared for any young children they came across while rescuing.
Idiots.
Still, you had standards. Standards that fell somewhere past war crimes and before common decency, but they were standards.
Honestly Obi Wan not knowing Anakin was alive the whole time changes everything. When Padme tells Obi that there’s still good in Anakin its seemingly implied that Obi Wan doesn’t want to tell her that he’s a sith now but it’s actually showing that Obi Wan fully believed that Anakin, Padmes wife, the father of the newborn babies, was dead and that he himself had killed Anakin, and couldn’t bring himself to tell her seconds before she died still believing
Ithink I have mentioned this before but I’m thinking about it again so: one of the best things about my “Fingon is around Curufin’s age-ish” headcanons is the sharp increase in the likelihood that Maedhros has given him some tips on various elven heir accomplishments such as archery. You know. So it’s a horrifying parallel when he tries to convince Fingon to shoot him dead
Actually the best scenario for this is to imagine Maedhros not really begging for death (though that’s absolutely what he’s doing and he knows it), but trying to die as soon as possible specifically to save Fingon - Fingon won’t leave otherwise.
There’s something deeply appealing about Maedhros using the last vestiges of self-control he still has to calmly and reassuringly walk Fingon through aiming and bending his bow as Fingon weeps and shakes like this is much worse for him than it is for Maedhros (which is true. It’s the hardest thing he’s ever had to do in his life, while for Maedhros is the end of a nightmare)
It’s not even the likeliest scenario or how I usually imagine the scene, but damn if it’s not peak angst
Personally I think you can further improve that by having Maedhros be so great at calming Fingon down that Fingon. does calm down. Just becomes the most determined person ever, with nerves of steel and a goal. By the time Thorondor bears him up, Fingon is capable of ignoring Maedhros dissolving into actual begging, and systematically try every way to get him out of there, before settling on cutting off his hand without a word so Maedhros is spared the fear of anticipation, so you end the scene with the exact opposite dynamic it began
@shrikeseams gets this concept on a very deep and tasty level
Surely they have gone hunting together before, surely Maedhros can invoke very specific memories to make it seem like everything is alright and Fingon can do this actually, it’ll be over quick
