Critical Role Liveblog side-blog

Schemers: actor the ENTIRE CITY is in love with, mask who is his bff and in love with him and put a hit out on his brother, super smart super cool teacher who mixes metaphors, and the only genuinely kind and good cop in Dol-Makjar

The way the other characters, especially Vaelus and Thaisha, interacted with him in episodes 1 through 3, along with Alex's own roleplay of the character really served to highlight just how young the guy is. He's awkward at a funeral because he's never had to attend one before. He panics and hypes himself up and thanks Vaelus for appearing during the barfight in episode 2, making it pretty clear he's new to this kind of thing too. Thaisha calls him a child despite his protests about being adult. Vaelus, after becoming interested in Pincushion, starts following him around and positioning herself as his older bodyguard. Even from the NPCs, Aranessa quite explicitly refers to Occtis as a boy when requesting Julien fetch him and bring him to the Palazzo Davinos. It's quite telling overall of how he's presented in these episodes that fandom chatter about Occtis very very frequently framed him as the baby of the group; his relative youth compared to everyone else was very apparent and viewers caught on.

And then in episode 4 he's subject to a horrifying death at the hands of his own older brother, with Alex highlighting for the audience that Occtis died terrified, in pain, and confused as to why Ethrand would do this to him. While he does end up coming back as a Hollow One, it's made very clear in the few minutes we've had with Occtis in his new state that he's very much a walking, self-aware corpse, given that he doesn't need to breathe, is cold to the touch, and doesn't have a heartbeat on account of no longer having a heart (though I suspect he wouldn't have one regardless). And the thing about Hollow Ones is that they're unaging, whatever age they are when they die and return is the age they are until something puts them back in the ground permanently.