#post vm

pikelan divorce.

i feel like i'm issuing a statement lol, but i've been chatting with a few different people about it and this is the pikelan blog, so i guess why not.

so first of all-- this blog has not been super active this past year because of real life things, normal fandom interest drift, and like with all stories that are over, not much new fandom material. so right away i want to say a canonical divorce does not kill my interest in pikelan, and i'll continue to reblog things as i feel or as they come up.

second-- a pikelan divorce doesn't really bother me or upset me much at all. other people may be in other places with this, and thats fine.

i, personally, simply don't care very much for marriage, or see it as a necessary goal for a happily ever after. similarly, i don't think divorce undoes bonds of affection or negates a previous romantic story arc. i also am just prone to enjoying relationship pairings that go through a lot of complicated phases--something that drew me to pikelan in the first pace.

so as far as i've seen pike and scanlan have two children, have an amicable divorce, and remain very close friends and sometimes lovers.

for me, that's acceptable. i might even like it. i like interesting journeys more than i like perfect storybook endings.

what i don't like about all this is cr fans who never liked pikelan, or never liked scanlan, taking this as opportunity to say its proof of something-- as though this means pike and scanlan never meant anything to each other in the first place or that they were never in love. that is simply untrue.

i still love stories about their relationship even if they don't die married to each other. and it doesn't change the story and relationship they already had.

[image ID: A tumblr messanger conversation between @jabletown and @tameila​ prompted by a link to a twitter post by twitter user @kajbergs that reads “had a bad day so made a lute out of an acorn.” There are two pictures attached to the tweet of a hand holding a tiny replica of a lute, including a neck and frets and 3 strings, approximately thumb sized, with an acorn lying in the background. The text conversation is based on these pictures. 

tameila: the concept of Scanlan, with his woodcarving skills, making himself a tiny little lute.....

jabletown: This is a perfect bored retired Scanlan prompt. He turns into a weird craft dad. Enchants a tiny band made out of acorn and walnut shells.

tameila: Arts and crafts dad!!!

jabletown: Kaylie and Pike forcibly make him take gigs again.

tameila: “I love you so much, babe, but... Please get out of the house sometimes.” /end ID]

~~~~

The most popular thing Scanlan ever creating becomes not even any of his tales of Vox Machina but a collection of fake fairy tales he started making up for Vex and Percy's kids, and the children of the air ashari, and eventually Pike and Scanlan's kids.

It takes decades but his tal'dorei gnome tales, Scanlan's Fables, become a standard children's book found in most homes. It's a strange arc, from renouned rake and traveling bard to retired adventurer and kids lit author, but it gets him decades of fans who grow up with his fables, and for years meets wide-eyed adults who claim to be his biggest fan, and how they pass down copies of this book to their children.

When he is nearly 300 he says something about how strange it is how long his tales have lasted. People barely know the name Vox Machina anymore and the writing isn't any good--he's gotten much better in the last 200 years but Pike says no you were always a good writer, even before the book.

And scanlan firmly thinks of himself, especially then, not as a writer but a composer. A maker up of songs. He creates but songs and rhymes that are intangible, interpretive. He just made up stories for the kids and then wrote them down. That never made him a writer.

But Pike goes to a worn and nondescript history book on their mantle and takes out a rattling piece of parchment folded between the cover and the printer's page. And the paper is old and she unfolds it gently and the ink is faded badly, Scanlan can hardly see his own handwriting from centuries before.

And he blinks when he picks up on some of the phrasing and he's like you still have this??

Pike says of course. It's not just a hastily written will at a bleak time of their lives-- it's a lifetime of devotion, for each of them.

And while she loves his other stories, and knows why the kids like his fables, his in case of death letter to Pike is as prized to her as her holy symbol of Seranrae. He wrote it, and it changed her life.