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I don't think even her biggest stans have ever called Yotsuyu 'morally grey' (amnesia arc not withstanding)
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Dec 6, 2020 01:41
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To continue a subject from the other thread, for a good while I thought the Exarch would be Future Alphinaud. Anyone else had some crazy guesses?
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Dec 6, 2020 01:48
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I hadn't done Crystal Tower at the time so I guessed Alphinaud. If I had, I want to say G'raha would just be insanely obvious given his link to the tower and the Exarch's build
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Dec 6, 2020 02:03
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Ither posted:To continue a subject from the other thread, for a good while I thought the Exarch would be Future Alphinaud. Zenos was a primal. This was a 'going through Stormblood' guess, but I was convinced that Zenos was a primal summoned based on tales of the real man from the ground; the real Zenos might even be dead before we ever see him, but the collective image of Zenos as a kickass 'Patton crossed with Chuck Norris' mega-commander from his troops combined with the sheer terror he inspired among the general populace, both of those sides thinking 'there's no way he can be dead', inadvertently summoned a primal of him that actually is that scary and hyper-capable. It's why he's so frustratingly capable at everything, as well as why he's so weirdly thin as a character; he isn't a real person, he's just a summoned manifestation of a warlord dictator. Honestly, part of me's still pissed off that he's not, and we were jerked around by the guy for a whole expansion just because he was powerful and the plot demanded we go through six zones. I thought the idea that we were instead fighting a population's collective image of being oppressed was really cool and interesting!
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Dec 6, 2020 02:11
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I cant remember all the pieces to the puzzle now but back in like 4.4 some people puzzled out how it was G'raha before the Crystal Tower was even mentioned and it was such a thorough, convincing thing at the time that i just completely bought into it. before that though i was 100% on the "future alphinaud" train
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Dec 6, 2020 02:39
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G'raha was always the main guess, but I remember Future Alphinaud was thrown around a lot as a possibility. I guess the Exarch's voice in the trailer sounded like a more grown up version of him to some people and G'raha didn't actually have any voiced lines up until then anyway. I just remember I didn't want it to be G'raha because I liked the CT finale and thought having him turn up again a few years later would be kind of lame. Also, I just didn't really care about him all that much and still don't really. He's a good character and all but I'm hoping he takes more of a backseat now. It is pretty funny that Ishikawa made her surviving minor OC from way back a Big drat Hero once it was her turn to be the head writer though.
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Dec 6, 2020 03:35
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There was also speculation that the Exarch was First!G'raha or Alph rather than a time traveler.
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Dec 6, 2020 03:55
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Innocence made the mistake of crossing the Amano Line, much like omega and Elidibus, which doomed him to getting his rear end kicked by the WoL.
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Dec 6, 2020 03:58
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multijoe posted:I don't think even her biggest stans have ever called Yotsuyu 'morally grey' (amnesia arc not withstanding) There's a reasonable argument that she ends the story in a grey area. She's bitter, vengeful, and destructive after getting her memories back, and she does turn into one of the most dangerous beings of Eorzea to pick a fight with us, but she honestly seems to want to give her country a monster to slay as a happy ending, and doesn't kill or permanently injure anyone who doesn't deserve it. As for G'raha, only Miqo'te men have lower faces shaped like that. That significantly narrowed down the possibilities.
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Dec 6, 2020 04:03
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multijoe posted:I don't think even her biggest stans have ever called Yotsuyu 'morally grey' (amnesia arc not withstanding) People absolutely have and for fairly justifiable reasons. Yotsuyu's behavior was terrible and unforgivable but it was action taken against a country that did terrible and unforgivable things to her. She lived a life of immense abuse from every angle and had to struggle to remain a person instead of an object and her cruelty was a mirror of the cruelty inflicted upon her by both the Garleans and Domans. She spent her entire life in misery and suffering and the only time she had some realm of control is when she inflicted pain right back. It is absolutely coherently understandable why she behaves the way she did and why she felt she had no other choice. The ongoing themes of people trapped in terrible situations and struggling to find some way to control the world around them is one of the biggest parts of FFXIV. For most villains (minus voidsent, elf-popes and capitalists) their behavior is usually built upon having no hope and no other way out. Most of what the WoL does isn't slaying gods but finding solutions that allow people to escape that eternal prison and it's usually treated as some form of tragedy when they can't.
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Dec 6, 2020 04:20
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Oh yeah, the other 'crazy theory' that I remember agreeing with, although I still maintain that it was a solid theory that happened to be wrong: that the white-robed figure that we now know to be Fandaniel was really Venat, either removed from Hydaelyn or another person taking on the same mantle. This is a theory that only really existed throughout 5.2 (although in our defense 5.2 stood for a while, for reasons). But it checked out that we learn that Elidibus was somehow the heart of Zodiark... and also still around, right around when we also learn someone named Venat was the heart of Hydaelyn... and coincidentally right around the same time, there's a white-robed guy who's apparently also from Amaurot goading Zenos into fighting Zodiark. I'm pretty sure we were at least supposed to suspect this one, albeit not for long. Cleretic fucked around with this message at 05:05 on Dec 6, 2020 |
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Dec 6, 2020 05:03
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ImpAtom posted:People absolutely have and for fairly justifiable reasons. I mean that's an explanation for her behavior, but it doesn't change it. She was still a straight up villain who was working to no greater goal than her own gratification, there's no moral ambiguity about her actions or motives for carrying them out.
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Dec 6, 2020 11:50
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Darth Walrus posted:and doesn't kill or permanently injure anyone who doesn't deserve it. Er, did you miss the part in Ruby Sea where she tortures and kills whole villages and complains that slaughtering kojin isn't nearly as much fun as killing humans?
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Dec 6, 2020 14:20
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ImpAtom posted:People absolutely have and for fairly justifiable reasons. being sympathetic doesn't make you morally grey. There's nothing morally grey about Yotsuyu: she's super evil and is doing all the hosed up things she does for entirely selfish reasons. Her backstory is sympathetic, and it's understandable why she ended up as the kind of person she is, but she's not morally grey whatsoever. There's no underlying good or benevolent reason for why she does anything that she does. She does it for the sake of revenge but has selected an entire country as her target, the end result of which is that she inflicts a lot of cruelty on completely innocent people for no reason beyond that she wants to. That is very concretely morally wrong.
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Dec 6, 2020 14:36
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given all the bullshit about sylvanas in the last couple of years from WoW i dont actually know what "morally grey" even means any more. having a believable backstory, and being able to understand the motivations behind their evil actions, is what makes a good villain. they don't have to be redeemable or sympathetic. there's a lot of good villains in this game. gaius, nidhogg, yotsuyu, emet selch, elidibus, even zenos. none of them are purely evil just to be evil (zenos is on the borderline of that, but we don't actually have his full story yet either.) they all have their reasons.
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Dec 6, 2020 16:39
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Nidhogg and Yotsuyu are both evil for evil’s sake. In Nidhogg’s case, everyone even slightly responsible for the death of his sister are dead. Their children are dead. Their children are dead. Their children are dead. He’s just killing innocent people with nothing to do with it, and had been for generations. Yotsuyu is just obsessed with Doma’s suffering. Nobody in Isari had anything to do with her life, or have any influence on the way Doma had been or is currently run. Yet she still goes to town and will kill and torture peasants. She just wants people to suffer.
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Dec 6, 2020 18:20
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Neither of those are "being evil for evil's sake"
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Dec 6, 2020 18:41
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Yes they are. Any perceived justice is long gone. Nidhogg has no other reason to perpetuate the war, and Yotsuyu is just bullying the weakest members of society. Compare this to the others. Gaius truly believes he's bringing good into the lives and society of the others. The Ascians are trying to restore their home. Neither Nidhogg or especially Yotsuyu have any notions of justice or good in their actions. They know, as much as Nidhogg has the capacity for rationality, that what they're doing is wrong. Orcs and Ostriches fucked around with this message at 18:52 on Dec 6, 2020 |
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Dec 6, 2020 18:47
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:Yes they are. Any perceived justice is long gone. Nidhogg has no other reason to perpetuate the war, and Yotsuyu is just bullying the weakest members of society. Both of them are seeking revenge. Justified revenge, even, but they've expanded their scope beyond the people who individually wronged them to include their entire countries and in doing so ended up hurting countless people who were completely innocent and undeserving. In Nidhogg's case I think he's genuinely unable to understand or accept that the revenge he's obsessed with obtaining is conceptually impossible. I don't think he's at all rational about it, and in his immortal mindset he seems to believe that all of his actions are completely justified. In Yotsuyu's case she seems to understand that what she's doing is evil, and she doesn't care. She's beyond anything but hating people and wanting them to suffer.
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Dec 6, 2020 19:04
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:Yes they are. Any perceived justice is long gone. Nidhogg has no other reason to perpetuate the war, and Yotsuyu is just bullying the weakest members of society. That isn't really the case for either. Nidhogg does not exist on the same time scale as Eorzeian races. What is a long time to even the longest lived of them like the Viera is still basically an eyeblink to him. He is absolutely wrong in that he's motivated out of suffering and pain but he isn't Evil For Evil's Sake. He was betrayed, his sister murdered, and his eyes gouged out and the people who he is fighting are still using his eyes to kill his brethren. (The fact that they are doing this in what they feel is self-defense doesn't change the fact that to him they're perfectly glad to keep using the stolen symbol of murder.) The Dragoon 80 questline specifically emphasizes how Nidhogg was not a heartless beast who loved being evil. Nidhogg has absolutely lost himself to his anger but from his perspective the pain is still incredibly fresh. Yotsuyu is acting out of pain and desire for revenge but more to the point she's following the only examples she ever had. She acts cruel because as far as she has been shown cruelty is the only way to survive and thrive. That isn't to say she doesn't take satisfaction in taking revenge or that she isn't supremely hosed up but it's kind of critical to note that responding to cruelty with violence is the only thing that worked in her life. I think it is important to note that a lot of what she does is a mix of true feeling and performative. She has had to fill roles her entire life and the role the Garleans thrust her into demanded that behavior. This doesn't mean she is forgiven for what she did but her entire post-patch plotline focuses on the idea that she isn't some cruel evil malicious being, she is someone who has been manipulated and forced by every side. That is why her Primal form is quite literally two-faced, based around suffering, and has a song about her desperately trying to battle against the people trying to make her bend to their will. Neither is Evil For Evil's Sake. Both are broken and damaged and threats to everyone around them but not because they are evil. They are victims. Someone can be both a victim and a victimizer and in both their cases they are.
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Dec 6, 2020 19:06
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cock hero flux posted:Both of them are seeking revenge. Justified revenge, even, but they've expanded their scope beyond the people who individually wronged them to include their entire countries and in doing so ended up hurting countless people who were completely innocent and undeserving. In Nidhogg's case I think he's genuinely unable to understand or accept that the revenge he's obsessed with obtaining is conceptually impossible. I don't think he's at all rational about it, and in his immortal mindset he seems to believe that all of his actions are completely justified. In Yotsuyu's case she seems to understand that what she's doing is evil, and she doesn't care. She's beyond anything but hating people and wanting them to suffer. I can concede Nidhogg at this point because his mind is so far gone, but quote:She's beyond anything but hating people and wanting them to suffer. is pretty textbook for evil's sake.
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Dec 6, 2020 19:10
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:is pretty textbook for evil's sake. Again, that only works if you ignore the fact that she was acting as a Garlean viceroy and we specifically saw scenes where they made it clear her behavior was at least partially expected. You can correctly say that she chose to save herself over saving other lives but that is an end result of being one of the forgotten and abused members of a society. She had no loyalty because she was used and abused for her entire life while the people in charge ignored her plight. Remember that she was working under Zenos who she (probably rightly) feared the poo poo out of. He's the biggest and scariest memory that pops up during the sequence in her primal fight and she was obviously scared shitless of him in basically every scene they are in and even the slightest sign of failure seemed likely to make Zenos kill her.
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Dec 6, 2020 19:15
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One crazy theory I have is that 7.0 will somehow deal with timeline the Exarch came from. I don't know how it will do that or how it will fit into the larger story but it seems that they like to tease expansions in the patch cycle of the one two before it i.e. the Warriors of Darkness in Heavensward leading to ShadowBringers, and the doman stuff in ARR leading to Stormblood. I just feel like they are building up to something with all the mentions of the alt timeline and the short story that was about it. Of course we still have two more 5.x patches to go through so they might be hinting at something totally different and i myself don't fully believe it. Edit: I also had a theory before Shadowbringers came out the its final boss would be a version of the emperor form FFII specically the holy version from the remake since that was the only light themed final fantasy boss since they usually have final bosses of expansions be bonus bosses from other games like Shinryu and Ultima Weapon Drashin fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Dec 6, 2020 |
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Dec 6, 2020 19:19
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Nobody is expected to kill peasants for no reason in Zenos's Ala Mhigo. And I doubt Zenos cares at all what she does to them. She's taking out (her legitimate grievances) on completely unrelated people that basically border on her situation. And enjoys it.
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Dec 6, 2020 19:20
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:Nobody is expected to kill peasants for no reason in Zenos's Ala Mhigo. And I doubt Zenos cares at all what she does to them. She's taking out (her legitimate grievances) on completely unrelated people that basically border on her situation. And enjoys it. You're absolutely wrong there. One of the things Zenos prizes is a hunger to hunt/kill/etc. This is something he openly states to both Yotsuyu and Fordola. When he talks to Fordola he is more upset at denying that she wants revenge than he is at her failing. He even says he'll pluck her eyes out if he doesn't see the hunger in them and knowing Zenos I doubt he's lying. Furthermore he's pretty clear that he wants Yotsuyu to act that way for the purpose of creating interesting prey. ("Let there be savage beasts baying for blood, and not hollow-eyed prey cowering in the dark, or there will be no joy in this hunt.") That is in fact a major point of what he does. Again, Zenos says it directly to her. " Do you understand why I appointed you to act in my stead? You, whose only accomplishment was to whisper the right words in the right ear? Because of your petty hatreds.They render you the perfect instrument to bleed your kinsmen of hope─to make an example of Doma, such as was ordered." She was specifically chosen because Zenos wanted her to treat people that way and when it seems like she is failing at creating what he wanted he basically tells her to fix it or die. That doesn't excuse her behavior but it wasn't entirely of her own will. She was ordered to do it and was chosen because she hated Doma enough to be willing to, and the moment it seems like she's failing she's threatened with death. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Dec 6, 2020 |
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Dec 6, 2020 19:24
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:Nobody is expected to kill peasants for no reason in Zenos's Ala Mhigo. And I doubt Zenos cares at all what she does to them. She's taking out (her legitimate grievances) on completely unrelated people that basically border on her situation. And enjoys it. "Completely unrelated people?" One of the characters you encounter in Doma is specifically Yotsuyu's former pimp, specifically to drive home the narrative point that a revolutionary state does not emerge from a vacuum but is built on the pieces of the old, and deciding that you are working towards liberation does not absolve you of your previous sins. Yotsuyu has a more sophisticated understanding of systemic oppression than some folks who think it's just a few bad apples and if you only attack specific individuals then it's ok and you can solve the problem that way. That's not what makes her evil, it's that she replaces the systemic oppression with more of it, just with her as the oppressor
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Dec 6, 2020 19:38
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To me, a character who is "evil for evil's sake" means that they were just born evil and don't have any real reason or motives to explain their actions other than that they like doing it. Zenos is the only character who could be described like that, but he's still kind of a mystery. Yotsuyu and Nidhogg are both undeniably evil, but they didn't just wake up one day and decide to start killing people. That doesn't mean they're sympathetic or redeemable though, just that they have actual motivations driving them.
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Dec 6, 2020 19:47
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CharlieFoxtrot posted:"Completely unrelated people?" One of the characters you encounter in Doma is specifically Yotsuyu's former pimp, specifically to drive home the narrative point that a revolutionary state does not emerge from a vacuum but is built on the pieces of the old, and deciding that you are working towards liberation does not absolve you of your previous sins. Yeah, but that pimp wasn't a starving fisherman in some backwater village. The fact a prominent member of society like that is still alive by the time the revolution came about shows she didn't much care to take revenge against the people and institutions that wronged her. Nor is she interested in doing anything regarding systematic oppression. She just wants to cause people to suffer. And yes, she's doing it to survive, as ImpAtom is saying; but she's doing it also because she enjoys it. Orcs and Ostriches fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Dec 6, 2020 |
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Dec 6, 2020 19:49
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:
sure, I don't disagree with you on that count
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Dec 6, 2020 20:02
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wizardofloneliness posted:To me, a character who is "evil for evil's sake" means that they were just born evil and don't have any real reason or motives to explain their actions other than that they like doing it. Zenos is the only character who could be described like that, but he's still kind of a mystery. Yotsuyu and Nidhogg are both undeniably evil, but they didn't just wake up one day and decide to start killing people. That doesn't mean they're sympathetic or redeemable though, just that they have actual motivations driving them. zenos was raised from the word "go" to be how he is, he had no chance. "evil for evil's sake" as this conversation is defining it basically doesn't exist in fiction anymore unless it's done as parody of that idea (ie the "i don't want to cure cancer, i want to turn people into dinosaurs" guy and even he might have been brainwashed by Big Dinosaur propaganda as a child or something) or it's like, a baby story for babies. if you expand it to "person acts evil for reasons which seem unrealistic or stupid to the majority of humans but are still A Reason" then there's more to talk about but i feel these sorts of conversations just sort of circle the drain as people list out reasons why someone did a warcrime or a genocide, because of their childhood Countblanc fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Dec 6, 2020 |
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Dec 6, 2020 20:05
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i can't say i fully buy the whole "dragons perceive time differently ergo the wounds will always be fresh on Nidhogg's mind and he has diminished culpability for his actions". Hraesvelgr was obviously able to reflect on the past even if it left him better, ruminate on his own actions and change. Tiamat was able to accept that summoning her dead brother-husband as a primal was messed up, and when she changed her tune to deserving eternal banishment for it her dad, the eldest and most timeless of dragons who spent a nigh-eternity in the endless void of space, responded with "yo chill". being overly dramatic over time just seems like a phase for sufficiently old dragonsCharlieFoxtrot posted:"Completely unrelated people?" One of the characters you encounter in Doma is specifically Yotsuyu's former pimp, specifically to drive home the narrative point that a revolutionary state does not emerge from a vacuum but is built on the pieces of the old, and deciding that you are working towards liberation does not absolve you of your previous sins. this in my mind is the biggest failing of the Doma storyline. it wants to talk about how there was and still are systemic issues in Doma that predate Garlean occupation and can't be blamed on it, but it's all so laser-focused on Yotsuyu that it feels less like an example of systemic oppression and more an entire nation banding together to arbitrarily make one woman's life the worst it possibly could be. like all you really need is instead of having that brothel show up, have a former prostitute show up to talk about how Yotsuyu showed her kindness and also outlawed sex slavery inbetween razing random fishing villages and boom, you did a much better job humanizing Yotsuyu. just the story can't do that because it would imply there would've been someone other than Yotsuyu who suffered systemic oppression. i suspect part of the problem is that the Doma storyline wants to pay lipservice to the idea that old Doma wasn't a perfect utopia, but the storyline is also all about putting the heir of old Doma on the throne when his only claim to legitimacy is being born a prince. if they went even a tiny bit harder on Doma being poo poo to its own citizens, then restoring old Doma would suddenly feel a lot worse, especially when before and after both Ishgard and Ala Mhigo have this whole "to learn from the sins of the past we need to make a clean break rather than cling to past glories" thing going on.
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Dec 6, 2020 20:07
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basically every problem with the Doma storyline is Hien's fault for even just existing
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Dec 6, 2020 20:08
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:Yeah, but that pimp wasn't a starving fisherman in some backwater village. The fact a prominent member of society like that is still alive by the time the revolution came about shows she didn't much care to take revenge against the people and institutions that wronged her. Nor is she interested in doing anything regarding systematic oppression. She just wants to cause people to suffer. He was specifically in a Garlean prison before that IIRC. And how much she wants people to suffer versus how much she is demanded to make people suffer is a question. I feel like something that needs to be emphasized with Yotsuyu is that she is pretty much always acting a part, right up until the moment of her death. She is always what someone else wants her to be. That does not excuse her behavior but the only time someone interacted with her who wasn't trying to turn her into a tool was Gotetsu. We have no clear idea of how much is her and how much is her acting because that is a big portion of what she did. She was performative and took on different roles, which is why her final act is to take on the role of a monster to be slain. You can compare how she acts during the fall of the Doman Castle versus how she acts later and it's pretty clear that she's putting on at least some of a part, calling herself a witch and a villain And to some degree Hein recognizes this because rather than dismissing her he says he'll remember what she said. Again, this doesn't mean she isn't a bad person or isn't responsible for her choices, but to pain her as someone who just likes suffering requires ignoring the fact that when we first see her she's acting the part that Zenos wants her to play. Think about how she acts right before she becomes Tsukuyomi. She's right back to acting in the role she did before. And remember that it wasn't he being told what happened that changed her back. It was the reveal that her parents were taking her back and intended to sell her again. She returned to the cruel malicious personality only once it became clear that she was going to be forced into the same position again. Her actions are in response to cruelties taken against her. I feel like it's kind of important to note that she never had a choice. She was passed from one abuser to another and had no reasonable way to escape because her society wouldn't recognize her or allow her to escape until she ended up with Zenos who basically told her to be his instrument or die. The only time she remotely had a choice was was when she had amnesia and that lasted until the horrific idea that she was just going to be enslaved and sold off again and then she got stabby. This isn't just "she had a bad childhood" but "she was systemtically abused for the entirety of her life and the one time she escaped from her abusers they showed up again and openly planned to abuse her further." ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 20:14 on Dec 6, 2020 |
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Dec 6, 2020 20:11
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a cartoon duck posted:basically every problem with the Doma storyline is Hien's fault for even just existing Yeah Hien is likeable as a character, but as a plot device and for what he means for Doma, he's bad, and bad in such a way that will likely never be meaningfully addressed beyond "wow look at this bad thing happening, that is bad huh?", like the bad poo poo the player nation-states get up to
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Dec 6, 2020 20:12
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a cartoon duck posted:i suspect part of the problem is that the Doma storyline wants to pay lipservice to the idea that old Doma wasn't a perfect utopia, but the storyline is also all about putting the heir of old Doma on the throne when his only claim to legitimacy is being born a prince. if they went even a tiny bit harder on Doma being poo poo to its own citizens, then restoring old Doma would suddenly feel a lot worse, especially when before and after both Ishgard and Ala Mhigo have this whole "to learn from the sins of the past we need to make a clean break rather than cling to past glories" thing going on. Eh, this isn't quite right. Hein absolutely acknowledges and recognizes the flaws of old Doma and part of Doman Reconstruction is finding out ways to avoid those mistakes again. They pretty bluntly make it clear that Hein wants to recognize the old country but not cause the same mistakes and even his willingness to let Tsuyu stay was colored by a desire to try to rectify some part of what the previous country had been. There's a lot of dialogue focused around it but it doesn't get as much attention as Ala Mhigo because the bulk of Doman stuff is sidequest material instead. It absolutely deserved more attention but so goes the issue of Stormblood's split.
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Dec 6, 2020 20:19
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ImpAtom posted:Again, that only works if you ignore the fact that she was acting as a Garlean viceroy and we specifically saw scenes where they made it clear her behavior was at least partially expected. it was expected by zenos, who put her in charge specifically because he knew she was the worst possible person for the job, but it's not a requirement for garlean viceroys to be as evil as possible. in fact they seem to have a huge amount of leeway in how they run their territories. like the previous viceroys of Ala Mhigo and Doma were Gaius and Hien's Dad, respectively. Gaius was oppressive but not capricious or cruel, and Kaien was by most accounts actually good and just. Constantly murdering people for stupid reasons isn't actually part of the job description, it's just Zenos' hobby, and he picked Yotsuyu to take over for him purely because he knew she'd do the same thing.
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Dec 6, 2020 20:42
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To be specific, Zenos selected Yotsuyu because he doesn't want a functioning and healthy-ish society the way Gaius and presumably Kaien did. He wants Doma falling apart at the seams and screaming bloody revolt, because that has the potential of producing someone worth his time to fight. It's why I think he selected Fordola for the Resonant project and deliberately had her fire on her friends for limited-at-best return. He's trying to make enemies. If you hadn't panned out, he'd probably have overtly kept goading Fordola until she revolted.
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Dec 6, 2020 21:15
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I'd like to add that "they won't rise up against us if they're too busy hating each other" is basic imperialist occupation strategy, it's a pretty realistic thing for any Garlean officer to do, not just something Zenos does because he loves violence.
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Dec 6, 2020 21:44
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ImpAtom posted:He was specifically in a Garlean prison before that IIRC. I agree with the take that Yotsuyu is not just some innately evil crazy person but my read of the finale of her story is that remembering who she is and what she did does cause her to snap back to how she was before. Not because her mind snaps back into place but because she decides, you know what everyone (ie the domans who wanted to kill her) is right, I am irredeemable. My whole life has been nothing but pain and suffering that I have received and given out, and this is just who I am. Her transformation into Tsukuyomi is not a genuine attempt to take back control of Doma, but just suicide by WoL.
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Dec 6, 2020 22:11
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A whole lot of people here judging characters in a fantasy setting with very different cultural and even biological contexts solely through a twenty-first century lens. Hraesvelgr didn't actually take the events of the start of the Dragonsong War 'better' than Nidhogg. He just spiralled into a depression that lasted for centuries instead of throwing a tantrum that lasted for centuries. The only reason we really think he handled it all 'better' is because he wasn't actively violent, and even then he was still very clearly making Bad Choices through Heavensward, those choices just weren't to directly set fire to things. And Hien is a pragmatic leader of a country that's just now pulling itself out of Imperial rule and trying to reform a nation that, even before then, wasn't exactly a progressive utopia. Even if he wants to make the choices that we as omniscient viewers from a 21st-century lens think are no-brainers, he can't, because he needs to keep the ship sailing during a period when mutiny or Imperial re-takeover are VERY likely because even though he's currently at least somewhat uncontested, that can change the literal instant he makes a choice that an influential enough fuckwad disagrees with.
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Dec 7, 2020 00:05
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