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avirael · 3 months ago

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Random musings about A'vi that may or may not make sense...

I promised I would write down a bit of my thoughts on A'viloh's feelings and probably specifically about Haurchefants since that is a little vague in my writing.

But before we speak of Haurchefant me have to speak of A‘vi and we have to consider that his own mind is his own worst enemy sometimes. If there is a very unreasonable way to feel bad about a situation he can and will find that way!

In a way we also would have have to speak about his upbringing and about Laqa of course and weirdly enough also about Thancred, although most of the last is pretty much just some idea in A'vi's head.

Not only is A'vi still confused because of what Thancred did before they parted ways -even if he tries to ignore that- but of course he also still loves Laqa.

Laqa was always there als long as he remembers. A friend, a lover, but most important maybe a person he could rely on, someone who protected him. And also to be honest a person he could hide behind, a person that would make the difficult decisions so he wouldn’t need to.

A’vi wouldn’t ever admit it and it’s probably not even conscious but some part of him - the part that refuses to change, that fantasises of going back to how things used to be - has been trying to replace all of that ever since Laqa is gone.

In a way Rael fulfills these criteria too. Rael would fight for him, care for him, protect him, just like Laqa did. This is a big part of why A'vi is so focused on Rael, occassionally so much that it gets mistaken for being something romantic. But in contrast to Laqa, Rael would in the end not coddle him. They wouldn’t spare him the struggle, the heavy lifting, the difficult decision making. And of course ultimately Rael also isn't availabe or fitting as a love interest for A'vi. And while their friendship means the world to A'vi, I think in the end he still needs something more than that maybe...

So back to Thancred for a second, because i think A'vi is not in love with Thancred.

If he is in love with anything or anyone apart from Laqa at this point, then it’s with the idea of not feeling so damn lost and lonely anymore.

In a way maybe that means he could be in love with Thancred but he’s not really in love with the person and more with the idea what he could be for him.

He is entranced by his charming behaviour, of course. People being nice to him is one thing. Kindness alone is too foreign for him still. Apart from Laqa there weren’t many people who were nice to him, especially not in the same way Thancred or Haurchefant are.

But Thancred or Haurchefants flirting with him? He is helpless about that! And it keeps on happening and when it doesn’t he misses the attention maybe? Yes, maybe he has a little crush on either or both of them.

But also, there was this moment after Ifrit when Thancred made him feel understood. A’vi saw Thancred struggling. A similar fight. Feeling not good enough. Trying your best and still failing. Wanting nothing more than to be useful for someone. Trying to live up to some shadow that isn’t there anymore.

And later that feeling of not having control over your own life. The pain caused because of oneself. The guilt he can either live with or decide to die of. Preferably in some grand sacrifice. For a good cause. Maybe that’s all he would ever be good for.

Their coping mechanism couldn’t be more different of course but something about their struggles is so similar. Being not alone in their misery is such a tempting thing. As so is maybe, just maybe, being able to finally move forward. But the important thing in context to HW here is that after the whole Ifrit-thing, when A‘vi considered going on a date with Thancred, this idea was born out of his hope, and only that, to maybe be able to move on from that loss he experienced. And all the fawning about him later, when it was already very clear to him that Thancred wasn’t interested at all, was more A’vi making heart eyes at the idea of being able to be in love with someone else. The idea of being free - just like Thancred - seems so nice to him. Free to do what he wants, to love who he wants and all of that without being scared or feeling horrible about it. Because feeling horrible and guilty and selfish and treacherous simply for still being alive is buried so deep inside of him even though all he wants is to be happy.

To be honest, even if things had been different in either of these two cases (the „date“ and Thancred‘s „disinterest“), I am very sure A‘vi would have found a way to chicken out of it last second. It was never a real possibility, just an impossible thing, so it felt okay for him to dream about it.

With Haurchefant however this IS a real possibility! He is very clearly interested and seems honest enough about it. But while there’s this voice in Avi’s head that says “I want this”, there’s still this other one that says “I can’t! I don’t deserve this! I am a horrible person!“ He rejects Haurchefant because there is someone else on his mind and in his confusion he can’t even tell anymore if this is just one person or two.

So he doesn’t take this risk, all while he thinks he might honestly like Haurchefant. He is just not sure if this is in a friends-only way or if it could develop to be more.

You may say now that this spares him some pain when Haurchefant inevitably meets his fate in the end but exactly the contrary would be the case somehow. Not only does he feel unworthy and ungrateful that someone as kind as Haurchefant died for him because he loved him despite A‘viloh not being able to return these feelings. No he feels like he missed yet another chance! He realises that maybe there will always be hurt and it’s just a matter of how well you spent the time you have. He feels like his insecurities, his awkwardness, his doubt and fear of getting hurt always kept him from making the best out of what he is given, may it be with Laqa or anybody else - time not used as well as he could have.

#Aviloh Tia #just some of my thoughts...#not going to tag this excessively now because its pretty specific and the people who will be interested in reading this are veeeery little #this is tbh just an attempt to bring a dozen notes into one text and it may still contradict itself or things I have already written #and of course there are still ideas floating around in my head about some things that may still influence my plans #the additive way I write my lore really isnt helpful sometimes #I wrote the whole backstory not thinking too much of it and well now its more important to me than I thought #then at some point I thought WoLcred could be a nice ship thingie because not thaaaat many people seem to like that...#and I want a nice ship too just because you know #and lets be honest that still looks kinda nice to me #but guess I am an idiot and I write my chars like idiots XD #and msq is being a bitch on top of that #anyway! conclusion:#I didnt really want to make the A'vi/Haurchefant stuff a canon thing because he really doesnt need another dead boyfriend #the thancred thing is still on the table but right now I'm still squinting at it wondering if I could make that work XD #and if anyone would be interested in that at all too...#ffxiv writing

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dimiclaudeblaigan · 1 year ago

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it's so interesting for me to hear that houses localization changed the script to vilify(?word?) the church bc when i played the game (i recently finished my first and so far only playthrough in lions route) for the first half of the game i was waiting for the shoe to drop to reveal the church is the big bad guys but it never came and the revealed was actually ed. idk if it should have been obvious but i was too focused on suspecting the church to see it or if it was actually subtle as i tend to be oblivious to hints(¿word again?) given in media lol.

idk where im going with this but i hope it makes at least some sense bc i am so sleep deprived rn

and the thing tou said about Henry being changed i am so curious of that too

hope you have a nice day and better sleep than me!

I'll answer the last part first since the rest is more descriptive.

Basically Henry went to Wizard School (tee em) and it was a cool and great experience. In JP, it was... iirc basically close to torture/hellish? It was a more mature situation/topic, but the loc changed it to be silly and fun sounding. For some reason Treehouse in particular seems deeply if not fatally allergic to mature topics and/or properly handling them.

Thank for about the sleep comment and I assure you, I sleep too often!! I wish I could send you some of my sleep and make it extra quality for you. :(

As for Three Houses, yeah, in AM it doesn't really happen that way. Nobody is really vilified (not even the imperialist warmonger invading neutral lands!) in AM (same with AG in Hopes).

What you saw/understood was the whole point! It was made it look at first like the Church was suspicious, but then the reveal was meant to be no, it was a fellow house leader all along. That was what the red herring part about the Church was all about. You were supposed to suspect the Church at first, hence Jeralt's warnings, and if you're playing GD, Claude's suspicions.

Unfortunately what happens in the other routes, especially in CF, is that Rhea's trauma is never explored, no characters stop to understand her motivation, etc. She's just used as the resident bad guy because she's Edelgard's enemy. Basically, you're seeing it from the point of view that Rhea is bad because you see it from Edelgard's perspective... but it fails to work because the game, in particular the localization, amps Edelgard up as a huge progressive hero. AM is the only route that really confronts her about her "views", and even then, it's a mess because all the things she argues with Dimitri about aren't her end goal (i.e. they don't ever end up actually happening in the vast capacity she claims she's going to do).

About Edelgard:

The localization avoids any particularly negative comments about her and changes or outright removes them (true of Hopes as well). In Dimitri's case it would make sense because of their connection, but when it ends up just being another route in the pile of feeling sorry for Edelgard (and... not Rhea, who had her family massacred and their bones turned into weapons), it just feels stale.

They basically tell you Edelgard is very cute and easily embarrassed, and she's just this headstrong progressive woman fighting For The People (tee em). The truth is (as per the game itself, i.e. content they can't change/localized because it's the contents of the game itself) that she's invading innocent lands, conscripting her own citizens, turning her citizens into demonic beasts to add to her military strength (lelz when u can't even rely on ur nation's own military strength without demonic beasts), and victim blaming anyone who fights back (if you have yet to see the extremely infamous "no u" line from Edegard to Dimitri in CF, you've been blessed) among other things.

They basically shove it down your throat, characters and narrative both (in the loc in particular), that Edelgard is good and just, while the story itself is looking at all that like ???. The JP script still tries to take good care of her and her image, but they're a lot more blunt about her/her goals (i.e. they don't dance around them nearly as much).

The localization showers what she does with love and attention, and even when they have to say she's the problem/aggressor, they still pretty it up as much as possible (such as Dimitri wondering if maybe her vision of society could possibly be just and righteous, instead of outright admitting what she's done is absolutely atrocious when it's way worse than anything he ever did, all of which he admits to doing and takes responsibility for).

The JP version is more clear on her being the villain. There's definitely bias toward her (as the writers were, confirmed by an interview), but it doesn't slap you in the face with it nearly as badly. Also, Dimitri has won a character popularity poll every year since the game's inception in Japan. In the west, Edelgard is much more popular than she is in the east. That, of course, is because of the way the loc pushed the writing for her/about her.

Edelgard's "progressive" stuff is supposed to be just propaganda (which is ultimately, even as per the western endings because there's only so much they can change). The way the loc frames it is that it's actually what she's aiming for. It's what she uses to inspire people to fight for her though, not what she's actually doing.

About Rhea:

This one's the real doozy because it's a victim of the above. Since they wanted to pretty up Edelgard's dialogue and make her A Hero (tee em), they needed whoever her main enemy was to be the "villain". Since Edelgard, now popular because of the tweaks in her dialogue, hated and wanted to kill Rhea, so too did her raging fans who gave no fucks whatsoever about any character who opposed her... even if it was just to save their own life!

They changed the tone of Rhea's voice in the loc to make her more angry and villainous sounding, rather than sad or kind. She was basically altered in the loc to make Edelgard look better. Like, of course, in the perspective of playing a villain in CF, she's the bad guy and the enemy. The problem comes when they have Rhea say things that are more aggressive than in the original script, and change her tone to sound demeaning and vicious (when she was otherwise not or not as much).

But like, why? The only reason any of us can think of is because they wanted to market Edelgard more. This is likely a result of the west's views and especially political views, since Edelgard's pretty words would sound good to a westerner's political beliefs... until you dig into them/the actual story content more.

Rhea also being the head of a Church probably got tweaked because of the west's recent irl views on religion. Religion in the west has been looked poorly upon in recent years. Instead of accepting this is just a fictional game though, the loc team just... pushed that they're Really Bad.

Rhea is more of a victim of them needing someone to be worse than Edelgard to make Edelgard look like less of a villain (which again, this isn't the case in the original script nearly as much), and they couldn't use Thales/the Agarthans because you were allied with them in that route.

The other characters vs Rhea as a villain choice:

The goal wasn't to make a playable lord a villain in the loc's case. It was the intention of the original script with Edelgard, but the loc tried to make her actions sound more justified because ??? like idk, I can't wrap my head around them justifying what she does.

Dimitri isn't handled too badly by the narrative itself and he's overall seen as a good person (even the loc didn't alter that or Edelgard's ablest mentality toward a mentally unwell person), so he wasn't really a good candidate for all that. Also, Dimitri's story is one of recovery, and because they ventured into mental illness, he wasn't a good candidate. He was treated well and pretty fairly (Edelgard not treating him particularly well makes sense with her character, but the narrative itself doesn't push him as being a monstrous person. Even in the time he considers that he was, there's depth, logic and complexity to the situation).

Claude being the main bipoc character would have just been an all around disaster if the loc or even original script tried to make him the top villain, yadda yadda (understandably). There was no chance that was going to go over well, especially in the west (have you seen the shitstorm GW caused? And that was with the writing not considering him a villain!!). He was basically safe from the get go as far as villainy if they writers/localizers didn't want serious backlash (there are discussions about the overall treatment of poc characters in Houses/Hopes, but I can guarantee it would've been legit backlash if he was made to be a genuinely and intentionally horrible person, so that wasn't really an option if they wanted this game to actually sell and be enjoyed).

So since Rhea isn't playable and is the head of a Church, that kind of makes her the only candidate. Players will get attached to the other lords and not like killing them, so it won't feel like a badass victory to kill them. I guess for some reason the loc team just... hated Rhea or something?

Dimitri's death in CF is either extremely sad and garners audience sympathy, or in the other version of his death in CF it's clear his mentally stability is starting to break right before he's killed, which in and of itself is another topic. Claude is either free to go by choice of the player or can be killed, and his death is sad and he's not villainized. Aside from how some characters treat Claude's death (in contrast to Dimitri's which is never outright villainized even by Edelgard), the scene meant for the player at the time it happens is supposed to leave a bad taste in your mouth.

So again, it really just leaves the loc team with the option of Rhea if they want to make the final battle seem like a big victory for the player. VW also has its big happy victory, and surprise surprise, Rhea dies in that route (offscreen no less!).

SS kills off Rhea but actually makes it sad, and it's, you know, actually the route that focuses on her/the Church most. AM doesn't kill her off and doesn't treat any character death as a badass victory, and instead gives a bittersweet ending (which again would be in line with Dimitri's connection to Edelgard, and it only feels botched down because of all routes obsessing over her).

So while, technically, the writing in the JP script wasn't trying to make Rhea as bad as the western version of the game, if the loc wanted to go for that, she was the best option. It just... came at the expense of butchering her character to make Edelgard shine, which shouldn't have been done but it was.

#DCB Ask #sorry this got pretty long. my thoughts are kinda. all over the place a lot lol. and I'm bad with expressing my thoughts in few words #this might be a liiittle discoursey for anyone not interested in that stuff #which sadly the loc changes ARE part of what had a hand in the discourse so it's #unfortunately a bit unavoidable when discussing loc changes and whatnot #but also like... what is discourse at this point? ppl seem to think discourse is just #any negative comment ever about the game/loc? like. idk lol #not sure how the truth is discourse but at this point I think it's bc the game has been #such a problem overall in the west that any negativity around it whatsoever is viewed by most as discourse #like I could say I don't like xyz character and here's why and if it's a certain character in particular (of a few)#then it's automatically considered discourse and not just someone's opinion on a game's writing/story?#but really any negative thing ever about Edelgard is considered discourse because like... it's a fucking mess lol #and well we primarily have the loc to thank for that mess so... it's hard to avoid when discussing the loc #anyway here is my resident ASHNARD comment of the week #you can have a villain just like Edelgard - identical even (cough Ashnard) - and if you handle it right #there's no need for discourse bc everyone's on the same page about the character!#but thaaaat's not what happened here bc pretty lady step on me loc/writer mentality. :(

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