#And no mentions of her bias against subhumans

[randomnameless]

Just the other day, i saw someone on Twatter claim that Azure Moon was a conceptually bad idea for a route because it's main point is that revenge is always bad, but then it ends with Dimitri taking revenge on Edelgard and being rewarded for it; that seems like a ridiculously reductive way of interpreting Azure Moon's message imo.

???

Dimitri wants to spare Supreme Leader and she's the one who keeps on rejecting his offer, both at the parley and when her dagger slips from her hand to lodge itself in his shoulder.

He's not killing her for his personal revenge anymore in AM, she fights to her death.

I guess those X people refuse to consider that her end in AM is the result her decision or her IdEaLs pushed to the extreme, there's no place for mercy, it's kill or die when Dimitri is offering her a way out.

[desertdragon]

TW: Mind rape mentioned

It being pointed out by someone I follow that Emet was a fucking moron for thinking Venat and Hydaelyn are completely separate beings encouraged me to continue solidifying my own HC for why Vaste does the same until more or less the final hour and killing the latter. While the separation still exists it's for entirely different reasons, to the extent any attempt at calling it the same thing simply because there's a separation involved for both misses the point (rendering his arguments as more bullshit).

First, Emet divides Venat from Hydaelyn because to him there is only perfection, wholeness, humanity in what was Ascian, in what was like him. His thinking is black and white; there are only two teams in existence either who he considers his people and the subhuman others. You can be one or the other and he believes his is the one worth anything. There is no change, no re-imagining, no growth and you cannot go from one to the other or into anything more, likewise you cannot be half and half. Venat cannot be anything other than who he sees in his mind under his bias, and if she is then it isn't her it's a deformity or corruption, and there's no way she could've chosen to change- he's like an ignorant petulant child or a baby with no object permanence. If something or someone doesn't exist in the now as he thinks it should then it's always wrong, he can't see the future or outside his head and he can't see anyone different from himself. The sacrifice Venat made does not exist in his mind and is completely unappreciated.

It's as if he walked out of the pages of Ur-Fascism's sections on the fascist belief of an eternal present, a mythic past in need of reclaiming yet unattainable, and needing to prepare for eternal conflict against a shifting bogeyman both too strong and too weak at once. The new races are simultaneously too weak to be worthy of "advanced" life and moral ascendance, and too strong to be overpowered or ignored outright. How could, why would Venat ever become something associated with that, no she wouldn't, she can't, it's not Ascian- so Hydaelyn must be an animal making a parody of poor Venat, wearing her skin.

He knew the man before the monster, and for him you can be either man or monster, nothing more. Not both.

Vaste on the other hand knew the monster before the man. The face of this “question” has only ever been Hydaelyn for her, the idea of Venat wasn’t a concept for her nor those around her. She didn’t want to entertain the thought either; to her this was the one who cursed her, violated her, who chose and reached into her with a change on all levels (Echo activation + Blessing) she never asked for nor wanted nor understood nor ever grew to like after. Hydaelyn is trauma. Big H mind rapes her as it happens even if Big H didn’t think that would happen and was desperate for a champion. I framed it that way because I do not think contact with a powerful otherworldly eldritch Primal being (especially given how they effect worshipers and summoners) would be a simple conversation, and perhaps subconsciously for personal reasons related to my own trauma.

Hydaelyn did not intend nor desire such a thing but it would be a consequence of being a Primal as well as the oldest Primal- and I think because she repeatedly states she is starting to get weaker in ARR that’s what makes her Blessing the super-fication of Vaste’s soul and by extension her body, giving her an edge as champion (The Echo is what makes her immortal). All Vaste had before her was an enemy; from the path of her change she learned personally that man and monster often are the same, in the real world, not the world of idealized imagination.

Then she does meet Venat, either while breaching Hydaelyn’s essence or the Endwalker way. And before where all she could think was “I’m going to fucking kill you I’m going to rip out your fucking throat.” toward Hydaelyn, she feels pause.

She feels her presence, receives a flood of her memories, speaks to her; she realizes Venat became what she is much as Vaste became herself. They both sacrificed from love and had the resolve to do what they find nessesary so that others bigger than themselves and not all like themselves can be saved not exterminated, liberated not oppressed, and it was not what they desired but circumstances forced onto them all the same. It's a continuous cycle of being out of control, under threat, torn from peace. They are so very alike. Two monsters who are still men. She pities her. She feels angry on her behalf and sadness. They understand one another through those final emotional firings, but Vaste will not back down because like Venat she too will do what she believes in and has come so far for. The pain between what Hydaelyn has done will never cease, but is closer to forgiven than it ever will be. She wishes things were different. Venat-Hydaelyn ask her and this new, once again dawning humanity to care for the universe, they will.

"Goodnight, Venat."