#Remnant order

[spiegelgestalt]

Women of Argatha is messy Part 2

But lets get to the stuff which stayed with me and will stay with me and why i'm writing this rant in the first place.

The TL/DR is: WOA is a survivors story and the messy feelings which happen if you survive.

Great female villains rambling under the cut:

Sherezade doesn't want to die. She tells us this the moment we meet her. Once she was a hero. A tyrannical king slept with virgins one night and than killed them the next day. Sherezade stops that. She offers herself and goes to the king. She tells stories over and over again until there is nothing left of her except one single desire: I don't want to die. I know the story of 1001 nights and i never realized the horror at it's core. Hell in the mythos she marries the guy. FGO calls this out for the bullshit it is. I like that.

Sherezade becomes a heroic spirit. And she doesn't see herself as a hero - she sees herself as a whore who did everything to survive and now she has to die over and over again. It is hell for her because she never got out. Then she gets summoned by an evil demon who understands her and offers her a way to die permanently. Sherezade doesn't want to die but if she can't live forever she rather dies once. So she takes it. With his help she creates this world where women abuse men. And the world mirrors what Sherezade survived - there is an evil pirate queen who kills every man she sleeps with, there is an empress who tortures her citicens out of false idealism, there is an amazon queen who rapes the men she wants to have children with. WOA works as Sherezades revenge fantasy. It works as a reflection of what she has endured. But the thing is: this violent fantasy doesn't help her. The demon doesn't offer anything to her - just death. Sherezade stays in a bad place. As a survivor who gets abused by the strong women around her. A survivor who wants to stay alive at all cost. Who grovels and sells out everything that is dear to her just to stave off death. She hates herself for it. Calls herself whore and coward and plans her own suicide.

But FGO disagrees. And it goes to great length to show that Sherezade has more to offer than her body: she is a great tactician, she nows all the stories, she is smart and resilient and knows how to play the room - hell she surprised me when it turned out that she was the bad guy behind all this. And the story ends on a hopeful note - maybe not all guys are like the evil king, maybe there can be savety and even consensual sex (with Fergus UGH but okay), The evil demon is separated from her (and there is neat little metaphor in there how some toxic relationships can keep you in a bad place, even though the people in it love each other)

I like the hope. I like that Sherezade is saved. That way WOA becomes a story about overcoming trauma/depression and survivors guilt and that resonates with me. I'm glad to have read it.