#That Valkorion's actions were to some extent justified?

[swtorramblings]

DS Comment: You think this proves anything?

You know, I would happily retreat into my relatively happy Vaylin lives and optionally the family somewhat reconciles AU’s, and maybe finally move on to original stuff or at least fics not involving the Tiralls, but I just... keep... SEEING... these things!

I’ve seen this one quite a few times: “But Vaylin doesn’t change, even after she frees herself, even after you free her in the mindscape. That proves...” Well, it apparently proves some kind of point. And Arcann generally comes up as a counterpoint, somehow.

Rest under the cut. Sorry app users.

Let’s look at that for a moment. By freeing herself, does my hypothetical speaker (since this is not a direct quote of anyone, more of a pastiche) actually think that what Jarak did in any way “freed” her? Perhaps of the command phrase, and I guess it “freed” her power (arguable, since you still basically just walk up to her and shoot her or, worse, impale her), but it looked like just more torture to me. And it certainly didn’t “free” her of the brainwashing and trauma, but added to it.

Yes, you free her in the mindscape, and she doesn’t seem much changed. If you decided to kill a mother for wanting to save her son, she never does. And if you did that, not to put to fine a point on it, neither does Arcann. She sides with you because you’re a monster, too.

If Arcann is alive, though, you can ask him to talk to her. and he speaks of their childhood, and her face softens. She goes right back to rage, but she still has that moment, and she still sides with you. She believes that you will help her be free, finally, even after everything, even if it’s only the freedom to die.

And if you talk to her yourself, she says, “Choice. I could get used to that”. For me, that tells me everything I needed to know about her life. Perhaps she had some, I’m not trying to just ignore her crimes, but after active brainwashing and mind control, it always looked to me like she had little agency. She was always Valkorion’s tool, what he made her to be. And we’re forced to make it worse, not better. We’re not even allowed to try. But she sides with us because we finally gave her that chance, however briefly.

So, no, she doesn’t change because of magical effects. That’s true. She changes, however little, when you finally actually help her, and then talk to her like a human being rather than a serial villain. When you’re not giving her some useless platitude, or telling her she can’t be saved, or using her command phrase on her. Go figure. Just a shame it had to be after you’d already played impale the abuse victim. I have to wonder how the story might go if she were treated that way regularly instead of one time at the end of her story.

If allowed to do that before, and she rejected it and still tried to bring our headquarters down, still decided to burn worlds, whatever, I wouldn’t like the story. It’s still associating her trauma and illness and whatnot with that evil, and I think that is both trite (yes, more trite than being able to save her) and actively harmful. But it wouldn’t have been any worse than any other similar story. She’s an active threat, she’s committed horrible crimes, I could let that go. 

This? Every time I see someone argue about how it was a good story, when I look at how we’re forced to side with her abuser, even speaking lines that would have been perfect coming from his mouth, and all for his pathetically transparent plan that had to have killed at least thousands so that he could obtain her power after we actively goaded her down that path and then kill her for him, it makes my skin crawl.