I wish everyone collectively understood aventurine’s character like you…things would be so much easier! I genuinely don’t understand how people keep getting his motivations wrong??? Could it be because some of the most popular Aven fanfics were written prior to his release? That could have contributed to some of the takes we tend to see about him…thoughts?
I struggled all day to come up with a concise way to answer this and couldn't think of one, so here, have a long-winded ramble:
I don't think early fic writers have much impact in the situation with Aventurine's character now, since most people can look at when a story was posted and go "Oh, this was before we had ____ information."
I think that Aventurine's problem is being a male character in a gacha game. Gacha game characters are designed to sell. Hoyo can sell female characters very, very easily. Give her huge tits and a visible underwear strap and you're good to go. I love all my guy friends, but I'm not gonna sugarcoat it: straight men are not the hardest audience to please. Hit a particular fetish (feet, spandex, dommy mommy), and you're gucci.
Nah, we all know why Jade's trailer is Like That.™
Male characters in gacha are harder to sell because women as consumers are a little harder to predict. Does every woman want a tall, ripped hunk? Shit, no, small cute boyish models like Aventurine are selling better now? Why?! Would a bad boy be more popular than a nice guy??? It's harder to account for women's tastes, especially because they are often (a little) less visually-oriented.
Hoyo is good at what they do though, and they've figured out that male characters sell very well when they possess at least one of two specific traits:
Endearing vulnerability/helplessness
Gay ship tease
Give a character both, like Aventurine? They might as well be printing money.
That sound you hear is Hoyo's stock prices rising.
So, from the very beginning, Hoyo is incentivized to create a character that appeals to people, a character people will want to crack their wallets open for. And they achieved this, first and foremost, by giving Aventurine traits that female players (in particular, but men too), find especially appealing: emotional and physical vulnerability.
We see Aventurine's pain. We sympathize with his grief. We identify with his struggle to make meaning of his difficult life. He's our woobie, blorbo, babygirl, whatever the hell they're calling it now.
He can't hide his suffering anymore. He's on the very edge. He's a dude in distress. He's surrounded by enemies! He misses his mama! He's been betrayed! No one understands him like you do, dear player!
The ultimate feeling evoked is: He needs to be saved.
When people talk about male power fantasies, I think they forget that women can experience them too, and "Emotionally vulnerable man that only I (or my favorite character) can fix" is actually a female power fantasy.
And from there it's really easy, right: the people who shell out cash to buy warps for their harmed-husbando feel like they've saved him; the people who are into mlm ships look for the nearest hot dude to be the savior Ratio was waiting for his time lol.
Morally and intellectually, this type of deep-down-golden-hearted, emotionally-wounded male character is very easy to digest. There is nothing to dislike about this type of character or role in the story: this character is a good guy who has just gone through so many terrible situations, whose victim status makes him endearing, and whose lack of agency means that any of the questionable or downright bad things he does are always the result of someone else forcing his hand, and never something he would have chosen himself.
His motivations are always clear and consistent: get free, heal, and live happily ever after.
Insert the Wreck-It Ralph meme: "Do people assume all your problems got solved when a big strong man showed up?" But to be fair, a big strong man did kind of solve Aventurine's problem, so--
Anyway, it's simple. It's straightforward. Morally, it's pretty cut and dry, black and white: Aventurine is our hero, which means everyone dictating the course of his miserable life is evil.
Hoyo is not remotely discouraging people from literally buying into this emotional appeal.
And trust me, I get it. I'll be the first to admit that hurt-comfort is its own entire genre in fandom because it is so appealing. People eat up Aventurine's tragic backstory like candy! The idea of watching a character go through hell at the hands of bad guys just to finally find a happy end is like the definition of everyone's favorite story.
In fact... people love Aventurine's suffering so much, they have invented whole new ways for him to suffer that aren't even in the game.
This is where we get all the headcanons that Aventurine was a sex slave, every single person he meets hates him because of his race, the Stonehearts are executioners holding knives to his throat, Jade enslaved him to the IPC with a lifelong contract, his material possessions belong to the company, the IPC is forcing him to take only the most dangerous missions where he is being required by his evil jailers to continually put his life on the line... You name it and I promise you, I can find a fanfic where Aventurine suffers from it. 😂
Bro can't even sleep in on his day off; life is so hard for this man.
Being serious: if the game is telling us that Aventurine is a victim... Why not make him the perfect victim?
Why not envision an Aventurine with no freedom, who bears no responsibility for any of the horrible situations he is in or any of the dubious things he does?
It's so natural to like that version of Aventurine, so appealing to see a totally powerless underdog use his own wits and charms to claw his way up to freedom. Or, if you're the kind who really relishes angst: It's even appealing to see Aventurine lose more. To delight in fics where he loses his wealth, where the IPC punishes him for past crimes while he's powerless to stop them... (I assure you, this is many people's cup of tea and the fanfics prove it!)
Ultimately, there's nothing wrong with liking characters who are exactly this straightforward! It's completely fine to embrace characters that are intentionally written to be morally above-board, whose primary role in the story is to generate angst by being a good person who suffers, or those characters who never show unlikable traits, bad decisions, or contradictory actions.
The problem is that that's just not who the game is telling us Aventurine is.
Hoyo may be capitalizing off people who love to envision poor Aventurine still living his life as a slave... But the game also needs to tell a complicated enough story overall to appeal to people who don't care about this specific husbando--Aventurine's role in the actual game's plot has to be interesting enough for almost everyone to appreciate it, not just Aventurine's simp squad. (Don't get mad, I'm in the simp squad with you.)
So his character doesn't stop at just being a pure-hearted victim who is still waiting to be saved.
Aventurine is not that easy to label, and I think the biggest struggle in this character's fandom right now is between people who prefer the even-more-angsty, still-a-slave Aventurine versus people who want a morally grey, self-destructive character instead.
To me personally, while I greatly understand the appeal of fanon!Aventurine and the joy of a really juicy angst fic where characters lose it all, I think that missing out on the depth that canon is suggesting would be a real loss on the fandom's part.
The character motivations that Aventurine shows in the game are complicated. They cancel each other out. They're basically self-harm! He makes almost every situation he's in worse for himself--on purpose.
He is a good person, but also a person who has done unspeakable things. He does have morals, but he's not above allowing those who don't have them to use him to their advantage.
He's both the victim and the victor. He's his own worst enemy. He's a lost little boy who's been making terrible decisions for himself since he was like eight years old, and a grown ass man who is barely managing to fake his way through an existence that destiny is not letting him quit.
This kind of character is a lot harder to embrace. He's done things that most people would find appalling--like willingly joining up with the organization that let his entire race be massacred. He's invented a whole new peacock persona to frivolously flaunt riches he doesn't even care about (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 101). He actively plays into racist stereotypes about his people to manipulate others through their preconceived expectations. He's made a mockery of his mother's and sister's hopes and dreams by endlessly trying to throw his own life away.
He has flaws! He bet everything he had on a ploy without doing his homework to find out if the people he was risking his life for were even still around. (Maybe he already knew, and couldn't bear to admit it, even to himself.) He's intentionally off-putting and obnoxious to everyone he meets (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 102). He terrifies everyone who gets close to him by (seemingly) carelessly throwing himself into the jaws of death without the slightest provocation.
He knowingly allows the IPC to exploit his power and talents for profit. Did everyone forget that his role in the Strategic Investment Department is asset liquidation?! Like, his actual day-to-day job is ruining people's lives. Canonically, Aventurine kills people when his deals go bad.
His motivations change off-screen in two lines of story text. We're told in one line that his biggest reason for joining the IPC was to make money to save the Avgin, then in the next line we find out that's impossible. And... then what? What motivations does he even have now? The whole point of his character arc from 2.0-2.1 is that he was on the edge of giving in to utter despair and nihilism because he couldn't even perceive a single reason to stay alive. He has no purpose in life before Penacony, and that didn't start with the Stonehearts at all??
People keep saying Aventurine was held in the IPC by golden handcuffs, but how do you tie down someone for whom profit is meaningless? What can you offer to a man whose only desire is to bring back something already lost forever? How do you imprison someone whose only definition of freedom is, canonically, death?
Working for the Stonehearts is obviously not healthy. But that's why Aventurine was doing it--because taking dangerous missions allowed him to put himself at risk. The job that he originally pursued hoping to save his people became a direct means to self-harm, and the IPC's only real role in that was just happily profiting off the results.
The journal entries for Aventurine's quests are there deliberately to tell the player what is on his mind, and none of it has to do with escaping from his job:
Like... Work is the least of this man's problems.
At really the risk of rambling on too long now, he's also just a massive walking contradiction:
Aventurine is among the most explicitly religious characters in the game, yet he's one of the only people in the entire game that we have ever seen actively question his people's aeon.
You might be tempted to think Aventurine's risky gambles with his life as an adult are a result of giving up after finding out about the Avgin massacre... Butttt no, Hoyo makes sure to tell us that even at knee-high in the Sigonian desert, Kakavasha was already willing to risk himself in a fight to the death against monsters because even back then he found his own life to have less value than a single memento.
He's the "chosen one" who will lead his people to prosperity... except they're all dead.
He's explicitly suicidal... andddd also a pathstrider of Preservation.
He wants to die... He doesn't want to die. He wants to make it end, yet goes to staggering lengths to continually survive. (Every plan risks his life on purpose--but every plan's win condition is also to live.) He life is the chip tossed down, but his hand is trembling beneath the table. When faced with an otherwise unsurvivable situation, Aventurine literally became a winner of the Hunger Games. He beat other innocent people to death with his own chain-bound hands just to come out alive.
He knows the IPC failed the Avgin and left them to die... and he still willingly sought out a position of power in their organization. Maybe he really is after revenge... but maybe not.
He starts his journey in the IPC with a truly noble goal in mind: to help his people using his newfound wealth and power. He's a good guy who did genuinely want to save the Avgin and repay all those who helped him. But once it became clear he was too late, once it was obvious he would have no use at all for that monetary wealth and power he risked his life to get... What did he do with it? Unlike Jade, we don't see him over here donating to orphanages. (I'm not that heartless; I'm sure he does actually do a lot of good things with his money on the side, but the point is that the game does not show us that--it shows us, over and over again, Aventurine putting on a wasteful, over-indulgent persona toward wealth. We've supposed to feel how meaningless money is to him, how meaningless everything is becoming to him.)
He outright refuses to use underhanded tactics or to cheat at gambles, which is meant to show us that's he's more morally upright than his coworkers. There's an entire exchange where he says that he'll never stoop to using manipulation the way Opal does. But... he doesn't have any issue fulfilling Opal's exact agenda. He was never remotely morally conflicted about denying the Penaconians their freedom by dragging Penacony back under IPC control.
He's willing to risk his own life, which is one thing--but he's also willing to risk other people's well-being. Topaz accuses him of constantly egging their clients on into dangerous situations; we've actively seen him shove a gun into Ratio's hands and pull the trigger with no care for how Ratio would feel about that on their very first meeting... Dragging the Astral Express crew into the entire Penacony plan in the first place was exceedingly dangerous...
To me, I just think it's vital to understand his character through the lens of these contradictions because they demonstrate the extreme polarity of Aventurine's life: from rags to riches, from powerless to empowered by multiple aeons, from willing to kill to survive to killing himself... He has quite literally lived a life of "all or nothing," and while he is the victim of many terrible situations out of his control, his arc as a character involves facing the truth of himself and the future his own actions are hurtling him toward.
Frankly, the Aventurine that canon is suggesting is a little annoying. You want to grab him by the shoulders, shake him, and say "Why are you like this?!" And he won't even have an answer for you, because he doesn't even know why he's still alive.
In the end, to me, this is so, so much more interesting. I can read an endless supply of hurt-comfort fics where Aventurine escapes the evil IPC and Ratio is there to fill the void in his life with the power of love and catcakes and be a perfectly happy clam online, but I want canon to continue to serve us this incredible mess of a man who constantly takes one step forward and two steps back.
Who is fully aware of his role as a cog in the grotesque profit-wheel of cosmic capitalism and still manages to say he never changed from the rags-wearing desert rat of the Sigonian wastes.
Who over and over again flirts with nihility but, ultimately, even if he has to wrest it from the grip of the gods themselves with bloody, chain-bound hands, chooses life.
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I have. So many questions about your version of Tarre but I will try to keep it short
How did the Mando's react when they found out that he was a Jedi?
How did his first Jedi Master die?
Did Tarre manage to finish the tapestry (the one he was trying to finish before the meeting) before the due date or?
Did Tarre one day look up and ask his close circle of Mandos if he was the Mando'alor and said circle had to awkwardly tell him he had been the Mando'alor for a while and they were technically his advisors?
HOW was your Tarre adopted by the Jedi - assuming he has always been a Mando even if he did practice much of the culture? Did he accidentally run away as a toddler and end up in a cargo ship across the galaxy in enemy zone? Did he accidentally set fire at 3 separate houses in the Vizsla Clan and they decided to set him against the Jedi (and did it work even if only for a temple)? Tell me pleaseeee
Also sorry if this is stupid I assume that Tarre has always been a Mando or is he a convert (and if so was it via the god haunting him or was it after he went on the self-imposed exile while everyone thought he was dead)? I'm asking this to make sure I understood everything correctly
okay okay okay. well, let me preface this with saying that I am 1) INCREDIBLY stoked to see someone as invested in cringefail jedi Tarre as I am and 2) I have an incredibly detailed account of Tarre's life in my mind (that I might one day write down in fic form) so you don't know the beast you just unleashed
how did the Mandos react when they found out he was a Jedi?
well, it depends a bit on which Mando. the guy that for a while was his Alor and then became his second in command figured it out on his own after Tarre was a bit too weird about certain things for a bit too long. He mainly was put out that Tarre never trusted him enough to tell him (even tho Tarre himself probably assumed he'd just left the jedi order at that point). Also, it explained just a lot of the general weirdness of the guy, so if anything it cleared things up.
The rest of their inner circle figured it out some time afterward when Fay just appeared in the middle of their dining room, calling him out on his bullshit. I think they were too mortified to see her immediately do a 180° and start a custody war with a literal force-deity to react, really. And again, Tarre being a Jedi explained more questions than it raised (at that point he'd had probably a literal decade of raking up a history of being That Weird Guy TM)
And the rest of Mandalore's populace... I genuinely think many of them might never have known? At least not during their or Tarre's lifetime?
There might have been rumors, sure, but again, Tarre had already collected a lot of weird ass rumors about him by that time, so it kinda was just another one of those? At least this version of Tarre never went out and proclaimed he was a Jedi in some grand sort way. He was way too busy for that. Which I think would explain quite nicely how all subsequent generations of Mandalorians seem to put all emphasis on Tarre being Mand'alor and never really seem to mention his ties to the Order.
2. How did his first Master die?
His first Master, a rodian crèchemaster named Yuumba Doksa, died on a mission where they were supposed to investigate a sudden epidemic amongst settlers on a newly colonized planet. It turned out to be a bioengineered virus commissioned by the Sith, and despite the Force, Tarre had to watch his Master die before an effective treatment could be found. He himself also got infected with it, but because his genetic material was such a wild blend of things, his immune system was a lot more resistent to the virus.
3. Did Tarre finish the tapestry before the meeting?
No.
In retaliation, he just took his loom to all subsequent ones. That was the first in a long list of Weird Things He Just Does I Guess.
4. Did they have to tell him that?
Of course they did.
Actually, and this is getting down into the nitty gritty of my personal headcanons and worldbuilding around Tarre Vizsla, "Tarre Vizsla" started off as two people: Tarre on one side and Marek Vizsla (his alor-turned-second-in-command) on the other. Through a bit of a miscommunication at some point, the spokesperson persona the both were operating under got the name Tarre Vizsla, even though Tarre at that point wasn't a member of aliit Vizsla. House Vizsla yes, but not the Clan. That came later.
So for way too long Tarre just assumed that all these things they were doing, he was doing under a shared name, sure, but they still were two people and Marek was the higher ranking one of them, so naturally he was the one the Mand'alor title actually belonged to.
Until they all had to tell him that 'no, you idiot, you are the one doing all the work here, it's your position. Marek is just here to yell at people and, if necessary, shoot them.'
5. & 6. I'll have to answer together because they share a lot of commonalities
I'm firmly in camp 'Tarre was a convert' (in the end) (kinda).
It's quite possible that one of his parents was a Mando, simply because of the smoothie blend that his genetic are, but they were not around to make decisions when he first exhibited Force powers. So he went through a normal(ish) jedi childhood (minus the truly being bad at jedi-ing) until he went to ilum and came back with an old god as his saber.
But since this was the old republic and things generally were a lot stranger back then, no one - Tarre included (plus, he still was a child back then u know) - really questioned it. Tarre just was one of those Jedi with a weird colored lightsaber. Happens from time to time, right?
(as for why Kad Ha'rangir chose Tarre... who knows what the gods think, right? especially a god that literally is change. The Force works in mysterious ways)
Him properly becoming a Mandalorian was.... well, who can say when exactly it happened. Maybe he was one from birth, just 'temporarily misplaced' due to external circumstances, maybe he became one when a mandalorian god called dibs on him, maybe it happened when an old weaver lady whose backyard he crashed his shuttle in also called dibs of her own, or it's possible it happened when he got his first set of beskar'gam, or when he officially became mand'alor, or when he properly got adopted into Clan Vizsla or perhaps even at some other, small junction of his truly strange life.
Or maybe it never really happened at all? Who knows. I don't think anyone ever made him swear to the resol'nare (if that even existed in that form back then), they just looked at him and said 'yes, this is what peak mandalorian-ness looks like' o( ̄▽ ̄)👍
(half of them were looking at Marek when they said that. that's why the statues look nothing like Tarre)
And I think if you had asked Tarre at the end of his life what he was, he genuinely might have answered with "a Jedi"? Because that's still the thing he grew up with and he only (temporarily) fled from it due to of his own anxieties.
Like. All the work he did on Mandalore was because of the things he learned as a Jedi - to help where he can and strive to make a better galaxy for the people around him.
It just so happened that the people around him technically were the Order's mortal enemies.
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Death Warrant!Au
When the rejuvenating, life-extending effects of ectoplasm to the dead and dying was discovered by planets across the stars, it triggered mass conflicts that left several systems obliterated beyond repair. Hundreds of Billions had migrated to the Realms in numbers that were never seen before by the residence of the dead. They had various forms of damage and disfigurement on their new forms as a result of the ectoplasm being weaponized and used on them. Their very beings were corrupted beyond repair with their minds significantly altered with highly specified obsessions.
• Peoples from the destroyed worlds being so afraid that they lashed out, ripping anything that saw them to pieces out of fear of being attacked.
A serpentine creature of the Realms eagerly stalking them and fed upon their cores to grow stronger.
• Soldiers of these races were hell-bent on continuing to fight and proceeded to attempt subjugate this dimension that was new to them. Their rage guiding them blindly as they left paths of destruction throughout the realm.
A beast, wrongly slaughtered in the early madness of an delicate fledgling world that happened to be rich with ectoplasm followed the warpath and basked in the rage.
Eventually, more creatures like them came to prominence as a result of these strange new victims. Being aspects of emotion that were born from the masses in the war.
The Ghost King during this time period could not sit idly by and watch these newly born ghosts run rampant and terrorize his kingdom. With a heavy heart and a weapon in hand, a call to arms was called and the purge of these beings began. It tooks thousands of years, but when the last corrupted ghost was destroyed, the King took to the realm of living and wiped away all traces of the Realms from the minds of the survivors with all recollections of this terrible war for ectoplasm erased from history.
As his rested his eyes one final time, before the Tyrant would cowardly claim his life, made a major, sacred declaration that all citizens was made:
• If any hostile, mutant ghosts were to be found, they were to captured and examined by the king's council to await judgement. If they are too dangerous to restrain and seek bloody violence, they are to be destroyed.
• Any scientists trying to use ectoplasm for endangering life were to be have their memories erased and put to the sword for their crimes.
• Anyone foolish enough to Defy Death using ectoplasm, the greatest violation of the laws in the infinite Realms, they were to be put to death as and immediately given their Second End.
~•~ ~•~ ~•~ ~•~ ~•~
When Pariah Dark, the Cowardly Tyrant King, is defeated and Danny fianlly takes the throne after a few centuries of training, the Observers hand him a compiled a list of names who violated these sacred laws.
They have him start with Earth and Danny's jaw hits the floor with what the charges he was seeing. He can already hear the chaos in the meeting room.
• Amanda Waller, Vandal Savage, Darkseid, Granny Goodness, a court of owls(?)...the list is long, and that's just Earth alone!
• Jack "The Goddamn Joker" Napier and a few of the more violent Rouges of Gotham are charged with Veil Destabilization.
Even Jason Peter Todd Wayne...the Red Hood!? Danny can probably work something with Jason, force him into therapy sessions (along with the whole damn family) with Jazz and a couple cleansing sessions and supplements from Frostbite...the others had to go...
The continued slaughter of the innocent, combined with the suffering they endured and the misery felt by Shades who couldn't move on was making the veil deteriorate at dangerous speeds. New pits would form across the city eventually as a result.
Lady Gotham has done everything she can to keep the madness from happening but she can't hold it back any longer. Her core is ready to shatter under the stress and is constantly in agony, but she won't abandon her knights, despite Danny's pleas to save herself.
There's a certain brigade of furry's who may or may not like this news but said brigade had no choice but to take it on the chin. They have children who Defied Death in their ranks and the Realms are not afraid to destroy anyone foolish enough to stop them.
• Lex Luther is charged with crimes against humanity. And several other violations in regards to unethical experimentation.
One sticks out to Danny.
Lex used Danny's stolen DNA from a stray core shard from the Guys in White, who he was was funding in secret, even after they were disbanded, to create a clone comprised of the Earth's resident Kryptonian, the bald bastard, and himself to kill and replace said Kryptonian...the guy who literally helps save the earth time and time again from doom.
...Yeah, Lex is undoubtedly, fucked beyond total comprehension. Anyone defending him was risking all-out war with the Infinite Realms.
But hey, at least Danny was finally having child of his own! The little tyke is only a few years old in the tube, Ellie's visits are far and in-between and Danny's status as a Halfa made him sterile and develop an embarrassingly strong case of baby fever.
He's sure the ghosts from Krypton would love to help out in raising Conner in case Kal-El wasn't really planning on being around the boy. After all, being cloned himself, Danny knows the emotional baggage that comes with being violated to this degree by your enemy.
He just hopes the guy can come around and accept the little guy...
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