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tapioca-puddingg · 3 months

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One, the Goddess of Diligence: A Drakengard 3 Analysis

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!

Hey, it's been a while since I've done one of these. I took a break from doing these long analyses in favor of shorter and quicker content just because it's easier on my brain. I apologize to those that I may have kept waiting with this one, but I'm back now.

If you're new to my blog, I post analyses about video game characters that I think are interesting, amongst other things. This is my Seven Deadly Sins/Heavenly Virtues series of Drakengard 3. And do be sure to like, reblog or leave a comment if you enjoy my insane ramblings.

"Facing the people crowding the streets, I gave a wave from atop my steed. This caused them to cheer even louder, and I felt the animal tense beneath me. I am not fond of horses due to their strong odor, but in this case I could sympathize with the beast. We were both being forced to parade our way from the harbor towards the cathedral. I would have preferred to have snuck back after sunset; I wanted to be alone. My mind, exhausted from battle, sorely needed a rest. But I was not allowed to be so selfish. It was my duty as an Intoner to symbolize order and peace having returned to the world, even if that meant being made a spectacle of. And how could the innocent people know that their cries of elation were causing me, with my heightened senses, to feel as if my head were being split in two?"

One is the second eldest Intoner sister and is the head of the Cathedral City. As the second eldest, she is the leader of the Intoner sisters. She is level-headed, intelligent, and capable. Not to mention the fact that she is well-respected by her younger sisters. Of the Intoner sisters, One is the most interesting in my opinion. She's the only Intoner that becomes self-aware and questions the world around her.

As with the others, One's novella gives us more insight into her thought processes, as well as her struggles and curiosities. She behaves as you'd expect; calm, composed, deliberate, thoughtful, calculated. Every move she makes has an intent and a purpose, and her logic is always sound. As I said a second ago, she’s the only Intoner to question their collective existence; where they came from, why they’re so powerful, etc. Her assessment of her sisters is objective, as she sees the good and the bad in all of them. As such, she does her best to position them for success as leaders in each of their respective lands, and tries to play to their individual strengths. For instance, she tasks Two with governing the Land of Sands in hopes that her optimistic nature could lift the spirits of the citizens, given how hard life in the Land of Sands is.

And yet, One has her own struggles, just like any of us would. Each Intoner deals with a certain bodily aspect that continuously grows at an alarming rate. Two's physical strength/muscles, Three's hair, Four's fingernails, Five's breasts, and One's senses continue to grow far faster than that of a normal human. For One, it is easy for her to become overstimulated due to her heightened sense of smell, hearing, touch, taste, and sight. The taste of food is too intense, the body odor of humans and animals are too strong, and even the feeling of clothes on her body can be uncomfortable. It's the reason why she's always in solitude. Damn, she just like me fr. Anyway, on top of having to shoulder so much responsibility on her own due to Zero's absence, she also is having to battle with heightened senses that hinder her everyday life. That takes a lot of strength.

"A disciple is a tool for battle. But it didn’t feel right using someone else as a weapon. So instead, I created a copy of myself. And since it was a copy… no matter what happened to it, it would always forgive me. Or I would forgive myself, I suppose. I used the Cathedral’s magical energy to infuse my copy with disciple-like powers. More than enough to take on the lords of these lands. Thus, I gained a partner I could rely on. And a way to forgive myself for what I had to do."

Not counting Zero, One was the only Intoner to not be given a disciple. She created Brother One from one of her ribs as both a combat partner and a failsafe in case she died. She also admits in her Prologue that she was lonely, so I'm sure that also may have been a factor in this decision. One is also vastly introspective, always pondering over philosophical or moral dilemmas. She notes the benefits of having a disciple and lists her sisters' main motivators in their lives: sex, honor, cruelty, and romance respectively. But she struggles to answer what it is that she truly desires in this life. In being the primary leader, she's bound by so much responsibility and duty that she doesn't really get to be herself, whatever that may mean. She always has to put the needs of everyone else before herself.

"You pretend to be all grown-up and mature, but you haven’t changed since childhood. We all need some kind of mental support, you know? Even Intoners. Heck, you probably need it MORE than the rest of us." "I suppose there’s some truth to that. Perhaps we’re weaker than we’d like to admit." "Aw, come ON! You’re supposed to get all mad and yell and stuff! I don’t like this pensive you. Quit messing with my head!"

Gabriella, being the boss bitch that she is, calls out One for shouldering too much responsibility on her own. One agrees with this, which, surprisingly, catches Gabriella off guard. What I find really interesting is that she says, "I don't like this pensive you." This implies that One used to respond negatively to Gabriella's brutal honesty but has grown since then.

And speaking of Gabriella, I wanna talk about her for a bit before I move on. Her personality so unique from all the other characters in the game. It feels like if you took a person from the real world and plopped them into a video game. They say that a dragon can see a person's heart, their true nature. And she always lives up to that expectation. The One/Gabriella partnership is almost opposite to the Zero/Mikhail partnership. Mikhail is a literal child and Zero is sort of motherly to him. She softens up to Mikhail more and more as you progress through the other branches. Even though their dynamic is short-lived, Gabriella is like an aunt. She doesn't mince words, but I got the impression that she does care about One at least a little bit. She sees some good in her. So that has me wondering, what the hell happened to her? By the time the main game starts, Gabriella has been replaced by Gabriel, and Zero states that he's a demon dragon whose power has been enhanced to fight off her and Mikhail. She was about to talk about the consequence of doing such a thing, but she trailed off before the line was finished. One of the last things Gabriella says is that she's the boss of her own fate. With her being so headstrong, I can't imagine her going along with being transformed in this way. Perhaps she agreed to do it because she grew to trust One? We may never know this tidbit.

"If you think you’re the only one suffering here, you’re out of your goddamn mind! Two, Three, Four, Five… You gave life to each and every one of them. Then you went and killed them all! What did you expect? Cursing the world then saving the world. You thought you could do everything by yourself? Well, THIS IS WHAT YOU FUCKING GET!"

As for the events of the main game, she is the voice of authority, as usual. By the end of Branch A, she's killed by Zero and is then killed by Two in Branch B. But come Branch C and D is where things get more interesting. By both branches, One is completely self-aware. She knows that the Intoners originate from Zero and that the Flower won't stop until it destroys the world. One has reached the same conclusion as Zero in that the Intoners should not exist, as they pose a major threat to the world. However, this is where they clash. Their goals lie within their names. Zero wants all the Intoners to be killed, including herself. One believes that she herself should be the only surviving Intoner. Maybe that's why the two of them share the same color scheme: they're more similar than they are different.

One hopes that her and Zero are able to understand each other since they both have a mutual understanding of their place in the world. But Zero of course shuts down the idea, calling her an "offshoot." Despite literally fighting for her life, she remained calm for a lot of this fight, but she does break her composure in the above quote. It's about time. She points out the contradictory nature of the situation, the fact that Zero created the Intoners just to destroy them in the end. She's technically not wrong, but we know that it's not the whole truth.

I mentioned One's loneliness earlier, and another wrinkle in this is the fact that she becomes the only sentient Intoner. Throughout the entire main story, she's aware of the aforementioned info about their link to the Flower, but she keeps it to herself. Maybe she thinks that her sisters wouldn't understand. And during the later branches, when the other Intoners start to become driven insane by the Flower's influence, she's the only one to remain sane. By sheer willpower alone! She is killed in all branches, never getting to bring peace to this world the way she envisioned. I start to feel bad for her when I think about it like this.

Because I gave her the title of the Goddess of Diligence, this would make her a foil to Three, as diligence and sloth are opposites. Both women have proven to be highly intelligent and curious. The difference being the way they wield their knowledge, right? Three constantly uses her intelligence for her own self-indulgence, without a thought or care of the people she's victimized. One, whether you agree with her actions or not, does what she believes is the right thing for the greater good of humanity.

Her last appearance is in the Final Song. Because she is an odd number, her dance is asymmetrical. One is usually so composed, and yet here she is, thrashing and flailing about. She's not at all timed to the music, nor is there a direction. Her movements are more controlled than Three's, for instance. But not as controlled as the others. Almost seems as if she's fighting. Fighting for control of her fate? Fighting for the peace that she envisioned? Perhaps fighting for her own autonomy.

TLDR: One was an intelligent, capable leader that only sought to do the right thing. Because Zero had no intention of being a leader, she was given a mountain of responsibilities to bear alone, until she created Brother One. She was also someone that dealt with her share of loneliness, as well as overwhelming sensory issues. She died by Zero's hand and shared the same fate as her other sisters, never getting to enact the peace that she wanted.

AFTERTHOUGHT:

Phew! I changed things up this time around bc I felt that it flowed better this way. If you've made it this far, thank you so much for reading and I do hope you enjoyed it. And I do apologize again for those that had to wait such a long time for this. I promise that I never forgot about these analyses, I just put them off bc they require a lot of brain power. Anyways tho, that's the post. Dunno when I'll start doing Zero's, but it'll probably be in two or three parts. Thanks again, until the next post!

#drakengard #drakengard 3 #dod3 #drag on dragoon #drag on dragoon 3 #intoner #intoners #intoner one #square enix #yoko taro #analysis #videogamewomen

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tapioca-puddingg · 2 years

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Four, the Goddess of Envy: A Drakengard 3 Analysis

Warning: Spoilers ahead! Read at your own risk!

EDITED 1/27/2024

Oh, hey. It's me again, your favorite over-analyzer. The more I look into the intoners, the more interesting they are. I should've said this in the last analysis, but I have to admit that I actually have not played any of the Drakengard games. However, I have watched all the Drakengard 3 cutscenes and DLC's online and have been re-reading all their novellas. I had a lot to say about them, so I dump all of that here. I gotta say though, Four's character is one that hits close to home for me personally, and I'm sure a lot of people would resonate with a character like this. Now let's get onto Four, the Goddess of Envy. You could say she's green with envy. (Ba-dum-tss)

"Once upon a time, many moons ago...There was a beautiful Intoner and a middle-aged man. The Intoner yearned for a world of peace and happiness and for evil to be banished forever."

INTRODUCTION TO FOUR

Four is the second youngest of the Intoner sisters and the ruler of the Land of Mountains. In this post, I'll start from the main game, to the DLC, and then the novella. Though to be honest, you don't get much of her in the main game. Before we even meet her, both Mikhail and Dito ask Zero about what kind of person she is. Zero claims that Four is "sleazy" and that acts sweet on the surface but is really evil deep down. When we actually see Four, she is seemingly one of the only normal Intoners. She seems harmless and doesn't want to fight Zero and just wants Zero to be her "old self" again. That doesn't stop Zero from killing her, though. Her being "sugary sweet" on the outside does match up with what Zero claimed, but we didn't get to see the whole picture before Four's death. If you only went by what you saw from her in the game, you'd think that Four is a kind, normal, unassuming girl. But the deeper you look, the more you see that Zero was correct in her claims.

FOUR'S PROLOGUE (DLC)

"Dragons can see the shape of a person's heart. And the heart of this beautiful intoner... was full of holes. A frigid breeze seemed to blow through it. What could have made it so cold? This dragon had no idea."

Four is given a task by One to eliminate the remaining troops of the previous lord in the Cathedral City. Gabriella, One's dragon, accompanies her a little later to help with this task. This is where we get to see the side of Four that Zero was talking about. While Four does want to do the right thing by maintaining peace and order, she is immensely self-righteous, perfectionistic, and condescending towards those that she thinks are less than her (i.e. all of her sisters save for Zero and One, and the elves later on). She takes every opportunity to throw her sisters, mostly Five, under the bus in order to make herself look better by comparison. She's definitely a "I'm not like other girls" type of woman. She considers herself to be morally superior and just, has a black and white mentality and does not think about the consequences of her actions (preemptively attacking the pirates for instance, more on that later.)

I think Decadus and Gabriella are foils in their relation to Four; Gab constantly calls out Four for being disingenuous and shallow, whereas Decadus enables her and coddles her ego. Going back to the quote, Gabriella sees that Four's heart is "full of holes" because of her many flaws and complexes.

"The screams of burning victims rang out from the downed vessels. The cries for help echoed far and wide. But none of it bothered the Intoner in the least. After all, they weren't civilians. After all, they weren't human. After all, they were the 'bad guys'. The Intoner was filled with sublime exhilaration."

The part of this DLC that I think is the most telling is the very end when Four insists that they go and slay the pirate elves. It is unclear if this was part of One's plan or if Four came up with this on her own, but it's probably the latter. Anyways, with Gabriella's help, Four begins slaughtering the elves and it doesn't sit right with Gab. She feels guilty and uncomfortable due to the screams of pain from the elves, but Four insists that she should ignore it and continue. Gab tries numerous times to tell Four that she thinks what they're doing is wrong, but Four doesn't bother to consider it. And now to the moment where everyone began to collectively hate Four; Gabriella calls their attack "manslaughter", which makes Four laughs maniacally. She says it can't be manslaughter because they're killing elves and not people.

This once again proves that she's apathetic towards those she considers less than human and justifies her slaughter. I should note that the elves are pirates and by that logic, they probably aren't innocent. We all know what kinds of things pirates do. However, she not only preemptively attacks the elves without any sort of plan, but she laughs and takes pleasure in doing so. She immediately resorts to violence instead of trying to form an intelligent strategy. She believes that she can do whatever she wants because she thinks that they're in the right and shows absolutely no remorse. This shows a very immature mindset.

NOVELLA

"I hate you so much! All of you! I despise you! I know I'll never be lovable like Two or beautiful like Three. I know that compared to Five I'm a pancake! I hate myself! I hate my face! My body! I'm not pretty or lovable and I have the most average face you can imagine. My arms and legs are gangly and I look like a twig that can never get my stupid hair to straighten out!"

Now THIS is really where we get to see who Four is. The novella lets us take a peak into her thoughts and boy, is it something. In this scenario, all the intoner sisters are living together in a house temporarily and some of the others are being rather irresponsible, mostly Five, Three and Two (unintentionally). She spends a majority of this novella complaining about having to clean up after the others while judging them harshly. She is extremely pessimistic, envious and resentful. Her cynicism reminds me a lot of Dito's novella. She points out the flaws of everyone else to make herself feel better, but she makes it clear that she feels inferior towards all of them. She projects her insecurities onto her sisters. While I can understand the frustration of living with careless and irresponsible people, she also doesn't do anything to change her circumstance. By that I mean she could've requested to live in a different house while her sisters sort out their own mess. When you always cover for someone else failing to be responsible, I feel like you're inadvertently coddling them, and they won't know how to solve their own problems. Or she could try to communicate more effectively.

Because of this, I think she has a martyr complex. By definition, someone who has a martyr complex "desires the feeling of being a martyr for their own sake and seeks out suffering or persecution because it either feeds a physical need or a desire to avoid responsibility....Other martyr complexes involve willful suffering in the name of love or duty." To sumarize, these types of people can seek out undesirable situations and continue to stay in them in the name of their victimhood. They also don't take accountability for their poor decision-making or actions.

Five makes an inappropriate comment about her body, and Four completely snaps, even throwing objects in the room in her fit of rage. While Five's comment was definitely inappropriate, Four's response was also inappropriate. Three was still asleep in the room, and she could've easily hurt her. She expressed her hatred, self-loathing and envy while hurling degrading insults when referring to her sisters. Once she's done, she does at least acknowledge what she did was wrong and that she needs to have better control of herself next time. Yeah no kidding.

NOVELLA ARTWORK

In the novella image, Four is standing in the center surrounded by dolls of her sisters. She is stabbing through the head of the Five doll specifically. We already know that Four resents Five the most because she's jealous of her mature body, so that checks out. While looking at the other ladies, most of them are a heap on the floor except for One. Maybe that represents how she thinks that they're beneath her, and that only One is at her level. Although, One is still upside down, which is curious. Zero is facing away from all of them, which shows that she's distant from them.

THE FINAL SONG

So, let's talk about Four’s dance in the Final Song. Just like the other even-numbered Intoners, Four’s movements are symmetrical. She had a desire for peace and order, so the symmetry makes sense in that context. This is also the “perfect” girl facade that she tries to put on in front of others. Her movements are limited and controlled, always within her line of sight. In her starting and ending pose, she’s covering her face with her hands. She’s hiding her feelings of inadequacy, or maybe it’s her true nature that she’s hiding. She also appears to reach out for Zero quite a bit, whom we know that she had always loved and admired. Idk if this has to do with anything, but Five’s song is playing during her dance. Which is ironic because Five is the one that she resents and antagonizes the most.

COLOR THEORY (GREEN)

I could go on forever about how important color theory is when it comes to fictional characters, but I'll spare you from that tangent. Four's signature color is green, as we can all see in her design. Green is associated with nature and is a soothing and relaxing color to the eye. Some positive traits include balance, harmony, vitality, renewal and restoration. Some negative traits include possessiveness, materialism, jealousy, selfishness, and greed. I referenced this earlier in my horrible joke, but I think when we think about green, the "green with envy" thing is one of the first things to come to mind. I also find it interesting that the positive traits are what she desires, but the negative traits are what she actually has.

TLDR/Personal Anecdote

In conclusion, Four is someone with a severe inferiority, saviour, and martyr complex. She also has an underlying twisted and sadistic side to her because of internalized anger and resentment. She has a desire to do the right thing and help people, but she has a skewed sense of what is "right" or "wrong" because of her black-and-white mentality. She is condescending and judgmental towards others that she deems inferior.

I'm gonna be outing myself by saying this, but I strongly identify with Four, as awful as she can be sometimes. I resonated with her character a lot as I was doing my research, and I think she's actually a well-written and relatable character. And realistic too, as there are many people in the world that are exactly like her. Over the course of the last few months, I've been in the process of healing from my wounds and acknowledging my own shortcomings. I only wish that Four got the opportunity to do the same. With time, surely she could've grown to be a better person.

Anyways, thank you so much if you've read this far. Doing this analysis was definitely eye opening and, again, reminded me of my own flaws and how much work i have to do. I can't say when my next analysis will be, but thanks again for your support. Until next time. ♡

#drakengard #drakengard 3 #drakengard four #four #square enix #yoko taro #intoners #intoner #video games #videogamewomen #intoner four

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