#unrelated i hated this entire event just read it idk how to explain my thoughts but suejenfjfiwi | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

goron-king-darunia · 3 years

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Annon-Guy: How did you feel about Marta's initial hatred of Colette? Like when she got upset with Colette for what happened to her mom and pushed her, did you hate Marta for that? I'll admit, it wasn't right for Marta to do so. I got upset seeing that despite liking Marta. But wasn't it because she (& Emil) didn't know the true events of the last game? P.S. This is compleatly unrelated to Marta, but like with her issue with Colette, were you also mad at Emil for his initial hatred of Lloyd?

Honestly, Marta being mad at Colette is one of the more realistic parts of the story. Marta doesn't know Colette as anything more than a sort of celebrity before DotNW starts. Like, IDK, if Miley Cyrus or someone went on some sort of global tour and allegedly pressed a button that shot a missile directly at my house which killed my mom on impact, I'd probably be pretty mad too. All things considered, Marta shoving Colette and storming off is a LOT tamer than Emil actively trying to fight Lloyd, but then again Emil thinks Lloyd himself killed his parents. Marta is aware that Colette's responsibility for her mother is a little less direct. She knows Colette didn't, like, kill her mom on purpose where as Emil thinks Lloyd very much did stab his parents deliberately. I think, more than anything, Marta is upset that Colette admits it because she loses some justification for her anger. If Colette had instead said "No, you don't understand, it wasn't me." or "I didn't mean to do that." Marta probably would have been less angry, but also probably would have been, like, unbearably righteously cocky about taking her feelings out on Colette instead. Because Colette admits blame, even when we know it was an accident, Marta loses some of the justification she had for being mad at Colette because the story Marta always told herself about Colette was that she was a coward who ran away from her responsibility as Chosen, and her cowardice is part of why the Giant Kharlan Tree was able to go rampant. Colette taking the blame is not cowardice. She didn't try to deflect blame. She just said "Yeah, I'm the reason the Tree Destroyed Palmacosta. I'm sorry." That breaks some of the narrative Marta has told herself. Colette isn't the irresponsible brat Marta had imagined and had gotten mad at over the years. And that makes it harder for Marta to hate her but it also makes her angry because her narrative of righteous anger over hating the coward that got her mother killed doesn't get closure right away. All in all, I think that part of Marta's ark was very good, and the fact that she can forge a friendship with Colette and actually get to know her is a great thing that I wish had gotten more attention in the game. Emil has sort of the opposite journey. He sees his "parents" on the ground and they put the blame on Lloyd. Whether Emil fabricates the memories, absorbs some of the REAL Emil's memories, or just pieces things together in Luin, he KNOWS Lloyd is a hero to many people, especially the people of Luin. And that veneration of this guy, without question, is entirely incongruent with what he "knows" about the massacre at Palmacosta. His parents, the people he trusts most, or the people he tells himself he should trust most about that night, TOLD HIM Lloyd did it. But everyone in Luin expects him to worship the ground Lloyd walks on. So the fact that he's expected to worship a person he believes to be a murderer fuels a hatred he already holds for a person he believes killed his parents. So when he finally DOES meet Lloyd and Lloyd dismissively just goes "Not again with Palmacosta," Emil just sort of... snaps. Because this reads as heartless, dismissive, and smug since Emil doesn't know the real Lloyd. To Emil this is basically Lloyd confirming that not only was he at Palmacosta, but he DOESN'T CARE. Obviously, Emil is misunderstanding, but that's what he hears. So not only does this "confirm" to him that Lloyd is just as bad as he thought, but he ALSO feels like Lloyd is evil enough that he essentially tricked everyone in Luin into worshipping him, which is a source of alienation and abuse for Emil because, well, no one in Luin likes Emil because he just hates Lloyd for what they think is at best a misunderstanding and at worst "Lloyd probably killed his parents because they did something wrong." So Marta gets mad with Colette because she's nothing like the monster she'd made up in her mind, and that removes a form of closure she expected once she finally got to confront Colette. Emil gets mad at Lloyd because he seems to confirm himself

to be exactly the kind of monster Emil feared he was. Both of these are very real and very valid reasons to be angry. Not valid reasons to lash out, but valid reasons to FEEL UPSET. So, yeah, Emil should probably not be seeking revenge, even if it was justified and he could prove Lloyd is a murderer because, like, vigilante justice usually ends badly and Richter is a prime example of that. And even if it didn't hurt Colette, Marta shouldn't have shoved her. But their reactions are very human, and that, in my opinion, is good writing. It obviously doesn't make them the best role models because you can't just go around shoving and/or trying to kill everyone you think has done you some wrong, real or imagined, but their reactions are very visceral and very human. How the characters experience and express their emotions is one of the most well-written aspects of the game and I actually like it a lot. Given what Emil and Marta knew or thought they knew about events in the past game is honestly really great and one of the reasons I liked the game so much and why I think a lot of people hated DOTNW. What some people see as retconning or trying to twist the past is just a very real facet of human memory and switching perspectives. If you had never played the first Symphonia, you would also believe that Lloyd and Colette were bad people because Marta and Emil think that they are. You're led to believe the same things Emil and Marta are because you get the same information they do about the past. So I think for some people, the fact that the sequel dared to challenge the events of its predecessor didn't sit well because "They're writing Lloyd and Colette wrong! They're not bad people!" For me that was the best part. "Okay, either the entire last game was a lie and we were playing as villains the whole time like Baten Kaitos or something or THAT guy at the beginning wasn't Lloyd. I wonder who's impersonating Lloyd or what we missed in the last story that explains this." For me I was EXCITED that "Maybe the last game lied to me! Maybe there's a deeper darker secret. Or maybe this time WE'RE the bad guys?!" There were so many ways that Symphonia could still be canon without DotNW also being wrong." But I think a lot of people took the first few chapters of the game as an insult because "Lloyd would never do that, this is character assassination and completely destroying the canon of the first game" and stopped playing before finding out WHY it was like that. What I saw clearly as this story being told from another perspective other players saw as the new game lying to them or the new game trying to tell them the old game was lying to them. Challenging the previous narrative even slightly was seen as a betrayal of the truth. And I think that's a real shame because the first few chapters of the game are a great lesson in how a change in perspective, putting yourself in someone else's shoes, can change what the truth actually is. Even the most righteous hero can be the villain in someone else's story. And even though Emil and Marta reconcile with Lloyd and Colette in the end, I honestly wouldn't have minded if, like, they WERE the bad guys. I wouldn't have minded if Emil and Marta were the bad guys. Somehow I think some of the people that didn't like DotNW have just a very fragile objectivist sense of what it means to be good, and having that challenged was so offputting they started to hate the game because how dare the game question for one single second if good can be evil and evil can be good?! Personally I found this all very fascinating and it made me love DotNW more, the same way I loved Baten Kaitos. Now I kind of want to do a video essay on this...

#DotNW #Letters from Annon Guy #long post #psychology #media analysis #opinions

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