After getting angered by 'takes' in tw*tter, I scrolled down through takes I'm afraid to post and only deposited in discord gc. However, since people can post some questionable takes without shame, I thought, why the fuck not.
This is about Furina and Xbalanque.
From the start they have one thing in common; they're human archons, though differ in concepts. However, their writing is where it kicks off.
From the moment Furina was born, she was already under society's scrutiny. She must "play a role" to fit in, to not be judged too harshly. And even when playing that role, her behaviour was constantly surveilled by her own people, who doubted her the moment she strayed from what they thought how a god should act. In a fucked society that is Fontaine, her suffering was what kept the nation afloat. She must kept her true self and never broke from her persona to keep them safe. Her suffering was either dismissed, an entertaiment for Fontaine, or a thing to be heavily judged depending on the circumstances.
When she was 'birthed' (split from Focalors), she was already an adult woman, at least physically. She was never a child. A sexist society would always see a child as a woman and a woman as a child.
Now contrast this with Lanque; we have this morally ambiguous god of war who might or might not have sold his friends and his city's fates for a distant future that might not happen. Who rose into godhood through trickery and violence. Who collaborated with colonialist force to overthrow a native ruler (granted the last part is really nuanced, but this is for simplification sake.)
And yet, how does the history (and tbh the fandom) treat him? "He's the most perfect god ever."
Nobody gave a fuck abt his flaws and possibly fucked up secrets. His violence was celebrated, his ambiguous decisions dismissed without further thought. All around a "perfect man."
One could say that he did suffer to maintain all that power, but one must remember that it was a self-imposed suffering.
Unlike Furina who was born with a role already imposed on her, nobody asked him to keep all his shits to himself. Nobody asked him to be a "lone hero". Nobody asked him to make a persona so perfect that Och-Kan elevated him into a perfect god.
Furina's suffering, that started the moment she was born, was the pillar that kept Fontaine from drowning. Kind of like how women's suffering is used to keep society running.
Xbalanque's 'suffering', if it was ever exist, was the consequence of his own actions, and probably the reason why Natlan is kinda fucked, yet from what I saw, there are not much discussion about it.
Of course, I'm fully aware that this take has many flaws too: Furina is a white woman based after European cultures; Xbalanque is a brown man based after indigenous cultures in the American continent. Furina's background is an uppercaste society, while Xbalanque's background... well, the one we know is that of a wartorn country. Fontaine's threat was indirect, they only 'hung' above the nation for centuries without any clarity until the very end; Natlan's threat was ongoing onslaught of the Abyss that needed countless generations to overcome (in a way, there are parts of Xbalanque that are positive; one of the readings about the Abyss' presence is Natlan is that they represent colonial forces, in the way they destroy the memories and people. His act of war was a spark of hope for Natlan.). Etc.
However... this doesn't erase that some people just erase Xbalanque’s complexity and reduced him into 'strong man' archetype that did no wrong because he was that 'awesome' and cool and... well add your own adjective here.
