this isn’t meant to be judgement on what other people choose or their opinions and there are reasons why there is no actual ideal solution, but if I’m playing the game in which I want every character to get what I feel is the best outcome for them personally, Shadowheart is always ending the game with her parents alive
There are a couple of reasons for this. I’ve done both endings with the Selûnite path for her, and I literally just let her pick what she wanted the first time (which ended in her parents dead) and seeing both, I do think she’s happier with her parents alive in general. I think, as with other characters (specifically Lae’zel comes to mind in her romance) you have to kinda challenge them on what their first immediate response is when giving them an option in order to get to what actually makes them happiest and what they’re afraid to admit
But if we’re not even taking like the arbitrary measure of happiness into account, I do think that thematically, keeping her parents alive is the only real option if you don’t want Shar to win.
The options here are either let her parents die and Shadowheart is free of the pain in her wound, or save her parents and Shadowheart spends the rest of her life with the threat of the wound hurting her at any moment. Basically no parents and no pain or parent and chronic pain for the rest of her life.
Harsh options either way, and especially when you phrase it as “chronic pain forever” being the thematically correct path, but look at it from the angle of rejecting Shar and what those options really signify form a Sharran angle.
If her parents die, she has no pain, which is good, but she also has no parents. She has no way of learning about her past other than random scraps she might find or maybe eventually remember somehow. She also has no attachment to her Sharran cloister anymore and no attachment to any Selûnite community either. She’s void of everything, including the physical pain. Now there’s obviously like emotional turmoil she’s feeling, and you do get a scene where she expresses that, but it’s from her loss. She only has loss now. The Lady of Loss gave up her physical hold on Shadowheart and in doing so, made Shadowheart embrace loss. Shar might not win completely, but she doesn’t really care about her individual followers and communities as much as they want her to. This is still a win for Shar because she still got Shadowheart to make Sharran choices in the end and embrace losing everything: the pain, her parents, her community, her past.
Hell, the desire to free oneself from pain entirely is a very Sharran pursuit. It’s why we see people turn to Shar. Ketheric turned to Shar as a way to get Isobel back and free himself from grief. One of the people that can lead you to the Sharran cloister is a man who remembers nothing about himself except that the House of Grief helped him because he was very sad and now he isn’t. Nevermind the fact that he doesn’t even know where he lives now or that Ketheric didn’t get what he wanted, it’s the motivation of freeing oneself from some kind of pain that drives people to Shar.
That is why Shadowheart received the injury in the first place.
I jokingly call it a shock collar sometimes, but that is basically what it literally is. You can get Shadowheart’s dad to reveal more about it if you control her and go talk to him in camp. The wound is because Shadowheart was constantly misbehaving and her parents weren’t converting, and they needed something to keep her in line and also motivate her parents. Shadowheart’s pain was supposed be negative reinforcement for her not to act on her kinder inclinations and for her parents to finally fall in line and reject Selûne so that they would stop seeing Shadowheart in pain. The desire for no more pain was supposed to drive Shadowheart and her family closer to Shar.
And all of this on top of the fact that Shadowheart’s memory was wiped repeatedly to an extreme degree, even by standards of the evil memory wiping cult. She was supposed to be a blank slate that only desired to feel nothing by the end. The perfect Sharran.
So if she keeps her family alive, what does she get? A life time of guaranteed pain from Shar, but also her family. Guilt over learning all she’s done to her parents over the 40 years they were held captive, but also answers about her life before Shar and kinder memories with them after Shar. She doesn’t get to not know all that she’s done and all that’s been taken from her, and she’s forced to feel all the negative emotions that come with that, but she gets comfort and positive feelings too.
The moment I keep going back to is the scene you get after she saves her parents where she’s clearly distressed. You get a similar version of this if her parents are dead, but if her parents are alive, they show up at the end of the scene when she’s crying because of the guilt she’s feeling toward all that happened to them. The specific moment in that which I obsess over a bit is when Shadowheart apologizes to them and says that they shouldn’t have to see her like this (because they just walked in on her crying). And it’s her mom’s response to that which makes me a little insane
It’s the emphasis on feeling that really gets me, and I think is the most important part here.
Because Shadowheart was apologizing specifically for them seeing her feeling. She was in this moment apologizing for them having to see her crying and in a very vulnerable emotional state over her own personal struggles and the immense amount of guilt she feels over seeing the extent of what was done to her parents, some of which she did. She’s not supposed to feel anything about that, as a Sharran. She’s not supposed to feel at all as a Sharran, good or bad.
But it’s her very visibly feeling something that her mom points out wanting to see. it’s the one word she puts emphasis on, because that alone is proof that Shar doesn’t have a hold on her. If she’s feeling something, even if it’s bad, then Shar isn’t winning and isn’t controlling her. Shar literally had to resort to trying to coax her into wanting nothing more than to be free of feeling in order to get her to behave, after all.
If Shadowheart accepts that she’ll have pain for the rest of her life in order to save her family, Shar doesn’t get anything but the shock collar she already had. And the point of the shock collar was to eventually never use it. Hurting Shadowheart wasn’t what Shar wanted. Shar wanted to eventually stop hurting Shadowheart because that meant she was a good perfect little Selûnite-turned-Sharran who had been properly corrupted. Pain wasn’t the point and was supposed to have an ending if Shar got what she wanted.
So when Shadowheart rejects the loss of the pain, that’s about as close as she can get to telling Shar to go fuck herself. Her plans didn’t work, not even a little. Shadowheart isn’t wiping her slate clean (again) and rejecting feeling things just because they’re painful. She’s reconnecting with the past that they spent 40 years trying to erase and she’s doing it even though it’ll be hurt.
Basically by keeping her parents alive, she’s doing every single thing Shar has spent four decades trying to stop her from doing and giving Shar absolutely nothing in return. Shar gets nothing besides the ability to hurt Shadowheart, which isn’t even something she wanted in the first place.
And proof of this is shown in the epilogue, where if you romance Shadowheart and kept her parents alive, you both point out what Shar hasn’t been triggering the wound much lately. She triggers it a lot and randomly in the end of the game, and it’s clear she’s pissed off, but by the time six months have passed, it’s apparently barely happening. Because pain wasn’t the point and it wasn’t what Shar wanted. The pain was Shar throwing a tantrum because she didn’t get what she wanted. Shadowheart calls it petty in the game and that’s literally what it is. Just pettiness from a god. And it’ll probably happen to some extent for the rest of Shadowheart’s life, yes, but it’s clear that Shar is bored and realizes it’s not going to work. She might try some other ways to get at Shadowheart eventually, but in making that choice, Shadowheart denied her any ounce of power that Shar actually cares about. Even if the pain is there, the fact that it’s there is proof that Shar failed.
quarterly reminder that if i reblog something ai-generated it is 110% and always an accident and for the love of god please tell me so i can delete it from my blog
“Haha remember when murder-hornets were gonna be a thing? What a nothingburger.”
Yes, because the Washington state government activated like a sleeper-cell and ruthlessly, systematically hunted them down and annihilated them.
“Y2K came to nothing amirite?”
Yes because an army of software engineers working around the clock, losing sleep, and busting ass till the last minute prevented it from happening.
“Remember the hole in the ozone layer?”
You mean the one that was fixed through rigorous world wide government action?
One of the root problems of our society is a refusal or inability by media to articulate that all those “it’s gonna be an apocalypse” disasters were not disasters because we collectively did something about them.
The good news is this is actually quite correctable. I maintain my firm belief that we as humans are capable of solving almost all of our problems, when we decide to do so.
And I still think that’s going to happen. I don’t know when or how, but I do know that abandoning hope won’t help bring it about.
And I refuse to let the cynics own a chunk of my heart.
Sending love to everyone who is just... tired. Life is a lot, and sometimes the answer to it all is to just be still and silent for a while. Give yourself space and grace.
Whether it’s decision fatigue, anxiety fatigue, information fatigue, routine fatigue, getting life back together fatigue, career fatigue, social fatigue, financial fatigue, or physical fatigue: take a moment to breathe and recharge. You deserve it.
blakekathryn
vaporwave
titsay
areudirty
germansingergirl
snowghoul
