This came unbidden to me on social media, at least three times, so don’t blame me for grousing about this once again. Under the cut.
Let me be clear: I’m not really accepting arguments on this subject. All it would do even if by some miracle you convinced me that my interpretation of these stories is wrong is to destroy those last dregs of hope that I will ever be able to enjoy this game fully again. So, don’t.
I get it. A lot of people view the same things I did and think of her as having been a monster from childhood, even as far back as a toddler. I actually consider this a valid view. Personally, I heard the ball thing and thought she was a toddler with too much power and no understanding, and then in the arena as a child beaten with sticks until she lost the bare control her mother had taught her and struck back. But I think both of those views are valid from what they gave us.
The thing is, they gave us too loving a treatment of her torture for me to tolerate that, brief as it was. Too much brainwashing, too much “the glorious sound of a spirit breaking.” Too little hope, too much torture porn. And then to say that there was never any hope, that she “chose” this, yadda yadda, when even the writers themselves finally, in the only tolerable chapter, gave her the line, “Choice, I could get used to that.” Implying that, at least in her view, she never had any.
And, again, as far as her “choosing” to be a monster even when “free”: yeah, see, we used her conditioning. We tortured her more. We proved to her how we would treat her. And, yes, she lashed out and murdered a popular character, and was going to kill us all. That’s on her, and this bogus overused story. But, we still didn’t give her a choice. I’m fully aware of the choice she would have made if we HAD, but to believe we gave her choice or chance or “tried” to help her, I call bullshit. They dragged us into her torture, and called it heroic. It wasn’t. I don’t think it means she’s an innocent or something, and she still had to be stopped, all I ask is that we aren’t forced to make it worse and that be accepted as “trying”.
And I’m easy. This story always annoys me, it’s trite and harmful and disgusting how often it is used, but all I needed was “you CAN be saved” and her rejecting it, “Killing ME won’t heal your scars”, things like that. But, no.
If you want me to believe that this person was just another Tenebrae as a child, they should have just done that. Just let her be that villain. I find that annoying enough, even for Tenebrae and the whole “your mother should have drowned you as a baby” thing, but compared to sitting through all that torture porn for the hell of it, it’s tolerable. If that’s the intent, that she was an outright monster as a child rather than “emotionally unstable” with too much power, and then we got her torture scenes for the hell of it, just help me uninstall SWTOR now. Along with all the subtle (or not) hints of attitudes that I’ve unthinkingly excused for over a DECADE, thinking them insensitivity of people who were nevertheless at least trying, but not really learning, it’s one of the things that would make me walk away. Because, as harsh as my criticisms have been in the past few years, it’s the final evidence that the truth is even worse.
Killing her to stop her I could have handled. Mocking, humiliating, and torturing her ourselves and having it viewed as heroic, not so much.
