maddsrambles

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I love your Iconoclasts analyses! Could you please do one for Mina?

Thank you! That's the next planned one, followed by Elro and then Agent Black. They'll just be coming out slowly because of life business 😊

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Iconoclasts Character Rambles: Royal

On to the next! This time i’ll be sharing my thoughts about everyone’s favorite progeny;

Royal!

(GAME SPOILERS UNDER CUT)

Oh, Royal. You poor, poor misguided child, you.

Through my research into a few social media communities for Iconoclasts, I’ve found that Royal is one of the most loved characters in the game. Despite his arrogance, ignorance, and childish tendencies, there’s something about this doofus that most of us really love and connect with. I think part of this overall attraction that the fanbase has towards him can be explained with two things: potential and tragedy.

Royal is an absolute goldmine of potential. He spends so much of the game getting SO CLOSE to understanding what is really going on in the world. He had all of the tools to make change. He had the privileged position of a Medium. He had literal psychic powers. Most importantly though, he had the presence of mind to recognize a greater good in the actions of people like Robin. And yet, he never quite got there, both in specific instances and in the larger sense.

Royal’s character journey over the course of the game is nothing short of tragic. Here we have this young man who has spent most of his life after transcendence in an ivory tower, completely isolated from outside influences and only fed a stream of religious ideology that both teaches him a rigid world order and builds an ego around ‘being chosen by Him’ as a Medium. His way of speaking and interacting suggests his only socialization was learned through books. He was a child suddenly thrust into a position of reverence and handed divine powers, but not allowed to make any decisions for himself. It’s no wonder that he turned into an arrogant, insecure mess. And then, at the start of the game, he is sent on a tour of the regions with the Agents, who actively and openly resent him. His dialogue during his introduction suggests that he’s been restless in City One for a long time, and his first trip to the outside is full of people he thought he had command over carting him around and ignoring his wishes. He feels like a caged bird being forced to sing. This is his mental state when meeting Robin for the first time.

There’s a lot to talk about when it comes to Royal’s relationship with Robin, but at its basics, Robin represents a different path for him. A quote of his reads “I see in you the rounded flower I cannot summon. You are what has eluded me my whole life!” He can decide his own direction for once in his miserable life by following her. She doesn’t know him, but she treats him with decency on their first interaction and fights the pirate machine alongside him, as an equal. This is a human interaction he has never experienced since he became the holy progeny, and he is immediately invested in staying with her. This would be the only reason, in my mind, that he would risk disobeying the Agents directly by saving her from execution. He even goes so far as attacking Chrome, lying to Mina about his identity, and begging Robin not to tell the Isi about who he really is in an attempt to further escape himself. He has the potential to remake himself. But of course, he doesn’t quite get there.

Royal loses his nerve and contacts the One Concern in order to get back home, running back to what feels familiar, even if he doesn’t enjoy it. A common regression in abused individuals. In the process, however, he puts Robin and her friends in danger, and so he is eventually drawn back to her to apologize and offer a favor, this time embracing his identity. Of course, he fails, and only hinders them further. His frustration mounts. He is reminded of the true lack of power he has once again. He rebels. He loses nerve. He runs back to the One Concern. Rinse, repeat. His abuse cycle is one of the most frustrating things to watch on repeated playthroughs of the game, especially considering the mounting evidence against the truth of the Tri religion that he flat-out ignores. There is so much potential for him, but the religion that has given him his entire identity is something he just cannot  and will not shake.

If he had survived the events at Midway, meeting Him and seeing the lie before his own eyes may have finally allowed Royal to move on. He had been forcefully cast out by the One Concern, barring him from running back again. He had already come to his own conclusion that his purpose was his to choose. He was able to keep trying to help Robin, even when everyone he had looked up to for his entire life had turned on him. Even when Black tried to kill him. Even when Mother disowned him to his face, and died in front of his eyes. He was so close. But we’ll never know, because Royal’s final tragedy was his worst. Left broken and warped mentally by the Starworm’s nightmare beam, not even Robin, his beacon of hope, could save him. He died alone, drowning in his own self-hatred and doubt, and abandoned by his last and only friend, even if it was Robin’s only option. 

Royal’s tough journey resonated with so many of us. Despite his shortcomings. Royal had begun to become the hero he never thought he was. He persevered, even when he thought everyone had come to hate him. He showed a deep loyalty towards his friends, even if they weren’t always kind to him. He was vulnerable and insecure, but he still build Robin up, even at his own expense. The decision to leave him on the moon was one of the most devastating things I have ever had to do in a game, and that is entirely because of his character journey.

In the end, it was Royal’s decision to attack the Starworm and break its ‘skull’ open that allowed Robin and us as the players to save the world. Even if his potential was snuffed out, he did good in the end. We all thank him for that.

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Whew, another one down! Let me know your thoughts, and please interact if you like! Keep an eye out for the next one :)

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Iconoclasts Character Rambles: Robin

I’ve recently finished this amazing game and I have a lot to talk about when it comes to these characters, so I’ve decided to make a series of rambling posts about a bunch of them. Strap in! Here we begin with our lovely protagonist;

Robin!

Discussion (GAME SPOILERS) under the cut!

 Robin is probably the most difficult character in this game to analyse. As a protagonist, her attitude towards other characters is mostly dictated by the player through dialogue choices. What we know about her otherwise is provided through the comments of characters around her. As far as her past is concerned, the flashbacks with her father, Polro, tell us that Robin grew up fairly peacefully, and eventually decided that she wanted to become a mechanic just like him. Polro was greatly troubled by this, and spent a fair amount of time trying to ask Robin not to follow him into his profession. In the present, we learn from the One Concern Agents that Polro has recently died, and Robin is now illegally continuing her father’s work. A comment from Elro lets us know that Robin doesn’t talk much anymore because she had a strong reaction to something bad happening. This can really only be Polro’s death. Along with being a convenient loophole to explain a silent protagonist, it establishes Robin as a sensitive person. She’s clearly emotionally damaged from the loss of her remaining parent, and yet she still carries on his legacy, despite the danger. Her sensitivity is both her one weakness and her greatest strength. It sets up the foundation for an incredibly empathetic lead whose main drive is echoed in the comments of multiple characters, the most direct of which is Mina’s:

She just wants to help, despite people resisting.

No matter what gets in her way; be it walls, puzzles, huge robots, supernaturally powered agents, or the ideology of a twisted theocratic government; Robin stubbornly helps those that need her most. Perhaps it is a drive born out of the tragedy of her father’s death. Looking at all of the clues across the game, I’ve come to the conclusion that Polro likely took his own life. His cause of death in the One Concern’s profile of him is ambiguously listed as an ‘accident’. Elro describes Polro as “a coward for what he did” mere minutes before attacking and killing Agent Grey in a rage, having mentioned that the Agents know how badly people are treated (I’ll look into that more thoroughly when I post about Elro). 

Most of this would point to the aftershocks caused in a family after someone commits suicide. It seems like Robin has responded to this tragedy in an active way, adopting the drive to help and ultimately save everyone that she can. This is only reinforced when she meets Mina, stuck in despair in a cell after the loss of her brother and his family, at least to her knowledge at that point. Once Mina is able to snap her out of her depression while laying on the cot in the cell, Robin becomes fiercely invested in helping Mina. She wasn’t going to lose someone else. And for the most part, she succeeded up until Royal’s death. Which, after briefly mourning, only gave her the strength and the upper hand needed to bring down the Starworm after his loss.

Robin is one of my favorite protagonists to date because of her empathetic drive. I enjoy a narrative lead by someone who isn’t doing what they do for material or personal gain. At most, Robin is looking for inner peace and to reconcile her feelings of guilt over not being able to save everyone. I hope she found that after the events of the game.

Feel free to add your thoughts to this! Discuss, comment, dissent, whatever! I would really enjoy seeing more conversations about this game. Who shall I rant about next?

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Y'know something I forgot about Model Girlfriend? Why is it that Sandy's disinterest in what Mike likes is JUST coming to light? They spent so much time talking on the phone in the height of their relationship and somehow Mike never mentioned games he was playing? Or gave any indication that his interests were a little less 'mature' than what Sandy's are??

Gah. These two kids barely know each other and it's a disaster.

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Hm. This AU Lucy is considerably meaner than most of her behavior from canon. Perhaps?? This is still a dream Mike is having? He still kinda demonizes Lucy and that would explain this overly harsh version.

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Well

That took a turn I wasn't expecting 😂

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Interestingly, no interaction yet between Mike and Jordan in this AU. Maybe we'll see that in a funeral setting??

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I’m really hoping that this AU/What if/Dream chapter goes a little deeper into a specific detail I’ve noticed about Mike.

Everyone remembers this parallel that @bramblepaws pointed out before, yes?

Taeshi specifically chose to use the same colors, background, and body language in both of Mike’s responses (or lack thereof, I suppose). Dream Lucy in Dial Tone confronts him with “You wanted me dead.” Mike has no answer for that, and cannot meet her eyes. Which can only mean that he did, in fact, wish that upon her in the past and feels too much guilt to address it. The parallel from Unspoken Rule reinforces that; When Lucy asks him to clarify what specific parts of his outburst he DID mean, that thought immediately snaps into his head, and he once again is too wracked with guilt to even meet her eyes, let alone respond.

As an extra note, it seems he still thought this way about Lucy in Just Beautiful, although Sandy literally smacks some sense into him, his first hint that maybe this isn’t something he should take lightly.

The rest of his dream in Dial Tone also continues to play with the idea of Lucy’s death, and he doesn’t get a chance to experience a full reaction to it before he jolts awake.

He may have only developed this deep, nightmare-inducing guilt after he found out about Lucy’s suicide attempt. His drunken confession at Rachel’s party, his nightmares, and the mounting tension around the Sandy situation all started mostly after his breakdown heading home from the hospital in Breaking Up. It made the gravity of that thought very real. Luckily Lucy lived, but the pure ‘What If’ terror has probably been slowly unraveling him since. 

I’m hoping this current chapter turns out to be a stress dream that finally gives him some direction on how to actually apologize to Lucy, albeit in a morbid fashion. He’s unable to address the reality that his thinking was so black and white that he very well may have indirectly killed his best friend. Part of that has to do with the whole Sandy debacle, but part of it is admitting to himself how cruel he really was. The “I’m sorry for what I said” sentiments he’s tried aren’t enough, for him OR Lucy. Maybe experiencing the full repercussions of what might have happened in a dream will help him take that leap.