#< oomfs who ahvent played stop liking thsi DONT READ IT

[parasitoidism]

Long meandering ramble about isabeau under cut sorry idk what happened

Ok I wanted to expound actually I do think it’s really interesting how Isabeau isn’t like a “wishy washy” kind of neutral she is really serious and principled about it. Like when you fight her in law (and I assume things turn out the same in chaos, haven’t finished that playthru yet) if you extend your hand to her she takes offense to it + tells you to have conviction in the path you chose to the end despite her being so horrified and appalled by it that she would put down her life to fight you to prevent it from coming to pass.

And in neutral as well after you defeat Merkabah she expresses respect for him in seeing his principles through. I think it’s interesting that she has such high respect for this concept of commitment to a belief, even a destructive one + even when that the belief itself is so fundamentally morally repellant to her. So anyways this is where I get kind of headcanony right. But I was thinking more about this again

And yeah like she doubly has this thing of coming from a family that has always gone into the monastery as well as being a woman samurai (the level of rarity of this can be inferred by the fact that she’s like, the only female samurai npc iirc) that feeds into this right? Tho it’s conjecture on my part bc we don’t really hear her thoughts on any of this she’s already in this position of being like, an outlier, somewhere she “doesn’t belong” (as she apparently grew up expected to go into the monastery like the rest of her family- it’s a “loss” for the monastery) in terms of her place in the samurai. So I think that’s like .. where her position ultimately comes from. She grew up believing in the good of the kingdom like Jonathan but is in a position where she understands Walters feelings of being hemmed in by her society which I think just like is how I at least understand her character. But her neutrality isn’t just from a place of helpless desperation or an inability to choose its something she really believes in. So this is the part where I insist her love of shoujo manga is actually really important

so yeah. I thought this was a little funny but the more I think of it it is super interesting how manga is cited as what makes her soul unshakably set against you and the destruction of Tokyo. And I think it’s just that it’s representative of or partly responsible for her genuine love for Tokyo, its art and by extension its people. Like to everyone the “unclean ones” are basically like some ancient historical threat once faced by their kingdom but through finding used copies of Rose of Versailles on the ground throughout the game and it, a product of the culture and people who live/once lived there, it just gives her a level of empathy/respect for them beyond what the others achieve.

And she just cares about the people a lot yknow. When everyone splits off at shen duque her first worry is about skins and fujiwara. Walter and Jonathan’s motives both are concerned with the fate of Mikado, be it tearing it all down to start over or preserving it by destroying Tokyo (although that isn’t really /Jonathan/‘s motive but you know) but Isabeau is the one who actually wants to help the people of not just Mikado but Tokyo as well. So like “isabeau’s stance is that killing a bunch of people is bad” isn’t like groundbreaking literary analysis im aware. The game tells you that. But all the stuff I said is like In my cute little opinion Why she thinks like this. Anyways I wrote this for no particular reason other than I thought about isabeau and I like her. Sorry. Obligatory “but I’m probably wrong about everything” disclaimer