#i cant find my og post complaining about bop so have this entire essay instead .

[eros-vigilante]

posting an essay i wrote once on bestower of power so i can link it in my rewrite lol don't mind me.

spoilers for master of all and bestower of power

Bestower of Power is one of three storyarcs for the third main story segment of CotC. It is a direct sequel to Master of All, as it focuses on the future of Edoras after Alaune's ascension to the throne. Mostly, the future was uncertain. Surely it would be better than it was under Pardis the third's bloody reign, but like how nobody knows when the next male dancer will release, they had no way of knowing what might happen.

Now, this was a promising story set-up. Queen Alaune of Edoras, King Solon of Altinia, and King Richard of Riven are meeting in the Edoras Castle Square to sign a peace treaty. Master of All was successful in realistic-enough political drama for a fantasy world, so there were many ways Bestower of Power could explore the social unrest of many areas of Orsterra.

Instead, however, this storyline introduces an entirely new nation for a very specific plot: racism. G'roha is a nation that is in… "the west," with a people who are mostly tan to dark-skinned and who wear clothing that would resemble what it would look like if you asked a white elementary-schooler to draw a Native American. Two of these people interrupt the treaty ceremony to deliver a dismembered segment of a corpse of a different Orsterra king as a "gift".

Out of the Master of All and therefore Bestower of Power cast, only King Solon is brown, with Queen Alaune, the most prominently presented 'protagonist' besides the Ringbearer, being white. And now she has been threatened by a random group of indigenous people that we have never heard of before. A white empire being attacked unprovoked by a dark-skinned people is the opposite of what usually happened in world history.

And they are explicitly indigenous-coded. In the fight, one of them wields a Chakram, "a throwing weapon from the Indian subcontinent" [1] which was invented by the native peoples. Then, there is the general outfit design of clothing that is most politely described as "non-modern". Note how this looks absolutely nothing like the clothing in the drawing of the people who actually invented the chakram. It is a very common image that indigenous people wore almost nothing, but this is untrue for indigenous people of India and Africa. Most simply, they would get horribly sunburned if they did. The image of all native peoples wearing "uncivilized" clothing is a negative contribution to the stereotype of barbaric-ism and violent lack of intelligence, something that Bestower of Power greatly leans into in all references to the G'rohan people by the non-G'rohan characters. The worst part is that in-universe, it is true. The G'rohan people are every negative word that has ever been associated with indigenous people. I only cut this short because the main villain of Bestower of Power is a much better example, as she is much, much worse.

Tatloch is the ruler of G'roha, and is probably getting severely sunburnt every day. Even without the indigenous-coding, this design is an absolute mess. She specifically is black-coded by the dreadlocks her hair is styled in, which is the only cool part of her design. She has less fabric on her body than Primrose Azelhart and that outfit was a stereotype of a belly-dancer's dress so that she could be Sexy. I wonder why she's the first figure being made of an Octopath character. Now, what redeems Primrose's design is that her chapter one is a criticism of how female performers and sex workers are treated by mostly male managers and clientele. Tatloch has this design for pure sex appeal so that people would pull for her playable form despite her not having any writing of substance at all.

Her reason for suddenly invading Orsterra and Edoras is that she wants all the rings. Why? She wants power over everything. Why? Uh… she wants power over everything. Unlike literally every other villain in the game, Tatloch has no backstory. Even Tytos, the other worst written villain, was explained as having been a hero in war and having that as the starting source of his pride in his might. Tatloch is just evil. Oh, and she eats her people's souls for power. This pretty easily gives her more on-screen murdering of people than any villain before her.

It is not a good look for the only black villain to have absolutely no writing that could help the player understand her better like the other villains have. The reason Herminia and Auguste are popular are because, despite absolutely being morally bankrupt, their stories are compelling in a way that makes how they act fun to appreciate in a fictional context. Herminia's is a story of revenge and infinite security, making sure that she is the best by eliminating everyone else who even passingly comes close. Auguste's is a story of a despairing man so desperate for inspiration that he started murdering people to feel something unique, and had to constantly one-up himself to keep feeling. Tatloch has no past. There is absolutely nothing to humanize her. Like Herminia and Auguste, she is presented as a person made monster by the rings, but unlike them, there are no stories of what Tatloch was like before the ring, no proof that she was ever human. It is not good for the only black villain to have no humanizing story.

G'roha's only purpose is to be a violent, perpetrating peoples that the protagonists of Bestower of Power feel little regret killing in self-defense, and Tatloch's only purpose is to be a hypersexual dominatrix that the people beg to execute.

[HILL, JOHN (1963). "5-THE GANGES PLAIN". THE ROCKLIFF NEW PROJECT – ILLUSTRATED GEOGRAPHY – THE INDIAN SUB-CONTINENT. London: BARRIE & ROCKLIFF. pp. 173–174. / Wikipedia]