#i have so many emotions and thoughts and i wish they'd just done sth different yknow :sob:

[icebrooding]

Woke up feeling salty again abt the way they wrote Trahearne out. If I analyse enough, I can find even fitting reasons why, but it doesn't mean it doesn't make me still salty.

Like, I wonder which reason it was for. The right end to his character arc? (I don't agree). Didn't know what to do with him anymore? Because he was very, very disliked amongst players at the time? Maybe even just they wanted to bring the remaining members of DE into the foreground and couldn't really think of a way other than what they ended up writing in? Have Trahearne die, make it another concrete reason for the Commander to quit the Pact, place Logan in there as Pact Marshal so he still would frequently be in contact w/ the Comm, and have Rytlock and Caithe be part of DW and thus be still relevant and prominent characters.

I feel like there's basically a whole slew of solutions, of which I have some. All of these involve him surviving HoT, obviously.

A) Have Trahearne retire and spend his time recuperating in the Grove if you just don't know what to do with him yet. He's been through a lot of trauma, likely would need a long time to recover both physically and mentally, and with the rampant levels of sylvari-oriented racism it would make sense for his character for him to give up his position to someone he knows is a trusted, responsible figure if it makes people less afraid/regain confidence in the Pact itself.

B) Have him part ways with the Commander and the Pact after HoT. For the same reasons above, but this would be him departing on his own to find himself. I would say have him kind of come back and forth from the story, bumping into the Commander on his travels, but this would be too much like Canach's post-HoT appearances. This way they could bring him back if they found another need for him, and can keep him out of mind, but without the need to kill him. Hell, they could have used this to eventually bring back Malyck by having Trahearne find him and his tree during his travels and settling there for a while.

C) Have him join DW himself after stepping down from the Pact. After all, he is very attached to the Commander. This would be a thorn (hah) in the side of players who don't like him, but with the Commander being the de-facto leader, it might mitigate some of the 'he stole muh main character spotlight' complaints going forward. This would also give him ample room for self-discovery, and it would be amusing to see how his 'makes friends anywhere with anyone' trait could come into play in places outside central Tyria.

There is a whole laundry list of things they could have done with him, and I just can't wrap my head around the concept that killing him was the best way to go about it. Like, it's not. Fun or enjoyable at all to see someone who has spent twenty plus years of their life, for their whole life, working towards a goal that isn't theirs, and then dying before even getting a chance to establish their own sense of self.

Maybe I'm just a simp (I am, for him) but I just feel like there was so much more they could have done with him.