#it could've been morally grey to the end or up to interpretation

[sunsetwaltz]

I'm not really part of the sol/avellan fandom (or not a loud fan), but me wanting the veil to come down has nothing to do with "believing it's best for Solas' character" and is 100% related to what I think would be interesting for Thedas and its characters, narrative-wise. (And I am only speaking for myself here.)

And what I think would be interesting for Thedas: overturning the current status quo; actually tackling the problems with much of Thedas' view towards magic, mages and spirits at the source; exploring what "one day all the magic will come back" could mean; having the WORLD realise/deal with the truth about the veil and its implications for society. And maybe dealing with the fact the veil was deteriorating; it was naturally going to come down anyway and that likely may come to pass post-DATV. (Say maybe 10,000 years into Thedas' future? Ignoring the endings where Solas is trapped against his will, may escape with the lyrium dagger and do who knows what concerning the veil.)

Also I very much wanted to see some change, some progress, some strides being made towards improving the elves' current disenfranchised status. Which you know... would've been more plausible and likely if the underlying solution to DATV wasn't keeping the macro framework of today's Thedas intact!

I'm 100% sure other, more eloquent fans have put forward this perspective already. I wanted to vent in response to what I just read ┐⁠(⁠´⁠ー`)⁠┌

[thelreads]

can confirm, what that anon said is true. i myself was more of a toxic villain stan who later reconsidered my views and then distanced myself from the "radical" stans (oooh, this is a very good word for them, that's exactly who they are lmao). i like to think that i also got a little bit better in media literacy because now looking back some of the takes radical villain stans had were literally going against information and characterisations presented in canon?? and the moment i dropped that mindset i immediately started to feel much happier with the story instead of being constantly annoyed and disappointed, and more of my predictions began to turn out true, so here's that. toxic fandoms and taking your headcanons for canon make melt brains.

Media literacy is a huge problem nowadays, even more in places like Twitter and Tumblr, and although not every person that has poor Media literacy means harm, the sheer amount of those discussions ends up leading to pointless arguments. It's quite sad, but it's not something that can't be fixed, as you can attest to.

Unfortunately fandom space allows a lot of the harmful ones to reach a wider number of victims. Headcanoning and fandom interpretations were meant to be things for fun, but alas, there some rather ravenous people around that think their interpretations are law and whoever doesn't agree with them deserves to literally die.

Gonna say something that should be common sense but the more time I spend on the internet the more I realize it isn't: liking an specific character does not mean that you agree or condone their actions and behaviors.

That's goes even more for villains or morally dubious characters. Liking an evil or despicable character does not make you a bad person or means you want those things that they did to happen. This is fiction, it's meant to be entertaining, and seeing characters that are evil or morally grey doing evil things is entertaining, that's the whole point of their presence in a story, to be entertaining by adding conflict!

Really, I have no qualms with people that like villains, since I have my far share of favorites as well. Going back to vigilantes as an example, because this series allowed me to talk about a lot of interesting topics, I don't have anything against people that like Soda or enjoy him. My problem with the character stems with the author just brushing under the carpet and downplaying the things he did instead of admitting to them, basically woobifying him, but not against that people that like his looks or his personality or whatever else that entails him. And in the story itself, the only grip that I truly have is that an author going "they did nothing wrong <3" completely ruins what could've been an interesting villain/antagonist to have around, what's the point of making a character that commits horrible and despicable acts if you're just going to pretend they never happen?

Really, people's morals should not be judged for just liking a fictional character. That's it.

[nomadicism]

I totally agree with you. VLD leaving out Pollux was such a wasted opportunity. I thought they were gonna add it and make them like Space!Wikanda or something. Adding Polloux would've added more grey. They could've scrapped the clone subplot and had Shiro end up on Pollux, befriending Romelle and Bandor, that way both Shiro and Romelle get more screentime and development. I still think the clone and Lotor's colony were both stupid and problematic ideas that should've been scrapped.

Hi Anon, thank you for the Ask!

I always assumed that Pollux would show up in some form, that it would be related to Lotor in either a shady or trope-defying noble way, that Romelle would also be involved, and it would be for just one episode (like Hole in the Sky) with some mix of legacy/nostalgia goggles and exist to unite some dangling plot threads in a meaningful way that doesn’t create more questions or vagueness. And that’s almost what we got in the worst way possible, and for the sake of nothing because it was never necessary, with only more questions created and everything was vague.

Pollux as an actual political entity could have added meaningful shades of grey instead of the superficial morality gruel continuously heaped onto the story plate with every decision made by nearly every character as the series progressed. But in order for Pollux to add that meaningful grey, there would need to be clear good-and-evil, or ethical-and-unethical representatives in the story without relying on the Tragic Pragmatist Underdog In A Hellscape Setting Who Has No Good Options To Save Lives And Probably the Universe to provide some half-baked measure to judge all actions against that is left intentionally vague by lazy writing posing as Fashionable Leaving It Up To Audience Interpretation.

As for the clone—Kuron, Ryou, Jiro—can we have a new test? Right after the sexy lampshade test, we could have a “Does The Character Who Does The Thing Really Have To Be a Clone?” test.

Does The Character Who Does The Thing Really Have To Be a Clone if:

A long-lost identical twin can do the Thing?

A brain-washed original can do the Thing?

A traitor sleeper agent original can do the Thing?

An alternate reality or time-traveling original can do the Thing?

You have no intention on following up on the ramifications of cloning respective to the setting and what the introduction of the technology means for those who use it.

For #5 above, that’s the biggest reason why BOTH the clone and the Colony were unnecessary (I hesitate to call those ideas stupid b/c it’s all about execution). The clone introduces far too many questions that usually begin with “Why didn’t Haggar also clone X…?”, while the Colony only existed to provide a cheap shock reversal of the Zuko bait, and was never required for S7-S8 to proceed as it did, nor was Romelle required.

I don’t say that to diss the character, but she added nothing to the plot that wouldn’t have been more interesting and fun if Reformed Zuko-Lotor hadn’t been in her position instead. Lotor had a personality that provided contrast and tension against the paladins in addition to already established rivalries and relationships with the paladins and it was too late in the game to give a shit about a new character who didn’t have any of those things.

Additionally, in terms of narrative utility, Romelle could have been replaced with either a strongly worded letter written in blood or a sad-tragic hologram, and the murder-confrontation with Lotor could have been just as easily shoe-horned without care as it already was.

Yes, Romelle is cute and blah blah Yeeting Girl Power blah blah, but Romelle as a part of Pollux-as-political-entity would have done more with her character, either as an antagonist or an ally. Otherwise, she was only a tag-a-long Elf Usagi who had to be given out-of-place-and-inexplicable martial skills/might in order to hold her own in S7—again—Reformed Zuko-Lotor would have made more sense in her place as the 7th Ranger.

Returning to the #5 Clone Problem, and the Colony: S7-S8 could have remained the same (including dead Lotor) because the Colony Alteans were not necessary. They weren’t necessary because Haggar/Honerva had cloning technology and access to Lotor’s body at various points over the past 10k years. If Shiro was fascinating enough for Haggar to clone, then for damn sure Lotor would have been. The Altean pilots in S8 could have been an army of Lotor clones. As-is, some (or maybe all) of the Altean pilots were possessed by the dark entities so there you go. The Lotor clones don’t even need their own personalities or motivations. The dark entities are another reason why the Colony Alteans were unnecessary. Honerva had Oriande, the dark entities, and could have used Galra Empire resources regardless of what state it was in to construct her mechas for Lotor Clones to pilot. Zarkon conquered nearly the entire universe, that’s really fucking big y’all, the resources were there.

Oh, but the Colony Alteans and Romelle’s story were necessary to motivate Allura to reject Lotor and motivate the Paladins to murder-confront him! 

Not really. A sad-tragic hologram as a testament to Lotor’s “crimes” *yawn* combined with the Paladins’ existing-but-partly-tamed distrust and Allura’s problematic space racism could have yielded the same outcome in one way or another. The crimes-worthy-of-death could have been different, and he still could have had that discount Azula breakdown moment to pad Monsantos’ resumes with.

That got longer and saltier than I intended, I’m sorry.

[justleaf]

FRIEND YOU'RE VALID AND YOU BRING UP PLENTY OF GOOD POINTS.

Also this is a pro-Vernon Roche multiverse Tumblr and I will never ever invalidate your thoughts. You are free to disagree with my interpretation and I will love it because your rationale gives me a new perspective to think about him from. That means more Vernon Roche thoughts for me, fuck yeah.

You're so correct when you say that judgement is grey and it really does depend on perspective. I don't think I explained myself very well, and it was also premature for me to say he's a villain without more context.

I was thinking from the POV of the Scoia'tael and elves who lived through his war crimes, who know of this guy with a stupid hat (which apparently was the height of fashion then but that's a whole nother can of worms) as the dh'oine responsible for the death of their friends and family. Imo there's no way they wouldn't consider him a villain.

And yet on the other side of the battlefield, there's also no denying that he's a hero to the Temerians. That duality of him being a hero and a villain at the exact same moment really gets my brain chugging in ways that few characters do.

Also I definitely don't think that he's irredeemably bad! The point I was hoping to make was that he hasn't had the opportunity to do so with all that has been going on, but even then we shouldn't hand wave away all the terrible things he's done. I could've explained it better so my bad.

Going extremely off-tangent but one of the reasons why I think all of our interpretations of Vernon Roche are very valid is because I don't think the man has ever had the opportunity to develop his own identity.

His entire life can be summarised as be born > fight for survival > be saved > take orders from guy who saves you > double down on your identity as the dude who takes orders from the guy who saves you > TEMERIA > ah shit he's dead > fight for survival.

Like I just don't see a time when he could've really sat down and had a think about who he is outside of Foltest. The end of W3 I think is a perfect time for change for him, because the war is over, he's no longer obligated to serve the man who saved him, and Temeria is safe. For the first time in his miserable little life he's free to do whatever he wants.

Does he become one of those people who just goes "well this is all I've known for my whole life guess I'll just be that guy"? Valid and I can see that happening.

Does he become a tailor because he's always harboured a love for dressmaking? Sure why not, he's brave enough to wander into an unknown forest what's stopping him from wandering into an unknown occupation and also his gambeson looks like a dress.

We don't know his interests. He probably doesn't know his interests. No one knows much about him aside from TEMERIA and FOLTEST, and suddenly you take away those things and we are left with a morally grey canvas to whump on.

Long story short are all so correct about our poor little meow meow and the true Vernon Roche are the friends we made along the way.

Roche is villain?

I 100% think he is.

Do I understand his motivations? Yeah. Here's a young boy from the streets and here comes along a King who gives him a job that puts a roof over his head and three square meals for the first time in his life. We're talking about someone swooped in and not only saved his life but gave it meaning. Foltest is the man he owes his entire life to - why would he question his treatment of non-humans or his decisions, especially when those decisions help keep the status quo of the shiny new life he's been handed?

I don't think it excuses the crimes though. Yes he was following orders, fighting to keep the life he led, and doing what he believed was best for his country. But as always every villain is a hero in his own mind.

In my mind there will never be an excuse for the pacification of the Mahakam foothills and I don't think he's done anything to redeem himself to the non-humans. Yes he saved Geralt in W2 and I do think he was successful in his conspiracy against Henselt (derogatory), two actions that helped the victory in Vergen. But helping the non-humans was just collateral and not a genuine effort to right his wrongs.

I don't think he ever had the option to choose whether he became the villain, but he hasn't made the effort to make up for it. I think after Foltest's death he would've become fully aware that what he did was pretty terrible, but I suppose it's hard to think about the past and future when your present is on fire.