On the topic of Lyse and Endwalker… (spoilers)

Can we please take a moment to appreciate Lyse was finally useful and took initiative on her own?

I was genuinely excited to see *her* show up in Gridania with a plan to join up with upside-down-cow-lady, along with the series of events after where she showed she’s finally come into her own as a leader.

Futher than her contribution being an lb3 at the end of a trash encounter in a dungeon, maybe. Oh, and she handled her own trash encounter without our help, too!

She did plenty of times in Stormblood lol.

People just stopped paying attention to what was happening at all or they don't remember Stormblood, I rly dunno where all of this hate towards her is coming from especially since the things people complain about her are things other characters are either guilty of or worse in regards to.
I get the disappointment initially after Heavensward and that she wasn't the greatest at the start, but people rly seem obsessed with hating her based on not remembering/ not having paid attention and for things characters that are beloved are guilty of too.

Edit: Btw this isn't too surprising to me considering how much people forget, I heard so much talking about how Y'shtola '' died '' in SHB and was brought back because of plot armor because people don't understand how Flow works.
Sometimes I feel like people pay no attention or are just skimming through then get surprised when they don't know what's going on.

But does it *really* count as taking initiative if even Little Sun is more impressive in Garlemald?

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

She did plenty of times in Stormblood lol.

People just stopped paying attention to what was happening at all or they don't remember Stormblood, I rly dunno where all of this hate towards her is coming from especially since the things people complain about her are things other characters are either guilty of or worse in regards to.
I get the disappointment initially after Heavensward and that she wasn't the greatest at the start, but people rly seem obsessed with hating her based on not remembering/ not having paid attention and for things characters that are beloved are guilty of too.

Edit: Btw this isn't too surprising to me considering how much people forget, I heard so much talking about how Y'shtola '' died '' in SHB and was brought back because of plot armor because people don't understand how Flow works.
Sometimes I feel like people pay no attention or are just skimming through then get surprised when they don't know what's going on.

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To be fair and from personal experience, I really couldn't stand Lyse's attitude and such. I understood why she was like that and to see her in a much better light in EW felt nice.

Y'shtola part in ShB felt unnecessary dramatic but I guess it is because our character has never seen how Flow works and the choice of dialogues were honestly too exaggerated to give the news to Runar for example.

I like Lyse and don't agree with all the hate she get's honestly. Same with Zenos, people get wierdly angry about certain characters in this game and I don't get it lol.

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

She did plenty of times in Stormblood lol.

People just stopped paying attention to what was happening at all or they don't remember Stormblood, I rly dunno where all of this hate towards her is coming from especially since the things people complain about her are things other characters are either guilty of or worse in regards to.
I get the disappointment initially after Heavensward and that she wasn't the greatest at the start, but people rly seem obsessed with hating her based on not remembering/ not having paid attention and for things characters that are beloved are guilty of too.

Edit: Btw this isn't too surprising to me considering how much people forget, I heard so much talking about how Y'shtola '' died '' in SHB and was brought back because of plot armor because people don't understand how Flow works.
Sometimes I feel like people pay no attention or are just skimming through then get surprised when they don't know what's going on.

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It's partly because, or at least some of the most recent hate towards her is because certain streamers have been perpetuating the "Lyse sucks" meme. One streamer with a notorious habit for stalling really pushed the "I hate Lyse" meme hard when he did SB, but many of his viewers took it way too seriously. Whenever she was in game out of cutscene his followers would often run up and make various emotes at her (like throwing, slapping, etc.), like to the point where it was incredibly cringe. One time someone made a TTS donation and made an extremely misogynistic comment about very awful things he wanted to do to her (so awful I'm not repeating them) and the streamer banned him immediately. Like some of these people take the Lyse hate way too far, not getting streamers are mainly just exaggerting their dislike of Lyse because its a popular opinion and it get's "KEKW"'s in the chat.

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

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Speaking from my own experience, the issue is that Lyse is built up as this character whose is going to grow into the leader her people need her to be in SB but her arc is handled so piss poorly that I couldn't get invested in it. I genuinely liked Lyse's arc up through the Steppes as while I disliked many of her takes in the lead up to those moments it felt like a decent character progression. This was her story after all and I'm a sucker for character driven story writing. I don't care if a character says things that drive me up the wall or that are ignorant (and let's be honest here, her takes upon arriving in Ala Mhigo were pretty ignorant as a privileged individual who escaped the bulk of the suffering from the occupation) so long as they don't stay stagnant and grow/regress in a believable way. The issue for me is that she isn't consistently written. Once we get back to Ala Mhigo it feels like someone else was in control of her character who didn't agree with how she had been previously built up and they decided to skip Steps 5-10 in her character arc and decided to jump all the way to Step 11. Which, okay, that's fine. I don't like it but the entire transition back to Ala Mhigo felt that way so why should Lyse be any different.

Except then the whole shit with the Ananta happened - which she really should have known better due to her history with the Scions and tempered individuals back in ARR. The scenes dealing with it are mostly cut now with the ARR squish, but she was front and center for Uncle Ramuh's lecture about the nature of tempering. Knowing what we know now, it was a pretty clumsy attempt by the writers to foreshadow the lead up to what would eventually happen with the porxies and Ga Bu in 5.4. However it was poorly handled and really, really hurt Lyse's character even further. Which then isn't helped by the fact that we go off to Doma and when we come back for the war summit she's changed off screen. Seemingly completing her character arc into a competent leader while the player wasn't there to witness it. In her own expansion, no less.

Lyse does a lot of good for the story. She isn't nearly as idle or useless as people make her out to be. But she is probably /the/ best example of writer fumbling and inconsistent character arcs in this game and it frankly is just disheartening when you look back and realize that with more care she likely wouldn't be so maligned in the fandom. It's not so much a matter of other characters doing things worse than her, because ho boy we could have an entire topic on Hien if we wanted to, at least not for me. I just wish we lived in an alternative universe where she wasn't basically emblematic and at the center of every dip in writing quality that dogged SB's heels.

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

She did plenty of times in Stormblood lol.

People just stopped paying attention to what was happening at all or they don't remember Stormblood, I rly dunno where all of this hate towards her is coming from especially since the things people complain about her are things other characters are either guilty of or worse in regards to.
I get the disappointment initially after Heavensward and that she wasn't the greatest at the start, but people rly seem obsessed with hating her based on not remembering/ not having paid attention and for things characters that are beloved are guilty of too.

Edit: Btw this isn't too surprising to me considering how much people forget, I heard so much talking about how Y'shtola '' died '' in SHB and was brought back because of plot armor because people don't understand how Flow works.
Sometimes I feel like people pay no attention or are just skimming through then get surprised when they don't know what's going on.

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PREACH :cool:

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Originally Posted by Kolsykol

I rly dunno where all of this hate towards her is coming from especially since the things people complain about her are things other characters are either guilty of or worse in regards to.

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because alisaie was a better written lyse when she was introduced
both are hot blooded, idealistic genki girls that act before thinking who idolize the WoL

I think lyse mostly suffered from her introduction, that everybody knew she was pretending to be yda etc, not to mention always being talked down by papalymo, who insults her for the 'dumb' thing she said only to say the very same thing but 'smarter'
never understood why people liked him, tbh

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Originally Posted by Enla

Speaking from my own experience, the issue is that Lyse is built up as this character whose is going to grow into the leader her people need her to be in SB but her arc is handled so piss poorly that I couldn't get invested in it. I genuinely liked Lyse's arc up through the Steppes as while I disliked many of her takes in the lead up to those moments it felt like a decent character progression. This was her story after all and I'm a sucker for character driven story writing. I don't care if a character says things that drive me up the wall or that are ignorant (and let's be honest here, her takes upon arriving in Ala Mhigo were pretty ignorant as a privileged individual who escaped the bulk of the suffering from the occupation) so long as they don't stay stagnant and grow/regress in a believable way. The issue for me is that she isn't consistently written. Once we get back to Ala Mhigo it feels like someone else was in control of her character who didn't agree with how she had been previously built up and they decided to skip Steps 5-10 in her character arc and decided to jump all the way to Step 11. Which, okay, that's fine. I don't like it but the entire transition back to Ala Mhigo felt that way so why should Lyse be any different.

Except then the whole shit with the Ananta happened - which she really should have known better due to her history with the Scions and tempered individuals back in ARR. The scenes dealing with it are mostly cut now with the ARR squish, but she was front and center for Uncle Ramuh's lecture about the nature of tempering. Knowing what we know now, it was a pretty clumsy attempt by the writers to foreshadow the lead up to what would eventually happen with the porxies and Ga Bu in 5.4. However it was poorly handled and really, really hurt Lyse's character even further. Which then isn't helped by the fact that we go off to Doma and when we come back for the war summit she's changed off screen. Seemingly completing her character arc into a competent leader while the player wasn't there to witness it. In her own expansion, no less.

Lyse does a lot of good for the story. She isn't nearly as idle or useless as people make her out to be. But she is probably /the/ best example of writer fumbling and inconsistent character arcs in this game and it frankly is just disheartening when you look back and realize that with more care she likely wouldn't be so maligned in the fandom. It's not so much a matter of other characters doing things worse than her, because ho boy we could have an entire topic on Hien if we wanted to, at least not for me. I just wish we lived in an alternative universe where she wasn't basically emblematic and at the center of every dip in writing quality that dogged SB's heels.

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Basically, this. Lyse was very poorly handled in SB—instead of giving her believable growth, since she didn’t come from a “born-to-be leader” position like Hien did, we return to Ala Mhigo after the developers remembered that SB wasn’t just all about Doma and she was suddenly given reign to be commander of the Resistance after Conrad died. But she never really did anything to earn that title, in my opinion. And they didn’t play it off as a “she was thrust into this position of power and now has to struggle with everything that comes with it, including gaining respect from her subordinates”. Instead everyone was just kind of like “yeah okay she’s the leader now cool beans”. It was just all around poorly handled, and every time I go through SB I think about that. Despite being the weakest of the expansion stories, I do still quite enjoy it—but her entire character wasn’t handled that well.

It’s kind of like the Minfilia problem where she was this diplomatic leader that did all of these diplomatic things—but we never really see that. Instead we get “Pray return to the Waking Sands” meme versus seeing her actually at work. I do think they did a fantastic job of redeeming her character in ShB, though. And I was very pleased how that was handled—but her and Lyse always fall into the same category as mishandled, sloppy characters whose potential works well on paper, but not when you put it into action. You just need more for the roles both were supposed to respectfully play in their given storylines.

Lyse is much better in Stormblood than people kept memeing about.

Replaying Stormblood on my new, current main (and doing all the side content as well) and Lyse is much better than I remembered being told. Course growing older and having more empathy I can read between the lines much better now and understand her train of thought.

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Originally Posted by Jennah

But does it *really* count as taking initiative if even Little Sun is more impressive in Garlemald?

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That's a way overused joke.

He's the leader of his people and is FAR from incompetent. Sure he gets the butt end of the joke with how bad he's with women but that doesn't translate to him being a bad leader. If he was a bad leader then he would have been replaced already as per his culture. The man is actually really competent and has the loyalty of those under him for a reason.

It also isn't a measuring contest.

Lyse being good isn't somehow erased because, in your opinion, you believe another character may have been better at some other unrelated thing that had nothing to do with Lyse.

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Originally Posted by Rinhi

because alisaie was a better written lyse when she was introduced
both are hot blooded, idealistic genki girls that act before thinking who idolize the WoL

I think lyse mostly suffered from her introduction, that everybody knew she was pretending to be yda etc, not to mention always being talked down by papalymo, who insults her for the 'dumb' thing she said only to say the very same thing but 'smarter'
never understood why people liked him, tbh

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What are you talking about? Outside coils, Alisaie was barely in the game until post game Heavensward. She also had a much different path to follow, was never expected to lead, nor was leadership ever thrown onto her without her consent. Not to mention that Alisaie wasn't expected to be the face of Resistance to free an enslaved nation. You cannot compare either as they had different paths to follow and far different struggles and expectations.

I don't understand those like you who keep trying comparing apples and oranges.

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Originally Posted by Tanis_Ebonhart

What are you talking about? Outside coils, Alisaie was barely in the game until post game Heavensward. She also had a much different path to follow, was never expected to lead, nor was leadership ever thrown onto her without her consent. Not to mention that Alisaie wasn't expected to be the face of Resistance to free an enslaved nation. You cannot compare either as they had different paths to follow and far different struggles and expectations.

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nowhere did I say that alisaie did or experienced any of that? you're talking about comparing apples to oranges because I compare simple character tropes that apply to both of them, which are glaringly obvious throughout SB considering you travel with both of them, and you're bringing up things unrelated to that, idgi
I like lyse, more than alisaie in fact, and I was sad she left the scions and more importantly, didn't like how she was portrayed for a while due to the aforementioned inconsistent writing
and yet, I think alisaie got the better end of the stick throughout SB, growing away from that idealistic fighter to what she is now, while at the same time, lyse stayed herself, despite - or maybe because - of her position? she had experienced leaders on her side or right next to her, yet she stayed the same person she was before and didn't really develop much at all until the end, which I found sad and unfair
I mean, her naivety/idealism even made her the butt of a joke for no reason in ShB in one of her few appearances there, which was weird

But that's what you're doing. You're comparing two vastly different characters and downplaying the other despite their circumstances, paths, and expectations being vastly different.

Aliasie has never been asked to handle those types of burdens of what Lyse has thrown onto her constantly in Stormblood. Heck, Aliasie even tells the Scions when she joins that she doesn't want to be a leader or wanting special treatment due to her family name. Lyse never had that option and knew that she was being used as a figurehead. Nearly all the major military operations were decided by others. All they needed from Lyse was to smile and wave for the people - thus projecting an image as a Leader when she's just a figurehead. It's why she struggles so much and keep seeking ways to become a better person and leader as the people need out of her.

People also don't just change overnight and Stormblood's events only take place over a couple months if that.

By the Monk 80 Quest and Endwalker, Lyse has developed a lot towards being a Leader and not just a Figurehead.

My favorite Lyse moment was her calling someone who took a child hostage and brought about that child's death a "hero". /s

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Originally Posted by Tanis_Ebonhart

But that's what you're doing. You're comparing two vastly different characters and downplaying the other despite their circumstances, paths, and expectations being vastly different.

Aliasie has never been asked to handle those types of burdens of what Lyse has thrown onto her constantly in Stormblood. Heck, Aliasie even tells the Scions when she joins that she doesn't want to be a leader or wanting special treatment due to her family name. Lyse never had that option and knew that she was being used as a figurehead. Nearly all the major military operations were decided by others. All they needed from Lyse was to smile and wave for the people - thus projecting an image as a Leader when she's just a figurehead. It's why she struggles so much and keep seeking ways to become a better person and leader as the people need out of her.

People also don't just change overnight and Stormblood's events only take place over a couple months if that.

By the Monk 80 Quest and Endwalker, Lyse has developed a lot towards being a Leader and not just a Figurehead.

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idk why we're even arguing cause we fully agree about lyse, tbh

all my post did was give one of the reasons why some people dislike lyse (but also for some reason like hien, despite the two of them being similar imo)
ali and lyse are different, yes, I never argued otherwise, but if you ignore their backstories and their obligations or lack thereof, both occupy the same/similar kind of tropes, and since alisis had better development throughout SB - while lyse stayed relatively the same for no reason up until the end, not to mention the subpar writing at times - people, from what I've seen and read, prefer her over the underdeveloped lyse despite sharing the same role in the scions for a while

If you ignore entire characters and push them down to tropes it would be meaningless. Context is important.

Too many that look down on Lyse tend to forget that it's really, really hard to get a beaten down nation to rise back up. Ala Mhigo no longer had the teeth left to bare, the Resistance was barely a thing until Lyse and co showed up which revived hope for them.

I mean, look at Estinien. Dude was pretty much to same for most of Dragoon quests and Heavensward (rarely showing any concern outside killing Nidhogg), it took til the death of Ysayle and the true death of Nidhogg for him to truly change. One of which are Post Heavensward content. He also Kill Stealed Nidhogg from us the first time (after needing protecting the entire fight) yet he's never accused of taking our kill/credit while Lyse is accused of this when she never kill stealed a major character from us nor took credit for it.

For Lyse that type of content came through in the Monk 80 quest and eventually to Endwalker.

What hurt her the most as that Stormblood had to juggle between Doma and Ala Mhigo. So it's easy to forget past events of another with the jumping around. It made Lyse's story feel off at times as for her not much time had passed while the player was around Doma.

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Originally Posted by Jennah

But does it *really* count as taking initiative if even Little Sun is more impressive in Garlemald?

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Tbf magnai is more impressive than like 90% of the scions lmao. That isn’t saying much in the grand scheme of things though.

I always liked her to be honest. Especially at the end of Heavensward, even though that irked many but I wasn’t. And I grew to like her later on.

I always loved Lyse, since she came out as her true self. All the hate towards her makes me sad, and I honestly wish we would have gotten her around more in EW.
Note: she's aslo a hugger.

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Originally Posted by Tlamila

I always loved Lyse, since she came out as her true self. All the hate towards her makes me sad, and I honestly wish we would have gotten her around more in EW.
Note: she's aslo a hugger.

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I agree. I'm glad she's her own person now. Not living in the shadow of her sister anymore. :)