A Part, and yet Apart

[Februs]

Snip.

1. I'm not sure what your point is with this one. Not wanting to temper someone is not the same as not being able to. Regardless of the Primal's personal feelings on the subject (which ... is an odd thing to consider, given the character foils we're dealing with) it would not change the fact that it would be a tactically sound thing to do if you wanted to stop someone from messing with you. So, the both Alphinaud and Alisaie would have been nothing but a minor inconvenience to Bahamut during T13, but we're expected to believe that he let them do as they wanted because he just wasn't in the mood to temper them? Right.... sure...

Worst case for Bahamut in tempering the twins was that he'd get two mindless drones he didn't want. Big whop. If it bugged him so much he could just command them to throw themselves off of a cliff, or feed themselves to one of the many monsters we were protecting them from just to get them there. The worst case in not tempering them was, oh, right, we killed him.

See the point yet? For some non-echo related reason, the two of them walked out fine when it would have been in Bahamut's best interests to use the easiest means of disposing them. He would have still had to deal with us, sure, but no more twins to divide his attention.

2. The Thancred thing is a small issue, since it's in tiny snippets of personal dialogue, but the fact is that there was some dialogue parts that implied he was more susceptible to tempering after the Lahabrea incident. The problem is with the wording here. If echo is the be all end all defense against tempering, than it's pretty black and white. You can't somehow be "more" susceptible. You either are or you aren't. So, again, what were they getting at here? Maybe just a mistranslated piece of text, who knows?

3. Louisoix was tempered. The fact that it happened after he turned himself into Phoenix is the part that is even more confusing about the echo business for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, the fact that Louisoix could turn himself into a Primal and back again without the echo makes no sense given what we know about it. Supposedly, the only reason Iceheart could achieve this without losing her marbles is because of the echo, so, what is Louisoix's secret?

Secondly, Bahamut successfully tempered Louisoix after he used his primal powers to punch a hole through Bahamut's chest. So, either Bahamut was capable of tempering another Primal (which is unlikely) or Louisoix was somehow weakened after his transformation, which leads back to the idea that echo is not the deciding factor in this case. Further, going back to your idea that some primals simply don't "want" to temper people, the timing of Louisoix's tempering makes no sense either. Bahamut was clearly capable. He successfully tempered Louisoix which, according to you, means he must have "wanted" to temper him in the moment. Yet he waited until AFTER he got falcon punched. WHY? How does this make sense? If Bahamut was capable of tempering Louisoix any time he wanted than, by rights, he should never have gotten a fist full of Phoenix in the first place. He could have just tempered Louisoix and been done with it.

4. Lastly, your point about the Knights of the Round and Louisoix not being able to turn back is actually baseless. Louisoix did turn back. He is seen walking around in human form throughout the entire coils. He also retained his personality, as we have a full blown conversation with him in the Final Coil. The same goes for the Knights of the Round They are seen frequently turning back and forth between their primal forms and their human forms in both the Vault dungeon and several cutscenes, and Theodan himself retains his personality during the KOTR fight, and yet not one of them have been confirmed to have the power of the echo.

So, all in all, I'm not sure what you were getting at with any of your examples...