Tales from the Storm Discussion

[TinyRedLeaf]

While there are certainly specifics in each contrary post I could endlessly discuss, I will just try to keep it general, so as not to derail the entire thread.

In short, I can accept and appreciate the many objections raised about the portrayal of Lyse as a character. But ultimately, I can't help but feel that most of these objections miss the forest for the trees.

Or, to put it another way, Lyse is to many of you naysayers what the cameo appearance of a certain actor was to many viewers of Season 7 Episode 2 of Game of Thrones.

Possible GoT S7 spoilers (and also because the following rant is only tangentially relevant to Stormblood).

As someone who had absolutely no knowledge of the actor and his accomplishments outside of his cameo appearance, I went through the entire episode blithely unaware of what the fuss was all about.

In fact, I actually liked the scene, because of how it humanised the common soldier in the Lannister army. And I thought the actor actually did quite well, bringing home the fact that, in the end, the soldier on the opposite end of the battlefield was really not that much different from his counterpart on the other end.

But many of those who went into the episode fully aware of who the actor is, were unable to dis-associate the character from the person in real-life. And, to these viewers, the cameo was distracting, and ruined the episode for them.

What can I say? It wasn't a problem for me, but it was a problem for others. My life experience is different from theirs, and that affected the way all of us approached the story.

Chalk it up, then, to subjective opinion.

But in that case, to what extent is the criticism fair? To me, it's completely unfair, especially not when an actor is trying his best to play a role. We could criticise his competency as an actor. That's fair game. But, to me, it seems grossly unfair to say he's a mistake simply because you, the viewer, can't ignore who he is in real-life, and are therefore unable to judge his acting on its own merits.

The failure, to me, is with the viewer, not in the acting, not in the casting, and certainly not with the script.

You see, to me, all this criticism about Lyse, while understandable, misses the point of how she grew as a person throughout Stormblood.

If Lyse became a completely different person simply after dropping her mask, both literally and figuratively, then perhaps I too would have had issues with the plot ret-con.

Ironically, all this criticism against her lies at the heart of why I found her portrayal throughout Stormblood to be consistent and believable: Lyse as Lyse was equally as ditzy and air-headed as when Lyse was "Yda".

These bumbling qualities — which, to many of you, disqualify her as a leader — are, to me, a crucial plot point, because it shows that Lyse didn't suddenly become competent overnight.

In fact, she stayed relatively incompetent, when compared to the other Scions and Lord Hien (as we can see from this side-story, Lyse, on her own, is actually far above average when compared to the average Eorzean; she just happens to be overshadowed by the illustrious company she keeps, and this lies at the heart of her lack of self-confidence).

This, to me, is keeping in character with who Lyse was, and it didn't strain my ability to suspend disbelief, unlike with so many of her critics.

And because I wasn't distracted by all the legacy baggage that others have attached to her, I felt I was better able to appreciate who she really was, now that finally she allowed herself to act in her own capacity. And what I saw impressed me.

As I said, the point about justice is critical to me. No one else in the story, save Lyse, realised its importance to how Ala Mhigo will move on after its liberation. It mattered to the Scions, even as war veterans like Raubahn and Hien casually brushed it away, as though the circumstances of Zenos' death were just an afterthought.

This quality alone makes Lyse a vital character to me, and it's one of the most important reasons I like her as a character throughout the story.