An NPC you truly hate with passion

[Alleo]

For me it's Yotsuyu and Fordola because they were evil as Hell and are given a story to have us forgive them for their truly evil actions. I do not want to forgive them. I want their heads on a pike! Please let me kill them!

It would be at least nice if we as the WoL could just say that we dislike it even if they still get their redemption. I mean its not our choice if the leaders forgive them but that doesnt mean that we have to like that descision. I mean we were able to say something about Laurentius and the Lalafell so maybe we get at least some choice with Yotsuyu.

[Kaldaka]

This dumb animal :/ As entertaining as it is watching him have his head kicked in by various quantities of stupidity... he doesn't learn, he remains stupid.

[Antonio_Xul]

This dumb animal :/ As entertaining as it is watching him have his head kicked in by various quantities of stupidity... he doesn't learn, he remains stupid.

You can't learn by having your head kicked in, you'd get stupider. It's an endless downward spiral.

[Kaldaka]

You can't learn by having your head kicked in, you'd get stupider. It's an endless downward spiral.

Yes, but survival instinct has to kick in at some point with the "oh, hang on, I shouldn't do that, I might die"
He seems to lack that, unless it involves his parents... I love his parents.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

For me it's Yotsuyu and Fordola because they were evil as Hell and are given a story to have us forgive them for their truly evil actions. I do not want to forgive them. I want their heads on a pike! Please let me kill them!

I had the same feeling for Laurentius. Then we forgave him and look what happened. Traitorous bastard needed to die.

They did a similar thing with Ysayle and made us forgive her, now she's beloved. I hate this trope. Stop using it. Let me kill Fordola & Yotsuyu!

It's worth noting, from a writer's standpoint, that no villain is truly evil.

Cruel? Yes. Sadistic? Sure. No regard for life, possibly even their own? Happens. But evil just to be evil? That's a hollow villain.

Fordola grew up in the occupation, and wouldn't have understood the hate for her kind had she not seen her own people kill her father and the Garleans do nothing about it. And even WITH that trauma, she still held some sense of patriotism, if not misguided. For her, resistance wasn't an option. She chose trying to work within the system (likely unaware of the limitations her being an Ala Mihgan would impose upon her), and as seen when she stopped her unit from beating an already beaten man (when you first see her), she's not simply wanton to acts of violence against her own. And 4.1 showed us why.

Yotsuyu's an amusing case, and one I've seen a lot actually. Life handed her lemons plenty of times, then crushed them before she could attempt to make lemonade. This doesn't absolve her of becoming a cruel bitch, but it shows how fragile a person's heart can be. After being made to suffer repeatedly, then finally seeing it happen to someone else, somewhere in her messed up head, she got her jollies from it (which embarrassedly, I found kinda hot, but I know I'm pretty messed up to think that). It became a "get them before they get me" mentality for her, and while even I didn't feel the least bit sorry for her in Doma Castle when she started crying, I could see that was years of pain all catching up at that moment. A bitter "after all that, it ends like this?" moment. I'm very interested in seeing what happens next with her.

Even notable villains like Zenos, Nidhogg, and Thordan all had MOs that weren't truly evil. Zenos was all in it for the "hunt"; an Imperial fight junkie who oddly saw a kindred spirit in us and was happy for it. Nidhogg was the avenger. Thordan was "peace through sustained lies/forced order". Their methods were evil. Their reasons were not.

If I had to name an NPC I didn't like, Teledji Adeledji. HE was a hollow villain. And a bad actor. Sure, being greedy, conniving and defiant of the current ruling party is one thing, but why? He seemed to have no greater motive than. . . his motives. And badmouthing someone barely "dead" for even an hour, to the person that cared for them the most was just bad form. Sure, motivation for what happened next, but it really just felt like SE saying "This is Teledji. He is an ass. You should hate this ass. Because."

[Kazgrel]

Hate is a bit overkill, but Minfilia, mainly because 90% of the “return to the Waking Sands” quests could’ve been avoided with a simple message via linkpearl.

Too early to toss any of the SB cast under the bus, to me at least.

[silverlunarfox]

I can ignore some of the side quest npc's....

But I cannot stand Lyse.....

[Antonio_Xul]

@Third Child

To me there is no excuse of doing the things they did. It is still evil. It doesn't matter if you have a tough life. You do things to better your life and not at the cost of others.

I'll get a little personal here, but is was born and raised in the ghettoes of L. A. If you've seen video footage of the L. A. Riots, that's my neighborhood. I grew up there and still live there. My parents divorced, I didn't see my mom for 3 years, left on my own after a fight with my dad and then my dad is robbed and murdered in cold blood. These are horrible things I had to live with it and I have yet to commit a crime, go to jail or even a traffic ticket. I'm currently trying to save money to get out of the hood to raise my child in better conditions than when I grew up. I went to school, got a good job and doing well. I never resorted to doing bad things to make a quick buck. Having a tough life is no excuse for doing bad things.

[silverlunarfox]

@Third Child

To me there is no excuse of doing the things they did. It is still evil. It doesn't matter if you have a tough life. You do things to better your life and not at the cost of others.
snip

In the aspect of villians, some have lessons yet to learn. They aren't evil to be evil, but perhaps they just don't know any better. Sometimes it just takes one thing to make it all click.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

On no I agree with you, there's no excuse for what they did, but there was reason. And at least when it comes to fiction, only the most hollow villains are "truly" evil.

Look at Garlemald: In their eyes, Primals (Eikons) are a major threat to the world, and Eorzea seems to produce them like rabbits. So they decided to get things under control (possibly with the mindset that "if we don't contain it there, it'll spread"). Their methods are cruel, and their condescending attitude toward "savages" is wrong, but even they care about the safety of life on Hydaelyn. No excuse for 20 years of Ala Mihgan occupation, but there weren't any primal threats then (to our knowledge). This might sound like I'm some kind of Garlean apologist, but I'm not. I disagree with what they do, but I see that the reason they do it isn't evil.

I understand and agree that a hard life doesn't excuse or justify evil actions or intent, but between those two, I'd say Fordola arguably had no evil intent. Ran face first into a moral event horizon, but she wasn't a Garlean conscript for the money or the "fun" of it. She was trying to embrace a better way for Garlean-occupied Ala Mihgo, and maybe be an example to others. She chose wrong. And now her story is largely learning to deal with living with that choice. Sure, death would be the easy punishment. Living with what she did, and how a free Ala Mihgo is proof that she was wrong is going to be tougher.

Yotsuyu's a different case. She let it twist her. Even to the "end". Whoever she is now as "Tsuyu" is a blank slate who's going to have to face the scorn and the hate, and won't know why. Again, from a writer's perspective, I'm interested to see what happens when she gets the answer to the "Who are you?" question from the trailer. Will she just go back to being a cruel bitch who gets off on hurting people, or will it somehow break her even worse?

To comment on the Lyse hate:
To be honest, I like her more as Lyse. I really didn't like her as the aloof space case she was as "Yda". I like the fact that she stammers and takes people too seriously. I like that she's naive and an idealist in pursuit of her goal. And I like that she's an imperfect leader. For the simple fact of character growth.

I would love to see her grow into something more confident. To "fill the shoes" of her sister and father, as it were. But she's not there yet. She's not even close. She literally just got handed a free homeland and thrust into a leadership role. The people she used to lean on either aren't alive, or won't be around to lean on anymore, and that's where the beauty of "what happens now" happens. Will she help create a better Ala Mihgo, or will she fail and let something worse happen?