Building a better Alphinaud

[CrownySuccubus]

Like I said, I'm not even a fan of Garlemald. Much like the Ascians were generic villains in the background until ShB, to me the Garlean empire was a generic military threat. I personally didn't feel they were fleshed out enough for any meaningful story one way or another (despite ample opportunity to do so), but I appreciate that EW at least tried to make them something more (or I suppose more specifically that Ishikawa humanized them). I just think that tribalism should not have been unexpected, especially given Garlemald's history, and that would've been present even without the supposed "indoctrination".

* Side note: I've come to the conclusion that I'm just too old and cynical to find adolescent idealists interesting or compelling anymore. It's another reason why I absolutely do not want Arenvald on the team since he is probably the most optimistic of all the Scions. (Please, please give me an actual realist on the team, OMG.) I really, desperately wish we could get some self-reflection like we did in early HW with the Crystal Braves (especially after the questionable ethics of EW), but it seems like we're back to a teenager's vision of the world is what we should all strive for and nothing bad will come as a result of that. In fact, Garlemald was its own fault, not the twins' ignorance and naivety! .

To paraphrase someone else in this thread -- if I need more cynical, "realist" worldviews, I can walk outside my door and talk to a politician. I don't play videogames to see cold, shallow reflections of the real world. I want to see worlds and people who dare to make something better.

The argument that "Silly rabbit, idealism is for kids" is, in my opinion, complete nonsense. If anything, what's more of a teenager belief is completely moral relativity. That's just lazy, because even in the real world, sometimes people (and their ideology) are just wrong. For example, there are millions of people who believe in anti-vaxx nonsense and vote for their politicians accordingly. And that is a belief that can (and has) done lasting harm.

Likewise, while I can have sympathy for the Garleans' POV, it was no less a position of cultural genocide fueled by ignorance. Even if we argue that the average Garlemald citizen views the WOL as a "attack dog superweapon", that position is still both wrong and ignorant because it overlooks the fact that Empire (for most of the story) had even stronger superweapons than the WOL, were still trying to create new superweapons, and even tried to recruit or capture the WOL multiple times. The Empire weren't some honorable underdogs who fought without the cheap edge the EA had -- they gave themselves EVERY edge they could find. So both in and out of the story, that argument doesn't work. It's pure Garlean sour grapes propaganda. And while I can understand if the averge Garlean believed such propaganda, that doesn't make it any less ignorant or WRONG, and thus why I feel it was necessary that the country's government (NOT its people -- its government) was completely wiped out.