On the topic of Lyse and Endwalker… (spoilers)

[van_arn]

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!

[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.

[Jennah]

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

[Jettinson]

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.

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.

[YukikoKurosawa]

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.

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.

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.

[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.

[Equitable_Remedy]

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.

PREACH

[Rinhi]

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.

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

[HyoMinPark]

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.

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.

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

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.

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

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.

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

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.