Unpopular opinion on G'raha Tia (spoilers)

[Erinellza]

I liked him as the Exarch. Now he's my least favorite character. I cringed so hard when I was forced to go on an adventure with him in 6.1 and he had a tailgasm. Ugh.

[Petite]

I liked him as the Exarch. Now he's my least favorite character. I cringed so hard when I was forced to go on an adventure with him in 6.1 and he had a tailgasm. Ugh.

I thought I had repressed that.

[Midareyukki]

Why doesn't it fit the game? Why shouldn't it?

Because I'm the sort of person who enjoyed Thor: Dark World and hated Thor: Ragnarok. When you've established a game without blatant, cliché and forced comic relief that didn't feel natural and only made it look like an anime, moments like those are jarring.
When you go from comedy such as "Alphinaud yeets himself into the ocean", "Little Sun", "Urianger got lost in the sea because he too cannot swim" and you replace those with "Puppy dog catboy has a fanboy moment" and "level-headed woman devolves into an over-the-top girly girl", it isn't natural.

Y'shtola can't be boring and stoic all the time, you are 100% correct. My friends would get angry at me for pointing out how boring and stoic Y'shtola was. Since then she's come out of her shell, be more laid back, with mature humour that wasn't based on gags.

Again: it was amusing, but unnecessary.

Had this been a more natural occurrence, had she had better indications of this, it would have worked. Everyone else is often rather serious, and this would have worked just fine. But Y'shtola was on the extreme end. And going to these lengths on her without giving her a bit more natural cadence is an extreme measure.

We don't need the game to have such blatant and forced moments. If it wants cutesy stuff with sparkles and bubbly animations, we have that naturally in the MSQ. Again: other characters are also serious, yet this works better for them. Y'shtola just randomly whipping that out of her ass isn't.

G'raha is even worse. We knew this kid as energetic and hero-loving, being inspired by us and idolizing us. We see the natural progression of that after 100 years of going through actual hell and needing to guide an entire country through despair on the vague hope that one day his hero might come to him and help fix the mess. And now he's just... blushy blushy uwu fanboi. Slay, I guess?

And this is what I don't like in my stories and why I didn't like Thor: Ragnarok. I'm fine with comedy, and as I've stated before, I don't like it when characters are nothing but a serious face spouting knowledge without you having any more meaningful interaction. But when you go from that and don't capitalize on the sheer good humour that someone serious and stern can bring without devolving them into something cliché and immature*, it's JARRING. People liked these characters for a reason, and if others didn't, that should be fine. Not everyone likes Thancred or Urianger, and we have to respect that, don't we? So why must we make Y'shtola endearing to everyone else when she's already endearing to the people she's meant to be endearing to?
*I understand the whole point of the scene was to show Y'shtola's immature side when she WAS immature. Hence why I say G'raha is worse. The real issue is why we have that to begin with. Why are we so willing to accept that this anime-esque degradation is fine? And why is it that the only argument I've seen people say was "Why not?". That's not an answer.

But I know what you'll say. It's the same thing to critics of Thor: Ragnarok. "You just hate comedy". No. Just that not every comedy needs to be built on gags and be blatant. It can be subtle. It can be mature. It needs to fit the character and the story you're telling.

[IkaraGreydancer]

I didn't get the impression he goes sparkly-eyed at meeting our friends, but at meeting famous historical figures – heroes whose valiant acts in the time of the Eighth Calamity are still told around the campfire two hundred years later. He would have soaked up those tales then, and now he's living among them.

Rather than everything revolving around us, it shows that he gets excited about other people too.

(Excited about things, as well – at one point in Ultima Thule you can possibly mention that you still have the Omega Jammer device and he geeks out about the mere prospect of seeing it in action. And he seems to understand mechanically how it works, too.)

This here is why I feel many people are choosing to dismiss things or just aren't paying attention. See things from the perspective of his character and it all makes sense n fits perfectly.

People also seem to forget where he came from, you know the dead world basically? Being able to have all these experiences now is a dream come true

[LianaThorne]

Some of this is admittedly my own impressions of them, mixed in with what I've seen online, but they roughly line up with what I've seen others saying.

Urianger is the one here I see the most opposite for. I see a lot of people talking about his struggle with being the "duplicitous one", his dad arc in ShB with Ryne and Thancred, his dealing (or not) with the death of Moenbryda.
I think I mentioned earlier about G'raha fighting for countless years to help save multiple worlds, and finally succeeding and being able to reap his reward, travel the world, with friends and comrades by his side.
Y'shtola honestly is the one that catches the most flack, even casually, for being the least "developed" of the scions, but even her we've had a lot of insight into her childhood with Matoya that shows she was a somewhat lonely if gifted child who never really learned how to properly interact socially with others, resulting in her developing this sort of mask of aloofness. It's why I always pick the dialogue options to be playfully snarky with her, try and poke her out of that shell from time to time.

I think if you don't think people simp/meme for the villains in the same ways and volumes that people do for the scions, you're clearly in better twitter circles than I and I envy you greatly ;D

I don't use Twitter....ew.

[ReynTime]

This here is why I feel many people are choosing to dismiss things or just aren't paying attention. See things from the perspective of his character and it all makes sense n fits perfectly.

People also seem to forget where he came from, you know the dead world basically? Being able to have all these experiences now is a dream come true

But he isn't the same G'raha as the Exarch. So you people keep saying. Thus this is irrelevant.
Or are you guys going to flip-flop just for sake of picking arguments?

[Midareyukki]

But he isn't the same G'raha as the Exarch. So you people keep saying. Thus this is irrelevant.
Or are you guys going to flip-flop just for sake of picking arguments?

Then let me put it this way.

If G'raha Tia == the Exarch, then his behaviour is jarring, juvenile and immature given the growth the man had in the previous 100 years of his life and his experiences as someone who had to be mature and lead several people through survival.

If G'raha Tia =/= the Exarch, then he is the ARR kid we met + some vague awareness of the Exarch, who he was and what he did. The above still applies, though in a more ambiguous way. However, as he was written all the way back in ARR, OG G'raha is an energetic young scholar who idolizes the Warrior of Light and would love nothing more than to go on an adventure with him. He'd give anything for it, though with a self-deprecating demeanor that Exarch G'raha's influence on his soul would soften up.

In either case, his reactions in Endwalker do not reflect the G'raha we're meant to be seeing. They reflect an anime trope and quite possibly the degradation of the characters' serious tones for gag-style comedy a la Hildibrand.

[dustdjinn]

Then let me put it this way.

If G'raha Tia == the Exarch, then his behaviour is jarring, juvenile and immature given the growth the man had in the previous 100 years of his life and his experiences as someone who had to be mature and lead several people through survival.

If G'raha Tia =/= the Exarch, then he is the ARR kid we met + some vague awareness of the Exarch, who he was and what he did. The above still applies, though in a more ambiguous way. However, as he was written all the way back in ARR, OG G'raha is an energetic young scholar who idolizes the Warrior of Light and would love nothing more than to go on an adventure with him. He'd give anything for it, though with a self-deprecating demeanor that Exarch G'raha's influence on his soul would soften up.

In either case, his reactions in Endwalker do not reflect the G'raha we're meant to be seeing. They reflect an anime trope and quite possibly the degradation of the characters' serious tones for gag-style comedy a la Hildibrand.

I thought he mentions that his souls like mixed together. So he has the personality of both a wise leader and a young lad. So sometimes he is being a fan boy like with Estinien and then other times he steps up as a leader like he did in Radz at Han during the riot.

[JamieRose]

I have no clue if this topic has been discussed before. My apologies in advance if it has.

I personally think G'raha's story should have ended atop the Crystal Tower without him returning to the Source.

It would have "cemented" him as a much more awe-inspiring character for his sacrifice (to me) and would have added even more emotional weight to 5.3's ending. Instead, we know in advance that he'll come back and we even get to meet him in the Source just 30 minutes after the fact.

I don't hate him. I think he's a fine addition to the Scions. But whenever I think of him now, I think of fanservice.

On a side note, I don't excuse Y'shtola's many fakeouts either. But plot-armor is a discussion for another thread.

[Midareyukki]

I thought he mentions that his souls like mixed together. So he has the personality of both a wise leader and a young lad. So sometimes he is being a fan boy like with Estinien and then other times he steps up as a leader like he did in Radz at Han during the riot.

Again, I point to what I wrote.

If G'raha Tia =/= the Exarch, then he is the ARR kid we met + some vague awareness of the Exarch, who he was and what he did. The above still applies, though in a more ambiguous way. However, as he was written all the way back in ARR, OG G'raha is an energetic young scholar who idolizes the Warrior of Light and would love nothing more than to go on an adventure with him. He'd give anything for it, though with a self-deprecating demeanor that Exarch G'raha's influence on his soul would soften up.

It doesn't stop him from being OG G'raha to have those impulses. To admire Estinien and fanboy over him, as he did with us (though we were on a higher pedestal than Estinien, no doubt).
And about the Radz incident, again I point out:
"he is the ARR kid we met + some vague awareness of the Exarch, who he was and what he did", along with traits being softened out of OG G'raha due to Exarch's influence.

That was never really the issue. This is expected: have his jovial self on the surface, but deep down still be able to channel his mature self.

The issue was that the game just took a leap from "energetic boy who has idols he places on a high pedestal" to "puppy dog boy who has a tailgasm, ears perk up and his eyes go heart-shape".

It's Flanderization.