The Negative Impact of Poor Character Writing on the Quality of Dawntrail's MSQ

[duckorz]

Preface: Hi everyone, this is my first time posting here, so I'm unsure how well this will be received; but I was surprised by how well this did on the discussion sub, and even had a few people suggest that I post it here on the official forums. The level of discussion about this MSQ's problems has been pretty frustrating, to me, with people being a little imprecise in their criticisms ("Wuk Lamat sucks and I hate her"/"Why is my WoL not the Main Character" being pretty reductive and easy to argue against), so I'm hoping going in-depth with a fairly core issue in how the MSQ treats all of its characters puts words to how some people are feeling, and helps improve the hygiene of discourse somewhat. This goes without saying, but this contains spoilers for the entire MSQ through Level 100.

Over the past few days, the early tricklings of immediate reactions to the MSQ of Dawntrail have come out, scattered across a few different forums, and raising a few different, but fairly commonly shared, objections to the narrative and its contents.

Given that these are, indeed, initial reactions, there isn't a ton of persuasive reasoning provided for why people seem to dislike what they dislike. People point to the existence of Wuk Lamat and her likeness to Lyse, the secondary role given to the Warrior of Light ("not being the main character"), the banal narrative structure of trials and keystones, the menial tasks given to us by townspeople and the thin-wearing functional delivery of FFXIV's quest system, the slow pacing, the lack of stakes, or myriad other nitpicks and complaints that build up over the course of ones playthrough and end up posted to reddit and the OF.

None of these are the problem with Dawntrail's MSQ. How could they be? As many have pointed out, every apparent flaw with Dawntrail is present in other expansions. Wuk Lamat, as mentioned, is easily compared to Lyse, as well as ARR/Heavensward Alphinaud, being a naive, sheltered, and insecure leader that needs to come to gain a more holistic perspective on the world and its people to become a more wise, effective motivator and unifier. The Warrior of Light has taken the backseat plenty of times before, taking a supporting role at numerous points in Heavensward and Stormblood. The simple structure of go to place and get key object bears likeness to the similarly simple structure of Shadowbringers and its Lightwardens. And, of course, Dawntrail would hardly be the first FFXIV expansion to feature talking to nameless townspeople and clicking on sparkly ground. These surface level objections to Dawntrail are imprecise, hardly communicate what one might find distasteful about the experience of playing it in full, and are easily dismissed out of hand for the reasons alluded to above, making criticism of the expansion fairly easy for some to ignore. Most of these positions, both for and against Dawntrail, are predicated on the contents of the expansion, not on their quality. The what, not the how.


Part 1 - The Importance of Character

Character is, I believe, the single most important component of storytelling. Unlike other features of narrative, which can vary from series to series and medium to medium, character is non-negotiable. I enjoy the thoughtful episodism of Star Trek, as much as I enjoy the absurd nonsense of Baki the Grappler, as much as I enjoy the heartwarming and compelling adventures of Dungeon Meshi, as much as I enjoy everything about Final Fantasy XIV. What these series have in common, despite their differences in content, tone, and genre, is a core of excellent character writing - the ability to get us invested in the stories of unique, individuated human beings with thoughts, feelings, desires, insecurities, and obstacles that get in their way. Even for the seemingly character-agnostic works of authors like Borges, the essentially human perspective of the narrator grounds us in unfamiliar, fantastic settings - gives us an anchor to relate ourselves to the world of the story.

"Character" is, in some way, a reductive term for what is, essentially, the humanity of the narrative. Characters are how we relate to the world of the story, no matter how different it may be from our own. The mutable facts of a setting may change, but the humanity of the people within it does not. What exists in our world changes all the time. We can accept things like the existence of Aether, Dynamis, and Thaumaturgy, as they're parts of the internally consistent world presented by the narrative. What we cannot accept is the human beings involved in the narrative acting in ways that are unrelatable to us. We can accept Superman shooting laser beams out of his eyes, but we cannot accept people not recognizing him as Clark Kent. Characters are the perspectives on the world and what happens in it; they are what we attach ourselves to, relate to, and empathize with. As we do so, we come to love them, hate them, root for their triumphs, cheer for their defeats, and watch the dynamics between them unfold. Every ilm of our engagement with a story is predicated on two factors:

1. Caring about the people in the narrative
   
2. Needing to pay attention to them in order to understand them

This is what makes stories both compelling and essentially human - their ability to engage our instincts as social animals. Our desire to empathize with those we share things in common with, our need to see those opposed to us fail, our intrigue at information we don't have, and our intuition to speculate on the subtext in what people choose to say - and not say.

To get to the point: What Final Fantasy XIV's strength has always been, what makes us care about it so much and has us recommend it to so many people, and what makes every single one of its expansions so excellent as narratives - is in not just what characters it features, but in how those characters are written. We love Emet Selch because of how he acts: what he hides from us, and what he bears to us in moments of vulnerability. How he interacts with one character, versus how he interacts with another. How his unique personality quirks inflect on his speech, and how his character contrasts with and forms such a fascinating dynamic with the Scions. We're compelled by how we see him shifts between Shadowbringers and Endwalker. We don't love Emet Selch because he's a cool, sexy, mysterious wizard - We love Emet Selch because of how he embodies those traits and how he acts.

Part 2 - Wuk Lamat

Similarly, people don't hate Wuk Lamat because she's a naive idealist who sticks to her values and her commitment to understanding others and their culture. There are many ways in which this character can be well executed - and has been in FFXIV. People hate Wuk Lamat because, again, of how she's written.

Wuk Lamat starts the narrative as a naive, easily fooled idealist, and ends the narrative as a naive, easily fooled idealist. She repeatedly makes mistakes, gets kidnapped, is deceived, overlooks the problems of people, and struggles to understand how to solve those problems. The problem is that Wuk Lamat is never punished for those mistakes - mistakes that are directly caused by who she is as a character. After being too naive and trusting with the Bandit in the pot village, and subsequently getting kidnapped and held hostage, she is, again, too naive and trusting with Sphene, never asking any questions about who Sphene is, how the society of Solution 9 operates, and repeatedly suggests to just run into things headlong regardless of whether or not they could be traps. After the equivalent of being given a tour around Eulmore by Vauthry himself, she's totally convinced that she's a good person because she cares about her people, and is thus somehow totally stunned when Sphene reveals her deception. The narrative may *say* that she doesnt still fully trust Sphene, but this is not how human beings act around people they are suspicious of.

In previous parts of the story - Including ARR - these sorts of character flaws were repeatedly punished in significant, unavoidable ways. Alphinaud's naive formation of the Crystal Braves, and Nanamo's naive attempt to immediately and drastically change the Ul'Dah government (in a way that is, in some ways, far less immediate drastic than Wuk Lamat's executive decisions to completely change the entire system of leadership in Tural, despite showing us at the start that very few people supported her) in ARR result in the near assassination of the latter and the total, catastrophically consequential betrayal of the former. Lyse attempts to motivate those around her through simple idealism to lay their lives on the line in an apparently fruitless attempt for freedom, fails horribly, with Ala Mighans suffering under Garlemald cynical and reluctant to throw themselves into a suicidal and hopeless revolution, only to learn in Doma from Hien that leadership must be demonstrated. That people must have more to gain than they have to lose, and that victories must be fought for and earned to demonstrate that success is possible in the first place.

As a character that fails, Wuk Lamat is not a mary sue - but simply a character that is never challenged in any way for their failures, nor is ever stimulated to grow and develop, which makes her difficult to relate to and root for. She is presented with very few problems that cannot be solved immediately by the mere suggestion of platitudes of peace and happiness (or, if the situation is really difficult, food), and any difficulties she faces are summarily eliminated by the Scions near uncritical support for her regardless of any legitimate concerns we may have about her capacity to lead a massive, diverse continent. This fundamentally makes her unrelatable to us as an audience, and makes it impossible to connect with her as a human being.

This makes every struggle Wuk Lamat has feel pointless, every victory she achieves feel unearned, and every mistake she makes feel frustrating. Despite the expansion's mantras of learning more about others in order to know them, and understand them; by the end of Dawntrail, we know absolutely nothing more about Wuk Lamat than we started the expansion knowing, and as such, going by the themes said out loud to us by the story, we can hardly understand her character at all. The effect this creates is one of utter confusion when she forms a Ryne/Gaia-esque relationship with Sphene at the end of the expansion, despite no scenes that build their relationship, demonstrate any reason for their apparent affection, or indicate any reason for Wuk Lamat to still trust and be endeared towards Sphene (after not indicating any reasons for her to trust Sphene in the first place).

Part 3 - Everyone Else

Now, many people have reduced their grievances of this expansion to this one character, and may read my criticisms of said character as a similar fixation on that character. I want you to understand, then, that Wuk Lamat is not the problem. The reason for this is because every single character has the problems of Wuk Lamat. Every single character is a naive, clueless fortune cookie that does nothing but move from point A to point B periodically dispensing semantically identical catchphrases about the themes of the narrative. This is a problem that the 6.x patches had with Zero and the Scions, and it's a problem that's persisted into DT.

Just like with Zero; In the proximity of Wuk Lamat, the scions become completely identical borg-like automatons who all talk exactly the same and say exactly the same things about peace, friendship, and happiness in order to prop up their companion. The analytical statesmanship of Alphinaud; the cynical, skeptical, sarcastic common-sense of Alisae; the hard-headed, aggressive approach of Thancred; the esoteric, erudite empathy of Urianger; the reckless, insatiable intellectualism of Y'shtola; all of the unique personalities and dispositions of the incredibly colorful cast of the Scions, and the myriad ways in which these traits informed how they interacted with eachother and the world around them, have been completely flattened into a single character - the Scion. The Scion is kind, calm, mildly inquisitive, and likes peace. They offer equally simple technical speculation on things the audience has figured out 5 scenes ago (them trying to figure out the time dilation in Heritage Found is a nightmare). That's it. These characters now only make mild comments on trying to figure out what's going on and give uncannily word-for-word identical advice to the new main character they're supporting.

Why does Alphinaud, who is extremely interested in statebuilding, social welfare, and leadership display no interest in and is totally passive towards the completely unexplored and unclarified political systems and bureaucracy of Tuliyolal? Why is Alisae, the voice of reason and street-smarts to Alphinaud's at times naive intellectualism, so completely uncritical and trusting of Sphene and of Solution 9? Why is Y'shtola, who has made it her lifes work to cross the barriers between realms at all costs, so completely unfascinated by and unopinionated about the emergence of Alexandria and the discovery of the key?

I could really go on and on with this, but suffice it to say - the main problem, here, is that the current writer of the MSQ is unable to put himself in the minds of the characters and think about what they would think and what they would do in new situations and given new information.

In previous expansions, I would take my time to talk to every single character, not just the one with the quest marker over their head, in between objectives because they would always have unique, interesting things to say about what was happening that indicated what they thought about it. In Dawntrail, this practice is completely vestigial and unnecessary, as all the characters do is muse trivially about what's literally happening or say "I love Wuk Lamat, lets do what she thinks is best." In this, not only does Dawntrail present us with a cast of new characters I can't relate to or understand, it sets out to ruin characters I deeply love and care about.

The novel world of Tural and Solution 9 both provoke an insane number of questions about how things work that are never asked by anyone. In the rare event that a scion does ask a question of a character that is obviously suspicious, they'll just unsatisfyingly hand-wave it away by saying "I can't say, you'll just have to trust me." If we wouldn't accept this sort of thing when it came to places like Eulmore, why on earth would we accept it when in a place like Solution 9, which threatens to break the worldbuilding of literally everywhere else just by merely existing?

Finally, characters do not speak with any subtext at all. In an expansion like Shadowbringers, Ishikawa commanded a mastery over subtext, giving us insight into what the characters thought and how they felt about things not just by what they said literally, but what they implied, chose to hide, or said with a certain tone of voice. In Dawntrail (and 6.x), everyone just literally says what they mean all the time in a completely unnatural and uncanny way.

Subtext falls under the category of "Show Dont Tell," which is more complicated than just whether or not dialogue is used for the purpose of exposition. A lot can be "shown" through the use of dialogue, such as when Emet Selch speaks wistfully about the pain of losing those dear to you before revealing the history of the Ancients. How strongly the Crystal Exarch feels about us and our heroism is so gradually implied by how he acts and the words he chooses to carefully use until finally has a cathartic, open heart-to-heart with us that feels earned. In the incredibly bizarrely placed bracelet subplot in Dawntrail, Namikka just says to us "that bracelet is really important to me and I will be sad without it." We are not shown that Namikka and Wuk Lamat have a deep, familial bond - Namikka just tells us that they do. Unlike seeing how much Venat cares about life and her people, and being shown how gutting and brutal her sacrifice of sundering was, we are merely told that Sphene was a good queen that loved her people and had to undergo great sacrifice to preserve them. Because of these failures, the emotional climaxes of these characters arc don't land, and my ability to relate to the themes of the narrative being "told" to me instead of being "shown" is broken.

Ask yourself a very simple question: if you were to remove the names from the dialogue of Dawntrail or 6.x, would you know who is saying what? You wouldn't, and you don't, because every single character is seeing the world through the same eyes, and is having the same thoughts, and is saying the same things. Every character speaks in the same words about "the Dome" when it appears, despite being from completely different places and not communicating with eachother about its sudden appearance until you ask about it, about peace and happiness every time Wuk Lamat wants to impress her beliefs on people who have no reason to immediately and uncritically accept them, about the natural order of life and death when musing on and shutting off the Endless. Even if I were to accept what these characters were saying, the universally identical phrasing of every idea posited by the narrative makes me feel like I'm talking to a bunch of mind-melded NPCs. Most tediously of all, every single character doles out the same dry exposition in completely identical ways with no consideration for character voice. There is no character voice. Every character is fungible.

Because characters - be they Wuk Lamat, Koana, the Scions, or anyone - do not react to the things happening around them, do not ask questions about anything, do not have any strong opinions whatsoever about anything, and speak straightforwardly with no subtext: I have no reason to care about any of them, cannot relate to any of them as people, and have nothing to engage with when they're onscreen. Every single character speaks in the same voice, says the same things, and has the same ideology. As such, there is no conflict, no interpersonality, no reason to even like one character more than another. Everyone is a Scion, or will be corrected into one.

Strangely, there is one exception to this. At the very end of the expansion, when you share a gondola ride with G'raha in Living Memory, he muses thoughtfully and somberly about the nature of life and loss in a way that only G'raha can.

"Tell me, friend. Have you ever wished to be reuinted with someone who has passed away?

I have. I do. But I think... Above all else, I wish that they had lived. If only for one more day. One more day... A joyous one, if I could choose.

I did all that I could to make it happen. I tried everything. Spared nothing. In that manner, I was able to keep some few souls out of harm's way. But so, so many were beyond my power to save.

What would I have done then, had I this? And you-can you imagine yourself spending eternity here, knowing no loss?"

It's a scene rich with subtext, one that says so much about who G'raha is, what kind of life he's had, what life he's lived as the Exarch, as himself; it says so much about what he values, what he believes, what he lives for. It speaks to his humanism, to his love for people and his commitment to life and adventure, to his thoughtful and empathetic way of thinking about things and how he sees the world. And it's all said in G'Raha's voice, expressed in a way that only he can. It's a scene that Ishikawa would write - maybe even one she did write. It stands out from everything else so much that I cant help but wonder.

To go back to what I said at the start, I think what makes FFXIV special is in how it treats its characters, but that's not entirely true. What makes FFXIV special is how Natsuko Ishikawa treats its characters. Consistently, everything that she's wrote, whether it be job quests, patch quests, or the MSQ has been characterized by a quality antithetical to everything I've described here. Her writing is instantly recognizable, and instantly elevates the material, no matter its contents. Ishikawa's greatest talent is her empathy, her ability to get into the hearts and minds of her characters, and as said, think carefully about how they would think, feel, and do about the situations that arise around them. In some way, Ishikawa is what we love about FFXIV and its narrative. And our love of FFXIV is what gets us to raid, what gets us to buy houses, what gets us to cosplay and go to fanfest - what gets us to subscribe and log in. To damage the emotional quality of the narrative, and our fundamental ability to relate to it and connect with it as players, damages our engagement with the game and our desire to play it. It is not something that can be ignored - this game is sold on word of mouth, and that word of mouth is sold on the constant upwards trend of the quality of the narrative. People do not sell FFXIV on its raiding, they sell it on its writing - writing that has been, at times, credited to Ishikawa. And for me, I feel her absence, and feel a great concern for the game should it continue.

[Swordsman]

Preface: Hi everyone, this is my first time posting here, so I'm unsure how well this will be received; but I was surprised by how well this did on the discussion sub, and even had a few people suggest that I post it here on the official forums. The level of discussion about this MSQ's problems has been pretty frustrating, to me, with people being a little imprecise in their criticisms ("Wuk Lamat sucks and I hate her"/"Why is my WoL not the Main Character" being pretty reductive and easy to argue against), so I'm hoping going in-depth with a fairly core issue in how the MSQ treats all of its characters puts words to how some people are feeling, and helps improve the hygiene of discourse somewhat. This goes without saying, but this contains spoilers for the entire MSQ through Level 100.

Thanks for posting this. I saw this thread on the /r/ffxivdiscussion subreddit and considered linking this post here as well. It's a good read.

Also welcome to the official forums!

[Bunyon]

That gondola ride was the first time I felt like we were about to start exploring some interesting concepts of what exactly is life for the Endless, whether they are alive and if they should continue to live, and address the weight of shutting them down. But I feel like we just hand waved all of that away with a "Well, we're on a time limit and also nobody really seems bothered to be erased?"

The only thing that made me feel actually bad was how Erenville was treated. He saw his whole past life get obliterated in seconds without knowing exactly what happened, and then was fooled into thinking his mom was okay, only to then being told she only exists in this weird memory state and he gets dragged around the last zone knowing they have to pull the plug, and it's just... handled so weird and rushed.

[NovalisCrystalis]

You summed up perfectly how I felt about this. I don't often come to the forums but I believe this is how I feel about Wuk Lamat and how she's executed here in DT. I was searching for the growth, the mistakes and the performance fit to rule yet I am conflicted. You expressed how I felt, but so have the others. As soon as we were in the bird village and she took credit ...I was like...are we not gonna address this? or...this is ...It went down hill from there for me. But everything I have read here sums how I feel about Dawntrail.
Thank you for posting this and hope many others read it.
Also I love and agree with the G'raha scene. It is what I had wanted with the characters most importantly from Wuk, Eren and Krile...anyway have a good day! o/

Edit: that said I still love Dawntrail as for me the rest was still enjoyable despite my personal issues.

[CaptainLagbeard]

On the whole "naive idealist" we already had that... He's called Alphinaud. Although wuk didn't come into contact with reality and didn't have to grow.

[ClayyLmao]

On the whole "naive idealist" we already had that... He's called Alphinaud. Although wuk didn't come into contact with reality and didn't have to grow.

Agreed. If Sphene-bot, at the very end had been like "No, you're wrong Wuk, I am right" and then died, I think it would've been a better way for Wuk to have to face the fact that you can't just Talk No Jutsu your way out of every problem.

[Tethan]

Thank you for posting this here as well.

I think a big issue it that communicating exactly what is wrong with the writing other than "MSQ bad", "Wuk bad" is that it is..... just a lot of work. Anyone with a decent grasp on media analysis could rip this story to smithereens, but it would take like a 10-15k word essay to truly do it justice, probably more, so thank you for putting in some of that work.

I expect in the coming months/years we will see hour long video essays on youtube picking apart exactly what went wrong here, like it happened with Starfield. Or at least I hope so, since then something entertaining would have come off it.

[Colt47]

The weakness they have is they want to say everything instead of show everything, and because they want to say everything they overlook the nuances that they unintentionally put into the world lore that would heavily impact several of the events in the game. The fact our character remains silent on several key points in the story of dawntrail despite having experiences relating to an immediate situation is definitely felt through the entire thing.

The other problem is that they focus so much on making a giant cutscene fiesta, the player has barely any interaction at all. If someone doesn't stop to do side quests, it literally turns into a string of cutscenes that have points where someone walks to another quest marker, then starts yet another cutscene. Many of them did not need to be there at all and could have been interactive segments, and there is one especially bad example of this that happens later in the story and EVERYONE who has done Dawntrail probably knows it, since it happens between the mid point and finale involving a train. We are so far past the limits of the PS2 era on needing movies for everything, and an MMO is not a great medium for lengthy story bits that people are going to rush through and then spoil anyway as short as two days after release.

[Bunyon]

I except in the coming months/years we will see hour long video essays on youtube picking apart exactly what went wrong here, like it happened with Starfield. Or at least I hope so, since then something entertaining would have come off it.

I'm curious as to what will come out of popular streamers reacting to MSQ as they can drive a lot of opinion strength as well, especially as the devs have shown to be aware of their reactions.

[duckorz]

Thanks for posting this. I saw this thread on the /r/ffxivdiscussion subreddit and considered linking this post here as well. It's a good read.

Also welcome to the official forums!

Thanks! I have a ton to say about this expansion (unfortunately, I have as much bad to say about it as I had good to say about ShB and EW :P), so I may post a few follow-ups in this thread if people are interested. I haven't even gotten into how this character writing problem affects the plot and suspension of disbelief, and I took notes that ended up with... uh... over 100 serious questions that I have for the narrative at this point that drove me totally crazy while playing the MSQ, lmao.

That gondola ride was the first time I felt like we were about to start exploring some interesting concepts of what exactly is life for the Endless, whether they are alive and if they should continue to live, and address the weight of shutting them down. But I feel like we just hand waved all of that away with a "Well, we're on a time limit and also nobody really seems bothered to be erased?"

The only thing that made me feel actually bad was how Erenville was treated. He saw his whole past life get obliterated in seconds without knowing exactly what happened, and then was fooled into thinking his mom was okay, only to then being told she only exists in this weird memory state and he gets dragged around the last zone knowing they have to pull the plug, and it's just... handled so weird and rushed.

It is super strange, right? It's as if a switch is flipped on that scene that is flipped back off as soon as its over. The G'raha I once knew is back, and then he's gone again as soon as its over. And I know I'm not alone in noticing this, because I've seen tons of people point out this scene in particular as a stand-out. I think people are better at noticing empathetic, realistically-human writing than they think they are!

This is all what makes DT a very problematic expansion to discuss and to make a holistic, convincing case against. Because Dawntrail is, as outlined (maybe even by Ishikawa herself as senior narrative designer - a lot of the themes seem to be stuff she's been interested in exploring, and I can easily imagine a Living Memory that is far, far, far more compelling, ethically ambiguous, and emotionally gutting if she were to have written it) a pretty interesting narrative! I love succession plots, I love new cultures, and I love coming to learn them, know them, and understand them. I even love the fundamental premise of characters like Wuk Lamat (I love Genki Shounen Protags with hearts of gold and commitment to ideals), the themes of consumption and conflict, and the premise of Living Memory and Solution 9 as places of idyllic, nostalgia-driven, conservative indulgence that seeks to preserve a harmful status quo of infinite consumption at the cost of the well-being of other cultures and societies (very relevant to the world we live in, if it were written better!)

Because of this, DT is very vulnerable to something called "Thermian Arguments," which are, essentially, making the argument that anyone who criticizes a narrative or its contents was simply not paying attention when the narrative expects us to take its premises for granted. A great example of a Thermian Argument with Dawntrail is with Living Memory and the Endless; we may ask as an audience "why do we not see the Endless as people, despite them possessing a memory that reacts and responds to new information, has desires and apparent feelings, and exists in a way that is more or less identical to a living person?" or, "why do we think its okay to write off their existence as people and think that shutting them down is the only solution, and is a solution that is totally morally and ethically uncomplicated and that we shouldn't even feel bad about?" the answers to this question for someone using a Thermian argument are, "Cachuia tells you that they arent people, and tells you that theres no other way to solve the problem and defeat Sphene other than shutting them down." The problem is that narratives are not real - they're entirely invented by the choices made by the writers. Moreover, I need to ask this question seriously, because it really makes no sense, and its absolutely critical for the last area:

Why does the narrative outright say we shouldn't care at all about the fate of the Endless, since they're not people, and then expect us to be emotionally invested in Sphene as a real person in the final trial?

(This is actually even worse than it seems, because Sphene isn't just an Endless - she's an AI programmed by Preservation to perform a certain task: she's even less human than the Endless like Cachuia and Kriles parents are!)

This is why "Show dont Tell" is such critical advice: it's not enough for Wuk Lamat to tell me that she apparently "doesn't fully trust Sphene" when her *behavior* indicates that she does. It's not an acceptable argument against the critique that she's still naive and too trusting to say that "the narrative says that Wuk Lamat doesn't trust her, weren't you paying attention?" when we, as human beings, are reading words and observing behavior that says that she does. To say that people who experienced this were just cutscene skipping and missed the point is borderline gaslighting.

Like, in what world does this ever make sense to say not just as Wuk Lamat, with all of her flaws that she's supposedly totally growing past, but as a human being?



I'm not asking for characters to act rationally all the time. But the reasoning behind this line is absurd and even the dumbest most irrational person in the world would never say this. Even if they did, the people around them (including Scions that SHOULD KNOW BETTER AND HAVE BEEN IN THIS SITUATION NUMEROUS TIMES) would caution them against it. Most of all, someone who said this would probably get routinely taken advantage of so often that they would eventually be forced to learn their lesson. And yet, when Sphene betrays her not even two levels later, she's somehow surprised by it? WE'RE somehow surprised by it? It's completely insane and totally shatters my immersion in the narrative (although that had been broken like, three levels ago at this point and never recovered). This is the person that we supported to become the god-empress of the entire Turali continent. When I see her talking like this and behaving this way I feel like we made a horrible mistake.