I'm Sorry, But I Think We Should See Other People - ROs You Hate

[Hayden_Winter]

I heavily disagree with you on the definition of rape. If they were unwitting, they never gave consent to having sex with a monster, no matter how seductive that monster might have appeared to them that moment. And they certainly - while accepting the possibility of becoming pregnant and deciding to have that baby, obviously - didn’t sign up for having a changeling child. I’d feel deeply traumatized and violated, and definitely raped in their place. But let’s agree to disagree, because it’s pretty much the last thing I want to fight over here.

@natwa

I certainly don’t feel that any of this excuses Winter’s evil behavior, although it at least partly explains it.

It wasn’t meant as an excuse. But you said there’s no tragic backstory, and I do see potential and hints, and showed them to you, because you asked me to, and I also enjoy sharing my thoughts on Hayden.
I don’t see it as my mission here to make people like them. Maybe I just want them to be hated for the right reasons? And I think it’s perfectly reasonable to hate this character. But what I don’t like, is reading things like:

@natwa

I have to admit I’m quite creeped out by all the SSW fans who are gushing over Manerkol as a RO.

Okay, this is not about Hayden, but I guess you feel the same with regards to fans of them, and I’m just tired of the implication that anyone who enjoys villains is someone to be creeped out by. I love horror and gore movies, violent video games, villains in stories, and I get that all the time. It’s just not true. Any mentally stable adult is capable of separating reality from fiction. Heck, I’m not even all that stable lol, yet I’m still able to see the difference and act accordingly.

[JBento]

As much as I disagree with @Hayden_Winter in all matters Hayden Winter, “unwitting sex=rape” is not really up for discussion. If they’re unwitting, that means they didn’t give informed consent, and that makes it non-consensual sex, and non-consensual sex is just the tame word version of “rape”.

@Zyrios

Not enough to romance the guy, he’s still an asshole, but if a position were to open up in his ranks, she might be sorely tempted to apply, let’s say.

Manerkol IS an asshole, but he’s also a mass murderer mindraping tyrant. Nobody’s saying “Manerkol is terrible because he jaywalks”, we’re pointing at all the murder and arson.

@Hayden_Winter

Any mentally stable adult is capable of separating reality from fiction.

And indeed we all know Star Wars isn’t real, but I’m still not trusting anybody who goes “Man, these Empire dudes are totally the best.”

[Zyrios]

@JBento

Manerkol IS an asshole, but he’s also a mass murderer mindraping tyrant. Nobody’s saying “Manerkol is terrible because he jaywalks”, we’re pointing at all the murder and arson.

Oh no, I got that, believe me. My character is just an eternal pragmatist before all else, and again, considering how things have been going for her thus far, her mind is operating on spite at this point. She absolutely believes Manerkol is a horrible, unforgivable piece of shit - it’s just, again, he’s also the only one actively putting up a fight against the gods, who she arguably hates worse. Not enough to ever forgive the guy, much less truly take his side, but the pragmatic side of her is thinking that, him being in the best position right now to act against the gods, she’d be willing to put her morals to the side for the moment in pursuit of that goal. Beyond that, all bets are off.

[AkaneTheAssassin]

While we’re talking about Soul Stone War, I’ll bring up another RO people aren’t bringing up for some reason: Daelynn. I realize a lot of people like her, but if you aren’t starry-eyed for her, her lechery is uncomfortable. She needs to dial it down. Even after you are in a committed relationship with someone else, she makes jokes about sleeping with you in the sequel. Even if she knows you aren’t interested in her or or aren’t interested in women, it doesn’t curb her leery behavior. It’s really too bad because she’s very sympathetic when she’s not being a creeper.

[Hayden_Winter]

Holy shit, I have another one! It’s always the worst offenders I forget! That one comes right after Jun, but for completely different reasons:

Michael from the Shadow Society!!!

I HATE his guts so much, I make sure he gets killed in every. single. playthrough! Gaawwwd does that piece of trash not take “no” for an answer, and he’s so clingy and overprotective, and yuck! And the worst thing is: No matter how much you insult him and metaphorically punch him in the nuts, this idiot just smiles and wags his tail and asks for more!

Gwyndal is a creep too (there’s that weird shower scene, where he just walks in on you and tries to undress you iirc, and no matter how you react, he doesn’t take you seriously, and it’s never brought up again?!), but I’m a bit of a hypocrite here, because Azuridian oversteps boundaries as well in some possible paths, and I don’t mind him doing that at all.

But yeah, Michael sucks big time!

[JBento]

Wait, I don’t remember Michaela acting like this. O_o

Gwyndal isssss… the weird-eyed lady? The one that works for the bad guy?

On the other hand, the game is getting a rewrite, so maybe that’ll fix your issues with it?

[Zyrios]

Oh, I disliked Daelynn on first hello. She all but strong-arms you into working for her (“I saved your lives, now you owe me a life debt that I’m cashing in here and now,” essentially, which, as I mentioned, my character only avoided arguing against because Daelynn had just spent the last several minutes lighting shit on fire, so it seemed like a losing fight), and the aforementioned relentless flirting and the fact that she insists on calling you a pet name that you didn’t agree to (and, in my case, don’t appreciate either) whether you like it or not, and if you try and set your feet with her, she starts acting like a thug in response (staring you down and making thinly-veiled threatening comments at you and getting REALLY uncomfortably close into your personal space).

And that’s just the start of the relationship with her. If you continue not being her bestest buddy, she only gets monumentally worse.

Now, in fairness, she WAS raised on the belief that humans are utter bastards who hate dragons and elves and are just out to destroy them both, and her best friend is heavily persecuted and hunted by humans, so it’s probable that many of her actions against you are driven by bias - but even if she still has cause to antagonize MY character, Straasa and Morkai have more than proven their worth by the second book, but she still antagonizes them, as well.

[Hayden_Winter]

Gwyndal is Azuridian’s second in command, with a pixie cut and obsession with humans. He’s also the one giving you those awful colorful clothes.

And yeah, Michael acts totally overprotective all the time (I know there’s a story reason why, but still, the MC doesn’t know that and it doesn’t change my feelings), maybe it’s not that noticable if you actually like him, but to me his presence felt absolutely suffocating and that’s something I absolutely can’t deal with.
He even storms like a total c*ckblock into the room when you’re training with Azuridian and makes a scene how A is hurting you (when I was enjoying myself!), acting like a total moron.

@JBento

On the other hand, the game is getting a rewrite, so maybe that’ll fix your issues with it?

I know and it was not a general criticism of the story! I absolutely love TSS, and as long as I’ll still be able to get Michael killed, I’ll survive.

[JBento]

@Hayden_Winter

Gwyndal is Azuridian’s second in command, with a pixie cut and obsession with humans. He’s also the one giving you those awful colorful clothes.

Oh, now I remember who they are. Ghostbusters 2016 Kate McKinnon.

[Tarlonniel]

@natwa

many of the people who have stated their dislike of M and similar characters, have stated no dislike for charcters like Winter and Manerkol.

I thought Winter was decently entertaining as a villain. Manerkol was the stuff of nightmares - literally - and I almost quit the game over him, but I felt there was enough opportunity to fight his ‘advances’ tooth and nail to make his presence bearable. And then I quit the game over different advances I couldn’t say no to.

[Hayden_Winter]

@natwa

And since I’ve also have tried the Ruby and D companion paths, I know that the captain is not on principle opposed to trying to make a deal. So either there is something about L that rubs Winter the wrong way or that the Captain only tries to kill those deemed to be to weak to defend themselves or not sexy enough to screw instead.

I didn’t comment on this earlier, because I didn’t remember the details of the L route well enough, but I just replayed this path (doing everything in my power to deescalate and cooperate) and you are actually correct about Hayden acting way more aggressively when your with L, and especially towards L, than they do in any of the other paths. With Ruby one could even argue it’s kinda-sorta self defense, because she draws her weapon first on them and they know perfectly well she’ll use any excuse to kill them to get back at them.

That’s actually really interesting to me, because ever since reading Ruby mentioning Winter not liking her close relationship with Keoni back then, I have tried to pay attention to their behavior towards and around couples, and there are indeed signs of a pattern there, even more so when taking this new information about the L route into consideration.

There is another instance, aside from Ruby + Keoni and MC + Lamuel where Hayden gets sadistic like that, and that’s on the Lady Anya + Himo Naiilo (another couple) mission. They’ll jump at any opportunity to kill Himo, even if you decide to let the two of them escape (there are ways to make that actually happen though, but Hayden… doesn’t like it), and it’s abundantly clear how much they enjoy it.

Interesting. Very, very interesting. I need to dig further into this.

But that’s one of the two billion reasons why I love them: There’s so much to find, if you look closer.

[Zyrios]

Here’s one that just came to mind for me: I’ve forgotten their names, sadly, but there are two ROs in The Last Wizard - if I remember correctly, it’s the town guard with a shitty spouse and the rookie soldier who doesn’t want to be a soldier, or that’s who the bickering was between in my run - who, late in the game, get into a spat with one another over… something, I forget what right at the moment, but you get presented with three options: Side with one, side with the other, or stay out of it because it ain’t your drama.

Choosing to stay out of the argument makes them both think that you’re siding with the other person and you take a relationship hit from both of them.

So, for context, you get dragged against your will into a fantasy world, forced against your will to become the resident wizard of a rapidly crumbling kingdom, forced to fix a thousand and one attempted sabotages up to and including assassination of the entire royal family, forced into fighting a war against a vastly superior enemy, and told by everybody at every turn that getting back home is impossible and you should just shut up and cope with it (which is a lie, by the way, the enemy commander knows a method for you to get back home and is perfectly willing to tell you for the small price of killing one backstabbing jackass in their ranks, and, you know, basically letting the kingdom you’re fighting for get curbstomped - but honestly, my character was so fed up with the kingdom by that point that he didn’t even care anymore)… and then two of your three or so ROs (EDIT: Okay, replaying the game now, and there’s a hell of a lot more than three ROs, my bad) decide to pull you into their stupid argument and get pissy with you if you choose not to take a side.

You know, however awful my situation is back on Earth, at least it’s the kind of nonsense that I can deal with. And fix, if you play your cards right, and it’s also the only problem you were facing back on Earth prior to your transdimensional kidnapping, compared to the million things going wrong in the fantasy world that you’re expected to fix. Certainly, I don’t have to deal with idiotic ROs pulling stupid nonsense like this back home.

Is it a petty reason to dislike them? Probably, yeah. But having not played the game in a bit, I’m having a hard time remembering any other more major issues that cropped up with them, and that was the most immediate example that I could still recall. It also happened so near to the end of the story that, on top of all the other annoyances and peril my character was put through, that was just the straw that broke the camel’s back for me: “Seriously, WHY do I have to put up with this shit? Man, I can not get back to Earth fast enough, I swear.”

[geldar]

Suddenly I’m unconcerned that I’ve only played the demo because I already know what I’d do, and it’s murder the monarch and priest(ess). Sure, I only need to kill one of them to get back home, but why not both?

[Zyrios]

Honestly, neither of them are even the person the enemy commander wants you to kill - and if you choose to set your feet and be a crappy wizard out of spite towards your situation (you know, like I did), the king and priestess will likely both wind up dead regardless. And, in fact, if you spend all your time fudging things on purpose, whether you take up arms in the fighting or not is plainly irrelevant anyhow, the battle’s decided regardless of your input or lack thereof, so why NOT just focus on the Return Home spell?

[geldar]

Oh. Who does the enemy commander want you to kill?

EDIT: Ah, I think I misread it. It’s one of their own people?

[Zyrios]

So, spoiler warning, in case you want to go back and play the game yourself:
It’s the enemy commander’s kid, who happens to be the enemy nation’s foremost scholar on all things magic. The enemy commander made a deal with the former kingdom wizard, who, like my character, just wanted to go home, that if they destroyed the wizard tower in the kingdom, the enemy commander would swear to aid them in their quest to return to Earth. The enemy commander’s kid, meanwhile, discovered a wizard tower within the enemy nation’s borders, and being an overambitious twit, decided they wanted to become a wizard. But, due to how the magic of the world works - i.e., wizards have to be chosen, they don’t just get to become magical on their own - the tower rejected them, so in their attempts to find a solution, they killed the kingdom wizard and cut off their hand to try and gain entry to the wizard tower. The enemy nation is big on honoring promises, and killing the kingdom wizard makes the enemy commander look like they broke a promise, which makes them look bad in the eyes of their subjects, so they put out a death warrant on their kid that you now get to fulfill, in exchange for being given the means to return home.

It can also be assumed that said overambitious twit is the entire reason you got dragged into the plot to begin with, since new wizards are only chosen after their predecessors die, so there’s some more motivation for you.

[JBento]

@Hayden_Winter

There’s so much to find, if you look closer.

Maybe, but if it’s all shittyness, does it matter? Like, “wow, here’s ANOTHER way in which this person is absolutely terrible, like everything else I know about them” is not particularly engaging.

[Hayden_Winter]

Well, there’s loving them, because they’re a well-written antagonist, while still hating them “as a person”, and there’s loving them as a person.
I don’t think you have to like or sympathize with a villain to acknowledge and respect the amount of care that went into their characterization and backstory, and it can be very engaging to explore what makes them tick, the hows and whys. Let’s take Hannibal Lecter, for example. Not the best example, admittedly, because everyone and their dog wants to boink Mads Mikkelsen and thus tends to overlook Lecter’s actual flaws, like being a cannibalistic serial killer, but as someone who has read Thomas Harris’ novels ages ago, there’s no denying in my opinion that Lecter works exceptionally well as a human mystery. He’s so damn intriguing, and it’s so fascinating and engaging to dig deeper. You don’t have to appreciate his cannibalistic tendencies in order to do so.
I’m not saying Winter plays in the same league as Hannibal Lecter, but they manage to do something I am desperately looking for in so many forms of media I consume: They scare the shit out of me. I want to feel scared, I enjoy being scared. But unfortunately I’m one of those people who never get scared watching horror movies or reading books. The only time I remember feeling truly scared was back when I first played Silent Hill 1-3. I’m not trying to sound edgy here, because honestly, it really wasn’t all that cool, I always felt like I was missing out on something while others where having so much fun with random horror movie 28372.
Winter is the only villain I’ve come across in a piece of IF who feels like a threat to me. And it has actually nothing to do with their tendency for backstabbing and murder, which everyone tends to focus on. I find their abusive, manipulative, volatile nature you only get to see if you decide to get close to them and start experimenting with different choices, way more disturbing. They may be a god-goddess in bed, but only as long as you play exactly by their rules. Try rejecting them, or worse, make them feel like they’re being led on, and see what happens. It’s deeply unsettling, and unlike cutlass-swinging changeling pirates, it’s a form of violence that’s very realistic and can hit very close to home.

As for “loving them as a person”… I’d love nothing more than gushing over them uninterruptedly for the next two hours, but this thread isn’t the right place. I’m the only Winter fan around at the moment, so it’d just be me opening up and sharing personal stuff (because my biggest reasons are very personal), only to be met with silence or “Yeah, I don’t get it”. Or alternatively, I could list less personal, minor details I love about them (like how cute they are when they act like a 14 year old atheist edgelord while waiting for you outside the temple in Dree), but those reasons would be even less convincing to those who have already formed an opinion on them. I’m not gonna change anyone’s mind here, and like I said, that’s not what I’m here for, and it’s perfectly understandable to hate them.
But I hope it’s just as understandable how it makes me feel uncomfortable, seeing a character I feel so attached to, who helps me through so much real life shit right now just by distracting me, getting ripped to pieces here, and even have it indirectly implied I’m creepy for liking them.

[JBento]

UGH, FINE! For YOU, I’ll say something nice about Winter.
…
Hold on.
…
Something will come to me.
…
Aaaaaaaany moment now…
…
I’m sure of it.
…
Er…
Um.
They…
Er.
They make @Hayden_Winter feel better?

[Hayden_Winter]

Appreciated! I know this wasn’t easy. And hey - it’s true!