a meta essay on Jill's arc(s)
May. 12th, 2021 12:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kradeelavI've seen a lot of folks mention how Jill's character arc in PoR was fabulous and a whole reasonably-nuanced thing on learning how to grow past ingrained prejudices and nationalistic upbringing,
These same folks often turn around and say her character arc sucks/regressed in RD. On the surface, i can see why - she goes from tentatively and then genuinely making friends with Lethe to suddenly fighting against the Laguz Army without hesitation or self-examination. However, I'm going to disagree.In this essay, i shall-
You can't mention Jill in Radiant Dawn without mentioning how she grew in Path of Radiance. Born and raised in the oppressive, militaristic, racist, authoritarian nation that is Daein, she takes her chance for battlefield glory by flying after Ike and his mercs and demanding that she fights with them against laguz. Time goes by - and she slowly changes her mind by observing, talking with the mercs, and eventually making lifelong friendships
Interestingly, the subtext is that she finds a home with the mercenaries that she never found even back home in Talrega. I do wonder if she looked at the end of the war with a secret sense of dread that it was going to be the end of her happy oddball family. Lethe was always going to have to go back to Gallia as Mist would always roam with Ike.
So the end of the war comes ... and she's faced with where to go next. Imagine, she's fought and grown her way through Ike's mercenaries and campaign (she was a bit young when she joined them, mid to late teens, and that's a vulnerable age already). Conversely, the one other option for her is back at a ruined Daein. There is nothing left for her to come back to in Talrega in the sense she could slot back into pre-war life. Her dad's dead, Talregans hate her (see: random mook battle conversations in PoR), and Haar... well.
She's still young, she still seeks approval and need of fitting in *somewhere* and Haar (canonically in contact with her in those 3 years) ... doesn't have what she needs. He's jaded to hell and like a lot of older adults, doesn't trust any kind of communal group due to the necessity of switching all the sides. I can actually see the two of them having arguments about that in those 3 years between the wars, actually - maybe even a reason why they don't mind not seeing each other for a while, in-between wyvern mail deliveries.
So somehow she wanders over to Tauroneo/Zihark and almost accidentally finds herself in a *Daein* (home-flavored, to her) tribe that doesn't hate her, and doesn't have the stink of Ashnard's misdeeds on it (at first). Then comes Micaiah who (to me) has the same sort of charismatic flavor as a cult leader ...
Of *course* she's going to grab onto that like an anchor of a lifeline, and be willfully blind to the warning signs like when Pelleas starts getting manipulated/coerced by Begnion. She hasn't quite been burned by the idea of her new-found community turning against her ethics slowly like Haar (the whole Shiharam thing) or Zihark has (being slightly older, knowing just how bad Daein can be with the dead laguz girlfriend, and with vigilantes).
She cooks like a boiling lobster in a pot - calling it "indoctrination" is maybe a stretch (I promise i actually like Micaiah these days lol) - but there's a brilliant sort of subtle subtextual sense that Jill is not willing to give up her newfound tribe/family/(nationalistic cult) because she has no other ties available, and a little bit also because of her youth. Shit is corrosive is hell. There's a reason why maladaptive religions recruit from the young and those with no community.
iirc Haar and an A-support Lethe/Mist are the only three people that can recruit her back over in RD P3. Haar makes sense - she trusts him, he's able to remind her what her real ethics are, and he's been around her since childhood so there's a real sense of always being able to belong "with" him regardless of the surroundings. Lethe and Mist also makes sense given they're very physical reminders of what she experienced in PoR (hell you can read it romantically if you want, too) - and she's torn enough that she only really needs a push one way or another to defect back over again.
anyway Jill's interesting, and a very "real" character to me (similar to Zihark), and i feel like most people don't give her RD self enough credit. :v
These same folks often turn around and say her character arc sucks/regressed in RD. On the surface, i can see why - she goes from tentatively and then genuinely making friends with Lethe to suddenly fighting against the Laguz Army without hesitation or self-examination. However, I'm going to disagree.
You can't mention Jill in Radiant Dawn without mentioning how she grew in Path of Radiance. Born and raised in the oppressive, militaristic, racist, authoritarian nation that is Daein, she takes her chance for battlefield glory by flying after Ike and his mercs and demanding that she fights with them against laguz. Time goes by - and she slowly changes her mind by observing, talking with the mercs, and eventually making lifelong friendships
Interestingly, the subtext is that she finds a home with the mercenaries that she never found even back home in Talrega. I do wonder if she looked at the end of the war with a secret sense of dread that it was going to be the end of her happy oddball family. Lethe was always going to have to go back to Gallia as Mist would always roam with Ike.
So the end of the war comes ... and she's faced with where to go next. Imagine, she's fought and grown her way through Ike's mercenaries and campaign (she was a bit young when she joined them, mid to late teens, and that's a vulnerable age already). Conversely, the one other option for her is back at a ruined Daein. There is nothing left for her to come back to in Talrega in the sense she could slot back into pre-war life. Her dad's dead, Talregans hate her (see: random mook battle conversations in PoR), and Haar... well.
She's still young, she still seeks approval and need of fitting in *somewhere* and Haar (canonically in contact with her in those 3 years) ... doesn't have what she needs. He's jaded to hell and like a lot of older adults, doesn't trust any kind of communal group due to the necessity of switching all the sides. I can actually see the two of them having arguments about that in those 3 years between the wars, actually - maybe even a reason why they don't mind not seeing each other for a while, in-between wyvern mail deliveries.
So somehow she wanders over to Tauroneo/Zihark and almost accidentally finds herself in a *Daein* (home-flavored, to her) tribe that doesn't hate her, and doesn't have the stink of Ashnard's misdeeds on it (at first). Then comes Micaiah who (to me) has the same sort of charismatic flavor as a cult leader ...
Of *course* she's going to grab onto that like an anchor of a lifeline, and be willfully blind to the warning signs like when Pelleas starts getting manipulated/coerced by Begnion. She hasn't quite been burned by the idea of her new-found community turning against her ethics slowly like Haar (the whole Shiharam thing) or Zihark has (being slightly older, knowing just how bad Daein can be with the dead laguz girlfriend, and with vigilantes).
She cooks like a boiling lobster in a pot - calling it "indoctrination" is maybe a stretch (I promise i actually like Micaiah these days lol) - but there's a brilliant sort of subtle subtextual sense that Jill is not willing to give up her newfound tribe/family/(nationalistic cult) because she has no other ties available, and a little bit also because of her youth. Shit is corrosive is hell. There's a reason why maladaptive religions recruit from the young and those with no community.
iirc Haar and an A-support Lethe/Mist are the only three people that can recruit her back over in RD P3. Haar makes sense - she trusts him, he's able to remind her what her real ethics are, and he's been around her since childhood so there's a real sense of always being able to belong "with" him regardless of the surroundings. Lethe and Mist also makes sense given they're very physical reminders of what she experienced in PoR (hell you can read it romantically if you want, too) - and she's torn enough that she only really needs a push one way or another to defect back over again.
anyway Jill's interesting, and a very "real" character to me (similar to Zihark), and i feel like most people don't give her RD self enough credit. :v
