![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
(no subject)
zihark's such an interesting take on the nabarl archetype since most of them are about bettering their blade skills, bettering themselves in some fashion or another. bettering themselves by getting revenge.
and at first blush zihark's whole character arc (like tellius deconstructing everything else) is him dedicated to bettering the world/bettering his country. not himself. (it's funny. i hate idealists as characters. so many things about his character i should have bounced off on.) except....
this is also tellius, and that's not quite the entire story, is it?
he's an idealist at his heart but he's a sellsword like every other nabarl. he fights for a better world for laguz but he's more daein than he wants to admit, and can and does stick with them until ideals are warped beyond recognition. on the flip side he fights for a better world but makes jokes about cutting down humans in port toha. he also has a tendency to waffle/stall enough that he can pretend that blood is out of his hands (the quote unquote quasi-bad ending of him staying with micaiah's army in p3 of radiant dawn is, quite illuminating. my heart aches for him there but it's also a very very needful view of one angle of his character).
honestly it's zihark's constant hypocrisy (tension, inherent contradiction) that's the most fascinating part of his character - he's deft and light (distant?) enough that it never quite rings as the blatant hypocrisy that it is, or hint of the real dark side that i do think he contains but more or less steers himself away from. (he's very libra like that. judge, jury, smiling executioner all in one). i think he has a deliberate, cultivated tendency to skitter away (from himself, from others) before seeing emotional consequences - a necessary defense, learned the hard way. none of us wants to feel hurt, but there's almost a certain empty, restless extreme quality to it that only catches up to him in the P3 bit mentioned above.
paints quite a bit different of a picture than the selfless idealist, doesn't it.
in this essay i shall -
and at first blush zihark's whole character arc (like tellius deconstructing everything else) is him dedicated to bettering the world/bettering his country. not himself. (it's funny. i hate idealists as characters. so many things about his character i should have bounced off on.) except....
this is also tellius, and that's not quite the entire story, is it?
he's an idealist at his heart but he's a sellsword like every other nabarl. he fights for a better world for laguz but he's more daein than he wants to admit, and can and does stick with them until ideals are warped beyond recognition. on the flip side he fights for a better world but makes jokes about cutting down humans in port toha. he also has a tendency to waffle/stall enough that he can pretend that blood is out of his hands (the quote unquote quasi-bad ending of him staying with micaiah's army in p3 of radiant dawn is, quite illuminating. my heart aches for him there but it's also a very very needful view of one angle of his character).
honestly it's zihark's constant hypocrisy (tension, inherent contradiction) that's the most fascinating part of his character - he's deft and light (distant?) enough that it never quite rings as the blatant hypocrisy that it is, or hint of the real dark side that i do think he contains but more or less steers himself away from. (he's very libra like that. judge, jury, smiling executioner all in one). i think he has a deliberate, cultivated tendency to skitter away (from himself, from others) before seeing emotional consequences - a necessary defense, learned the hard way. none of us wants to feel hurt, but there's almost a certain empty, restless extreme quality to it that only catches up to him in the P3 bit mentioned above.
paints quite a bit different of a picture than the selfless idealist, doesn't it.