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Yotsuyu Goe Brutus - Blog Posts
“His heart knows naught but guilt. Seeks naught but forgiveness.”
I’m gonna be honest this ain’t it. Your article basically takes these two complicated and interesting characters and strips them down to how “masculine” and “feminine” they are, all the while cherry picking moments and dialogue to fit your needs. But most importantly, you seem to be ignoring who these characters are, their motivations and goals and why they did what they did.
Let’s start with Fordola.
In your complaints about Fordola in the English localization you pretty much focus entirely on one set of scenes, the ones with Fordola in prison. The first you point out the missing tattoo scene and how it leaves out how she’s fighting as an Ala Mhigan. But this completely ignores her monologue in Specula Imperatorius where she basically says that she’s fighting so that Ala Mhigans can be seen as equal in Garlemald. You claim this means she’s denying being Ala Mhigan, but that’s just blatantly untrue. And her Resonant Scene wasn’t her simping for the WOL, it was her asking “how are you not a broken, miserable person like I am?” You say the removal of her tattoo scene makes her look stupid and less sympathetic, but that’s basically only works if you just, like completely ignore her backstory and everything we know about how Garlemald (especially under Gaius) operates.
Now let’s move on to Yotsuyu.
First and foremost, your assertion that Yotsuyu didn’t get redeemed because of “how much of a woman she is about it” is just completely ridiculous. You can only come to that conclusion if you just ignore everything about Yotsuyu, who she is, her motivations, her goals etc. While it’s true that the actions done to her are were because she is a woman, this is really just missing the forest for the trees. Yotsuyu doesn’t just hate the people who did bad things to her she hates everyone else who just stood by and let it happen. And this isn’t speculation or anything she says this out loud, in game.
If Yotsuyu were a man and was, say, forced into hard labor or servitude, he’d still hate the domans all the same and would be just as cruel to them. This is kinda the point of the Tsuyu plot. No matter which choice you make things don’t go well for her. Let her live as Tsuyu and she lives in a place where everyone hates her for something she can’t remember doing. Let her go back to being Yotsuyu and she’ll just be back to what she did before. While I will concede it could have been written better, the point still stands. It could have been Asahi, her parents, Jifuya, or just the constant hatred and suspicion from the Domans, something would have caused her to snap. To quote the game and Yotsuyu herself again.
And perhaps most importantly, and I cannot stress this enough Yotsuyu did not get a redemption because Yotsuyu did not want a redemption. Redemption is something that must be actively worked for by the person who wants to be redeemed.
Final Thoughts: You’re big issue is that you’ve taken two characters that have similarities and basically said that because the more feminine one did not get the kind of redemption you wanted her to, that the writers are misogynist. But your take completely ignores the fact that beyond these similarities Fordola and Yotsuyu had very different motivations and goals.
Fordola loved Ala Mhigo and wanted to what she thought was best for it. It’s just that her thinking has become corrupted by a childhood of tragedy and Garlean Propogands.
Yotsuyu hated Doma and the Domans for letting her suffer as bystanders and to put it simply, was never going to be like Fordola. Yotsuyu would probably much rather die than so much as lift a finger for Doma or the Domans
I wrote an article comparing fordola and yotsuyu's arcs you should read it❗