Question of the Day!
Is there any point in canon your WoL would have behaved differently?
(submitted by @ismene, prompt originally from Twitter user @ cei_no_)
"Under most circumstances, I would probably say that I've never done anything wrong in my life and I'm always correct about everything. You may think that sounds arrogant, but when you've lived with as much doubt as I have I think you're allowed a little bit of overcompensation. It's also a bit of pragmatism; I'm not so much an 'everything happens for a reason' kind of gal, but I try to be a 'whatever happens, happens' kind when I can.
"That being said, if I could get Real™ for a moment, even I can admit that early on in my adventures I had a real problem with indulging in bloodlust from time to time. As much as I'd like to say it was justified, the truth is I never cared about justifying it in the moment.
"On the flipside of that, I do sometimes wish I would've killed Zenos in a way he couldn't have come back from earlier. A bit more bloodlust may have been useful there.
"At the end of the day though, it's always a tricky situation to think about what you might have done differently in the past. It's not just the potential to spiral into regret, but also the question of what might have happened if things were different, y'know? Are there people I never would have met? Opportunities I never would have had? That sorta shit can fry your brain if you let it."
Okay let's try this again.
While the topic of things she regrets remain more or less the same, the truth of the matter is that, in terms of the broad strokes, Aigead's journey follows the details of the canon pretty closely. There aren't wild deviations from the events that actually happen, though specifics of how she reacts to it may be different.
Things such as Estinien's constant dismissal of Ysayle in Heavensward, the way the game sympathizes with and redeems van Hydrus, the way the game does everything it can to avoid doing so with Yotsuyu, etc etc, are all things that I personally dislike in how they're written and presented and I do express these via my WoL's story, but they are all still things that happen.
This is in part, I suppose, due to the way I consume narratives. It's important to approach the story with a critical eye and identify the ways in which it falls short, but I also prefer to take the story as it is because otherwise I'm concerned I'd run the risk of becoming upset that it's not living up to the version of it I've constructed myself.
On that note, I have written about the events I'm critical of in this post and how Aigead reacted to them in-canon in a few short fanfic pieces.
The Drake and the Dragoon (Calling Estinien out on his treatment of Ysayle)
Fraying at the Edges (Covers Aigead's thoughts on van Hydrus)
An Echo, A Mirror (Covers Aigead's thoughts on the treatment of Yotsuyu in 4.0 patch content)
My Eyes Are Shining, My Hope Igniting (Resolution to Aigead's sympathy for Yotsuyu)