Yeah, that really was a spectacular failure. Jumping straight to an accusation? Definitely realistic, but it hurts Terra so badly that I really can't blame him for his reaction.
It also sort of killed me that she did it right in front of Ven, their mutual little brother figure. I know this was something weighing so heavily on Aqua's mind she didn't have any idea how to approach it gracefully, so it just sort of got blurted out, but daaaamn.
I guess the thing is, by that point, Aqua was essentially The Boy Who Cried Wolf. The advice that she gave Terra and the advice that Terra needed were actually the same thing... but he'd found her to be so unhelpful before that he had no reason to listen.
I can see that! I do think my reading is slightly different, but that sounds like a totally reasonable, and equally tragic, reading to me as well. I think for me, the thing is is that I'm not sure where I see a transition to Aqua started to question her views and such—so even if it was the right advice for the situation at the time, it's still sort of coming from a wrong overall mindset. (I-I'm not sure if that parsing makes any sense, though.)
It definitely is nice, though, to note that her approach when asking Terra what happened was definitely different from Radiant Garden – giving Terra an opening to actually explain himself and clarify the actual circumstances of what happened.
I think we've sort of been trained to expect tragic heroes to be, well... not particularly sympathetic, honestly. And Terra, especially, had the specter of Anakin Skywalker hanging over his head, and Anakin's the poster boy for the "tragic hero" who deserves everything he had coming to him.
Yeah, you nailed it on the head. And not just the specter of Anakin—also that of Riku, too, who had that same arrogant, smug streak in the first game and seemed to be primarily acting from a hurt superiority complex, which is... not exactly the most automatically sympathetic thing. (Saying this as someone who really likes Riku, ahaha.)
Okay, I think I might have phrased my thoughts wrong.
No, no, like I said, I'm actually super thrilled to get to discuss this and trade different viewpoints, because my reading, like any other reading, probably has certain holes or blind spots in it and it's really fun to talk about in depth.
Terra's definitely broken, I agree. But I think the thing he gave up on isn't so much his ideal of being a good person as himself in general. It wasn't that he stopped fighting as much as he stopped caring about what happened to him as a result of it, because he thought he deserved whatever he had coming to him. If he had to destroy himself, mentally or physically, to take out Master Xehanort... well, that was just the price he'd have to pay for allowing himself to get taken advantage of in the first place.
...which, come to think of it, is really dark. O_0
Hmm, I think it's kind of a fine line between readings—it is
very obvious, either way, that Terra no longer thinks what happens to him is important (he tells Aqua to kill him in Last Episode, after all...)
But to me, when he's standing there, smirking, and saying things like “even if my heart is consumed,
even if I become an object of Darkness itself...” I don't think those suggestions occur in a vacuum on a couple of levels. The first thing here is that Terra was, after all, raised with that viewpoint that equates darkness with evil, and in the entire scope of things I don't think I see cause to think Terra's outlook on that has changed by the end of the game—the only person telling him differently was Master Xehanort, who spectacularly trolled him in the end with that advice by manipulating him into playing a part in killing Eraqus and destroying the Land of Departure. Terra did flirt with an alternate view of the nature of darkness, but then he saw that ending with horrific results.
So even with a reading that “Terra is exclusively talking about the parts of himself he's willing to sacrifice” (which I'm noooot quite entirely convinced of—the way he pulls that 'I don't care what has to be sacrificed' bit really struck me as ominous, but that's super subjective for sure)--he's still announcing, basically, “even if I become an object of evil, if it means accomplishing my goals, I now accept that.”
Basically, I don't think Terra announcing he's resolved to plunge himself entirely into darkness, become darkness itself, he doesn't
care anymore, is quite the equivalent of “I'm willing to die.” It's the equivalent of “I'm willing to become something monstrous and potentially dangerous to those around me”--and there's a shift there, because at the beginning of Last Episode, he
does tell us, and Aqua, that he's willing to die, he wants to be put down—but my feeling is that that may have shifted when Terra realized he still had something he had to do, even if he was dark and evil to his own mind: help his friends.
It is entirely possible I'm reading too much into it, though! SOMETIMES THAT HAPPENS.
I've kind of taken to assuming that Terra's not really responsible for much of what either of those two did, since their actions have very little in common with anything he's ever done. And in Xemnas' case, it'd be really weird to say that Terra had any measure of control, since Ven didn't seem to have any direct control with Roxas.
The more interesting question, in my mind, is how much Terra will feel he's responsible for. Even if he wasn't the one driving their actions, if he knew what they did, he might feel responsible simply because he didn't off himself properly when he had the chance. =/
Yeah, this is something that's going to have a huge variety of readings, all valid until we get more information—for me, the Secret Ending on Terra's part amounted to “oh man, oh
damn, I
get Xemnas and his goals now”--there's too much going on between the ending and the Ultimania and KH2 that's implying or sometimes outright stating that Xemnas was at least partially acting on Terra's memories, that something really iffy was going on with Xehanort's supposed “amnesia”--but a lot amounts to speculation, and like I said, for me personally it's hard to tackle until I know for sure. Again, I might be reading into certain things too much!!!
But I do honestly think it's apparent—and much more interesting to me than Terra the self-loathing but mostly innocent victim—that even if Terra didn't “influence” Xemnas directly, Xemnas is in part a shadow of Terra who partially inherited his intentions and what was important to him, even if those things became corrupted or distorted somehow. Terra's identity basically being a glorified, scattered jigsaw puzzle for so long is in itself kind of an interesting thing to explore in and of itself, too, though.
chasespicer056 said:
It seems like part of the reason Aqua didn't want Terra to fall into darkness is because she loved him and wanted him to love her back. But if he fell into darkness...he'd never be able to do that.
L-lol, I'm not sure I buy into a reading that Aqua was in love with Terra--honestly, I just didn't get that vibe from her when she sacrificed herself to save him, for instance--but I do think there is a sense of ambiguity to her feelings (moreso than with Terra, at least), the certain ways she kind of dwells on him that can be read into. It is true that, iirc, after Aqua tossed that line re: love at Maleficent, Maleficent countered with "too bad about Terra dohohoho." XD;
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