fukaimetsu

Something that's been on my mind....

Thinking about how each Xenoblade entry focuses on one of the Trinities, where the narrative and story revolve around how the Trinity behaves, it feels so much like a reflection of human "fantasies" about "female" and "male" fantasy. It's hard to explain, but take XB2 for example, where the main focus is Pneuma. Pneuma's personalities (Pyra & Mythra) behave a lot like what the "ideal" woman looks like from a male point of view. People often think Pyra and Mythra’s demeanor is for Rex, but I digress — I think there’s some meta-commentary in the story. Their portrayal wasn’t meant to titillate Rex, but rather the player (at least that’s what I think). Pyra and Mythra's personalities follow popular female character archetypes or tropes that are well-liked by male audiences in Japanese media. Pyra being the Yamato Nadeshiko (Ideal Wife), while Mythra is the tsundere, adding moe and cuteness, one of the most popular archetypes in many danseimuke media.

It just makes me think that the Trinity Processors were really designed to appeal to, and incorporate, many tropes that players like. In XB1, Ontos feels like a character designed for both male and female players, like Ontos is a combination of both. Though personally, I feel Alvis was more catered to female audiences, hahaha.

As for Logos, we don’t know yet because we haven’t had a Logos-focused game (and no, XB3 doesn’t count, Logos doesn’t play an active role there). But we can guess that Malos seems designed with male audiences in mind, maybe because his resonator was a man (Amalthus). So in a way, Malos or Logos  tailored his personality to appeal to male sensibilities.

Damn, I’m rambling, but I wonder if the Trinity behaves that way based on which human they resonate with? Pneuma resonates with men, and Ontos resonates with both women and men, so their personality and demeanor are tailored to be an idealized version of the gender their ''resonator" represents. Since Logos also resonated with a man, maybe he's also tailored to appeal to males fantasy?

Hmmm... I wonder which gender the XB4 protagonist will be, and who they'll resonate with — Logos, perhaps? Just makes me curious.

I've been stalking some Japanese Malos fan accounts because I wanted to know their thoughts, and I found out that a lot of them like Madoka Magica and love Homura. It’s such a funny coincidence—how Malos fans also tend to like Homura. I knew it! Anyone who likes Malos would definitely like Homura too.

The really interesting thing is that one person mentioned that, between Pyra and Mythra, the one who probably hasn’t forgiven Malos is Mythra—because in a way, Malos is responsible for Milton’s death and for sinking the Torna Titan.

And I totally agree with that. It just makes sense when you think about it. I can see Pyra being able to forgive Malos, she knows what he did, but she only witnessed Mythra’s trauma from an outside perspective. In a way, she’s not really that emotionally attached to Torna. She feels guilty, yeah, but I feel like that guilt is more imprinted on her or forced onto her rather than something she organically experienced. You can even hear it in her voice—whenever Pyra talks about Torna, there's a distant tone in how she speaks, like she's explaining it from what she knew, not from firsthand experience.

Mythra, on the other hand, experienced everything directly and actually developed real bonds with a lot of the Torna cast. So she’s the most hurt. I can totally see her having a hard time forgiving Malos if they met post-game—she’d probably want nothing to do with him.

It just makes me think about an AU scenario where Malos survives the whole ordeal at the World Tree and ends up joining Rex's crew or something. It would be super interesting to see how Mythra would behave toward him in that kind of setting.