Noire's Father

[amielleon]

This post is not about designer intent. This post is not about designer intent. This post is not about designer intent. From a designer intent standpoint, the issue can probably be summarized as, "they thought it was lulz and no big deal."

This post is like my post about Ike and the epilogue, an attempt at sensibly reconciling these things in some way that enriches rather than cheapens the universe, for pretentious fic writing purposes or general peace of mind or whatever.

All right. So. Noire's daddy.

The issue at hand is this: Tharja, both in the other universe and this one, has used Noire for experimenting with new hexes for what appears to be a pretty long time. And Tharja's spouse has dealt with this by going up and confronting Tharja and getting the hex transferred to him instead for his efforts. Beyond this, in the present world, he also steals Tharja's hexing implements in an attempt to stop it for good -- but Noire explicitly says that he'd never tried anything like that in the alpha timeline.

So what's up with that, dad? Why didn't you deal with the matter in some way to stop it once and for all?

1. Physical limitations

Let's say he tries to physically leave Tharja. Grab Noire and run or whatever.

First of all, it's not really clear how far they'd have to run to be out of the danger zone, if ever. Henry/Olivia, Henry/Tharja, and Henry/Sully supports all indirectly suggest that hexes can affect a target fairly distant from the caster. Can you get far away enough from Tharja? She's probably got a lifetime supply of hair hidden away, and she might just make you projectile vomit slugs until you come crawling back. With the possible exception of Henry (who apparently finds the runny nose curse too "delicate" to counterhex, but should probably be able to keep them safe from any seriously coercive hexes meant to bring them back, which are probably more mainstream) I don't think the dads could assert themselves against that unless they either outright killed Tharja or attempted to enlist the support of other army members, both of which are questionable options thanks to the following reason.

The second reason is that there are more dangerous things in the world than Tharja in this doomed timeline. A lot of them. Noire seems to suggest in her father A support that it's ~free will~ that's allowed her father to steal mommy's curse kit whereas he'd never tried before, but personally I think it's the difference in circumstances. In the doomed timeline you need every fighter you can get, and alienating a powerful mage who would protect your own child and everyone else's over the matter of runny nose hexes probably doesn't work out to be a gamble in your favor. Because while Tharja is a threat to her child, she's a threat on the level of "persistently causing discomfort," not "eaten alive" -- and insofar as larger threats are concerned, Tharja's presence helps¹ rather than hurts.

(I would actually be interested to know if there's scholarship on divorce in times of major, immediate, and external survival-related uncertainty, like if they go way down when a country's currently fighting a defensive war or recovering from a tsunami or something. I do know that there's research done [a lot of it] on the matter of economic dependence, but I think the "Child Getting Hurt vs Where Next Meal Come From?" question is a very different one from "Child Getting Hurt vs Will Zombie Eat Child?" question. In the latter, both sides of the scale are about the child's well-being.)

Considering that Tharja outlived Dad, his staying with her may have even saved Noire's life.

In the present timeline, dad's already pulling stunts within months that alpha-timeline-dad never tried to pull. Perhaps their relationship is charted for a significantly different course in this timeline, now that no one has to play nice because of the zombies.

¹ Per Tharja/Noire A and the Future of Despair DLC, Tharja acted to protect Noire from serious threats, going so far as to sacrifice herself.


2. Social pressures

There are two people outside of daddy's own potential neuroses that might keep him attached to Tharja.

One of them is Tharja. By all accounts, he loves her and has probably seen her sweeter side, which might cause him to believe too much in her ability to ~change~ (or generally not do harmful things to their daughter). All right, that's daddy's weakness. But.

The other one is Noire -- because despite being afraid of her mother, Noire is also very clingy and feels warmly toward her. Judging by their interactions I'd certainly guess that Noire would object to the idea of being permanently (or near-permanently) separated from her mother.

And I suspect that when your daughter is squalling for you not to do something, it's harder to convince yourself that you're doing it for her sake, especially when your wife is using the same "it's good for her" excuse to do said questionable things.


3. Because he was dead

No, really.

Noire/Tharja C: "You were consumed with avenging Father, so you never had time to waste on me."

Dad died before Tharja. How much earlier? It sounds like it was a matter of years to me ("you never had the time to waste on me"?). I don't think the game clarifies. Perhaps it says in one of the Future of Despair Dad&Noire chats, but as far as I know there's no general statement about Noire's dads in general.

But it's certainly possible that the worst of it, the part that drove Noire to having a split personality and whatnot, came after dad was already gone. Yes, practicing hexes on your kid is certainly bad enough in principle, but when it's runny noses I think I can understand dad having a "Well, let me talk to her" mentality about it. I'm not sure I want to know what Tharja was practicing in her latter days.

Comments

[amielleon]

If you have something showing that Tharja is endangering the lives of many, I'd like to see that. Until then I think the argument goes the other way: people ignore Noire's plight because her mother is a valued member of the army, and cutting her off hurts their collective force and therefore everyone.

You often see victims overlooked IRL because their persecutors were more highly regarded by the community, and I think this is a sad little mirror of the very same effect, except driven by survival rather than status.

Incidentally, it is essentially possible to demonstrate any moral stance in Ylisse thanks to its hodgepodge inconsistency. I was only interested in demonstrating that a high evaluation of single lives doesn't come out of nowhere. (Incidentally, a high evaluation of life is a separate issue from that of the individual vs collectivism.)

[raphiael]

She's willing to hex her own child and husband. What, exactly, is stopping her from endangering the survival of everyone else? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Henry, at least, is apparently easy to call off or convince away. Tharja reacts with more violence, which, if you take it at more than a gag level, can seriously interfere with the survival of the people she's going for, to a point where it could very easily counter whatever usefulness she has. Ignoring that would take a whole lot of stupid on the part of the characters, and I'm trying not to go "they're all idiots".

Regardless of how valuable she is to the army, this isn't something like "she's annoying" or "she's weird" or "she's creepy". She is actively willing to endanger anybody and impossible to convince otherwise. So keeping her around would benefit few (her + her wet tissue husband's feelings if those are an issue) at the expense of many.

[blankspectrum]

Pardon me for jumping in here, but I think it's a big stretch to assume Tharja would turn on her allies because of her history with hexes. It's not supported by anything that I'm aware of in canon, and like Ammie said, we're never specifically told that she actually does anything more severe than inflicting crying and runny noses. I can't speak for the Japanese but in the English supports where she does perform hexes, the self-serving ones (not all of them are self-serving) tend to involve her, uh... putting people to sleep, or making them run mundane errands, for the most part. The worst she does is give Frederick a short-lived cold.

There are even examples in canon to support this. For one, no one else in the army ever seems to find her behavior worrisome enough to kick her out, either in the course of the game or in the future. I think that alone says a lot: Tharja's bad behavior is never perceived as severe enough to threaten her position. And even more specifically, Henry offers (more than once) to demonstrate to her a death curse on someone in the army, and Tharja refuses.

Tl;dr there are a number of instances that indicate a limit to Tharja's bad behavior.

And again, I'm not saying that her behavior, especially where Noire is concerned, is either desirable or defensible. I'm just saying that doing one type of bad thing doesn't make someone thoroughly evil, or even thoroughly dangerous.

I'm also inclined to agree with Ammie that this mirrors countless irl situations where people in positions of power get away with bad things, even though people might be aware of said bad things, simply because of their status and/or their perceived value to the community. I think it's very arguable that Tharja's value to the community, especially given the situation in the future and the indications that no one perceived her as a threat, outweighed whatever bad things others might have noticed her doing to her daughter. (And this isn't even factoring in other irl issues like bystander effect.)

[raphiael]

Putting people to sleep and doing things to eyes that cause constant crying, and again whatever she did to Noire, which again is pretty obviously suggested to be more, are things that would absolutely compromise people's ability to fight and defend themselves. Noire's reactions are more than enough; people not perceiving her as dangerous means nothing toward what she actually did. She's willing to do this to her own daughter in battle as punishment for being annoying, as evidenced by Noire being afraid she's going to do exactly that, so, yes, she would probably be okay doing it to anyone, for any reason, without any warning.

I'm not saying she's going to kill anyone. But she is endangering them by making it more likely that they will be killed. The failure to perceive her behavior as bad or dangerous does not mean it is not bad or dangerous. She could easily compromise enough characters to outweigh her benefit, and any assessment harsh enough to excuse child abuse for benefit would more likely excuse ditching a huge liability for greater benefit. This is a case where Tharja's not-just-one-thing does make her thoroughly dangerous to everyone. Keeping her around is more risk than benefit, unless she can outperform everyone she compromises, combined, all the time.

If the characters don't find her behavior bad enough to do something, then they're either stupid or favoring her above everyone else, including the child she is abusing. Either way, they're casually complicit in child abuse, and I'm allowed to find that unforgivable.

[amielleon]

If you really think that an unconsensual runny nose is more dangerous to the army's survival than a misinterpretedly-consensual death curse I don't think I really care to discuss this argument because we obviously have some very different base assessment of what hexes Tharja's throwing around. (Regardless of intent I'd certainly peg Henry as more dangerous.)

[raphiael]

Can't Henry be convinced to stop pretty easily? Tharja can't. I'm not sure why you're fixating on the nose thing when she compromises people's vision. I mean, if you don't think compromising someone's eyes is dangerous, that's fine, but I'd say it's a pretty clear problem. And that's if we're going with Tharja only doing what's explicitly said (and you completely dismiss Noire's fear.)

Objectively they should both be thrown out if we're talking about actual risk justification, so it still holds that Tharja helping more than she hurts is not a valid reason to keep her around when she is abusing her child.

[amielleon]

Because as far as I know, the runny nose thing is the only effect that persists into a battle. The others are cast in a well-guarded camp with knowledge that it's time to chill between battles. (Though I'm not totally sure where the eyes thing is from? Which support?) And while Henry can be called down, Robin's absence and the deterioration of a clear line of command makes that measure of safety suspect. If there's anything making Henry less of a threat, I'd say it's his potential character development -- an argument that holds well enough for Tharja too, if she's no longer cursing comrades since she has her daughter (and one guinea pig is enough, per Noire epilogue).

Morally speaking it's quite sick, very "Those who walked away from Omelas", but in the face of the apocalypse I think it's a very different matter from a setting without such dangers.

[raphiael]

When is there a guaranteed safe time to chill between battles in this future? Even if there was one, it would still compromise essential rest time. And there's really no indication that Tharja's waiting til it's "safe" to abuse her child -- again, Noire's afraid Tharja's going to hex her due to her actions when fighting.

The eye thing is from Noire's dad support.
Every time you talked back, Mother cursed you up to your eyeballs.
...Or sometimes she just cursed your eyeballs, and you cried yourself to sleep.

If you take that in the least seriously, rather than lol-FE13-gag, which is the goal... yeah. The only reason Tharja is not regarded as dangerous is because the game treats this as a gag. She is definitely dangerous, and continues to be. And if that's treated as "it's okay, she's hurting Noire, not us", then every single character becomes morally repugnant in a way that's totally unacknowledged by text, thus not adding interest but horror to the lot of them.

[amielleon]

I just checked the original and in the Japanese it just says "cursed" him. I'm not inclined to take the English forced joke any more seriously than the butter scorpions and Yay Blood

Also, Noire was "pretty young" when Tharja died so I doubt she was fighting. I think her fear stems from not knowing if Tharja would, and fearing the worst.

I tossed out #1 and #2 because they would conspire to make the vast majority of people make the same or similar decision. It's not for the sale of excusing his actions in that universe where it happens, but pointing out that the potential for falling into such a role is something many, many people have, and so I don't think the Kakusei guys necessarily deserve to be judged as unusually terrible people because of how we know they'd react to it

[sain]

Suddenly I wonder if any of the Dad/Noire Doomed DLCs address when/how they disappeared.

But that sounds like a horribly time-consuming project and I'm not so invested in Tharja that I really need to find out with any degree of speed. NoA will get to it eventually. :u I'd rather find out about other characters.


Though that note about added 'joke' is interesting. Thanks for looking that up.

[Also, Noire was "pretty young" when Tharja died so I doubt she was fighting. I think her fear stems from not knowing if Tharja would, and fearing the worst.]

This is a definite possibility. I mean, we know Tharja is a dangerous mage, and if she died relatively early and Noire was supplemented with horror stories about how Tharja wrecked entire armies, fear can be intensified especially in such a generally meek and complacent person as Noire. Fear can intensify or twist a LOT of reactions really. On a far more tame example, I know that I like having extended periods to focus on projects, and if I'm 'afraid' I'll be interrupted with inane or annoying bits, oftentimes I'll default to extreme laziness on the basis of 'well I won't be able to get anything done ANYWAY,' and while this by no means is anything like 'ogod if I screw up she'll curse me,' fear of the unknown can definitely affect people in strange ways.

On the Dad front, I also wonder if there was perhaps something that debilitated or detained them, thus preventing them from being able to engage in a more active involvement in Noire's raising. I mean, it sucks, but it's not unusual to consider that Dad may have had his hands full earning food/money/protecting the home from Risen and in his exhaustion coming back he just didn't have the capacity to intervene in Tharja's questionable child-rearing methods. In a timeline where this isn't an issue, he could definitely play a stronger role, as indicated by how quickly and negatively Dad reacts to finding cursed Noire and the statement that he couldn't do much more than take the blows for her in the future.


but anyway, just musing here.

[raphiael]

Yes, nothing says appropriate script gag quite like domestic abuse. Thanks, NoA!
But Tharja still does try every new magic she cooks up on Noire. Not just the cute ones. All of them. Unless you discount what Noire says as just not counting, which seems counter to this.

There are totally legitimate reasons why Renault could have killed Lucius' parents, and totally legitimate reasons for Niime to encourage her sons and grandsons into playing with soul-eating magic, but no one takes exception to me hating their guts or offers excuses about how understandably human their actions are. Canon calls all the fathers "pathetic". Claiming "well Tharja could be more help than hurt" is all conjecture and counter to text, and really just seems like a way to make them look less bad than they actually are. They had a child and a wife who, while helpful, was also willing to curse them and said child (at least) whenever the fancy struck her. They decide to stay with her instead of doing the sane thing and getting away from her. It's a shitty decision.

Either the fathers die extremely early, or they are all abusers with no reason that stands to scrutiny (without discounting Noire's words or adding a thick layer of "what if" to it) outside cowardice. They are people who end up like that unless they're made to feel bad about how pathetic they are by their abused future daughter. Why shouldn't they be judged harshly? Because people do these things all the time? It's still abuse, and abuse should be judged harshly. Every man who can marry Tharja is a potentially abusive father, and I have every right to feel deeply uncomfortable with this fact. It's great that you guys don't, and I'm not saying you have to. What I was saying was that even with conjectural excuses, they are still abusers unless they die very early on and continue to do everything possible to protect future Noire (which they explicitly do not - nice job abandoning her with furious Tharja on the way, guys!), and I do not like abusers.