One topic I would like to talk about , focusing on the 4 rank adventurers, Heinz, Vandeliu, Schneider and Randolph (Borkus, Godwin and Vigaro have never had their butt bitten by their actions again). as I have little time I will summarize it. Vandeliu is a hedonist with a strong sense of responsibility, his existence, even if he keeps it to himself, is an agonizing contradiction. Heinz made a lot of mistakes, but he was on the right track until he wanted to cover more than he could. Eventually, he would find himself at tipping points, where the option of being responsible and paying the virtue of his "sponsors" led him to ignore the path he originally wanted to take. Schneider tells himself alone, although ironically, he is the most competent of the 4, he knew when to stop and with enough patience he was able to put in place the consequences of the acts of his youth. and randolph is someone who tries to act like nothing has meaning and meaning when it clearly does for him, and all for Spoiler not knowing how to manage your personal and work life , I bet at 16 or 18 when I feel that he lived his childhood
Van is not an adventurer, and although he once wanted to be, he has lost interest as he's less than impressed with what the guild has to offer. About his only positive experience is with the guild master in Morksi, and even that guy hesitates to bring Van into the fold. As for his personality, Van has legitimate mental illness, perhaps several illnesses, but he is still legally sane, and is the first to step forward and admit responsibility for his words and deeds. His primary motivation is to keep himself and his people safe and happy. He doesn't give a rat's behind what some xenophobic, genocidal, paranoid, self-professed "God of Order" has to say about that. If anything, if he's left alone, he'll happily return the favor, far more often than not, and he'll go out of his way to spare the innocent if at all possible. None of his enemies can say the same. Heinz... I want to like him, I really do. He means well and genuinely wants to be a bona fide hero, crusading to make the world a better place. Heinz himself makes that absolutely impossible. I've said it before and I'll say it again. He is the victim of "Perspective Flip." If the story were mostly, if not exclusively, from his perspective, the readers would be cheering for his success and, at best, pitying Van because of the long laundry list of crimes our dear Dhampir has been forced to commit to stay alive. Unfortunately for Heinz, the story focuses on the perspective of just about everyone else. From his perspective, Heinz is walking a tightrope, trying to end nearly 100,000 years of horrific persecution while having to work within the system that fosters said persecution. Every time he makes a mistake, it's because of outside factors beyond his control, the situations leading up to the mistake were beyond reproach, or both. While Van deserves some pity for the fact that one of his early adventuring career mistakes led to the boy being orphaned and hunted for a bounty starting at infancy, the dhampir's retribution is wildly disproportionate and the poor boy has to be stopped, no matter the cost. From the perspective of everyone else, especially his own party members, this is predominantly a convenient self-delusion that said party fosters so Heinz doesn't dissolve into a pool of guilt and self-pity, throwing himself into a depression, as what happened in chapter 203 when he's in Mills's domain after Darcia herself blasted him to kingdom come in a rage, and it gets worse. Heinz hates himself for walking up and attacking a dark-elf woman walking down the street, knowing she would be horribly tortured and killed, and then spending the next three days, as she's being publicly tortured, eating lavish meals in the tavern, and seeing the town celebrate with her primary accuser Orbie and his stooges, bragging about how that "bitch is getting what's hers for spurning his 'love confession'" and how "eating luxurious food is the best way to honor her", all because he never, ever bothered to validate the hand-delivered note from Baronet Bestero claiming that she was a high-ranking member of an evil cult. Then "tries to atone" by taking kill quests without verifying them beforehand either, wiping out not just his quest target(s) but the entire villages they come from, for the better part of 10 years, and rounding up body parts to turn in for cash. The one time a party member, Jennifer, did call him out his actions, he glared at her until she gasped and covered her mouth in shock, at which point he sighed and decided the best way to find out why he and the remaining members responsible for the Darcia incident got a "holy mother-killer" title is to go even deeper into the dungeon where they GOT the title. Then in chapters 252-256, we learn that he [Guided] the duke of Alcrem from having a "kill on sight" policy towards Vida's races to putting them in concentration camps, and the only way they would be allowed out is by being [Tamed] or being carried around by a slave caravan! This doesn't even cover the fact that he feels pity towards the radical pro-Alda cultists who are willing to die in pursuit of straight up murdering (by Orbaume Law) his own legally adopted daughter. Sheesh! And whenever he has a choice, he surrounds himself with people who tell him he's not at fault and hasn't done anything wrong, getting mad whenever someone has a contrary notion. Meanwhile Van repeatedly goes out of his way to hear the thoughts of those opposed to him, especially Heinz himself, and his acts are quite limited in scope. Van could, if he so desired, completely depopulate the entire Amid Empire all by himself. Heck, he once states that he could pump a regular fireball with enough mana to turn the planet to magma! It is Heinz who keeps antagonizing him and escalating the situation. We really don't know enough about Schneider or Rudolph to make too much of an educated guess.
Actually, that's why I DO like Heinz. Because he's constantly screwing up and sabotaging himself even though he means entirely well. Watching people struggle with a really terrible flaw is interesting. In comparison, let's go with a less divisive figure: Schneider. I mean, sure, he's an interesting spectacle, but as a person he's kinda dull. There's no real conflict and little depth. I can't exactly dislike him, but I don't actually care about what happens to him, whereas with Heinz we know he's going to do something interesting and something interesting will happen to him too, whether good or bad. Same reason for why Alda is more interesting than Rodcorte. Rod is just a selfish prick, but Alda has goals you can understand, if not exactly get behind.
Agreed. Though, in Schneider's defense, he already had his epiphany about what he really believed in, and overcame most of his developmental challenges--physical and mental--long before we met him in the story. Heinz, meanwhile, is still trying to discover what he actually wants and believes in as a person. No doubt, in his youth, Schneider would've been every bit as interesting as Heinz is now.
Unfortunately for Heinz, even if he figures it out now, and it is contrary to what he has been doing. . . It won't matter. Van will still end him, and I flat out guarantee Alda would descend to use him as a host just like that other god. Actually, could totally see that being how Alda makes his final fuck up. He possesses Heinz (for whatever reason) for a battle with Van. . . Which he loses.
Schneider never drank the kool aid like Heinz did, He always knew something was wrong with their society, so held an open mind when approaching Vida races. Plus he is VERY horny and Vida races like physical pleasure. Heinz drank the kool aid, and knows what he wants to believe, he is mostly trying to justify his beliefs as they are extremely self serving and hypocritical, he NEEDS to be the hero, and to be able to see himself as the hero, but does not want to do any of the actual leg work to earn the title so always takes the easy path to glory, and will never do anything of substance to the actual evils of the world. Close, very close. Spoiler Alda does possess Heinz in his last fight with Van, and Heinz goes snacky snack, but that was a desperation move as Alda had lost already due to a series of other beyond stupid mistakes. It was not the stupid move, but the last real (but extremely faint) hope of a fool who had destroyed his chances by...
Well, I mean more about Van's true motive for becoming an adventurer, being rich, and flaunting that wealth, which he can't do in Talosheim because no one shares his sense of luxury, not even the undead nobles. Furthermore, although Van does the paperwork with all the dedication in the world, and accepted his duty as emperor, it is a shame that he loses his freedom, in the most literal sense of jumping into the river to go to the ocean and live an adventure of a few days like a fish without the return of his city burning in flames because people went crazy due to insufficient vitamin v. About Heinz, I think that his choice to go to ourbane was a demonstration that he really wanted to change, and even going to the Fazon duchy and not some duchy of life races has more weight, because that shows is that his objective is to change the situation from his dinner (mirg or amid are impossible), but from there, the problem was not continuing to act as an adventurer. the five-color sheets themselves, even if we have not seen much of their points of view, from the little we know about them and what we are given to understand by their dialogue, is that none of them are really interested in races of life, even if they do not hate them, they show a clear disinterest in them, they are only doing this because they want to fulfill Heinz's dream, and if not, because they consider this as a fairy tale adventure. And to compound the problem, they don't let Heinz grow as a person, telling him to ignore his doubts and preventing him from seeing the worst parts of his profession. In that aspect he is like makoto from tsuki ga, he lived a good part of the story with a bandage, and let's hope it doesn't happen to him like makoto who by the time he took it off, he was already indifferent to most things (I don't want to speak ill of Makoto, simply, there were better roles for the merchant), because if he does, Van will be very happy with that. In general, Van, Heinz and Alda are in the same situation, an echo chamber, the difference is that of the three, Vandeliu is aware and does not simply search yes or no and usually talks to everyone inside or outside the discussion to have various points of view. fazon is a separate issue, in itself, choosing fazon is not only not bad, but it is a perfect alternative, if you can convince the mini amid, you can convince anyone, the problem was that after he gained influence and his title that gives him the power to create a country if he wants, he did nothing, not an attempt, to play by the rules of the game or even learn them, he only remained passive so as not to insult Fazon's goodwill, which becomes counterproductive when The belief that you want to expand and most importantly, make it valid, goes against everything your sponsor wants. If Van and Heinz were actors, Heinz would be an old child actor, his first roles were good because of his natural talent, but his career was greatly influenced by others, and although now his career is high, it is more to stay in his zone of comfort and not show that potential he has, while Vandeliu would be one who started with bad jobs that marked his career and in which he did not perform well, taking him through difficult times, but he remained firm and that led him to become now an excellent actor who explores and experiments.
I don't think that's entirely true. While it's true audiences tend to justify a protagonists actions due to an innate assumption that the protagonist is also meant to be the hero and their actions justified somehow (Just look at the controversy surrounding the Joker movie) that's not the core of the issue here. The problem with Heinz is, like you point out in the rest of your post, he ultimately isn't willing to accept his own faults. I could go into a long rant into how and why but I think you said enough on that front so I'll just add onto it that this kind of behavior is what tends to ruin protagonists in the eyes of audiences. Think back to all the series you've watched. Remember a time the MC messed up, is wrong, or is just flawed ... and completely fails or refuses to make up for it in a meaningful manner? People tend to rip them apart pretty damn fast. The example that sticks out in my mind is "Tales of the abyss" where the MC, named Luke, is a spoiled rich kid who just assumes he's always right and while he's not indifferent to the suffering of others he also doesn't really properly sympathize with it. Anyway without spoiling the plot much something really bad happens and he insists it's not his fault (and it may or may not be. All you need to know for now is the way he refuses fault rubs a lot of people the wrong way regardless). You will find TONS and I mean TOOOOONS of people who point to this moment as why they hate him. Now as for me I do like Luke because of his character arc as a whole. But the thing about Heinz is he's kind of like Luke ... if you just took his character arc and ENDED IT after that big event. After that Heinz really just runs from his problems and looks for ways to justify himself or settle his conciense so the demons in his head stop haunting his dreams. Because of this I don't think a perspective Flip would help Heinz. If anything I think it would make him more hated as we'd see his actions in more detail but still have the same end result. We'd expect better of him as the protagonist and then be let down.
I can think of quite a few series where the roles of Van and Heinz were reversed and Van would be loathed while Heinz is championed. Case in point, the Baldur's Gate series. The story starts off with the player character being raised by "kind, old" Ganleon who adopted them in infancy and after a few fetch quests have to flee from their home for the sake of their lives and the game's Big Bad catches up to them and during a cut-scene, Ganleon hurls a lightning bolt in Szorak's direction, killing an ogre or two before the lightning bolt rebounds and kills him. Long story short, the final chapter forces the player to see things through Szorak's eyes, where it's revealed that Ganleon killed Szorak's mother (or so the world was led to believe, she was actually in hiding), abandoned Szorak, as an infant, leading to him being raised by "evil cults" which Ganleon went around killing to gain the glory, fame, and position to keep the player character safe in The Grand Library. As if that wasn't bad enough, Szorak also had "the blood of Bhaal" in his veins talking to him through his entire childhood, while the Player Character has that happen for less than a year, due to the stress of the "flee for your life" stuff at the start of the game. Still, I can see where you're coming from, and if the narrative didn't go out of its way to gloss over Heinz's flaws, then yeah, the audience is likely to turn on him, but that still won't help "Demon King Vandalieu" much.
but wait ... in this example the rolls aren't really reversed because the "role" of heinz is taken by the protagonist's care taker rather than the protagonist himself. Furthermore I can't tell from your description is this old caretaker shows any aknowledgement for his sins or if he's like Heinz and tried to deflect fault entirely. Although possibly the more important thing here is that we are not made aware of the depth of his crimes until the end. In other words any sympathy the audience has for the old man is more due to what was built up before hand and less because of protagonist biased. First impressions mean a lot. The other issue is the big bad who it seems, unlike van, was much more aggressive and less concerned about third parties getting involved in his revenge. See the main thing that saved Van from being a bad guy is ... he ultimately brings harm to no one who didn't ask for it. The way he goes about things sometimes feels like it came right out of a horror novel but the worst thing he's probably ever done was create a dugeon outside of that town he met Heinz in filled with undead wanting to kill him. But in his defense that was totally an accident. Plus van aknowledges how his actions may seem crazy to other people. But he lacks a real choice as the nature of the death attribute means he doesn't have a lot of socially acceptable options. Especially with his enemies being god's he doesn't have the luxury to listen to social norms. Another big thing about van is while he's not willing to forgive Heinz he also doesn't really go after him. He's more concerned with the happiness and wellbeing of himself and his loved ones. He still intends to clash with Heinz eventually but it's far from a main priority for him. That makes him a lot different from a blood thirsty avenger that the audience might have a harder time rooting for.
I’ve had to resort to dirty aggregator sites for some of my reads lately due to the originals having been struck down by DMCA’s or just being picked up by webnovels*com. So missed this until a whole 4 days later. Noticed someone mentioned Van doesn’t need a storage space/bag. But honestly it makes life so much better for Van. He now has a harvest station with an anti-decomposition tool he doesn’t have to fuel or manage. Honestly it was overdue as a kindness to his busy life. Lives? I mean food cart owner. Ruler of a red light district. Patron saint of transformation equips. Emperor. Divine being……feel like I’m missing more hats. Including his one of being a “normal” boy as he never had a real/worthwhile childhood previously and we all know he tries to claim pieces of it. His obsession with “luxury” for example. PS the consequence of reading aggregator sites is I read in private mode instead and don’t keep an active version of this site going. I know it won’t stop all the malware/adware and other. But it’ll at least cut down on it all.
Anyone else just suddenly picture Van dressed like Buscemi in that 'Hello, fellow kids' meme while thinking about all the hats he's wearing?
Heinz being flawed and unable to accept his own faults doesn't mean he isn't meant to represent a kind of stock hero character, just like Van is meant to represent a kind of stock villain. I mean, Heinz is literally the hero chosen by the god of light to save the world while Van is straight up the demon king. The difference is in which character we're following and therefore where our sympathies lie. Overall it's a fairly gray conflict, leaning more towards Van as the good guy for a role inversion.
["I have the acceptance of Earth's Great Gods, Origins Great Gods, Vida, Ricklent, Zurawan and Zantark; 4 great gods of Lambda. You are but 1 god who punished and imprisoned your sister Vida for doing what she deemed necessary to prevent the worlds destruction and stole her authority with the light attribute; though i understand she could have talked about it with you and the other gods before she birthed new races, you could have also talked with her before doing what you did." "After one hundred thousand years what have you accomplished? You have preached to your followers to kill all of Vida's children, you have let evil gods gain strength, you haven't made any progress in purifying the demon continent, you created a solar eclipse loosening all the seals on the evil gods and demon king fragments causing chaos on a global scale, and blinded your own heroic spirits and gods with your narrow views about ultimate evils, giving me the title [Demon King] and causing me a lot of trouble, and actively trying to kill me when i had no reason to attack you in the first place." "You believe that everyone other then you has gone mad, that Vida lost her way, Zantark went insane and Ricklent and Zuruwan have been seduced by Vida, it sounds very narrow minded to think everyone else is wrong and you alone are right. You are the God of Law, not the God that Makes Laws, laws are made by a group to keep order. The moment you imprisoned Vida and ignored the words of all the other gods who you believed had 'gone mad', made your own laws and strictly enforced your sole views on the people, you became nothing but a tyrant." Every being in the divine realm, those siding with Alda and those behind Vandalieu, froze. Alda's subordinate gods hastily turned towards Alda to implore him to ignore the Demon Kings lies but were stunned when they saw their chief god shivering with a pale face, shaking so much you'd think you could hear his bones rattling.] I'm waiting for soooooo long for a good ending, i want redemption!!!! I want to see Alda taught a fookin lesson!!
Ultimately the above would be awesome. But I see things playing out more like when Van confronted Priest Gordon’s soul. “I tried to forgive you but my insanity skill went up from the attempt. Sorry but time for soul death.” Van is a very simple and direct type. And we love him for it. Well for that and his pure joy at being loved by others. But direct when it’s time to destroy Also this. This will forever taint my view of the scenes of Van playing with all the young versions of the black goblins, anubises, and orcuses. Those were some of his best childhood type moments. That and when he’d do stupid stuff like mimic his own statues or when he played at being a lure fish when visited the mermaid nation lol.
...That and when he’d do stupid stuff like mimic his own statues or when he played at being a lure fish when visited the mermaid nation lol. "Hello, i'm Angler-Vandelieu"
Van actually killing Alda would annoy me somewhat. He should probably be sealed long enough for Vida's faction to fix all the stuff, let out and then see how he reacts. If he still can't accept it, fine, do what you gotta do.
I would seal Alda in one of Van golems and let it make toilets for eternity and look how world changes without him