ānother character study on Trahearne because no character study can be comprehensive
Absolutely the difference between people who relate to Trahearne and people who donāt is LONELINESS, and being the weird kid, and being quiet and nerdy. But mostly loneliness. Normal people (as far as I know, since Iām not) are not super lonely. They have friends and acquaintances and such, even if they donāt see them super often or only online.
And, side note, not being able to see and interact with people (as during COVID lockdowns) is DIFFERENT from not having those people to exist in the first place. And a huge chunk of people I think donāt understand that. Like, in my personal life I have the opposite of those things. I have a huge family (eight siblings) and we all live in the same house (it is a big house, donāt worry), so I have PLENTY of actual human interaction and contact and talking to people and living my life, and lockdown couldnāt take that away.
Anyway: being on good terms and friendly with your family, thatās great and all, but thereās something⦠necessary about outside friendship. Itās a real problem when thereās no one OUTSIDE your family you can be friends with. No one you can be sure cares about you. And youāre trying to find friends, but, again, youāre also naturally the weird kid and also absolutely nerdy, and no one is quite sure what to make of you, and so you never do make any friends.
Enter Trahearne, who has that same situation, and is also, by the dictates of the story heās in, your best friend.
I latched on to Trahearne initially because he died and because I had to kill him, which was horrible for me even though I couldnāt remember why I cared about him at the time. I knew the story said he was my friend and weād spent the whole time trying to rescue him, and now I had to kill him, and that was Very Bad.
But I think I CONTINUED to obsess over him because, once I looked into the story as a whole, I related to him so hard. Yeah, heās supposed to be your best friend, thatās his role in the story, you couldnāt not be his friend, but... if you distance yourself and say the Commander is just simply a faceless character, not your own self, and reframe it as reading a book where youāre purely an outside observer - Trahearne is still a compelling character to people who are truly lonely because heās lonely, and for a lot of the same reasons, too, in a way thatās widely relatable to people who are lonely.
And his story arc about finding friendship and finally accomplishing his goals in life and even achieving more than heād ever dreamed of, and finally dying for those people heād come to care about - THATāS relatable. Thatās so fiercely something I want to happen to ME. Thatās wish fulfilment right there. Thatās living the dream. Thatās skipping the lonely part and setting the story at the time where you finally find friendship.
And then you remember that, actually, he ALSO spent a full twenty-five years of loneliness first that the story never really bothers to explain, but thatās because - well, because the story says āhe was alone for twenty-five yearsā and then it moves on so fast because youāre supposed to fill in the blank with your OWN experience. Youāre supposed to relate to him SO much because the story is essentially saying āimagine yourself, all lonely, and then THIS happensā and itās amazing? Itās what youāve always wished for? And whatās not to like? I would love to have Trahearneās situation, to have a real-life friend that I honestly cared about so much Iād die for, because I know - since Iām also the Commander - that the feeling is reciprocated. That relationship is almost a closed circuit in your head.
But also, the way the story gets you to relate to Trahearne so that it can build on your own experience that way? Leaving his past a blank slate so you can relate to him as hard as you need to? Thatās - I mean that should be the high aim of all literature, honestly. To say āimagine yourself, in this particular area of life, and now imagine this new development!ā This is my new philosophy: Literature is supposed to be fan-fiction of real life. And good literature can be fan-fiction of the life of anyone in the target audience (or broader), and the only requirement is that you suspend your disbelief in the details. Itās the feelings that really count, and in order to have those you need relatability.
But what if you DONāT have relatability? What if youāre not the target audience? What happens when youāre NOT a lonely person? You have friends, you have a social life, youāre fine. Trahearne then becomes offensive to you, because the story is treating him like heās supposed to be you - like youāre supposed to relate to him, and you DONāT, and thereās this jarring disconnect, and you canāt even begin to comprehend why the story is treating him as someone whoās so important. And if youāre only playing for the story, well then, you leave, because itās not your thing. But if youāre here for the game and the min-maxing and stats, and youāre playing the story for achieves, levels, and loot, well, youāre stuck, and youāre bitter, and now youāre a hater.
And thatās really the real tragedy here - not that Trahearneās fate was shaped by haters, but that Trahearneās fate was shaped by people for whom his story was not even intended in the first place. If the story was aimed at you and you hated it, thatās one thing; another thing entirely to count the opinion of people who are forced to be here as valid.
The story is and should be for the people who want to be here. In fact, everything should be only for the people who want to be there. I mean itās even the philosophy behind our entire government - that in order to be valid you need the consent of the governed. I could write a whole essay on why school shouldnāt be mandatory, because if you donāt want to be there you wonāt learn anything. The people who donāt want to be there shouldnāt shape the thing theyāre part of.
The thing should be shaped by the people itās designed for, otherwise youāll get the people itās designed for - the target audience, the marketing demographic, etc - youāll get them up in arms and hating you, and nobody wants that. Everyone should be working towards peace. But thatās what we see with the GW2 fandom and Anet - the people who donāt want to be in the story complaining, and Anet listening to them and changing it, and the people who really care - the people for whom Trahearneās story was written - WE are hurt.
I could do some meta-analysis on how this is a - to borrow a phrase from another fandom - another turning of the Wheel, that weāre lonely, that weāre the overlooked ones, the ignored ones, and we had this beautiful story lovingly crafted for us, knowing weāre quiet and donāt talk much and arenāt that confident talking in front of people - but now even that is yanked out of our hands by the people who manage to be louder, talk more and better and are good at enthusiastically expressing how much they care about everyone - except us lonely folks.
But - back to Trahearne - the story leaves out his backstory because thatās the key. All you need to know is that he was lonely. If there was more details we wouldnāt be able to relate so much. And yet, because we relate so hard, we desperately need and yearn for that very backstory. We want even further validation, because Anet has proven they know us extremely well, and we trust theyāll continue to deliver. Usually fans would get this fulfilment from sequels, but Trahearne is dead so there is no more going forward, only back. But his story is sort of dependent on that blank slate, so there really is nowhere else to go with him unless he comes back, and maybe thatās why nobody writes fic about Trahearneās past, only about him not dying, or coming back - because his unexplored backstory is the cornerstone of the reason we care in the first place.
I used to be afraid that once Iād played all the missions Trahearne was in (back before Iād done all the sylvari missions) that Iād lose my obsession over him, that Iād stop caring because there was nothing more to learn. Iāve since found there was no danger of that, but it may have stemmed from the fact that, for me who mains a human character, playing the sylvari missions was delving into his backstory. And it was; but not too much. You gotta hand it to Anet, theyāre good at this. I surrender my emotions to them every time I step into a story mission. I have to trust theyāll take care of my emotions properly.
Anet did everything so perfectly with Trahearne, coaxing you into trusting them, that not only was his death a shock, it was a betrayal of that trust. It wasnāt only that his death was wrong, it was that it was done so poorly, which again would be the subject of another post. His death wasnāt the problem.
I remember one day I logged in to play a story mission and I said to myself āI know Iām putting my emotions in Anetās hands with this oneā and that very mission was Darkrime Delves (I didnāt know that ahead of time) and it was a rollercoaster, it was brilliant, it was amazing; it brought me close to the edge of panic Iād once felt for Trahearne, and threaded through it all the knowledge Almorra was dying whether I did it or not, they had me fight it out, gave me the opportunity to die rather than kill my leader (but then, hey, you gotta come back and finish the fight - ) and then I didnāt have to kill her after all, Bangar came and killed her and stole all that anger and fear and terror and pointed it all at himself like a spotlight. It was a BRILLIANT handling of my emotions, an amazing catharsis for Trahearneās death. And Trahearneās death was just. hi. you win. you gotta kill him now and it was short and brutal and they didnāt even TRY. The dying isnāt the bad part (although I will hate Bangar until the end of my days). Itās how the dying is handled. I hate Bangar for Almorraās death, but who do I hate for Trahearneās death? Not Mordremoth. Not myself. No, Anet bears the full brunt of my anger for Trahearneās death, because as the storytellers THEY were at fault for how it was handled.
I donāt know where I wanted to go with this post, I wrote it at midnight in a fit of passion - you can tell it's not my usual writing style and might not be as good as usual - and so itās bounced between several separate subjects and has no proper ending tying it all together, but hey. this is a glimpse into my Midnight Trahearne Thoughts (also partially spurred by that Homeric hymn I had to write).