Tippyfrog

To start with, as much as I love Shania (she’s my damn comfort character, after all), I can also understand why people absolutely despise her as a character. My fascination with her led me to try and dissect why I was initially so repulsed by not only Shania, but Ghondor too. I learned to fall in love with their characters but at the start, I wasn't even a Shania hater, I just straight up didn’t think about her beyond her death. It was a random video that popped up into my feed showing Shania as a Moebius that piqued my curiosity, sending me down the rabbit hole that I'm in now

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Shania’s backstory is a tragedy. She grew up in the shadow of the people she looked up to, desperately trying to attain some sort of validation for her efforts, only to be met with bitter scorn from the only person she considered to be her friend and harrowing disapproval from her mother. Despite placing eighth out of a hundred people in the Ouroboros Candidacy trials, her own mother says, “If you aren't in the top six, you might as well be last", completely crushing her euphoric high. She then puts the final nail in the coffin by saying, "If only Titania were here.” Titania being Shania’s fallen sister, essentially saying, ”If only Titania were here instead of you. If only you died instead of her. Maybe then, I’d have a daughter worth a damn.”

Her cries for help were left unheard or worse, were met with the aggressive and scornful words of a “friend”. She felt her entire life was nothing more than a massive failure. At that point, who wouldn’t see value in the Endless Now that Moebius offered? Was she wrong? Was she really saying something crazy? Because I don’t think so. I honestly don’t.

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…eeeeeeeexcept, there’s one small, itsy-bitsy issue here.

NONE OF THAT IS EXPLAINED IN THE MAIN STORY

If you never play Side Story: Sena (which sure, a lot of us Xenoblade fans are going to go out of our way to do the side quests but for some people, they just do the main quest and only some of the side quests, meaning it's very possible for people to miss this), Shania only has like, what, maybe less than fifteen minutes of total screen time for us to bond with her? Fifteen minutes where we establish that she has some sort of loose connection between her and Sena and establish some sort of spat between her and Ghondor before BAM, betrayal.

The writers try to use her character’s perspective to show the flaws in the “natural cycle” and to make Moebius's Cycle seem appealing but it ultimately falls flat because at this point, we know nothing about her backstory! We have no reason to believe what she's saying since we have no basis to go off of for her point of view aside from her being pissy about Sena and Ghondor having things “given to them”! (Obviously, there’s more to that statement than what’s on the surface but when you’re in the moment, you don’t see that!) And then she has the audacity to rub the fact that Mio is gonna die in our faces, gloating about the fact that she's gonna take her place in the Cycle- like, OF COURSE PEOPLE ARE GONNA HATE HER AFTER THAT!!!

When Shania dies, the story hams it up like it's this big thing. Sena is crying over Shania's body (which hasn't evaporated into motes of light for some reason) and I'm just like, Sena, love, you spent less than thirty minutes of screen time with her, five of which she was gloating in your face!

And then, in Origin, when Noah is reaching out to N, he says something along the lines of, "I've been shaped and molded by all the people I've come across on my journey." and it shows characters like Ethel, Cammuravi, Joran, etc. AND THEN IT SHOWS SHANIA???

Noah, dude, she tried to kill your girlfriend, had a failed attempt at genocide, and then ACCIDENTALLY MADE YOUR GIRLFRIEND IMMORTAL. WHAT EXACTLY DID SHE DO FOR YOU??? 

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Again, after playing Side Story: Sena, I've come to love Shania. I had a similar experience with Ghondor, especially after doing her ascension quest. I’ve come to love them… as characters. However, as narrative devices, they don’t really do much for the story. They are very one note characters for the main narrative. Sure, that would be fine if this were a character like Bolearis, who can afford to have a side quest to expand upon his character. But for them? I don't know, it just doesn't sit right in my admittedly kooky brain.

It feels like Ghondor purely exists so that Noah and Co. have to go to the prison so that Shania can betray them so that M can do her gambit. Outside of that, they don’t do much of anything!

Compare them to a character like, let's say, Ethel. What does her character do for the narrative? Well, through her, we learn a multitude of things:

We learn that Moebius are able to directly control those under the yoke of a Flame Clock

We learn that black fog obfuscates Moebius’s vision

When she and Bolearis go to the Kevesi Castle, they help set up the plot point with the Annihilator cannon

She and Cammuravi blockade Noah and Co.’s path before rebelling against P and O, passing the torch onto the party before shortly dying

And, even after her death, she continues to impact the narrative because Noah FINDS HER IN A STASIS POD IN THE THRONE ROOM, FURTHER LAYING THE GROUNDWORK FOR THE IDEA OF THE CYCLE THAT EUNIE’S HUSK HAD PLANTED THE SEEDS FOR A FEW HOURS PRIOR!

Ethel, alongside a lot of amazing side characters, do an amazing job of wearing multiple hats for the sake of a fulfilling narrative. Now, I’m not saying every character needs to be as complex as that (look at Cammuravi, he does a stellar job with what little he has), but even so, for someone who betrays the entire team, I feel like Shania should have either a bigger role to play or just have more screen time for us to give a damn about her before she bites it! I mean, they went through the effort of giving her an entire backstory and everything! If it were just “Nameless Traitor Number 22,525”, that’d be one thing.

But she’s not.

I see these threads of things that imply that Shania was meant to have a much larger role in the narrative, the threads like with Sena being broken up over her death and Noah thinking about Shania in his flashback, and it gets my mind running. What were the writers’ intent behind creating Shania beyond just being a narrative device to get the party in a position for M's gambit to happen?

Well, this is where I delve into tinfoil-hat territory. I noticed that there were narrative parallels between her and certain characters in the main party. Obviously, there's the connection between her and Sena, both seeking external validation and wanting to be like the people they look up to (Ghondor and Mio respectively). This is the one that the main story points out. However, there was another character that had something in common with Shania that stuck out to me. One that isn't obvious at first glance. 

In Side Story: Sena, we learn that Shania has a big sister named Titania. This sister died somehow, we don't know how, but the only thing of note left behind was this pistol of hers. Immediately, Shania tries to practice with her fallen sister's pistol in remembrance of her. The father intervenes but eventually he too, passes. After this, she carries that pistol with her and tries her damndest to wield it for the person who gave her life for the City. Gave her life so that she could live. 

Now, in those last two sentences, I'm going to replace "pistol" with "flute" and "City" with "Colony".

After this, she carries that [flute] with her and tries her damndest to wield it for the person who gave her life for the [Colony]. Gave her life so that she could live.

Tell me, who does that remind you of?

It's Mio and Miyabi. Shania has this random narrative parallel with Mio, of all people! Why? It feels so random that it might just be coincidence (and probably is), but what if it wasn't?

What if they were initially intending for Shania to have these narrative parallels with certain members of the main cast? Perhaps Shania was going to be a microcosm of the party's issues, giving her perspective on their problems and perhaps, helping them through said issues while avoiding her own. However, due to time constraints, they had to leave it all on the cutting room floor.

Now, that is a MASSIVE stretch, obviously. I basically have nothing to work off of besides a loose thread that shows a connection between her and Mio. To have Shania do all that, she'd have to be a Hero character or something! That's a massive change that the writers were surely not intending, right?

...Well, this is where I go into yet another tinfoil-hat topic. Delving into resources outside of the game, specifically into the first artbook, we notice that it's divided into a few sections. It has the main cast, the Heroes, and a spoiler section for the villains. Now, at least for me, I would assume that Shania would be placed in the villain category, perhaps with her main design and a mockup of her Moebius form, right? Well, where is she then in the artbook?

She's smack-dab in the middle of the hero section

Maybe this was just a formatting thing. Maybe they just wanted to put her in the hero section so that people who have yet to play the game aren't spoiled on her eventual betrayal. However, the way the story tries to ham up Shania's death as if it should be this massive thing that we as the player should be broken up about, the way they jammed her entire story into Sena's Side Story, the odd narrative parallel between her and Mio, and now this?

...okay, it's still not a lot, BUT STILL! It got my mind racing with the idea of What If? What would Shania's story be if she was given more screen time? What else could've been done with Shania's character to reinforce the main message of XC3, which is learning to let go and embrace the unknown (among A LOT of other things lol)? What could've been done with her, Ghondor, the City Special Forces- hell, even X and Y to further drive home that message? How could they have taken the knife that they had wounded us with when Mio's Homecoming happened and twisted it even further?

How would they have gotten us to care about Shania and her eventual death before Side Story: Sena?

...I honestly don't know. I have no clue how the original writers would go about doing it. However, I have ideas on how I'd do it, at least.

I’ve been working on this project that’s gone under a few different names now- the Shania Rewrite, the City Rewrite, and now, XC3: Rewritten Fates. I’m gonna be writing it out and posting it to Ao3 with the end goal being to make it into a video series with some rough animatics, music, and voice acting. However, that’s not gonna happen for a while.

I feel kinda weird talking about my project in a post rambling about Shania lol. Sorry if it came off as weird but I just wanted to share it lol

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That's all I got to say about Shania though. However, ever since I started this "rewrite" of Shania's inclusion in the main story, it kinda snowballed into me taking a critical look at other characters and plot devices. Namely X and the Sword of Origin/the End/Lucky Seven.

Seriously, why can Lucky Seven randomly NEGATE MOEBIUS POWERS, THE F###?!?!?!

Like, I know the lore reason. However, the lore reason doesn't change the fact that it only comes up in one side quest AS AN ASSPULL. Shania, for all intents and purposes, had Noah and Co. dead to rights which is obviously a bad thing for the narrative! It feels like they wrote themselves into a corner and desperately tried to find any sort of way for her to lose which, fair, she should lose, but this felt silly.

Had they built up the fact that Lucky Seven and by proxy, the Sword of the End could negate Moebius powers, then I'd have no issue with it.

Instead, they built Lucky Seven up to be the most advanced envelope opener- it's just that instead of envelopes, it's Flame Clocks- and its a fancy compass that they can use inside Origin!

In a game series called "Xenoblade Chronicles", where the first game's "Xenoblade" in question was a sword that held the soul of a god and could later warp reality, and the second game's was a duo of tragic girls who just wanted to end it all, having the penultimate game's "Xenoblade" be a REALLY SHARP KNIFE AND COMPASS feels kinda silly lmao. However, being the thing that can nullify Moebius's power? That sounds appropriate.

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And then, there's X. Oh my god, there's X.

With Moebius as a whole, I had no issue with the fact that they were kind of silly. I thought it was fun! However, it needed to be contrasted with absolutely terrifying or narratively compelling Moebius to contrast the sillier ones. In this regard, they did well with Z and N.

However, it also slightly falls apart when we look at X.

Why

The fuck

IS X A PETULANT CHILD IN THE MAIN STORY?

YOU ARE AN ELDRITCH ABOMINATION OF A CREATURE! CREATED FROM THE CONCENTRATED DESIRES OF ALL HUMANITY! AND THE FIRST LINE UTTERED FROM YOUR MOUTH IN THE STORY IS:

"And that's why it takes so much fricken work! Working stinks..." - X

NO!

You are as old as Aionios itself! You are peers with both Y and Z, WHY ARE LIKE THIS?

I might be crazy, but in my mind, at least one of them (X or Y) should be psychotically infatuated with the idea of fucking with people's lives (more actively so than Z)!

Y'know, I had a thought. N and M weren't always Moebius. There was a looooooooooong stretch of time where they were still fighting against Moebius, meaning that for a time, the Golden and Silver Consuls weren't ruling over the Kevesi and Agnian consuls respectively. With that in mind, who would've been in charge of them?

Hmm, if only there were two other ancient Moebius that were created at the Genesis of Aionios! That sure would be mighty CONVENIENT!

Like- What if X and Y ruled over the Kevesi and Agnian consuls initially? However, after N and M came to be, N challenged them both for control. Perhaps Y conceded since he wanted to focus on his experiments but X? What if X saw this challenge and was like, "Pfft, sure, try your best." And at this point, since we're changing so much, why not change X's powers to include some gravity based things? (Perhaps Z's power deals with matters of the soul, Y's deals with life, and X's deals with matter and space).

The amphitheater seating is filled with Moebius who watch on with bated breath. The stage is riddled with slashes from the two combatant's blades and holes from X’s failed attempts to ensnare the Golden Consul in her gravity wells. The Swordsman and Reaper trade blow after blow, the two narrowly blocking and dodging each other’s attacks. Eventually, X catches N with a feint, sending him far across the stage. As he staggered from the hit, he felt the gravity around him begin to intensify. A wave of gasps sweep across the crowd as N is forced to his knees, visibly fighting the suffocating weight around him. X begins to cackle as she crushes the young Consul. “Well? Ready to give up yet?” X taunts. “NghhhhaaAAGGHHH” N roars as he forces his hand to his blade. Before X can even blink, N finally withdraws the Sword, nullifying her power. “Wh-what?!” In an instant, N closes the gap between them as he thrusts the Sword towards her core. Time seems to slow to a crawl as the blade creeps ever closer. The eyes of the ancient Moebius widen as the feeling of panic and dread begin to set in. “H-he’s moving too fast… I can’t-!” Before the blade can make contact with X, purple motes of light materialize between the two combatants. With naught but two fingers, Z catches N’s blade, causing a massive shockwave to ring out across the amphitheater. X stumbles backwards, falling to the ground as she struggles to catch her breath. For but a moment, silence fills the air, only to be shattered by an uproar of cheering and applauding from the crowd. The Ringmaster smiles at his prized possession’s victory before turning his head toward the house. A hush falls upon the audience as Z prepares to speak. “It appears we have come to a conclusion! Henceforth, N shall lead the Consuls of Keves and M, the Consuls of Agnus! Just as we have agreed.” Z declares as an applause sweeps across the crowd. X stares at N’s blade, still stunned at her apparent loss, before regaining her composure. “F-fine. Just don’t make us regret it.” (Co-written with the help of @/bleeding.ichor on Instagram, go give them a follow!)

Perhaps this entire exchange leads to X just seething for several millenia, searching for any sort of way to usurp this Golden upstart piece of shit! Which then leads to her eventually manipulating Shania, with her line of thinking being:

Well... if Z got his little toy from the City, perhaps that's where I should be looking!

Perhaps she does this in the hope that Shania's Moebius power manifests into something that can overpower N's.

This is all just a crackpot idea but still, it gives X something more to do in the main story than just sit in the background and do basically nothing aside from tempt Shania to their side. Plus, it lays the groundwork for the Sword of the End being this artifact that even a Moebius as powerful as X is afraid of because it can negate Moebius powers!

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