Moczo
Character Study: Ilyasviel von Einzbern
by , January 20th, 2013 at 01:20 AM (5355 Views)
Oh boy.
This is going to be a rough one for me. I struggle to maintain neutrality on these character studies and analyze the characters involved less around how I personally feel about them, and more on how I feel they were used in canon and how I prefer to use them in my own stories. This is gonna be rough with the Lady Einzbern, since of the FSN cast, she is my favorite by a decent margin. I loves me some Ilya. Maintaining objectivity in the face of that is gonna be a bitch, because I have to analyze her rationally and think of the flaws in her character, in addition to just pointing out what I love.
Secondly, any analysis of Ilya is, by necessity, going to delve deeply into Heaven's Feel, since that's the route where she got the most development by a landslide (more, ironically, than the actual heroine of it in some ways). And I... don't care for HF. I know that's odd, considering Chaos Theory draws so heavily from it, but it's true. I don't wanna analyze HF again. It depresses me.
But I promised. And a Moczo always keeps his word, unless lying is more fun. ONWARD!
Ilya in Canon:
Ilya in canon is my favorite character for a number of reasons, but not the best-utilized one. These seem mutally exclusive, but they really aren't; Nasu just had issues with putting his characters to good use. Check my Sakura analysis for what I think on that; he is great at making these deep, complex, interesting characters, and then when it comes time to use them in a well-rounded story, he flops like a sea bass.
Ilyasviel is among the most complex and most difficult to write characters in the FSN continuum, in part because she is also the most malleable. Every character that is decently written should be dynamic. Able to learn, change, grow, and become someone different at the end of the story than they were at the start. And Ilyasviel is, bar none, the most dynamic character in the story. In both Fate and HF, (UBW does not count, since she gets no screentime to change in) she is a completely different person at the end compared to the beginning, despite having relatively few stimuli to create this change. Things that would not deeply alter most other characters can cause Ilya to instantaneously reevaluate her entire worldview. Why is that?
Because she, more than nearly any other character in the series, is innocent.
And note that I say she is 'innocent', not 'good'. They are not the same thing, and indeed she is capable of some of the most shockingly horrible cruelty imaginable, but it all stems from her core of absolute, complete innocence. When first introduced, she is basically a blank slate with no social experience to speak of. She has no moral compass, does not comprehend the difference between right and wrong, and is almost incapable of considering the feelings of others. She is out to do only what she feels like doing without considering anyone or anything else, because with no concept of what constitutes good or evil, she has no conscience. She is, for all intents and purposes, a sociopath, but this stems not from an actual lack of personal morals or empathy, but from the fact she's never had any interactions with people to develop those things. She was pushed into the role of sociopath, it isn't her natural state of being.
Is Ilya evil, at the start of the story? By most standards, yes. She's a heartless little monster. But she never had the chance to be anything else, and interacting with other characters almost immediately begins to change that. In both of the routes where she got any development at all, this development happens at lightning speed. Getting to know Shirou even a tiny bit is enough to cause her feelings for him to do a complete 180 from 'unreasonable loathing' to 'I really like this guy!'. And it's the same with, basically, everyone. With both Saber and Rin, relatively short periods of association are enough for her to develop from utter disdain to treating them almost like sisters. And it isn't like she suddenly becomes some paragon of love and justice; she's still selfish, catty, and impatient. But she's so unused to social situations, such a blank slate, that any friendly contact with a person at all is enough to shift her opinions on them rapidly.
And God did Nasu drop the ball by not giving her her own route.
Of every girl in the game, Ilya is the one with the deepest connection to Shirou. She has the most elaborate backstory with him, is the quickest to bond with him once their differences are settled, and the one who offers him the most unquestioning support. Once she begins to trust him, she does so implicitly and to a degree that is almost frightening; once they have bonded in HF, Shirou is quite clearly the center of her world. It is a deep, intense bond.
And it never gets the exploration it deserves. Instead, it is relegated to a background relationship in another girl's route, which I feel harms the storytelling of Heaven's Feel as a whole, because Shirou honestly seems to like Ilya more than the girl he claims to be in love with. She is the one who supports him when his will is failing, the bright spot in the endless tragedy that characterizes the story of HF. I have heard Heaven's Feel described as the route where 'Shirou romances Ilya and has sex with Sakura', and it's painfully accurate.
This is a disservice to Ilya, as it hamstrings the development of her connection to the one character in the game she has the deepest connection to, restricting it to grow only so far and no further. And it's a disservice to Sakura, because comparing her romance to the brother/sister relationship Shirou develops with Ilya, there is no comparison. The latter gets infinitely more on-screen development as Shirou comes to rely on her more and more, and Sakura's deteriorating health keeps her off-screen more and more often. Shirou's bond with Ilya grows continuously deeper, while his relationship with Sakura is largely static and based on development that happened before the story even started and which we never get to see for ourselves. The end result makes both girls feel like they only got half the story they deserved, and is a big part of the reason I feel HF was sub-par. It wasn't the Sakura Route, it tried to be the Sakura Route and the Ilya Route, and as a result it didn't fully succeed at either.
Bluntly? Ilya shouldn't have been a loli. It was a bad decision with little impact on her character anyway. It was clearly made to play to the fetishes, and as one of the major factors that prevented her from being a full love interest, it was just plain a stupid choice. Had she just looked teenage, without changing anything else about her, she could have gotten the route she needed, and the huge amount of screentime she got in HF could have been given back to the actual love interest of the route. A fairly simple change, but it would have made a world of difference.
But what if she is the love interest? To the fanfics.
Ilya in Chaos Theory:
God she's hard to write, both in her relationship with Shirou, and in her own development as an individual.
First, the Shirou thing. For starters, no, I did not take the easy way out by simply giving her a new body. That means I have to take my time and be fucking careful when writing the romance between her and Shirou, because otherwise I make him look like a perv. Lolicon is a real fetish, yes, but it's not a good one to hand a sympathetic character. To me, the successful Ilya/Shirou romance is not one wherein he pervs out and falls for her 'cute little girl charms,' such as they are. It's one where he falls for her despite her appearance. Her devotion to and adoration for Shirou are obvious and real. It just needs to be made clear that these, and nothing else, are the defining factor that draws him to her. The primary relationship must be emotional, not physical. He can be attracted to her physically, yes, but it must be made bluntly clear that the physical interest is developed after an intense and genuine emotional bond is already in place.
And for fuck's sake, after he finds out she's a teenager.
Second, her own personality. This is hard too, for a different reason. I mentioned earlier that a good character should be dynamic, and this is true, but general characters require some major outside force to change. It's normal for the majority of characters to end a story as largely the same person they were when they started, just grown somewhat for their efforts. But as I mentioned earlier, Ilya is not like that at all. She is dynamic to the point of making most other characters seem to be developing in slow motion. Relatively small things can produce enormous changes in her. This is hard to portray convincingly without making her seem like a lunatic (and yes, in some ways, she is kinda insane, but not that much). Tiny things; a smile, a friendly gesture, an expression of generosity that she sees no point behind. Anything can be a trigger for a minor existential crisis in the poor dear. Just treating her like a human instead of a weapon rapidly shifts her morality and viewpoint on the world.
Writing a serious Ilya story means recognizing this, spotting the things that could change her, and trying to work out in your head what that change would be. It's a very much trial and error process, and I don't claim to have gotten everything right. So far, I'm very happy with how she's grown; in a fairly short time, she's gone from her usual sociopathic starting point to valuing Shirou's happiness more than her own convenience. Is she in love? No. She's in a combination of admiration, lust, and a tiny bit of over-possessive obsession. But she's growing into someone who can be in love, and someone Shirou would want to love back. She grew from seeing Shirou as 'someone to kill' into 'someone to have', then 'someone to take care of'. 'The one I really love' is on this road, she just has a long way to go and a good deal of selfishness to shed in order to get there.
Ilya in Comedy works:
In sharp contrast to Chaos Theory, Einzbern Comedy is both easy and fun. It is also very, very simple:
Take that sociopathy I mentioned above. Add in a dose of 'Shirou is my toy!' attitude. Shake well and sprinkle liberally with the willingness to sic Berserker on people who annoy her. It really is this simple. She works astonishingly well with Comedic Sociopathy works because... well, she really is kind of a Comedic Sociopath played for non-comedy at some points in canon. 'The crazy girl with the pet giant' is comedy gold. And her enormous wealth and tendency to consider logic a vague whim mean she can make a lot of plots go very, very off the rails.
Beauregard optional, but encouraged.
Phew! That was... a lot of talking. But hopefully it all makes sense.
Now. If you'll excuse me, God, I'm tired.
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