acreaturecalledgreed:

im gonna say a Thing
about 

Olivier, who i do not talk about much but i do actually love a lot

and a really big peeve I have which is basically

i think a massive hunk of the fandom completely misunderstands why she’s so mad at Alex

a few things

-Olivier was not in Ishval. She was already stationed at Briggs at the time and its heavily implied its b/c she was prone to disobeying commands or being difficult, but too effective a leader to just dump her. Briggs is composed entirely of rejects and dissenters that the military didn’t want anywhere else. Olivier is one of them. 

-Yes, she spouts her ‘only the fittest survive if ur weak gtfo’ shtick all over the place but Olivier is very much a character where what she says and what she does don’t always line up. She’s not a warm or compassionate person- you could make the argument that she might even be largely incapable of it. She’s harsh as shit and often excessively brutal. But she wants to do whats right, and people acting on what they think is right is deeply important to her and typically what she’s referring to when she talks about these things. Olivier conflates weakness with inaction, not with someone being inherently ‘weak’ or not being able bodied or being ‘inferior’. 

That is why she’s mad at Alex. She says she’s mad because he didn’t fight and instead ran from Ishval, that he didn’t fight for his country.

She isn’t talking about “Alex should have stayed and partook in the massacre” and I think that’s something a lot of people miss b/c her more clear reason for being upset with him doesn’t come until the storm of Central on the promised day- where she scolds a group of soldiers for blindly following orders they didn’t agree with and knew were wrong.

For continuing to fight for a side unquestioningly when they didn’t even know why they were fighting, and whats more, for still thinking about fighting for that side when they KNOW whats going on and KNOW its wrong and don’t agree with it because “thats their orders”. 

Olivier hates people who choose to be complicit just because they won’t disobey. The greatest crime against a person to her is mindless obedience, because mindless obedience is part of what lets evil gain so much power in the world. 

That’s why she’s mad at Alex. When she says she hates him for not fighting for their country, she isn’t saying that Alex should have continued in the massacre. She’s saying “You knew what you were doing was wrong and instead of turning around and fighting against the massacre, you just left. You abandoned the innocent people who were being slaughtered and were a part of your country. You knew what your country was doing was evil and you abandoned it by doing nothing to stop that evil. In doing nothing, you became complicit.”

She’s angry he didn’t try to stop the massacre in any way he could- especially when he almost certainly could do some effective damage, since we all know Alex is an absolute tank of a fighter, and also has a great amount of social influence due to their family.

That’s also why she forgives him in the final storm of Central when he comes to fight alongside her with Sloth. He knows something is wrong, and he’s not running from it. He’s fighting it with her. He’s showing her he’s not a coward because she’s now seeing that he’s ready to take action against the evil that’s happening around them, and actually doing something about what’s wrong in the country.

“Olivier is blindly obedient to the military b/c she is For Her Country” is a really flat and really inaccurate read of her character. Olivier is for her country, yeah. Aggressively so. But Olivier’s country is the country’s people and their best interest- and she includes Ishval in that as well. 

That’s what her men know, and that’s why they love her and follow her so solidly, and why she fully expects each and every one of them to go against her if they think she’s in the moral wrong.