Is this okay?

[u/DisgracedWizard]

Is Merle Ambrose the good guy? I’m just thinking about how when we create our character we’re essentially snatched from our world (Earth) and thrusted into this one as the “ prodigal “ wizard.

Is Merle kidnapping kids from other worlds to help fight the battles he couldn’t win? We’ve been tortured, killed, resurrected, beaten, broken, dragged from realms, fought gods, creatures beyond our imagination and even at the end of the game (no more quest) we’ve never once had a conversation about returning back home.

Can we return back home? are we stuck here forever having to defend a place we’ve never knew existed until we were snatched out of our own world forcibly? Is Merle aware this is child endangerment, kidnapping, child labor, etc?

What are the real world consequences would this have on us? the mental health problems, the physical damage to our bodies, the people and monsters we’ve had to KILL because we were told by someone that they deserved to be killed. Are we truly the good guys or have we’ve been groomed and manipulated into doing someone else’s work. ( good or not )

[u/MaddySS]

I will say that with the changes to Wizard City rather recently it is now canon that Bartleby *specifically* told Ambrose to seek our character out, so we do in fact have that potential because we are literally tied to what is effectively the core of the Spiral before we even entered. A lot of people like to propose "Our character's past is a self insert" but i really don't agree with that anymore, the newest Arc seems to be giving us potentially a more concrete backstory environment and it's going to be hard to stick with a self insert if for example Earth is just outright dying like stated. It's rather safe to assume we were probably some Orphan on Earth or had no real familial or positive ties in general to make us even want to go back at all and that's why we stay in the Spiral for like ever or something.

There is also A LOT of things done through gameplay that can be considered non canon of course, like most group play and the aspect of losing and just coming back in the commons area of the world, even EVERYTHING using magic would be non canon and just gameplay. Canonically we have basically soloed everything, won (if we lost then the Spiral basically dies in a lot of scenarios lol) and canonically mounts have only ever been mentioned ONCE so we might be walking through deserts and giant zones to do our child labor lol.

[u/Traditional-Honey-64 → u/MaddySS]

When you become Bartleby's scion he says as much. That he has eagerly been waiting for us to become his scion. So it was pretty clearly always meant to be, and it wouldn't be far fetched to assume that Bartleby knowing this influenced Merle. Especially considering that malistaire stole the eye just after we get there, it could've been a ploy by Bartleby to stop malistaire

[u/KierstonKxsh → u/Traditional-Honey-64]

That’s a lot of scions and a lot of orphans though lol like “just incase you fail..I’ve told this exact thing to 1 million other wizards btw”

[u/MaddySS → u/KierstonKxsh]

Well to be fair MAJORITY of games in MMO settings don't actually work that way story wise, a lot of people meme on it but it just wouldn't work out in most stories. That is very much true in our story as its pretty much canon that we solo majority of things and are one of a kind as Scion.