Arvo: Understanding His Side Isn't Pitying His Side *Spoilers For Episode 4 and Season 2 Finale*
EDIT: You people need to stop with this 'Arvo is pure evil and deserves to be treated like Hitler' bull because he clearly is not a Hitler-esque sociopath. He might not show compassion to Clementine or her group but he does to his sister--enough so that he feels compelled to exact revenge against the person he believed to have killed her.
Oh, what's that? He shoots her anyway? Well, tell me something--what would you do if someone shot the person you loved most in the world right in front of your eyes--would you just forgive and forget within the space of two days? No, no you wouldn't.
Oh, it was his fault so he has no right to be mad in the first place? Yeah, okay--because that's how human emotion works, right?
YES, he made an incredibly shitty decision and NO, you don't have to take pity on him or forgive him--because I, for the last time, do not take any sort of pity on him--you just have to understand that he's a human being just like everyone else and has his own personal weaknesses and faults. Not to mention, he's still a teenager--the time in your life where you fuck up a lot (trust, I can testify to that.)
He will do the wrong thing, he will be selfish, he will be an asshole--but at the end of the day, he's a human being and human being's make mistakes.
End line--he made mistakes but he's no Hitler.
EDIT:Putting this here so you'll read so you can all stop with the 'you're protecting Arvo' excuse you keep making purely so you can argue with me. Because if I see you say that, do you think I'll think you read this post? No, you obviously didn't because I state /multiple times/ that the only purpose of this is to get people to see that people make shitty choices--you don't have forgive them or sympathize with them for their shitty choices, but make an effort to understand what led them to come to their shitty choices.ou
I never understood the Arvo hate, even from the beginning. I mean, yes, it's understandable to hate someone who did the things he did--but, to truly understand his process of thinking, you have to look at it from a different perspective. But then again, I understand people tend to make decisions based on emotion. The general complaints I've seen are;
He pulled a gun on a little girl?
He's a teenager himself, you know. He's closer to Ben's age, then anything. It's not like he's a full grown adult. And Clementine surprised him. He had one instinct, and that was to protect himself. It was more of a reflex than anything. Hell, he even said 'I don't want to shoot anyone, especially a little girl'.
He ambushed Clem's group?
Okay, let's break this down. He was ambushed and disarmed by Clementine and Jane, had the belonging that he obviously wanted /no one but him to touch/ taken and poked through and then (determinant) stolen. Regardless of what choice your Clementine picks, his gun is stolen. Leaving him completely defenseless--it's not like he can outrun a walker if he comes in contact with one, and if he falls, forget it. And then he's threatened. If everything, he wanted to scare them, and get revenge for making him feel completely helpless. And, regardless if you can understand Russian or not, Arvo's tone during the confrontation on the road was completely hysteric, and he was actively trying to stop it from escalating. He jumped in without thinking and he was terrified at the prospect of getting hurt or dying.
He intentionally gets Luke killed?
I wholeheartedly believe that the lake wasn't his fault. Firstly, depending on the choice, it's actually Kenny who decides that crossing the lake is the quickest way ("The fastest way between two... things is a straight line.") Secondly, Arvo volunteered to cross first (and then reassured everyone when he was volunteered by Kenny) When you first meet him, it's pretty much cemented straight off that Arvo is a coward with a fear of dying. If he thought there was the slimmest chance that the ice would have broken, he most likely wouldn't have touched it, he probably would have volunteered Clementine, as she is the lightest, second to the baby.
You have to remember that, for a period of time, Arvo and his group (or at least Arvo and his sister) lived in that house--meaning that they had to cross that lake if they ever wanted to go in that direction. We know for a fact that Arvo crossed that lake three times before--he would have been more confident than anyone with crossing it.
He shoots Clementine?
I feel like the Arvo situation was a lot like the Lily situation, just with different parameters. He has a sudden strong disdain for Clementine because, in his eyes, /she/ shot and killed his sister, regardless if she was a walker or not, and he's obviously fucked over emotionally because his attachment to Natasha. Approaching the end of episode four, Arvo notably became more and more hysteric. I can barely speak Russian myself, but the translations say he was all but begging both sides* 'Put your guns down! Please! I don't want to die! I don't want to die!'* and then when his sister got shot... that was it, I think he sort of just shut down mentally. When a person reaches that level of a mental breakdown, they very rarely look at things logically because they are driven purely by emotions. He most likely /thought/ that he could save her, hence why he didn't abandon her in fear of his own safety, and why he wrestled to get back to her after Kenny held him hostage. Maybe by her re-animating.. he thought it had worked? She was crawling, as if trying to escape and get her strength back so... maybe. But by Clementine shooting her, he twisted it around in his head that it was /her/ fault. That much I can see.
EDIT: After viewing a translation of the Russian dialogue, it is clear that Arvo did not know that his sister had zombified.
As Kenny grabs him, he pleads to be let go to help his sister--ergo, he thought she could be saved.
The thing that annoys me so much is very few people, I've found, seem to get one of the points of the dream sequence with Lee and Clementine suddenly bringing up Lilly.
'...She was sad, Clem. That can make people angry sometimes.' 'Clem, people don't always make sense.' 'Because bad things happen to everyone, and its hard to keep being yourself after they do.'
It was almost like it was drawing parallels between Arvo and Lilly--not so you sympathize with him--but so you /understand/.
I mean, hell, /Lee/ got that angry and no one hates him for it, because we spent an entire season with him and saw his redeemable qualities. We don't know Arvo's redeemable qualities yet. Just the negative one Telltale showed us for the purpose of setting up a 'villain'. I'm not saying people have to like him, I just like it's stupid to hate someone who tried to do the /exact same thing Lee did/, kill a person, just because literally only know one side of the story.
So, when he had a means of hurting Clementine himself, he was still angry enough to let his emotions get the better of him, like when Lily shot Doug/Carley for standing up to her. Another opinion I have is, he wanted to distract them so his new friends could escape--but just like the stand-up, he didn't think of what he was doing until it was too late. I think that's why he ran instead of goading Kenny for a few moments. Yes, emotion doesn't excuse everything--but it makes it understandable as to the /why/.
Look at Arvo's mentally maturity for a second.
Alright. My speculation is that Arvo is within the age range of 15-18.You think he makes good choices? Especially after the treatment he's gone through. I'm barely 18 myself, and I snap over the littlest things. I sure as well wouldn't have been as submissive to being constantly abused mentally and from a racist standpoint, beaten multiple times (it's determinant, but if you don't send Kenny to the fire during the first night, he beats Arvo when he screams at Mike), and then tied up like a prisoner.
You're just trying to justify his actions and make us all feel bad for him!
No. I'm not. Plain and simple, I'm not. At this point in the apocalypse, hardly anyone can be considered a 'good person'--it all boils down to perspective. **Take for example, the Stranger--Lee's group /ruined/ his life. Take from him or don't, the point is your group does and it ruins him. He kidnaps Clementine as a revenge, therefore painting him as a bad guy /to us/. But, in his mind, he was just getting even. **
This whole thing isn't to make people think he is a good person, or to give him sympathy. It's so people understand that Arvo--like pretty much everyone else--has made shitty decisions. It's out of understanding, not pity or sympathy.
I see him as Ben 2.0, as a lot of others seem to. Especially during the finale when stood up to Kenny when he couldn't stand the abuse. He tried his hardest to protect the people important to him, but made very bad choices because he hadn't thought it through before acting. Then, when the actual shit hits the fan, he cowers away. I just chalk it up to him being young and.... almost naive, and obviously scared as shit of dying or turning into one of the walkers. I remember at my graduation, the valedictorian's speech centered a lot around 'You're going to make mistakes, and sometimes there's nothing you can do to fix them, but you can try by moving on' He made a mistake, just like Ben. We were mildly annoyed with Ben, and initially hated him even when we found about what he did--but when you found out where he was coming from and what he was /trying/ to do, the sensible person could understand.
For the last time; I'm not trying to make people feel sympathy, forgiveness or /anything/ for Arvo--he shot a person; age or gender or condition doesn't matter, a person is a person and that is fucking horrible. What I'm trying to do is to get people to /understand/ Arvo. He had his reasons just like anyone else did--it's just putting things into perspective. Again, this isn't a sympathy plea, this is an in-depth look at the emotional and logical process behind his actions, so we can understand why he made the shitty decision to shoot an eleven year old.
Comments
I just want to know why Mike thought it was a good idea to give Arvo a gun.
I don't think he did. As soon as he saw Clementine, he took the gun off the front seat of the truck. That's most likely where Mike was going to sit
Maybe Mike sees children as innocent? Naive...
He just put too much trust into Arvo too quick. He wanted to, but he didn't really understand the extent of how... raging he was?
Yeah I'm sorry, but if Clem falls in the river and she's freezing to death in the house before the fire starts, he gives her a hate look. Fuck that shit, I hope he dies a painful death.
I want bigby to give him the "Dum" treatment
Mike may be funny, but that Ruskie chickenshit was too much trouble.
He wanted her to die without actually having to do it himself. As his own personal revenge.
Jane said it nicely. Carver was probably a nice guy before all this, with a pretty little wife.
Still, Carver deserved to have his skull bashed in, as Arvo deserves to die after trying to kill Clementine.
Im not saying Arvo is a bad guy, he probably could have been an asset. But the truth remains is he gets us ambushed and he tries to kill Clem.
Killing his sister-walker is no excuse.
Didn't say it was an excuse, just an explanation as to /why/. The more unfortunate shit happens to a person, the more sour they get, and that leads them to do totally impulsive things. Not saying I forgive him totally, I just say that I understand his emotional process and, like I said, he's a kid as well.
Agreed. He was a good kid. Good kids can bite too.
That's the truth. I'm just glad he's the sort of character that allows our own interpretations because there is so little we know. I personally hope that Clem runs into him next season--I feel like that'd be an interesting thing to throw back at her. Maybe a year or two down the road when he's not such an... impulsive screw-up.
It is kind of like Lilly's situation but Larry technically wasn't a walker yet, he was still savable. Arvo's sister was not. I mean, Clementine shooting his sister probably saved him from getting bitten too. I think depending on how you go about the situation with Mike it seems like he either shoots her out of paranoia or revenge. One is much more sympathetic than the other though of course it is no excuse. I wish Clementine got to steal the truck and the baby and go with the three of them. That would have been my first choice. But nooooooo, we had to be with Jane and Kenny. (I ended up loving Kenny again in my ending but whatever.)
I feel like they wasted Arvo's potential a lot and most of it was bad writing and not the character itself. I wish we had a chance to actually have a conversation with him but instead all we were able to do was tell Kenny to quit hurting him at various times. The options to be nice to Arvo were only there so the player would almost certainly end up hating Arvo later on for shooting Clementine. (All those death glares he was giving to her beforehand counts as foreshadowing to him doing something bad though, I think.) It still felt really cheap to me.
I don't think he knew that, though. Approaching the end of episode four, Arvo notably became more and more hysteric. I can barely speak Russian myself, but the translations say he was all but begging both sides 'Put your guns down! Please! I don't want to die! I don't want to die!' and then when his sister got shot... that was it, I think he sort of just shut down mentally. When a person reaches that level of a mental breakdown, they very rarely look at things logically because they are driven purely by emotions. He most likely /thought/ that he could save her, hence why he didn't abandon her in fear of his own safety, and why he wrestled to get back to her after Kenny held him hostage. Maybe by her re-animating.. he thought it had worked? She was crawling, as if trying to escape and get her strength back so... maybe. But by Clementine shooting her, he twisted it around in his head that it was /her/ fault. That much I can see.
I thought they were going to do so much more with Arvo's character, I really did--maybe they will (maybe they'll have a DLC where we play as Mike?) but they completely wrote out all sympathy for him once he stopped crying, it was their intention all along to establish him as a sort of 'villain'.
The thing that annoys me so much is very few people, I've found, seem to get one of the points of the dream sequence with Lee and Clementine suddenly bringing up Lilly.
'...She was sad, Clem. That can make people angry sometimes.'
'Clem, people don't always make sense.'
'Because bad things happen to everyone, and its hard to keep being yourself after they do.'
It was almost like it was drawing parallels between Arvo and Lilly--not so you sympathize with him--but so you /understand/.
I mean, hell, /Lee/ got that angry and no one hates him for it, because we spent an entire season with him and saw his redeemable qualities. We don't know Arvo's redeemable qualities yet. Just the negative one Telltale showed us for the purpose of setting up a 'villain'.
I'm not saying people have to like him, I just like it's stupid to hate someone who tried to do the /exact same thing Lee did/, kill a person, just because literally only know one side of the story.
Because Mike feels bad for Arvo after seeing how insane Kenny had become. Remember that the first time he and Kenny interacted, Kenny picked a fight and brought zombies into Howe's Hardware.
Arvo had balls, I'll say that. He threatened Jane when she tried to rob him, and stood up to Kenny after taking him to his house and being told that he was a liar WITHOUT KENNY EVEN TAKING A MOMENT TO SEE IF ARVO WAS TELLING THE TRUTH.
Shooting Clem still reeks of trying to retroactively justify all the racism and irrational hate Kenny was piling onto him, and it bothers me that his fans have swallowed it without question. You might try to justify it as him being paranoid, or wanting to spite Kenny by hurting his loved one, but in the end it happens so that we feel wrong about sympathizing with a beaten, scared, physically disabled boy who lost his whole family and was getting abused by a raging madman.
Kenny mocks you for trying to save Arvo if you stayed to watch Carver, but ultimately there is no comparison between the two.
Carver was an irredeemable monster who was directly responsible for his numerous crimes. Arvo was a scared boy who, like Clementine, had no say over his group's actions (it was Buricko who decided to rob, then shoot at Clem's group despite Arvo's attempts to calm things down), and had ceased to be a threat as soon as his entire family was dead.
I think he had a plan to kill Clem and/or her group since she killed his sister or whoever that was.
It was another one of Telltale's 'fuck you for thinking that' moments, like with the Pizza and Ice Cream nonsense, when we all thought it was a Luke vs Kenny thing.
I'm still a fan of Arvo--I love his characterization, at least. But, at the same time, he tried to kill someone. I mean, people loved Lee, even though people were constantly reminding him he murdered someone.
"Bad Decisions Do Not Make A Bad Person" . . .ok then what does?
In a zombie apocalypse your decisions are the only true test of your character. Arvo was a tool. No one can support this kid because there isn't a leg to stand on in the argument. I am sure tons of people will try but all in all Arvo was a a-hole plain and simple. If you think otherwise, you are wrong.
I've stated my opinion. The fact that you don't agree is your opinion, you'll /obviously/ think I'm in the wrong.
Sorry I disagree. Like Jane said, Carver was a good person, Kenny was a good person (and still is), Arvo was a good person and isn't. He glared at Clementine for shooting his sister as a walker, he hoped Clementine died due to pneumonia, he shot Clementine for no reason and he led his group to ambush Clementine. He made bad choices, and he should die for it.
What are you even... I literally explained all those points in my argument. I'm not going bother explaining them again.
Kenny feels the same way about Ben in season 1
My main beef with Arvo was him holding that grudge against Clem even if you argue for Kenny to lay off him. The lack of any real dialogue fleshing out his circumstances before the shoot out didn't help either. Getting his group to come after you over a gun is just beyond stupid. The drugs I could understand but any idiot should know why they wouldn't trust him to keep the weapon. I suspect Arvo hid the drugs elsewhere and blamed your group and things escalated from there (if there is dialogue that indicates otherwise feel free to say so).
However, at the end of the day, if you want people to like a character you have to put in that extra work to make it so. Especially if you're going to have them do things as controversial as shooting the playable character.
But your "opinion" doesn't have any fact in it. . .
Its an extremely weak defense.
I have a bit more sympathy for Arvo than most do simply cause I robbed him in the first place.
I also think Kenny's abuse of him had an effect on his actions. If I was with someone that had already beat me several times and was just looking for an excuse to beat me to death, as he said, it would mess with my head too.
I understand that, but what I'm saying is I don't agree with your points. In my opinion what Arvo did was still wrong and such.
Arvo is weak. Let's be serious here, he shouldn't have lasted that long in the apocalypse to begin with. Why did Lee died and this guy with a bad leg, glasses and the body frame of a 12 year old survived... WHY.
It was the same sort of problem that episode 4 had--it didn't really seem like your choices had any sort of weight. That's because primarily, I think, Telltale wrote them to be the 'villains' for an epic shoot out finale and that was that. Anyone with a purely good heart would have felt at least a tiny bit sorry for Arvo in episode 5--but it all leads to Telltale's ''fuck you for thinking that'' approach when he completely destroys the frail, illiterate prisoner approach when he shoots Clem. It was similar with the whole Pizza and Ice Cream nonsense. Everyone thought it would be a Luke vs Kenny finale but Telltale just "What? No. Fuck you for thinking that''
It really irks me that they solely wrote Arvo to just be a snake who lowers defenses and stabs them in the back.
I have a theory. Arvo wanted to revange after incident with Clem and Jane but it didnt work as he expected - it is obivious. Then he came up with an idea to go to the house where they have to go through the river/lake. With some luck they will fall into the river but if not, they will have supplises to live - that why he was so dissapointed when he saw that Clem has survived coz he was angry that Clem has shot his zombified sister.
No, no, I understand that and I respect your opinion its just the way your first comment was phrased it gave off a sort of 'Your opinion is wrong, mine is right and that's that, you should feel shitty for having anything but' But I did have a bit of a rough morning, so it's probably that.
If you're saying Arvo and Lee are alike, then sorry but I have to completely disagree with you. They are completely different.
1- Lee killed a grown up man; Arvo shot a little girl; 2- Lee probably did it in the heat of the moment; Arvo wasn't even in danger if you give your gun; 3-Lee felt bad for what he did; Arvo probably felt good, for getting revenge on the person who shot his zombified sister.
I don't think he knew it was going to break, though. You have to remember that, up until their deaths, Arvo's group (at least Natasha and he) were living in that house--meaning they had to cross the lake every time they wanted to go in the direction of where Clem's group ended up being--Arvo made the trek at least twice, going to and from their to dispose of the supplies. He most likely actually thought it was safe to cross--hence why he started getting noticeably scared when the walkers started coming onto the ice, and even more once the first two fell through, where he actually started running to get off the ice. If he was prepared for it to break, I feel like he would have been a lot calmer. And if anything, Clementine is the lightest member of the group so she is the last person who would break the ice, were that his plan.
He wanted her to die, yes--as revenge against her shooting and forever killing his sister--whom he may or may not have realized was a zombie (he was mentally hysteric. That does a lot to a person's ability to look at logic and reason) But he didn't really have any sort of set plan to do it, or even to do it himself. When the opportunity came he wanted her to die as his own personal revenge for Natasha, but he didn't have any plan to actively kill her (I think, at least) until he saw the gun on the driver's seat of the car and she came outside.
Exactly but a guy that would do such things is already a dead person inside. He may regret and live with extreme guilt all his life. The other way would be that he would become the scum of the Earth.
Hmm,ok. You are right. My theory wasnt correct.
I've got little sympathy for him. He stole supplies from his own group (why else was he out?), got caught by Clem and Jane and despite not stealing from him, he said we did to his group to cover his own back. Then was happy to see Clem's group fall apart.
Oh no sorry that's what I meant. I thought the 'Sorry I disagree' thing would be enough. I'm sorry about your rough morning, I hope your day gets better soon.
I didn't say they were alike, I just pointed out the parallels--just like I did with Lilly/Arvo.
Lee was a grown man himself, Arvo looks to be in the 15-18 range--they aren't both 37 year old men. I assure you that Lee was not in danger either--I've never heard of a man taking a weapon when having sex with someone--but the point is, the /danger/ doesn't matter, it was the emotion. When it gets to this point, I agree that I can't compare them; Lee lost it in a split second of rage while Arvo's just built over time with each insult/beating, which is why I drew parallels to Lilly in this case. It was obvious for a long time that Lilly was bitter and mentally not there, which is why, when confronted by Carley/Ben, she loses it out of anger. She wasn't thinking about it, but at the same time she was paranoid and mentally hysteric and untrusting of everyone in Lee's group, especially after Larry's death. Larry to Lilly was Natasha to Arvo.
Also--judging purely by the expression on his face, he didn't feel good. There wasn't the same glare he gave her moments before, there wasn't a smile or a taunting sort of expression--his face fell, he realized 'oh shit, I really did that' and ran. There was so victorious gazing at Clem's wounded body on the ground.
Yes, Arvo wanted revenge on Clementine, this much I know--and I'm not saying sympathize with him, I'm saying that I understand the thought process. As the situation at the end of episode four escalated, you could hear the hysterics in his voice as he begged his side to stop, and that he didn't want to die. He probably had it in his head that it was his fault--justly, I'm not saying that it wasn't--and when his sister ends up getting shot straight in the chest, he most likely couldn't handle it. That's how a mental breakdown works--you don't apply logic or reasoning to anything, it's just /pure/ emotion. This is also why he desperately tries to perform CPR on Natasha, despite the fact that he could have his own head blown off at any second. He didn't see all of that, nor did he care, because his sister was his only focus. Even after Kenny pried him away as a hostage, he kept fighting to go back. When Natasha turned... I really don't think that Arvo understood fully that she had turned--especially with him flailing around in Kenny's grip. So, when Clementine shot her--as someone who suffers mental issues--I feel like, at that point, he cemented it in his head that it was her fault. He didn't see a little girl, he just saw the person who 'killed' his sister. And--as attached to her as he seemed to be--he wanted revenge for that.
My thinking is that, yes, he had been glaring at her every time she escaped danger unscathed or every time he got beat--but that was because he was most likely wanting her to die as a personal revenge, but without doing it himself (he said in episode four 'I don't want to shoot a little girl') The entire time he was captive, he was unarmed--until Mike decided to escape with him and Bonnie (determinant). He second he saw the gun on the driver's seat and the second Clementine came outside, he made some sort of unconscious choice to both defend himself and exact his revenge on his sister's killer. Again, there's no 'little girl' here, she's just his sister's killer. That's all he saw. I'm not saying that justifies it, I'm just saying that's how he understood it and most likely the only perspective he'd understand with the state of mind he was in.
And also, I pointed out in my original post up above that the reason everyone has come to love Lee is because we've known him long enough to see the redeeming qualities he has as well as the negative. But with Arvo, it was literally just 'You're going to be the main villain for the finale. Then we're going to make you extremely vulnerable and sympathetic until we pull a ''fuck you for thinking that he's anything but a piece of shit' angle'' We're seen nothing but negative because that's all he's been given.