A key problem I’ve seen bandied about over and over is that Y’sthola doesn’t have a “character arc” and that she is a very static character--she has no growth because she essentially came in without any flaws that could be fixed over time in the narrative.

Characters don’t need flaws to be good characters. But in the absence of flaws, what they do need is organic motivation. Y’sthola ostensibly has a motivation: she loves knowledge and wants to learn more to sate her own desire for information about the world. She’s literally a ham-fisted “curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back” metaphor.

The problem with this motivation is that no reason has ever been given for it. Why is she so driven to pursue knowledge? What made her choose this path? What events in her life led her to this specific course, when we meet her sister who behaves in a totally different (read as: much less self-sacrificial) way? What made her leave her family to study with Matoya and then leave Matoya to join the scions?

At her core, Y’shtola is characterized by her lack of prevailing connections. She has essentially no backstory other than “has a sister and studied with Matoya.”She has a family but never spends time with them. She loves Matoya, clearly, but still made the choice to leave her to join with Louisoix. Why? Although she’s friendly to all the scions, she still isn’t given any of the truly personal relationships that mark the other scions’ stories--she doesn’t have a Papalymo, a Minfillia, or a Moenbryda to truly “humanize” her; Matoya is the closest, and Matoya is a side character at most.

To be honest, I don’t care about learning a ton more about Y’sthola’s search for knowledge. It’s a typical and, in her case, criminally under-developed motivation. What I do care about is why, surrounded by so many opportunities to connect, she remains quintessentially a stray cat.

It seems to me that Y’shtola’s story would be much more interesting if it was not about this or that arcane magic she can learn to advance the plot, but instead about the deep and personal struggle between individual desire--endless pursuit of knowledge to sate one’s own curiosity--and the abiding desire to belong to others, to forge meaningful connections even if that sometimes means giving up on some of your personal, lone pursuits.

If you are never satisfied, can you ever settle?

Y’sthola’s "character arc” shouldn’t be about intelligence. It should be about wisdom: the discovery that the road to enlightenment might actually be the road that leads you home.