#Ending Interpretation

[glon-morski]

FF7 Rebirth Ending Interpretation

Well. That game sure was a ride, huh? 

As stated above, I’ll be talking about my interpretations of the ending. Please note that I’m writing this about two weeks after the game came out (for future reference). Obviously, spoilers for the entire game ahead/under the cut.

The main question of the ending if, of course, rather obvious: did Aerith die or not?

Cloud sees her alive and well, but the rest of the party doesn’t and is grieving her death. With how Cloud was set up since Remake and especially throughout Rebirth to be the one with hallucinations and delusions, one would think the answer to the question of “what is truth, what is fiction?” should be obvious, right? But… what if it’s not as clear-cut as the most obvious answer? What if Cloud is the one who sees reality and not his teammates? What if we have (finally, for some) left the “original world” of the OG behind and are now 100% in a different world, similarly to how Remake dangled that option in our face more subtly?

Yes, you read that right. My personal belief is that Aerith didn’t actually die, at least not in the world we see in the ending scene. There is a world where she died, of course. The world of the OG. But this is not the world we get to see at the end of Rebirth, and possibly not the one we will play in Part 3.

Hear me out.

1) The framing of Aerith’s death.

In many other “ending explanation/interpretation/theory” videos I watched on YouTube these past few days, everyone always comments on how we’re “teased” with Aerith surviving before ultimately seeing her die. But in none of them did I see anyone comment or talk about the way this vision of a death is brought about. It’s not the the first thing we see. It’s not that we see her live and then get a fade-to-black or fade-to-white like in other parts of the game. No. Instead, the shift is done in a very telling, very specific manner: the static that indicates Jenova’s interference with what is being remembered or perceived. Whichever of the two is the truth, Jenova is making Cloud (and us) see the other option. It’s not a glimpse at what was or what could have been. It’s all Jenova.

So, having established that, why do I think Jenova is fabricating the vision of Aerith’s death, and not her survival? Well, let’s look a bit closer at both the framing and how Jenova’s interference is portrayed through most of the game.

A) The “mechanism” of Jenova’s memory and perception editing

We’ve seen Jenova (also referred to as Mimic for the particular ability to copy a person’s memories) interfere with Cloud’s memories and his perception of reality many times throughout both games. In Remake, this was mostly in cases when:

- Jenova had to edit memories in the background so Cloud’s fake persona was still believable, for example in the very first chapter where he went “I’ve never been to a reactor like this before” because “the layout depends on when a reactor was built”.

- Jenova interfered with Cloud’s immediate perception to block some things out, primarily any mention of Zack.

- Sephiroth appeared before Cloud.

In Rebirth, it goes a bit further than that. We see Jenova edit Cloud’s memories in real time in Nibelheim when he first remembers Zack. We see Jenova ensuring he doesn’t see Tifa’s scar when she shows it to him a second time in Gongaga, with the implication that his memory of seeing it in Kalm has also been altered, only for everything to be edited back once Tifa falls into the mako. And of course, there are again the appearances of Sephiroth, as well as the frantic editing going on in the ending itself (very reminiscent of Nibelheim, might I add).

Of note here is how it’s all portrayed, which is what I mean by “mechanism”. There might be some discrepancies between Remake and Rebirth as Cloud’s situation changes, but throughout Rebirth itself, there is one definite consistency to every time Jenova messes with Cloud’s mind, be it his memories or his immediate perception. Namely, that we as the player first get a look at reality (whether obvious, brief, or much earlier in the game in the case of Tifa’s scar) before the editing kicks in and we see Jenova interfering, if not outright seeing how it changes Cloud’s memories or perception. In a lot of cases, we also see reality againafter the interference is over, to further drive home that Cloud is seeing things the other characters are not.

Why is this important? Because assuming the ending doesn’t pull a (rather random) deviation from that set-up, the first thing we saw was Cloud managing to save Aerith before the camera zoomed in on the clean blade. Only then did Jenova’s interference start. Looking at it from how it worked for the rest of the game, Jenova was attempting to alter Cloud’s perception and see blood where there was none, rather than the opposite.

B) The general framing of the scene

Setting aside whether we see reality first and the lie second or the other way around purely from an “it’s been like this the rest of the game” assumption, there is another thing. Namely, Jenova’s interference was only ever present in regards to Cloud. He was the one whose memories were tampered with, he was the one who didn’t always see things as they actually were, he’s the one who can (and sometimes is) controlled by Jenova/Sephiroth. But in the ending, there’s one interesting detail that I think warrants consideration.

When the rest of the party is allowed to enter the City of the Ancients and come running, it is after the first bout of Jenova’s interference ends. After Aerith tells Cloud that “it’s okay” and he’s relieved because she actually looks fine after all.

The first shot we get of the two as the others arrive is this one.

We can argue until we’re all blue in the face if the dark spot under Aerith in this shot is blood or just a shadow, though I do agree it looks a whole lot like blood. Still, we can tell that that spot aside, there is no blood anywhere else. There are no dark spots on Aerith herself (on her hand), or on Masamune. And then an interesting thing happens as the camera swoops in on Tifa as if to tell us “this is a PoV change, we see what she’s seeing now”. Which makes sense. Throughout Rebirth, Tifa has been set up as the main person who can notice when Cloud is being weird, or when his memories are weird, which was also pretty much the case in the OG. She’s the one we, the players, are supposed to trust when Cloud is acting off or remembering things she thinks are odd. Unlike Cloud, she’s not affected by Jenova. She sees the truth.

Except when she doesn’t. The thing is, we get the camera swooping in on her to indicate the PoV change to her… and then the following shots are full of Jenova’s interference all over again, shifting between seeing blood and not seeing any. However, Tifa’s (and Barrets) reactions make it clear what it is they actually see: Aerith, dying or already dead.

Question: if Aerith dying is reality, why is there a Jenova static effect in what Tifa sees? Just to throw us off? To confuse us?

Maybe so, but honestly, it feels a little odd to throw it in if Jenova wasn’t actually manipulating someone’s perception. And those of us who played the OG know very well that Jenova’s ability to make people see something else than reality isn’t limited to those who have her biological material in them. Otherwise, she never could have fooled the Cetra.

And there is another thing: the last scene with Rufus and “Glenn”, who turns out to be nothing but a Shadow of Sephiroth.

Rufus has never been in contact with Jenova. He doesn’t have her biological material in him. But he has been made to see Glenn (and then briefly Sephiroth) in the place of a simple Shadow of Sephiroth (or Sephiroth Clone, as they were called in the OG localization). This feels like the game reminding us – or letting those who never played the OG know – that Jenova indeed isn’t limited to Cloud in fucking up in their perception.

But wait. There’s an issue here, isn’t there? After all, even after the fight and after Sephiroth is gone from the City of the Ancients, Cloud is still the only one who can see Aerith just fine. The others don’t see her at all and still think her dead. If it’s indeed their perception being messed with and not Cloud’s, why is it not lifting? Any other time Jenova tried fucking with Cloud, he saw the truth eventually. Well, let’s look a bit closer at what we, and the characters, know of Jenova’s abilities, shall we?

2) Jenova’s Abilities and Limitations

I’ll be pulling mostly from Rebirth here (since Sephiroth and the Cetra so kindly gave us so much Jenova lore), but also a little bit from the OG regarding details I believe to be important even if they have yet to come up properly in the Remake trilogy, as well as CC(R) as a source of additional proof where necessary.

Jenova’s abilities are, to be frank, a terrifying combo. To summarize, it can

- appear as someone else, usually taking the form of a deceased whom its current victim used to know

- edit someone’s immediate perception of the things around them in real time (which is probably how the implied shapeshifting actually works, but as far as I know there’s no hard confirmation on that; not that it really matters for this meta)

- copy someone’s memories (a form of mind reading, I guess)

- edit its own DNA and memories (or the memories of a host some of its biological material is stuck in)

- a form of telepathy where it can put images/thoughts in people’s heads (as evidenced by Sephiroth, Cloud, and also strongly implied through Angeal and possibly Genesis in CC(R))

- furthermore, these abilities aren’t restricted to Jenova as a “complex lifeform”, but can be used and called upon even when it it’s in scattered pieces as small singular cells.

So, in short, we’re talking about an intelligent life-form capable of mind-altering/affecting abilities with possibly full on shapeshifting to top it all off (not that Jenova needs it), and with every single piece of it capable of using those abilities on its own. Of note here is that the players know all this (and even then only those who played the OG; newcomers can certainly guess at some of those abilities because they’ve been shown in action, but they haven’t had them explained in detail). The characters, on the other hand? All they got is what Sephiroth told them of Jenova’s abilities on the ship to Costa del Sol.

“They say she’s a monster. That she can peer inside you - into the very depths of your soul. That she can become those you hate. Those you fear. Those you love. And they call her… Jenova.”

He tells them about the mind-reading. He tells them about the “shape-shifting” which we, the players, know could work in two ways. He certainly doesn’t mention the ability she has of putting thoughts in your head or visions in your mind, altering your perception of things, though. Which is why Cloud thinks these things happen to him because of Degradation instead. It’s the only explanation he (or anyone else in the party) have.

There are also some limitations to Jenova’s powers (thank God for that, right? LOL). For one thing, distance. Jenova doesn’t seem able to affect someone without being in their close vicinity or, alternatively, having someone with its biological material in the vicinity of the manipulated person. This, of course, doesn’t apply to someone who already has Jenova’s biological material inside them, because they’re as close to the source as they can get.

The second limitation is rather more interesting, but also requires a little more assumption and, like the shapeshifting, can go two ways.

Any time we see Sephiroth, it is quickly revealed that it’s actually a Shadow of Sephiroth instead whom Cloud and the party perceived as Sephiroth (or whom Rufus perceived as Glenn). This implies one of two things:

a) Jenova  can’t make people hallucinate something “from thin air”. By that I mean, Jenova can’t create a hallucination of a whole-ass person acting all normal if there is nothing but air in reality. It needs a base to build off of. That’s why, in Rebirth, whenever Cloud sees Sephiroth, it’s in actuality a Black Robe. Or

b) Jenova could create a hallucination from thin air, but chooses not to because of a different limitation: it can trick the eyes and ears, but not the sense of touch.

If it’s the first one, then the Aerith Cloud sees cannot be a fake created by Jenova because Jenova wouldn’t be able to make Cloud hallucinate her. In which case, if she’s not real, then Cloud is hallucinating her all by herself. Which, sure, is possible, but it definitely creates very big narrative problems in that it indicates a mental break the likes of which Cloud didn’t have in the OG, and for good reason. While he has more then enough reasons to be messed up and traumatized, most of Cloud’s serious mental issues in the OG were all created by Jenova. His hallucinations, his fake personality, his uncertainty of whether or not he was ever a real person… all because of Jenova messing with his memories and Sephiroth exploiting that and manipulating him. Which means the source wasn’t Cloud’s own mind, but an eldritch abomination from space. And as such, the problem could largely be fixed by just “doing something to set him straight”, which in the OG was what the Lifestream Sequence accomplished.

If Cloud is now hallucinating Aerith without Jenova’s input because he can’t face her death, then that’s an entirely different ball game and I cannot see it being satisfactorily resolved without Cloud having to be benched and someone else taking over and finishing things. Which, granted, happens for a time in the OG as well while Cloud is mako poisoned in Mideel, but it’s not nearly for a long enough time for Cloud to recover from a mental break such a this. That would take years. And unless he passes the “main character and hero of the story” baton to someone else, it ain’t happening.

I don’t know about you, but that wouldn’t just be a letdown for me, it would be downright insulting and dismissive of mental illnesses in a way in which FFVII never was.

Okay, so let’s say Cloud hasn’t completely broken down mentally and hasn’t started hallucinating Aerith all by himself. Let’s also say that Jenova isn’t making him hallucinate her from thin air. So, she’s real. That still leaves us with one glaring problem.

Why can’t the others see her?

Well… there is one last thing Jenova can do that I haven’t mentioned yet. Something Remake has exploited and very vaguely teased.

Jenova can warp one’s perception so they don’t see or hear someone who is actually there.

This ability comes the most prominently to the front in the OG when the party visits the Northern Cave and shortly before Cloud gives Sephiroth the Black Materia again. During that scene, Tifa yells and yells at Cloud to not do it, but what she says is no longer in the typical speech bubble, but rather almost like a narrator voice over the screen. One of her questions at that point is “you can’t hear my voice?”

No. Cloud can’t. And in fact, none of the other characters in the scene act like they see or hear Tifa at all.

Rebirth hasn’t really touched on this ability yet. But Remake has alluded to it several times when Cloud saw Sephiroth (who was likely a Shadow of Sephiroth again), and then nothing and no one at all. In one scene, when Cloud, Barret and Tifa are on the way to Aerith’s house after the Platefall, we even get a direct comparison when Cloud sees Sephiroth, and then we get to see through Tifa that there is seemingly no one there.And then, there is the scene in the Drum, where Cloud is experiencing another Jenova episode and Tifa slowly approaches him. We see there is no one on the walkway up ahead. Then we get a close-up of Tifa and Cloud as she asks him if he’s okay before looking ahead again, and her eyes grow wide. Because suddenly, Sephiroth is there.

It’s subtle, but it is a hint at that particular part of Jenova’s perception-manipulating abilities, I believe.

It doesn’t help that in Rebirth’s final scene, Aerith doesn’t even really try to talk to anyone but Cloud. She doeslay a hand on Nanaki’s shoulder and he does acknowledge it, but is it a case of him sensing her spirit, or him feeling her physical touch but still being unable to see her? Both are equally possible, but I think you don’t need me to tell you which one I believe is happening.

But wait. I said myself that one of Jenova’s limits regarding mind manipulation seems to be distance. If so, how can the rest of the party still not see Aerith after Sephiroth and Jenova are gone?

Well, we’ve already established that Jenova can manipulate someone – anyone – and that she doesn’t need to be whole to do that. A fragment of her is enough. That’s why it can constantly play with Cloud’s mind whenever. Because he does have her cells (or Sephiroth’s cells) inside him. And here’s the thing: by the end of Rebirth, he’s, in my opinion, more than close enough to a Shadow of Sephiroth to be the “conduit” for Jenova to manipulate the others. He was basically completely taken over for most of the Temple of the Ancients, for one thing, something that was made painfully obvious when you still controlled Aerith rather than him when the group reunited (something that didn’t happen at any other point of any other character), and then when you played him going after Aerith and the Black Materia after the Temple’s collapsed. If you try to not go after her and pull the joystick back, Cloud starts shifting and contorting very much like a Shadow of Sephiroth that is being pulled towards a given destination. The only real difference between Cloud and them would be that he’s not as Degraded – not in body and not in mind – and so he isn’t fully lost or at the “I can only slowly shuffle forward” stage.Alternatively, of course, there can also be a Shadow of Sephiroth somewhere close by without the party knowing, but that demands a little more suspension of disbelief and, at least to me, feels like reaching.

3) A Different World

All right, so I think I’ve established why it’s possible for Aerith to still be alive. That leaves one last part of my claim still to be discussed: that we’re in a different world at the end of Rebirth than at its beginning.

Let’s go back to the framing of the scene again. If you look at the exact moment when Cloud breaks free of the Whispers and parries Sephiroth’s blade, we see a brief flash of a “rainbow” before Sephiroth is pushed back. From that point onwards, up until Cloud catches Aerith in his arms as she falls, the entire altar is circled not just by Sephiroth’s Black Whispers (which quickly leave), but also this rainbow glow.This glow is the effect Rebirth uses to show a creation of a different world. A different possibility. A fork in the timeline. We’ve seen it multiple times with Zack, as obvious as in this scene and far more subtle, whenever he made a choice. The most blatant example that comes to mind is the scene where he was picking the left or the right tunnels to go to either Hojo or Biggs.

There is one thing to note, though: whenever this effect made an appearance to indicate that “multiple possibilities have been created”, we didn’t immediately jump between them. We followed the first choice made and remained in the same world. When Zack chose to go to Hojo, we saw the possibility being created that he went to Biggs instead, but the next scene of him we got was still at the Shinra Building where he wanted to meet with Hojo. What’s more, we didn’t see multiple approaches of that (like Zack trying to go in through the front vs Zack trying to enter through the parking lot like the party did – and nobody can tell me there’s no way he didn’t at least think of the option). We see him facing a platoon at the main entrance. We see him confront them. And then we get a “fade-to-white” that… kinda seems to indicate the end of that particular story. Only then do we see the Pug-Stamp world where Zack went to Biggs, and only after that do we see the third option where he went to neither and visited the church to make up his mind instead.

What this means is that when Cloud saved Aerith, he created a fork in the road, a new world, and going by other obvious instances of this, there is little reason for us – or the story – to randomly jump off the road he just created to another alternative. So by pure logic, we should be in the world where Aerith survived.

4) The “problems” such a twist would create

Now, time to hit the most controversial issue. If Aerith actually survived like I believe, I can already imagine the havoc most of the fandom will raise. “But her death is iconic! It must happen! She can’t cast Holy without dying! She can’t save the Planet from the Lifestream if she’s not in it! She can’t stop Meteor!”

To those people I say: kindly shut up and listen for a spell.

Aerith’s death in the OG is indeed iconic… but most of the reason it hit so hard in the OG was because it was so unexpected. That’s a feeling that could never have been replicated in Rebirth, because everybody and their mother seems to know by now that Aerith died in the OG. Everyone was waiting for this moment to see how it would play out. Very few are the exceptions who don’t know. But as for everything else… I’m sorry to burst your nostalgic bubble, but it’s not true. Any of it.

Aerith did not need to die to cast Holy. Holy was already cast and Sephiroth could hold it back by sheer will alone. Aerith dying did not make Holy stronger or anything of the sort. It was not the price for casting Holy, either. If it was, Sephiroth wouldn’t have even needed to impale her.

Aerith also doesn’t need to die to command the Lifestream, something which we see far more reinforced in Rebirth than we did in the OG. She’s using the Lifestream just fine in the Temple to shape it as she needs it, after all. Sure, she first needs to learn how to do it, because she never had the chance to learn before, but she absolutely can do it without being dead. There is no reason to think she’ll need to die to use the Lifestream to stop meteor in this case. What she does need is to learn how to do it.

I hate to have to remind people of this, but in the OG, the whole “point” of Aerith’s death was that it was senseless. It had no narrative meaning. It was no noble sacrifice; it was not something that “needed to happen for the greater good”. It happened, yes, and the remaining characters grieved her, but had she survived, the story’s narrative would not have changed one iota. The emotional impact of her death would be gone because she wouldn’t be dead, sure, but outside of that emotional hit, her death did nothing to advance the story in terms of narrative. It gave the party an additional reason to want to stop Sephiroth, but it’s not like they needed another push, either. Most of the fandom seems to have convinced themselves that she needed to die, and I assume it was a form of coping with the unexpected loss given that she is a fictional character in a story that very typically would paint an MCD as something that was “necessary for the greater good”, but that is not the case here. And that was the whole point.

So, those worries people have about her casting Holy or stopping Meteor? Yup, still possible with her alive. Her survival does not actually doom the Planet.

5) The Narrative Purpose of Having Aerith Live

Finally, one last thing you might be wondering about: narratively speaking, what is the point of having Aerith survive, but have most of the party not be aware of it? Why would Jenova/Sephiroth want that? If Aerith’s death is one big mindfuck created by Jenova, how is Cloud of all people immune to it this time? And why does she stay alone at the City of the Ancients to "pray"?

Well, what Sephiroth wants is basically for Cloud to not trust his companions and vice versa. He wants him isolated and susceptible to his manipulations. He wants to have him as his puppet to use and torment. What can I say? The man is obsessed.

His first attempt at breaking Cloud was, as in the OG, by killing Aerith. When that failed, he tried to have him believe Aerith died anyway.

Except at the end of Rebirth, Cloud is very determined to not believe one word Sephiroth says. And this is important because as powerful as Jenova is, its power and influence can be overcome if one’s willpower, one’s sense of who they are, one’s heart (one’s kokoro, a word that’s often translated as “heart” from Japanese, but the concept of which encompasses all those other things as well) is strong enough. And Cloud does have the potential to be strong enough to overcome it. He does in the OG. It’s a big part of how he ultimately recovers his true self. The problem is, the way Rebirth portrays it at the end, Cloud is in this odd space where he’s on one hand supremely vulnerable to Sephiroth’s and Jenova’s manipulations, and on the other hand begins to tap into that true strength of his that allows him to overcome Jenova.

So what I think happened is that Jenova tried to make Cloud see Aerith as dead, but when she reached out and spoke to him, he broke free of that control and suppressed Jenova’s ability to twist his own perception of things, but not Jenova’s ability to affect others because he doesn’t even know about it. That’s why, for a short moment, we see things as they are again. We see Aerith being fine.

And then the others arrive and Jenova basically flips the coin and starts manipulating them. The end result of which will be the same… if not potentially worse, depending on how things go.

Think about it. Rebirth set Cloud up as the unreliable narrator even better and more poignantly than the OG did. Furthermore, after her first dip in the Lifestream and remembering the whole thing with climbing Mt Nibel as kids, but not experiencing a revisit of any other memories, Tifa has little reason to doubt her recollection of Nibelheim. Especially since Cloud’s recollection changed to partially fit hers once he remembered Zack. Tifa, and the rest of the party, are far more likely to believe their own eyes and Tifa’s version of the past should she speak up than Cloud’s at this point. None of them have any reason to believe they are suddenly the ones seeing things.

Cloud himself is also far more aware of how unreliable his memory is. So if confronted with something he and Tifa remember (or saw) differently, who is he more likely to believe?

This can all further play into Sephiroth’s attempt to convince him that he’s merely a puppet. That nothing he thinks or remembers or believes is real. And the thing is, Sephiroth (whom Cloud resists supremely now) doesn’t even have to do a single thing. The party will do it for him, because I can’t imagine them notaddressing the fact that they believe Aerith died, yet Cloud acts like nothing is wrong.

And who can ever correct them or anything? There’s only two things that could help: one, the Lifestream Sequence as per the OG so Cloud can piece himself together. Or, alternatively, the one person who can confirm that there is some truth to Cloud’s recollection of Nibelheim and that he was indeed there even if Tifa has no clue about it: Zack.

Of course, Zack is in a different world altogether, so him playing this kind of major role is up in the air and very dependent on the exact inner workings of the multiverse created here. I have plenty of thoughts on that, too, but that’s for another time.

Either way, this sets up Cloud to be isolated from the party all by his own and the party’s doing. And you know what this seems to fit? Cait Sith’s fortune from all the way back in chapter 8 of Rebirth.

Yes, yes that fortune.

The fortune that spoke of a “last minute twist” and how Cloud “would lose what he cherished most”.

Those who watched Advent Children know what it is that the real Cloud cherishes most: everything. “There is not a thing I don’t cherish!” And right now, even though Aerith survived, it does seem like he’s set up to lose it all unless something is done.

As for Aerith staying behind, consider this: unlike in the OG, we don't awaken in Gongaga a few days after everything at the Temple. Aerith hasn't been gone for at least a day. We don't have to waste time going after her by figuring out we have to go to Bone Village (factor in Tiny Bronco voyage time here), we don't have to lose time mining for a Lunar Harp. The party enters the Sleeping Forest at the same time as her, but then just "loses her in the fog". When Cloud wakes up, he sees the Whispers and guides them the right way.

Unlike in the OG, we don't get to the City of the Ancients at least one day after Aerith, if not more. We get there a couple hours after her at most, if even that. In fact, when Cloud approaches her, we hear her start praying. Unlike in the OG, there is every chance she didn't finish casting Holy - had barely even started - by the time Sephiroth interrupts and quite literally crashes the party.

Setting Holy aside (because Cloud could very well find some sort of excuse to stick around until she finished, especially given how the rest of the party were reluctant to leave because of grief and the fact that the Tiny Bronco needed fixing for flight), we could also assume she's staying behind to "pray" as in "to learn to control the Lifestream better" - something that's clearly established in the Temple of the Ancients that she needs guidance in, and gets it from the Lifestream itself. Finally, this Aerith has a working White Materia, which seems to have some connection with her future memories... if not downright with a "post-OG Aerith" who already exists in the Lifestream, just like we suspect there is a "post-OG/AC Sephiroth" who's pulling Cloud's strings.

Some explanations seem more farfetched than others, I'll give you that, but there can be reasons found for why she stays behind even if she isn't, in fact, dead.

And with that, I believe I said everything I had to say on this particular subject. I hope you enjoyed reading :)

[ash-and-starlight]

humble contribution

[cheeseandcake-from-ao3]

[itseghost]

very straightforward redraw because this quest and this whole scene have been ON my mind.

[hyhkai]

camboy! | c.yj.

[ 🎥 ] — after yeonjun's rise in the porn industry, an interview was something he agreed to for fun. however, after he saw you, the interviewer, he wished it was a fake interview where he gets to fuck you.

cw : pornstar!yeonjun. unedited word vomit fictional magazine company that apparently also exists in real life.

a/n ; i apologize for my sins i swear I'll change 🙏🏼 and this is a drabble, not a fic! i might turn it into one over time ♡

after you reached out to him a few weeks ago with greetings and compliments, and asking can I interview you some time? I'd like to know what it's like to be a person who earns through the adult industry, and with your fame, I know that you're just the right person., his first, honest reaction was to laugh. i mean, seriously?

he was laughing at the irony of the fact that he was being interviewed. i mean, who was willing enough to take out time of their busy, hectic schedule to interview a man who earns bread by having a dildo inside of him? he had to know. he wanted to know what this person was like.

he did think that this could be completely false and you could be a potential threat, trying to lure him into your little cage with cheese like he's a fucking rat, capture him and do bad things to him like he'd heard with various nefarious acts of people against people with 'easy' fame.

"can I get proof that you're actually an interviewer?"

to which he immediately got a response with a photo of a xerox copy of your identification document, namely at a popular company called mode de vie. he could see the black and white ink that framed the photo stuck on the top right corner, and he knew that he had to see that fucking face in real life. if that's how you look in a awfully captured picture, so captivating, bold, and confidence outlining your eyes in the form of sharp eyeliner, he had to see that face in front of him, asking him questions about his body count or something else he doesn't give two shits about.

he'd said sure to your offer almost immediately now that he saw that it was a real interviewer after him. and now that it was time, he drove to the place where you both agreed to be at — a café which was relatively close to his house and your office.

"I'm glad you came!" you said as you shook his hand that would eventually get sweaty from just sitting opposite to you. what the fuck? he seriously considered telling you to quit this stupid, serious job and just join him in his public sex life. you were stunning.

now that he saw your hair open, framing your face, and that fucking sharp-ass eyeliner, he was mad that he didn't dress up nicely and instead came in a hoodie. who wants to miss a chance of getting a baddie?

he thanked the lords he'd long forgotten when you told him this is just an audio based interview which will later be turned into a text format.

while you continued asking him questions about everything, from "fuck-a-fan" to "how did your mother find out?", he'd needed to ask you to repeat your questions several times. his eyes kept drifting down, down to your chest.

'why the fuck are you wearing a top so low-cut? is it to provoke me or something?' he'd think. he legitimately wants to put his hand on the table, pushing himself towards you and grabbing one of your tits. it's pissing him off he can't.

okay, so maybe he was a pervert like one of his friends liked to say. but it wasn't his fault when you were asking him questions about his sex life while looking at him with those eyes that were possibly tearing his clothes off.

in his world, that is.

'do you want to fuck me too, or am I trippin'?'

he knew he had to keep his filthy hands, his filthy thoughts, to himself. c'mon, it's a fucking interview, yeonjun. grow up. you've had plenty of girls and guys to fuck in your life. from small and petite, to taller than you. from fucking someone to getting fucked. you've done it all. why are you so captivated by this woman?

maybe it was the way you had your makeup done that had him wishing he could see it smeared all over with a new makeup product; his cum, or maybe it was your tits that were practically begging to be the thing he shoves his face in tonight. but no, it was the way you carried yourself.

there was this... this aura, this radiation of confidence that was magnetic enough for him to be pulled to you.

under the table, he was practically going to rub one out. he kept adjusting his pants, kept palming his dick that was straining against his pants and standing up against his thoughts of not fucking you ever.

ugh, just how fucking good you'd look on his bed, and he swears he could go above his rounds per fucking streak of 4 with you; from classic missionary to the amazon position, from sixty-nine to his foot on your face while he fucked your ass from the back. fuck, he'd even let you peg him, something he's always refused to do.

just how good you'd look while sliding your strap-on inside of him, his eyes going wide, as well as your smile at the sight of his pretty face. he thinks you'd like some crazy songs playing in the background, similar to the vibe of playboi carti.

fuck, he'd hold onto your tits for support, comfort, for just the fucks of it no matter who is topping.

"um, excuse me?" you asked when he spaced out in the middle.

"yeah?" he said, looking up from the table where both of your milkshakes resided.

"thank you for the interview. i appreciate it a lot!" you said, smiling at him, completely unaware of the junk he had in his brain about you. you put out your hand for a friendly yet professional handshake.

"oh, yeah, of course." he muttered out, responding to your hand with his that was definitely sweaty.

as you closed your notepad and stopped the recording, he looked up at your face finally.

"can I ask you a question too?"

"oh, yes, of course." you said, looking up at him with a face of genuine curiosity. maybe it would be something like —

"when will this be posted?"

"where can I read it?"

"will there be a hardcopy?"

"would you ever fuck me if you could?"

and suddenly, this was the first time you regretted not recording the aftermath of an interview.

[goldensunset]

when people refer to canon story-relevant kingdom hearts games as ‘spinoffs’ it makes me sad not only for the obvious reasons i always say but also bc like man i WISH this series had spinoffs. imagine what they could do if they had permission from nomura to truly go off the rails and ignore the greater canon for a second and just do some fun whimsical plotless thing in an alternate universe. imagine a fishing/boating game on destiny islands. kh fighting game. it is an injustice that we have been deprived of kingdom karts. can anyone hear me

[fumifooms]

Falin who cares too much and too little - analysis

Been stewing on Falin thoughts for a while, I know I have an interpetation on her that differs from many but I’m jumping into the fray. I think there’s a lot to be said about what we do see of Falin. This shorter Falin analysis I made is heavily encouraged prior reading. This analysis mainly explores her complex relationship with caring and so it’s sort of structured in two halves, with Faligon at the crux of it all.

Falin cares too little :

A lot of people assign Falin a people pleasing mindset and I… Don’t agree. We never see her care at all about people in her town or at the academy not liking her.

We do see her worrying about what people think of her… ONCE. And Laios comforted her, told her they didn’t matter and she should be proud of herself. She latched onto that hard. That’s why this scene was so important to be included during the dragon fight, relationship-defining; it’s always been them against the world. She grew to not care what others thought, to only focus on her close loved ones. No one else matters.

Laios’ words were her world. Her older brother who taught her how to feel comfortable with herself, who told her, you’re great, others are the ones in the wrong to not see that, I’ll always be with you, always be there for you. Older brother who always made great plans, who always knew more, who was better at wrestling to name the dogs, who she has always idolized. Laios who always spoke of traveling the world, to which she always said she wanted to follow. And she would, she’d follow him even if it meant leaving the academy and all she knew behind, she’d follow him to the ends of the world, and that’s what she did.

She didn’t care about showing to her classes or keeping up such appearances, she doesn’t even think of toning down her jumping into bushes when Marcille recoils, etc. She acts like an obedient pawn often, to her parent’s directives and then following Laios around no matter what he decides to do, but I don’t think the motivation is people pleasing, rather it’s being with & caring for her loved ones, and her go-with-the-flow attitude enhances the impression. Not that it’s as simple as that, mind you, but let’s talk about this for now.

Falin is perceived as selfless because we, the audience, have our perspectives revolving around the main people in her life (Laios, Marcille). They’re the ones she’s devoted to and people who care about her back a lot too, but to people like her classmates or the towspeople she probably must have seemed like someone who didn’t care about the people around her or her surroundings a lot, who just went on alone and did her own thing.

What matters to Falin? From what place does her kindness come from? Is a part of her keeping up appearances? And I think that’s the point, the horror of Faligon as well, that we can’t tell just how in control Falin the person is as the chimera (because we are shown that she’s in there, we just don’t know at what degree), that we don’t know her enough to be able to tell when she’s at her most genuine, her most raw. That even if you do settle on none of her being present as Faligon, we have to at least consider it, consider that she may be able to do something like this and have a part in it, brutal and uncaring. That even the lenses we see her through, the people who love her, may be unreliable.

And this is what’s very interesting about her too, she truly is so idealized by people around her as a saint. She’s so good and kind and caring to everyone etc etc etc. Laios, Toshiro and Marcille all see her as the paragon of goodness in the world. More cynical characters like Namari and Chilchuck have more layered opinions on her, the latter finding her somewhat unnerving because he can’t read her well. But then with that one flashback scene we see that… Her priorities are intensely focused on Laios and Marcille, she doesn’t care all that deeply about anyone other than them (+ maybe her parents). The rest of the party is in the same danger here but only Laios and Marcille who she’s speaking to get the special ,ention, and if they don’t cross her mind then of course she’d be ready to sacrifice strangers through a risky teleportation. That doesn’t make her not kind or caring!! Just that greater good isn’t exactly her priority. Any means is alright if the end result is her loved ones safe, it usually takes the form of healing and caring, but we see she’s ready to fight and make dangerous calls too. To me there’s this aspect to her that she isn’t as pure and magnanimous as everyone thinks she is, both in-world and interestingly enough meta wise as well, and there’s something interesting to that.

People pleasing implies a need to be liked, needs for the motivation to be that. A yes-man, etc. But if we analyze Falin, her general kind, smiling demeanor is more a matter of passivity I yhonk. Conflict avoidance is easier, so she’s friendly and hopefully things’ll be smooth sailing. It’s easy to be kind to classmates even if they act wary and rude if you don’t care about what they think either way. Of course she prefers good things happening to people over bad things, she is genuinely kind, but I think people tend to assign her a very grand altruistic way of life when to her the motivation is pretty self-centered. She doesn’t do what she does because she loves them, but because she loves them.

One situation that’s interesting to dig into for her way of thinking, and what I’m trying to get at, is Shuro’s proposal to her. I’ve seen people saying she hesitated because she didn’t feel comfortable saying no even though she wanted to, "I can’t say no, I don’t want to hurt him", something that sounds sensible and familiar, but it’s actually canon in the Adventurer’s Bible that the reverse was the case, that she didn’t feel comfortable saying yes. Because the offer was tempting, but it’d have been a loveless agreement on her end. And it makes sense she’d want to say yes too, like we see with the Toudens, marriage is very much a political strategical economical thing in their village, there’s even a bit on it on Laios’ Adventurer’s Bible profile about dowries, and both siblings were engaged very early. They lived poorly for a long time, it’s an enticing idea to marry rich, to have not only yours but your brother’s needs met forevermore easily, which at one point in their careers was their main worry and goal. Why shouldn’t she accept a life of leisure and wealth handed to her by a lovely friend?

So her hesitance was "yeah that’s convenient for me, but where it’s everything to him and heartfelt I’m able to be detached because I don’t care about it that much… Can I do that? I’m not reciprocating, not saying yes in the way that matters. Can I do that to him?" Very caring even though it’s not what you’d expect, isn’t it?

And central to my analysis, where I’m going with this is, I feel like that’s the thing with her character, that she doesn’t feel as strongly as she "should" sometimes, or feels a different way than she "should", or at least that she feels that way and others say she does. She didn’t mind suddenly leaving the academy, leaving Marcille behind and not seeing her for 4 years. She acted like it was no big deal that she sacrificed herself after getting resurrected after the red dragon fight. And in both those cases it upset the people around her greatly that she didn’t seem to get why it was such a big deal, didn’t seem to care about how they’d experienced her choices.

So it’s a tendency… And it’s not that she doesn’t care, it’s just that the way she measures what’s good for the ones she loves isn’t the same as what they themselves think it is (like Laios and Marcille not wanting to be apart from her). It’s an overt but quiet kind of care, it’s doing things like following them around and making sure they bathe and have a meal, even if that means she has to be dragged into misery too.

So yes she probably would know "not caring enough/the right way" is one of her perceived flaws, and that informs how she tries to handle her response to Shuro’s proposal. Her not wanting to accept like her first gut instinct, is because she’s thinking about reciprocity, about if it’d be right to go into this knowing that they have different priorities and she might not be able to keep up with the type and amount of emotions he wants/expects from her. And that’s a big part of her character isn’t it, having expectations pushed onto her. Her trying her best, but in her own way that may seem odd or even unfeeling. Not unlike when she exorcised the ghost as a kid too, unblinking and matter-of-factly, and not seeming to understand why people stared the way they did.

Even though she answered his proposal only post-canon, she’d been pondering it for a while even pre-canon and the Adventurer’s Bible explanation was released midstory, so I’m hesitant to assign her much growth about her hesitation and what I went on above, since she still didn’t react "right" with Laios after the red dragon fight (even if she apparently doesn’t remember sacrificing herself) and put herself in that situation in the first place. She hasn’t finished her arc on that flaw of hers is what I’m saying, she for sure still has it, but I certainly think her thoughts on Shuro’s proposal shows awareness, both of herself and social.

And awareness is a big analysis key word with Falin, especially here it can be hard not to conflate not caring with not knowing. How socially aware is she? It’s rather layered, because canonically she wasn’t aware of her ostracization in her hometown at all, and we’re not sure if she knew Shuro was interested in her before he proposed, but she generally seems more socially aware than Laios. She tags along on his caravan job to make sure he isn’t being mistreated (though doesn’t ask he get a salary), she catches social faux-pas more easily like in the genderbend magic mirror omake with Shuro, and interestingly enough she’s very good at empathizing with her parents and understanding their perspective. We see when she’s worried about Marcille coming that she does know about propriety and how appearances shape impressions. Being a chief’s daughter must at least have taught her a thing or two on that front.

She never stands up for herself, but when it comes to defending others she worries, strategizes and explains.

And this sort of understanding is part of why I think she’d notice the expectations pushed onto her like I was saying earlier, notice how she makes people feel when she’s careless. But if she changes anything about herself in response to noticing is for her to choose, and generally I think it’s a sort of inbetween of yes and no: that she becomes more complacent but also more reserved, complying but by hiding more of herself passively. She’s not sure wether to accept or reject Shuro’s proposal, doesn’t want to lead him on? She’ll just be taking a while to silently consider it, try to keep things as they are for the time being. The third, less conflicting option. She doesn’t feel heard by Marcille who keeps infantilizing her? Just bear with it. Retract yourself emotionally. Settle for it.

We see that when she was young she had a tendency to not read a room, and I think that’s here too. She doesn’t get why her nonchalance upset others but that doesn’t change that she doesn’t want them upset or hurt, so she tries, albeit in maybe a roundabout way. She always had a hard time deeply connecting with people, often keeping herself some amount of emotionally distant: erasing herself from the equation, from the two-way trade that relationships are and making it a onesided thing instead, where all their needs and emotions are directed towards her but she only lets out a bit of her own show. She takes everything upon her and deals with it and tries not to give others this same burden, though not on a conscious level, it’s just that she’s learned growing up that she doesn’t have much agency.

Like I went into with my analysis linked at the beginning, I think Falin is used to just taking what she can get and not asking for more, when it comes to social bonds. She’ll take spending time with her mother no matter what it is they do, she’ll follow Laios to the graveyards and stick by him even when he’s pushing her away (because he doesn’t want her borrowing his book or "No copying!" or such). Her father was always distant, cold and uncommunicative, her mother was considered sick from anxiety and the exorcism attempts were the main way they spent time together, at dinner tables there were only her and Laios. The dogs picked on her too even if she loved them— And so did the townspeople, maybe that being normal to her at home is why she didn’t notice the ostracization she suffered.

She’s always been the last to be asked about decisions or what she wants, never asked to play with at recess, neither her father or Laios asked before sending her to the academy or leaving the village. At home, in the hierarchy she was considered to be below the dogs by the dogs themselves, as someone they can disrespect. Dogs learn from example and behavior, so this means Falin must have been pushed around a lot, and that the family didn’t try hard to rectify the dogs’ misconception, likely worsened by Laios regularly wrestling with her as a competition.

So for example when Falin showed Marcille food, it was her way to implicitly ask to have lunch with her without voicing that question, without daring to take up space. Someone’s presence isn’t something you ask for, it’s something that’s bestowed upon you, you can follow them around but you can’t ask them to stay or to come with.

She’s used to her needs and wants not being listened to, so she’s learned to have less wants. Caring less about herself, caring less about other people beyond her safe zone, was a defense mechanism in part. She has a sense of learned helplessness too, like how when Marcille came to take her away from Laios, even though she didn’t want to leave with Marcille it felt so determined and unshakable to her that whatever Marcille decided Falin would have to comply with.

And still, it’s the "marrying you would be awfully convenient if it wasn’t that I’d feel guilty for not loving you back, the way you wanted me to when you proposed to me" and the "I don’t regret leaving the academy and leaving you behind without goodbyes but I’m sorry that you’re so much more upset about it than me". It’s the guilt of not loving people back the way they want to be, with the same intensity or fervor.

It’s the autism it’s the aroace of it all, it’s the emotional stunting and confusion but the pit in your stomach telling you you did something wrong again. The no object permanence even for people you love even for 4 years, it’s the feeling like you’re somehow at fault for someone having fallen for you and not knowing what to do with any of it. I’m not joking btw it isn’t uncommon for autistic people to not see their close friends for a long while, not having missed them all that much and for that to be really hurtful for the other if they notice/ask about it. "Hiii bestie! Oh umm you’re uh more emotional about this than I expected, hopefully you won’t feel alienated by me not feeling as intensely about it…"

So… Yeah. I think she thinks of things and relationships in a different way than most people, and beyond "good things happening to people is good" I don’t think she actually cares about people all that much. I’d argue that Laios shows more desire to connect with others and make relationships. And just like with Laios and his own issues with humans, that doesn’t mean her kindness is a lie or ungenuine or worthless! It just means that like, well it’s pretty straightforward really, she’s not all that social and doesn’t see casual bonds as meaning all that much and whatnot. She does want to see people happy, but it’s not as much like… A conviction or goal. She’s too laser focused on a select few people. "It’s not that they’re bad people, they just aren’t interested in humans."

And sometimes it feels like people get defensive about Falin in a meta way too, like if you ever so much as imply Marcille isn’t her whole world or that she isn’t the kindest soul out there then you’re saying she doesn’t care at all or she’s evil. And that’s actualy exactly the sort of vibe I wanted to get through with my analysis above here actually haha, that she does care and she is kind but it’s not in a way that’s quantified or understood in a way that makes people feel comfortable. In a way, that makes people feel insecure because they don’t have the same logic as her, don’t show love the same. And I think this is another stellar depiction of autism, of parts of it that feels unpalatable to many, if I’m making sense. The fandom idealizes her as well, which isn’t uncommon or surprising for the character embodying the trope of the perfect beloved to rescue.

And disclaimer, as I said in the tags I feel like the details of Falin are pretty vibe based when it comes to analysis, there’s absolutely a valid angle where she does super care about everyone always, feel free to disagree with me on the overarching angle of my analysis. There’s enough supporting evidence to tip the balance either way I think, and the reason I’ve chosen this angle is I feel it’s more compelling for the themes in Dunmeshi of idealization and being different, of desires vs wants, and because I think it neatly ties up Falin’s character arc as I’ll go over throughout the next section…

So.

Not feeling as much as she should. And……. Is this not Faligon pushed to the max?

You can’t tie down a dragon. As the chimera, she gets to just not care about everyone else and be on her merry way.

Part of it I think is finding comfort and freedom in the mindlessness, in not having the burden of feelings and connections and a consciousness (despite still ending up seeking those in a stranger, Thistle). Like when she’s dead in the purgatory as well, she gets to just… Hang around and do whatever. Similarly to when she played in the forest instead of going to class in her academy days. That’s what freedom and peace of mind looks like to her. Why she decides to roam post-canon, if only now with the goal to find herself instead, with her mind in tow and somewhere to go back home to.

There’s excellent analytic framing out there about how of course, Dungeon Meshi has a big theme of grief and letting go, and… Falin was always a symbol narratively, idealized by characters and often underconsidered by them despite their love. It was Falin’s choice to sacrifice herself for Laios, she thought it was worth it, knowing that it would be her end. Her resurrection and the process of it intertwining her soul with a dragon’s wasn’t done with her consent, and the subsequent opening it gave her to become a chimera puppet. She’s stripped of her agency consistently, and so… It’s very noteworthy that the final choice, of wether to go back to life or to stay dead, in that purgatory scene, was up to her. And she chooses life, but I do think about her in those fields and how at home she seemed there. Peaceful, by herself in a vast calm expanse she could explore, free.

Personally, I think freedom is Falin’s own subconscious selfish desire. And though to us becoming the chimera is obviously a shackle, I think it felt like freedom to her somewhat, too.

And if you think I’m going wildly off the rails here I want to talk about Laios’ wish of becoming a monster. And to be clear before getting into it, being mentally a monster is absolutely a big part of the appeal for Laios, it’s something that’s consistently referred to, something especially pointed out in the werewolf monster tidbit with Lycion. Right panel is from that, but left panel is from the extra with Izutsumi where Lycion talks about suppressing souls in a beastkin body, the human or the beast soul.

Finding comfort and freedom in being mindless, less sentient, less aware? While being unaware in her hometown might have saved Falin a lot of heartache although perhaps stunted her emotional growth, it’s always been Laios’ curse.

Actively, through his choices, he seeks to grow closer to people, to form deeper bonds, to understand and be undertood, but… On a deep seated level, what he desires is to leave humanity and civilization behind. He has an irrational hatred for humans, born from the trauma of ostracization, being different, being beaten up and rejected consistently through his life. Running away from problems is easier. He wants to be free from being a social animal from a social species who has deemed him the black sheep, he thinks it’d be simpler to just leave it all behind, people and his own humanity. At its core, to Laios becoming a monster is a power fantasy, a coping daydream of "if only I could be strong enough to never be hurt again, the power to destroy anything I want, the power to go somewhere better, if only it was possible for me to never feel hurt again. If only I could be someone, something, that can never be hurt". "If there’s someone you don’t like, you can gobble ‘em up in one bite. If you could fly, you’d be able to leave this village right now." It’s a childhood fantasy, from a deep sense of being misplaced and a desire to be able to stand fearless, thinly covering up resentment that Laios represses.

But you’ll notice, when the Winged Lion is enticing him in the last page, even now with his lifelong wish of becoming a monster on a silver plate, he still cares about his friends. He still has that sense of responsibility to his friends, doesn’t want to leave knowing they’ll be in danger and alone. The offer that his friends may be left unharmed is already good, but Laios also visibly flinches when the Winged Lion offers to specifically care after Marcille and rid her of her biggest fear. Laios’ care runs that deep. Not unlike with the succubus, he resists temptation until he gets reassured that everyone will be okay. But see, what he desires isn’t to stand alongside Marcille until her last days, it isn’t to stay and see how well his friends will live, it’s to go. It’s to leave. It’s to fly away, a monster both in body and mind. He wants to be free from caring here, wants to not have to worry about his friends, wants to just go do his own thing, but for that he needs to feel safe in the belief that said friends will be safe even without him being there to see it, because despite everything else he cares, he does. It’s again that dichotomy about caring and wishing you didn’t, or not caring and wishing you did.

In the end, it’s Falin who achieves that wish. Both by becoming a chimera during canon, and by going traveling post-canon. In the latter, being both free of human relationships as something chaining you while still being uplifted by them, by the knowledge that there are people out there you love and that love you. It’s a theme that can also be connected with Marcille, because she gets anxious over people she loves getting out of her sight, worrying they’ll get themselves killed, that time is passing while they’re away from her. But before she can get to the point where she can both have her freedom and being uplifted by her social bonds, regaining both her individuality and her connections, she has to get a taste of just one at a time. Before they can find balance in her life, she has to see what it’s like to have what she’s never had on its own. Unapologetic freedom, and power.

No one can blame you for not caring enough or caring right if you’re a fricking dragon!!!! You make the rules when you’re a beast and you can just… Fly away. From anywhere, from anything. And if a dog bites you you can just crush it. Instead of being pushed around by the dogs because you’re at the bottom of the hierarchy, you’re now at the top, the one with the power to be heard and do what you want without consequences.

I think she’s on autopilot. I think she’s on autopilot a lot of the time, even before being a chimera, and it’s partly why her will is so weak compared to regular dragons. (Again, read my shorter analysis.) It’s familiar to slip back into the role of following someone around unquestioningly. And that’s what is weaponized when she’s a chimera, that instinct she’s been nursing all her life to unconditionally support, defend and follow someone. Only now, that someone doesn’t matter in itself, only the symbol of it. She doesn’t mind, either way is fine. Her will is weak after all, because she’s trained it to take as little place as it could.

Falin cares too much

She spends all her time caring for Laios and Marcille alternating that none of her care and emotional energy is left for others, including herself. So she had to get relieved of all of that for a bit, becoming the chimera so she could reset and recenter and remember that she, too, indeed, is there and an important part of her own life.

So you’re probably seeing the duality I’m talking about here, Falin is very self-sacrificial but for specific people in ways that they often don’t recognize or appreciate. She cares but selectively, both in people, putting all her eggs in the same baskets, and in the ways she cares after them. She doesn’t care a lot, but when she does she cares a lot. Falin doesn't have a lot of earthly attachments, but when she does, they're her world.

In canon her arc, especially post-canon, is to grow beyond Marcille and Laios. Her caring for her close loved ones held her back from looking after her own self-fulfillment needs. And this is what I mean when I say she cares too much; she could gain from caring more about the world besides Laios and Marcille, both lands wise and people wise. She cares too little, but her arc centers her flaw around caring too much instead. Her pitfalls that Kui highlight over the course of the story, while of course her selflessness is appreciated for how she saved Laios and everyone, on a personal level is shown to be self-effacing and damaging. She’s undermined by Marcille, without the courage to voice her thoughts and wants, she would dedicate her whole life to Laios. And I mean, it’s text, in the response to Shuro’s proposal extra no less. And she’s so laser focused on her most loved people that she’s fine with being callous and risking others’ lives, even.

Post-canon, she needs to leave to find herself, away from them.

Herself. What if she wants to just be with herself for a while.

And this is me reaching but I feel like, not unlike Izutsumi who learns to feel this sense of never being alone, always having someone on your side what with having two souls, the dragon in her would make her consider herself more. She finds it easier to care after other people after all, and in the purgatory fields sequence she takes care to bring the bit of dragon left with her… Not unlike with Izutsumi, having two souls forces you to think about your identity and figure yourself out. Besides being this sort of duo now, where if she wants to care after herself she can channel it to that other side of her too… In meta dragons are symbols of greed, and I think the bit of dragon would push her to want more and listen more to her desires, primal and self-serving as they might be. The dragon soul which warped her human body with feathers and draconic features, her image of perfection marred, her weirdness externalized in a way that’s not palatable. But she doesn’t care, about if her appearance is palatable for most people, she hasn’t for a while now, and that’s great.

Notes & nuance

I’m struggling with the structure of this post, making my points organized, concise and strong at once. It’s difficult to make any statement without going "things are generally like this, but there’s this time that this contradicting thing happened too" or "it’s ambiguous enough that you should just follow my interpretation for the time of this analysis" haha, so this is the pit where I put all the stuff that wouldn’t fit well in other places but are interesting for Falin’s character. This section is pretty separate from the main thesis of the post, it’s just more Falin observations. The post has reached the 30 pics limit so I can’t just pull it up whenever it’s relevant but I really encourage scrolling up to read the stuff I highlighted in her Adventurer’s Bible profile if you haven’t already.

I think with the shy-looking loner type autistic kid archetype, and knowing she didn’t seem to mind others ostracizing her, it’s easy to lose sight of how she was by no means an unemotional child. In all the bits we see of her as a kid she’s bursting with energy and emotions. Canon confirms Laios leaving the village did affect her and make her lonely and she cried a lot, too. She may not be social in the traditional sense, but she was clingy with her brother, and she also never was all that shy about who she was, wearing her heart on her sleeve.And okay. Okay okay okay. Speaking of appearances. About what I said of her not caring about what people think of her, even seeming defiant with the caravan leader… There’s one istanxe of her caring actually, and it’s about how her face blushes easily. I remembered it as being because Laios’ said it and as I rambled Laios’ words are her world, but actually it’s ambiguous. It’s only Marcille imagining up this scenario where Laios says Falin looks weird because of it, there’s no evidence Laios said or thought that at any point. And on the other hand…

Her Adventurer’s Bible says: "5, Lovely Skin. She isn't particularly careful with it, but Falin's skin is fair and beautiful. Possibly as a result, her cheeks seem to flush easily. Marcille's always saying she's cute, and she secretly has a sizable complex about it." The phrasing makes me think the complex she has over her blushing might have developed because of Marcille more than Laios. "Marcille's always saying she's cute, and she secretly has a sizable complex about it." It could be related to how Marcille gets swept away and infantilizes her, calling her cute wanting her to wear cute feminine outfits etc. Again this feels like it relates to Falin’s struggle to be seen for who she is and what she wants to be seen as, her struggle to be recognized, having ideals and perspectives pushed onto her. Here Falin is insecure over her blushing implicitly because she doesn’t like being called cute over it, but that’s not how she wants people to see her. She doesn’t want Marcille to always see her as her 10 years old adorable friend. Like if your friend said you had puppy energy, it can be flattering, but it can also make you insecure.

Here’s a link to what I mentioned about her being uncomfortable wearing feminine outfits. It does seem to be more about comfort than the aesthetic perse, to me. Interestingly the shirt & shorts don’t seem like they show much more skin than her beach outfit, so maybe it’s more about the shirt and shorts being tight-fitting. Like the skirts and heels they feel stifling. Again a bit with themes of freedom and not wanting an aesthetic pushed onto her. So yes just to reiterate, I think this is more about self-affirmation and how her identity and self-image gets shown to others, rather than wishing to hide parts of her body like her blushing etc for people pleasing reasons. Makeup was a way for her to appear how she wants to and feel more confident. It was a way to take control over her own image. She didn’t keep doing it, the narrator stating the process to be ‘troublesome’. Ultimately she still prioritizes her comfort, and it was a lot of recurring efforts to go through.

And on the topic of appearances… A friend once asked me: "Does she really hide herself or not? I keep thinking about "falin is herself first and foremost" (in her Adventurer’s Bible profile) it’s just so. Hmmmmmmmm... I just keep seeing people say she hides her real self from people when I feel like the issue is more about her charitable traits straying too far into becoming flaws but people around her dont realize that..."

Imo the thing is, I don’t think she hides her identity, but I do think she suppresses her individuality for others’ sakes if that makes sense. In the way that only post-canon does she allows herself to go see what the world is like, but that’s not personality wise it’s needs and wants wise. And I do feel like that’s the closest interpretation of canon, she says it herself she doesn’t know what she wants because everything she’s done was always about Laios or Marcille, but she doesn’t change her demeanor or personality for others. But she *will*, like, not ask for things she wants directly, like sharing lunches with Marcille at the academy, she suppresses her wants, doesn’t ask things from people and doesn’t hope for more, hope for better. I don’t think we ever see her actively repress her personality, except like what, being more laidback than enthusiastic but I do feel like unlike Laios with her it’s less ‘appearing stoic to fit in more’ and more ‘yeah i’ll just chill until I’m needed or something activates my enthusiasm’. To which said friend quoted: "to feel like you belong you need to be useful. when you can’t be useful the next best thing is being convenient."

And speaking of passivity… I want to speculate about Shuro’s proposal some more. Shuro and her got along well though we don’t know how much, or how often they hung out, she even saved him from a nightmare. Why did she take so long answering Shuro’s proposal? Was it an effort to preserve or was she really just that conflicted? Procrastination probably yes, but what is the core motivation of itl Considering she ended up saying no to travel the world instead, I don’t think it was as simple as ‘she wanted to say yes for convenience’. Logically it’s what would have been best, but it’s not what she wanted for herself, but it was and still is hard for her to even know what she wants. Probably, since like she states it was a great offer and she doesn’t think she’ll get proposed to again, it’s that self-effacing tendency that yes it’d be convenient and logical, and that makes her want to say yes even if her spirit isn’t in it, because if it’s convenient then that’s more important than her feelings on the matter. Man also… Obviously Marcille is very vocal about how she shouldn’t get with Shuro, but imagine how Falin’s whole perspective on marriage must have felt when her only friend ever is a Romantic with a capital R who gushes about idealized romances and grand gestures and True Love and doing things with fully pure feelings all the time.

AND speaking of passivity!!! How much Falin is "there" as the chimera, just how much she’s master of her actions, is left ambiguous and intentionally so imo, but she’s for sure there & influencing the dragon’s action to some degree. Having a dragon’s foot on her in purgatory that keeps her from moving for sure visualizes how it must have been like, but there’s Falin calling out to her brother Laios, there’s the kind attentions towards Thistle that are so Falin-like, and most explicitly there’s the Adventurer’s Bible stating "Even after becoming a chimera, she has a soul that's as kind as ever", which I honestly dislike, a fantranslation puts it as "Even as the chimera, her caring nature remains" and either way to me it feels like confirmation that it’s her giving those berries to Thistle. Now, wether or not she has the mental capacity of a chicken or something closer to human Falin, no clue, there has to at least be some kind of mind bond between monsters and the dungeon lord, compelling or forcing them to go along with orders, or calling her to him in distress like with the fight on the first floor. But yes, it’s interesting to wonder what it is that a Falin, with her kind soul but without her human mind, would willingly do. On her profile, she’s described as Thistle’s guardian and servant. The power dynamic between the two are very interesting, I already went into how it might have felt like freedom to her while being fake so I’ll reign myself in and just mention it again. She’s still at the heel of someone, only now it’s someone who doesn’t care about her back. Going from being cared for so strongly that it’s suffocating and they would defy death and the world for you, to being devoted to someone who has not one feeling about you besides your utility as a paw . She has all this care to give and to focus onto others and he has none to send back to her and I think that’s part of it. In a way, being left with only her own feelings and a void, without expectations or feelings or ideals pushed onto her, it might have been soothing in itself, and eye opening. But yes the way I think of it, her care for Thistle isn’t unlike the care she gives the ghosts.

Interestingly, the care she extends for the ghosts is sending their soul to a peaceful death, freeing them, of life and any earthly attachment. Take that as you will with the themes of freedom and burden of life and mind, immortality and becoming a warped version of who you were, and such and such.

But going back on the topic of connections and bonds for a bit, I think academy days Falin & Marcille is super interesting bc we’ve never really see Falin form a connection besides with Marcille and even that is kept pretty ambiguous. When was the point that Falin started seeing Marcille as a friend and seeking her out? When was the "I’ll lay down my life for you" point? I’m so fascinated by how she wanted to share lunches with Marcille but never truly asked, only made little "hey want this? I found it isn’t it cool?" gestures of showing things to her… It’s the only way she knows to ask, or maybe it’s the only way she feels comfortable to. In all the scenes of young Falin and Marcille Falin seems comfortable in her friendship with Marcille, but at the same time… I think we see Falin at her most insecure around Marcille, because she really does care about Marcille and what she thinks of her so much, and while Marcille is a bit of an unstoppable force tornado style (affectionate) Falin is something of a doormat. I’d usually say showing her berries was her earnest way to connect and be like "Hey bestie look at this! :]" , but there’s a real possibility that she was self-conscious and holding herself back.

Friendship and Marcille! Involving Laios into this too but, again with the autism thing of not showing you care in ways that others understand, Marcille being very overtly affectionate and clingy was so so soo important… Marcille keeping on hanging out with Falin and caring after her, and being undeterred/unbothered by Falin not always seeming like she cares all that much back in the conventional way, as in Falin acts nonchalant and a bit like she didn’t mind wether she was there with her or not during her outings to the cave dungeon. Caring and being clingy and so affectionate despite that in such a classic Marcille way is soo needed, because so often people will get discouraged by say, their friend not keeping in contact regularly/well, seeming disaffected or as happy-go-lucky as ever even if you haven’t seen each other in a while or when they’re alone, and yes there’s potential for a strong friendship there but someone like Falin won’t be committed enough to reciprocating attention the same way… I hope I’m making sense but yes this angle in particular strongly correlates to autism. And the way Marcille always initiates physical affection, both Toudens being awkward about initiating touch because they don’t know if that’s allowed, if they’re going about the social interaction the right way, if they’re allowed to ask that out of someone…

Another fun observation to make is about the 4 years Falin and Marcille spent apart. Marcille despite being of a long-lived race treated these 4 years of separation with more gravity than Falin did. Falin brushed it off very dismissively to say the least. But then you remember that the amount of time Falin and Laios didn’t see each other after he left the village was 8 years. Double the years, double the time. And that reminder makes Falin’s actions so starkingly understandable. Of course she wouldn’t see 4 years of separation as a long time if 8 years of separation with her beloved brother is her point of comparison. Of course she’d see it as worth it to leave Marcille for 4 years if it meant ending those 8 years instead, especially if she was worried about him (the reason why she followed him into his caravan job).

A friend always says that while Falin is the center of Marcille’s world, Laios’ is at the center of Falin’s, and I tend to agree.

It’s fun to think of how her career dreams had always been shaped by Laios, even when they were kids. Of course there’s how traveling the world began as a dream they talked about and shared, but there’s how he reassures her by listing cool jobs she could do like traveling exorcist, etc. And then of course, she gave up on her magic academy and career path to follow him and do odd jobs, etc etc.

I should go into the violence of Faligon more tbh, because I think there’s an interesting parallel to how she has no problem wacking things with a mace, wether a ghost when she was a kid or a walking mushroom as an adult. Something that often surprises fans when they remember, I don’t really want to get into the whole " Falin hates violence and hates seeing people in pain to an intense degree. ‘If you die do it somewhere where I can’t see’ style’ interpretation, it has some weight but on the whole I don’t vibe with the theory she has a particular aversion to violence, she seems to be fine resorting to it as much as any other adventurer as long as it isn’t needlessly against ghosts. And Falin’s sudden mace hits are fun to me too because it’s not her becoming a berserker when the need arises as much as her becoming active because something she cares about is threatened, and that brings her out of her passivity from 99% of the rest of the time. Thistle included. Falin always could be violent, she just dislikes senseless carnage. The Shuro party vs chimera fight is a bit ambiguous on it, because you can argue she only attached after being provoked, presumably offscreen as well while the ninjas went off to fight the harpies. Falin becomes the most active when she needs to protect someone, she has no qualms doing whatever’s needed for that, wether it be leaving the academy & Marcille without notice no matter the consequences or what her parents think, or teleporting the party, etc.

I’m working on a post specifically pointing out all the differences between Falin and Laios, but yes I think both of them selfishly desire freedom in different yet similar ways. Falin’s dark secret is "Ethics and risks are optional if it means I can protect those I love" like the teleportation, and Laios’ is "Ethics and risks are optional if I can be free of all this bullshit" aka humanity aka his wish with the winged lion.

Conclusion

Flighted birds have hollow bones. With freedom and wings there comes risks and sacrifices.

Tldr: Falin doesn’t care all that much, she’s very go with the flow. For example if someone hates her she doesn’t really care because that’d require her caring about what they think of her in the first place, and she only cares about her loved ones. She smiles, but it’s more a state of being rather than out of active goodness: she’s canonically very genuinely kind, but it’s more out of a general want for pleasantness than active care itself. She’s passive, and softspoken because that’s just how she seems, but she has no problem hopping into bushes or getting heated if something calls to her enthusiasm or calls for action and a hit of the ol’ mace. Her loved ones needing tending or protective is what makes her go from passive to active. That familiar autopilot mode of making someone the center of her world and following their every move is what made her so easy to be controlled as the chimera, even ferociously defending him with her life. Faligon is most interesting to me with the theme of freedom. She’s shackled to Thistle and out of her mind, but there’s also a sense of empowerment and freedom from expectations and society. She spends all her time caring for Laios and Marcille alternating that none of her care and emotional energy is left for others, including herself. So she had to get relieved of all of that for a bit, becoming the chimera so she could reset and recenter and remember that she, too, indeed, is there and an important part of her own life. There’s a way of caring after others that can be selfish, not unlike Marcille being overly coddling and not listening to Falin. In Falin’s case, I think it was so selfless that it ended up looping back around to erasing her sense of self. In losing sight of herself, that devotion becoming neither quite selfish or selfless but a fact of life and a state of nature, muddled by its lack of direction.

She’s sooo used to never being able to ask things out of others, you get the crumbs of affection and approval that others offer to you unprompted and that’s it don’t hope for more don’t ask for more. (Also reflected in how she follows her loved ones around without complain or personal opinions and how she’s not willing to rock the boat and affirm herself in her relationships like with Marcille during canon)

Falin cares so much, so much and so laser focused on her few loved ones that it blinds her and she loses sight of everything else, she ends up neglecting herself and the rest of the world. As Kui puts it, Falin is herself first and foremost. She just had to remember the importance of that.

-

I see her as an enneagram 9, which can be surprisingly accurate and fun to research through the lense of Falin. Excerpt below from this book, but like my god, good way to put it

That’s it, ty for reading. Even if it’s a bit of a mess, hopefully you’ll have gained a thing or two from it. Falin is a character hard to pin down, but it is very gratifying when you find the way that the puzzle pieces fit together right for your own understanding of the story. Fantranslation of the shuro proposal comic by @/thatsmimi here.

Here’s my spotify playlist for her if you’d like

Sometimes love is about letting go, a lesson a lot of the cast needed to learn. Self-love’s important too, and just like with diets we need a healthy balance.

[zukosdualdao]

everytime i see antis imply that katara somehow secretly still hates zuko by the end of the show, i'm like

... "yup. that's exactly how i look at people i hate."

[dozydawn]

Mayerling.

Melissa Hamilton and Rupert Pennefather.

Lauren Cuthbertson and Thiago Soares.

Natalia Osipova and Edward Watson.

Melissa Hamilton and Rupert Pennefather.

Natalia Osipova and Edward Watson.

Sarah Lamb and Steven McRae.

[wherewolf]

the responses i’ve seen to shiv’s ending seem very quick to write her off as just another sad victim of the cycle, which isn’t without truth BUT!!! that is not even remotely the summation of shiv’s story.

i don’t think she votes yes to “save kendall” or to try to finally set her brothers free. and i don’t think her main concern was that ken was becoming their dad. she absolutely noticed and didn’t love it, but that was not her motivation in betraying him. she was thinking about herself.

it’s tempting to make a martyr out of her as she is the only female child and we see her suffer the onslaught of misogyny that comes with that. but to make her into a saintlike figure who got beat takes away the power and intelligence behind her decision.

at this point she’s stuck between two non ideal choices, but she recognizes that they have accidentally made her the single most important player in the game. because while she can’t have the outcome she’d prefer, she has the power to decide the fates of everyone else. the written off lone woman now holds in her hands the fate of every man in her life.

so she thinks about the long term benefits of both options and realizes that one side leaves her completely without any leverage.

her brothers have proven to her multiple times in the last few days alone that they will cut her out and walk all over her the first chance they get. siding with them leaves her nothing to bargain with. she would just have to hope that ken would actually take care of her. and that level of vulnerability is not only unacceptable to her, it’s stupid. and shiv fuckin roy is not stupid.

so she thinks about the other side and about what she actually wants for her life. and against her better judgment, it’s becomes unfortunately clear that she wants tom. the way she wants him is not altogether loving or even good but it is necessary to her. she sees relationships as having winners and losers and she chose this man specifically so that she could be confident in her ability to win. except now he’s grown some balls and made himself unavailable to her.

she may not like the way her husband is evolving but she already placed her bets on him, so she’s sure as hell not losing to him now. there’s also a part of her that feels intrigued by this new man she’s married to. it’s interesting to have a sparring partner in him instead of having to looking for excitement outside of their marriage.

so for maybe the first time ever, she processes what tom has said to her and thinks about what he actually wants.

he needs her to prove that she cares. he needs to know that she is capable of sacrifice. if she can’t find it within herself to do this for him, then she will lose him, and by extension, she will lose.

siding with tom gives her the opportunity to once and for all make a grand-stand gesture of love, but more importantly, it creates leverage for her. never again will he be able to hold the moral high ground over her head. never again can he say she doesn’t love him. never again can he call her selfish or uncaring. above all, he can never betray her again, because she just removed all of his moral justification for turning on her. he doesn’t realize it yet, but she’s just taken back all the power in their relationship. just in a more subtle way than she’s used to operating.

and just like that, she has the ceo of a multi billion dollar company in her pocket, while situating herself as the only descendant of logan roy to still be playing the game, having removed her brothers from the equation permanently. she may still be far from the top but she’s creating a path for herself to climb.

so yes, she’ll let tom play king for a day, and she’ll have his baby and say “congratulations,” and play the gracious wife, but tomorrow is a new day with lots of room to maneuver. and when her husband puts out his hand, she’ll place her own on top. but she won’t grasp it because she doesn’t need to.

[hinamie]

もう一回、もう一回

[umbrvx]

[mipexch]

comic about v2 and the goal they'll never fully reach alongside a dissatisfying conclusion. intimate rivalry and all (alternative ending comic. V1 dies instead of V2 during 4-4. V2 is narrating. V1 is dead.)

[hollowtones]

not to jam my foot in the fandom door & make myself a miserable kind of poster but it's a bit funny to see some "would this character escape a time loop" poll on here for dr coomer & see the most voted result be "yes"

[w0lfwren]

i adore the meta interpretation of genloss because of what it does to NIKI’S STORY. like oh my god she was SOBBING on the carousel until it was her turn to talk then she put on a smile and all she could say was that she was “nice”. THAT IS HOW NIKI HAS BEEN VIEWED FOR HER WHOLE ONLINE CAREER. people who hate her call her overemotional and then people who “like” her can only ever come up with Oh she’s so nice or Oh she’s so encouraging. then she’s just DISCARDED, just as she was during You Know What, and shot OFF SCREEN. showfall didn’t care about her because the fucking audience never did.

[tea-cat-arts]

Shen Yuan getting transported into pidw isn't "the system punishing him for being a lazy internet hater," but instead representative of "step 1 of the creative process: getting so mad at something you decide to go write your own fucking book" in this essay I will