#but why does everything get so long

[baronessblixen]

So I just read your Antarctica angsty fic and saw you said you wanted to keep doing more angst. I’ve been craving a The Field Where I Died fic I looked up random angst dialog and came across ‘What are you trying to say?’ Super vague but a place to start! Happy fictober!!!

Thank you so much for the prompt! I hope I made it angsty 😁

Fictober Day 4 | Tagging @today-in-fic @xffictober2022 | Wc: 1804

Dreams of the Past

The first few times he dreams about Scully, he ignores it. He doesn’t remember what they’re about, is only left with a lingering feeling. It fades quickly every time and makes room for everyday life, for what happens in daylight. Until one night when he dreams of her screaming.

She’s half sitting, half lying on a bed, being tended by strangers while Mulder stands in the doorway, grappled by fear. He watches Scully, still screeching, being told to push! push! but no matter how hard she tries, there’s no baby. There should be a baby, he realizes. Her stomach is protruding, bigger than he ever thought possible. They’re having a baby. His heart swells before it breaks into pieces.

“We’re losing her,” someone says. “What else can we do? What can we do?”

“There’s nothing we can do,” a man says, stepping away from Scully, who is only whimpering in agony now. “She will die.”

“No!” This time it’s Mulder who screams. A moment later, he finds himself in his bed, panting and sweating. Just a dream. It was just a dream. A nightmare. His ears are ringing and he can still see Scully clear as a picture, framed by dim candlelight, trying to birth their child. Mulder wraps his arms around himself, feeling the loss of the child, of his beloved wife. Scully. He reminds himself that it wasn’t real. That all he has to do is pick up the phone and call Scully to hear her voice. He knows she’d call him crazy and for once, she’d be right. Thinking about Scully calms him enough to lie back down. It’s just after 2 am, far too early to stay awake.

Not once since the Ephesian case a couple of weeks ago has he dreamed about Melissa Riedal. Up until now, he hasn’t even thought about her. Instead, Scully has been invading his dreams. He wishes he could remember the rest of them. He wants to know if all of them have been this devastating. Is he losing her in every dream he’s had? In every life they’ve lived? He shudders thinking about it. Closing his eyes, he wills himself to relax. As much as he doesn’t want to relive the moment – losing her – he wants to keep going. He wants to see what else his mind has to offer him. After all, he’s no stranger to pain.

It doesn’t take him long to fall back asleep. Once, as a student, he tried to get into lucid dreaming, hoping it might help him make progress in finding Samantha. Then he met Phoebe and everything went to hell. Including his dreams and the rest of his sanity. It has been years since he’s last tried it and while he’s aware that he’s fast asleep and dreaming, there’s nothing he can do.

He takes in his surroundings, the sparsely decorated apartment, the lack of TV, the metallic drumming of a radio in another room. He walks around, trying to find clues if he – his past self – lives here. There’s an eeriness in the air, alerting him to be careful. He stops in front of a room, the door closed. That’s where the music is coming from, he realizes. It’s an old tune, but he recognizes its melody. This must be the 1930s or 40s. His stomach plummets before he opens the door. His eyes land on her body on the bed, still and pale. Her lips are parted slightly as if she had tried to say something before death took her.

He sits up in bed, gasping for air. Not again. Not Scully. Her face was so devoid of color, of everything that makes her the woman he… but it was her. He knows it was her. He no longer cares that it’s the middle of the night. He needs to see Scully. Needs to know what she’s thinking. He needs to know she’s okay.

It’s just after 4 am when he gets to her apartment. He considers using his key, but he doesn’t want to freak Scully out. No more than him showing up here in the middle of the night will do anyway. He should have called, he thinks, as he gently raps on her door. There’s shuffling on the other side of it before Scully opens the door. He’s never been so happy to see her. Her hair is sleep-ruffled and her pajama crooked, but she’s never looked more beautiful to him.

“Mulder, what time is it?”

“Late. Or early, however you want to look at it.”

“What happened?” She asks stifling a yawn. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“I’m okay,” he says truthfully, smiling at her. At least physically he is and he doesn’t want to talk about his dreams out here in front of her apartment. “Can I come in? I don’t want to wake your neighbors too.”

“Of course. Come on in.” He follows her inside, taking off his coat and shoes, while she walks into the kitchen.

“Do you want coffee? I think I’m going to make coffee,” she says, yawning again. Mulder watches her, amazed at how normal everything is. She’s moving around her kitchen barefoot, asking him questions that he barely hears. She’s here. She’s alive. She’s fine. He thinks of his first dream, of her dying in childbirth. He couldn’t help her, was helpless. Then, in the second dream, he was too late. Each time he lost her. In this life, right now, nothing is wrong at all.

“Mulder, why are you here?”

“I- I needed to see you.”

“Why? Is it a case?” She rubs her eyes, hiding another yawn behind her hand.

“Have you ever had nightmares that felt so real that you… that you had to make sure they weren’t?”

“Did you have a nightmare?” She asks him. “Was it about Samantha?”

“Why do you think- no, it wasn’t about Samantha.”

“Let’s sit down, Mulder,” Scully says with a sigh. “I’m still trying to wake up. Tell me what happened?”

“I’ve been having dreams,” Mulder begins, glancing at her. “Ever since the Ephesian case. About… I think I’ve been dreaming about my past lives.”

“Melissa Riedal,” Scully says. “You were dreaming about her.”

“No,” he says. “I’ve been dreaming about… you.”

“You said it was nightmares,” she says, her voice gentle. She puts a hand over his and he stares at it for a moment, relishing her touch. “Do you want to talk about them?” When he lifts his eyes to hers, he can see that she wants to know. But she doesn’t know what he’s seen.

“Mulder, they’re just dreams,” she assures him. “They’re not real. No matter what happened in them, it’s not real.”

“But that’s just it, Scully. It was real.”

“What are you trying to say?” She squeezes his hand.

“I believe that they weren’t just dreams. I think that- whatever my relationship with Melissa Riedal was in this life or any other, pales in comparison to what we have in every life. But that’s not why I’m here, or why I had to see you.”

“What did you see?”

“You didn’t have any dreams?” Mulder asks instead, not wanting to put her through what he’s experienced. Her screaming. The pain she must have endured.

“No,” she says softly, giving him a smile. “I can take it, Mulder. Just tell me. You were spooked enough to come here in the middle of the night.”

“Well, I am Spooky Mulder, aren’t I?”

“Mulder,” she warns. “I want to know.” He nods, preparing himself. He puts his other hand over their entwined ones, needing to feel her warmth and strength.

“Tonight was the first time that I woke up from my dreams. Maybe we were happy in all those other lives,” he says. “In my first dream, you were… you were in labor. You were screaming. You were screaming so much, Scully. There was blood, but… there was no baby. They couldn’t get to the baby. The doctor – I think it was the doctor – said you were going to die.” He hears her gasp and he looks at her. There are tears in her eyes and when one falls, he wipes it away.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have-”

“Mulder, I’m not crying for me. Or whatever version of me that you think you saw in your dream. I’m crying because you had to experience that. What was the second dream?”

“I don’t- I don’t really know. I was in an apartment. I think it was the 1940s. Maybe it was wartime. I don’t know. I found you- there was a room and you were in it, but you were, um. You were…” He can no longer stop his own tears from falling. He hears Scully whisper something and then she wraps her arms around him, holding him close. His tears land on her shoulder where her pajama top has slipped out of position. She cradles his head, her fingers in his hair.

“It’s okay,” she whispers with a kiss to his temple. “It was just a dream, okay? I’m here, aren’t I?” He nods against her shoulder, taking in her sleepy scent, her Scullyness. She’s real. This is not a dream and he’s holding her. But what if this life ends like all the others? With him unable to save her? With him always being too late?

“Your nightmares are not reality. We don’t know what the future will bring, but I’m here, right? Look at me.” He lifts her head and they’re close together. Her face is devoid of make-up, making her look impossibly young. He can see her beauty mark that she always covers up. But he knows her secret. He touches it softly, letting his finger drift lower to her lips. She lets him touch her, watching his every move.

“You see? I’m real.”

“You shouldn’t cover this up, Scully. You’re beautiful.”

“Thank you,” she says. “Are you feeling better now?” He thinks about it for a moment and then he nods.

“Good. Do you think you can sleep some more?” She asks and he tenses. “I’m not sending you home. You can stay here, but I’m just so tired,” she admits with a shy smile.

“You sleep,” he says.

“What about you?” She yawns and gets comfortable right there with him on the couch, snuggling into his side.

“I’m perfectly fine.”

“Just another hour or so,” she says. “If you have another nightmare,” she says, turning to give him a sleepy look. “You can wake me.”

He knows he won’t sleep, but he nods anyway.

“Sweet dreams, Scully.” She smiles at him before she closes her eyes. Mulder holds her in his arms, content to feel her solid against her. He doesn’t need to dream when she’s right here with him.

[britcision]

Hey by the way if anyone tries to deny Kabru is a judgy bitch I’ll send you the panels of him calling everyone worthless

Respect his duality he’s a good boy who genuinely wants the best for everyone but also thinks he has to do everything himself despite being the Least Qualified Ever because no one else lives up to his standards

He doesn’t even want to look at monsters but oh well every single other person is a piece of shit let’s go get my friends killed over and over again

He’s interesting BECAUSE he’s not one dimensional Good Pure Boy all the time, he’s a judgy manipulative little shit who will eat monsters if it gets him towards his goals, which are “nobody should be killed by monsters actually” and “i want to know what the fuck is going on”

He coulda had ONE honest conversation with Laios and known literally everything about him, Laios has never met a filter

But Kabru was raised for a good chunk of his life (6-18) by Milsiril, and for all he believes elves can never understand short lived people… he picked up the whole “I must be secretive and always conceal my own motivations”

He only breaks under literally the most intense high pressure situation he’s likely to see in his life, which along with being the potential goddamn apocalypse is also a rehashing of All Of His Personal Trauma oh and also Every Suspicion He Ever Had About This One Guy

He’s not more honest because he’s an honest person, he’s more honest because he forgot how sentences work when he finally caught Laios and doesn’t have the bandwidth to play the constant 4D chess in his head that underpins his EVERY INTERACTION WITH EVERYONE EVER until Marcille takes the lion

Kabru’s a pretty good person, with extremely good motivations and goals.

He’s a manipulative son of a bitch who will do anything, anywhere, anytime, to meet those goals, and spends a solid chunk of his time and energy on reading people so he can be someone they like… regardless of his own feelings.

He’s the living The Good Of The Many Outweigh The Needs Of The Few, and solidly puts himself in with “the few” by doing shit he hates because he thinks it’ll help.

Isn’t that more interesting than “oh he would never manipulate anyone, he’s so nice and good all the time”?

[quietwingsinthesky]

every time i think im okay i remember that the echoes of clara across the doctor’s timeline didn’t know they were echoes. or. no, some of them did, i think, but the more clara gives of herself to save the doctor, the more she loses the sense of who she is. and that’s why some of the echoes just seem like clara, knowing why she’s there and what she’s there to do. and some of them, many of them, don’t. the ones eleven meets don’t. and how many of them didn’t know haunts me. how many of them died just out of sight of the doctor, for the doctor, alone, without knowing why.

[the-bi-fangirl-biatch]

the entire season they've shown sylvie perpetually being okay to just walk away from the fray and getting no consequences whatsoever. which would be ok since she doesn't rlly care about them like loki does. but in the end she just moves on so fast after she watched loki isolate himself and go off JUST to fix her mistake.......

meanwhile mobius is there, frozen in that time, left behind by the person he's an "expert" on not only bc of his job but bc of their friendship, him quitting the job that was his entire life, because loki has left and his previous purpose didn't have loki anymore

it's just fucked up how everyone else got their happy endings (good for them) except for loki and mobius. they're apart, separated once again, looking miserable in their last shots. just like last season.

[turrondeluxe]

Was it love at first sight for Mikey and the tots? Did it take Mikey some time to warm up to them? Super cute AU!!

It was kind of hectic when Mikey saw the tots for the first time ever, while also being emotionally stunted, so the warming up is kind of a slow but surely process!

[louisdelac]

it's like. louis attempted to tell this story to daniel the first time, broke down, and attacked him before he could finish it.

and then decades later he's convinced himself that it was leaving the story unresolved that's holding him back from living his life fully now. so he invites daniel back again. and louis is sitting poised and put together, confident in his ability to recite his history in a pretty, poignant, neat little narrative that will resolve all the guilt and yearning and emptiness inside of him. that if he can just tell a compelling, satisfying story, maybe it will actually be that, and not the life he lived through, with all the pitfalls of his own failures lurking inside.

and then season 1 ends with him once again being forced to confront that the story he wants to imagine and the life he actually lived aren't the same thing. the boundaries around his narrative are shredded and he's left exposed, and subsequently able to face his past for the first time since that original interview. and you think, you think, "well this is it. they've crossed the event horizon. there's no use hiding the truth anymore, not after it's come flooding out into the open like this"

and then season 2 opens. not only is it back to the original, practiced distance, we now have armand literally enforcing that distance. a man sitting at the table who's interjections must be disregarded, an intentional interruption to the flow of the story. he doesn't exist to aid or add detail, he exists to distract louis when he gets too deep in the story. the only time we do get louis allowing any deep truth to come out is when armand leaves the room.

it's like. louis wants a story that's true, and the truth is what he's convinced will leave him satisfied. armand wants a story that will satisfy louis, to the extent louis will accept it's true.

[blueskittlesart]

any thoughts on how once again zelda was robbed of her agency because her "father figure" didn't listen to her? even if rauru was kinder to her than her father. and that she had sonia who was patient and loving for a little while before she died (just like her mother). i know rauru apologizes for his hubris but still, i wish we saw zelda be upset about it. and even if zelda was such a big part of the quest she still literally sacrificed her humanity once again because of someone else's mistake- because rauru literally didn't listen to the girl from the future that warned you that shit was going to go down. o know nintendo just loves putting zelda inside crystals and stones but i wish we got something better. even if it was her decision to become a dragon... did she have any other choice? it really just feels like they robbed her of agency again just like botw and the games before

i've been trying to figure out how to answer this one. because there are two ways i could analyze this plot point, either from a writer's perspective or an in-story perspective, but neither of those lead to me fully agreeing with your interpretation? I think there's definitely something to be said about zelda consistently being pushed aside in these games, but. well. ok let's get into it ig

from a writer's perspective, I do honestly have quite a bit of sympathy for the zelda devs as they attempt to navigate the modern political landscape with these games. The cyclical lore, though canonized relatively recently, holds them to a standard of consistency in their games in terms of certain key elements. one of those key elements is that there has to be a princess, and that princess must somehow be the main macguffin of the game. The player must chase her, and the end goal of the game must be to reunite the player and the princess. In 1986 this was an incredibly easy sell. women didn't need to be characters. players were content with saving a 2-dimensional princess whose only purpose was to tell them "good job!" at the end. but as society advances, that princess becomes a much more difficult character to write while adhering to the established overarching canon. (as a side note: i don't necessarily believe that the writers SHOULD be held to the standards of that canon. I think deviating from it in certain areas would be a good change of pace. but i also recognize that deviations from the formula are widely hated by the loz playerbase and that they're trying to make money off these games, so we're working under the established rule that the formula must be at least loosely adhered to.) Modern fans want a princess who is a person, who has agency and makes decisions and struggles in the same way the hero does. but modern fans ALSO want a game that follows the established rules of the canon. so we need a princess who is a real character but who can ALSO serve as a macguffin within the narrative, something that is inherently somewhat objectifying.

the two games that i think do the best job writing a princess with agency are skyward sword and botw (based on your ask, our opinions differ there lol. hear me out) in both games, we have a framing event which seperates zelda and link, but in both games, that separation was ZELDA'S CHOICE. skyward sword zelda runs away from link out of fear of hurting him. botw zelda chooses to return to the castle alone to allow link the time he needs to heal. sksw kinda fumbled later on by having ghirahim kidnap her anyway, but. i said BEST not PERFECT. botw zelda I think is the better example because, with the context of the memories, she's arguably MORE of a character than link is. we see her struggles, her breakdowns, her imperfection, specifically we see her struggle with her lack of agency within the context of the game itself. when she steps in front of link in the final memory, and when she chooses to return to the castle, those are some of the first choices we see her make almost completely free of outside influence; a RECLAMATION of her agency (within the narrative) after years of having it stripped from her. from an objective viewer's standpoint, this writing decision still means she is absent from 90% of the game and that she has little control over her actions for the duration of the player's journey. however I think this is just about the best they could have done to create a princess with agency and a real character arc while still keeping the macguffin formula intact--you're not really SAVING zelda in botw. SHE is the one that is saving YOU; when you wake up on the plateau with no memories, too weak to fight bokoblins, let alone calamity ganon. the reason you are allowed to train and heal in early-game botw is because SHE is in the castle holding ganon back, protecting YOU. When you enter the final fight, you're not rescuing zelda, you're relieving her of her duty. taking over the work she's been doing for the past hundred years. in the final hour, you both work in tandem to defeat ganon. while this isn't a PERFECT example of a female character with agency and narrative weight, i think it's a pretty good one, especially in the context of save-the-princess games like loz.

as for totk, you put a lot of emphasis on rauru not believing zelda and taking action immediately, which, again, from an objective standpoint, i understand. but even when we're writing characters with social implications in mind, those character's actions still need to... make sense. Rauru was a king ruling over what he believed to be a perfectly peaceful kingdom. zelda literally fell out of the sky, landed in front of him, claimed to be his long-lost granddaughter, and then told him that some random ruler of a fringe faction in the desert was going to murder him and he had to get the jump on it by killing him first. the ruler which this girl is trying to convince rauru to wage an unprompted war on has the power to disguise himself as other people. no one in their right mind would immediately take the girl at her word. war is not something any leader should jump into without proper research and consideration, and to rauru's credit, he DIDN'T ever outright dismiss zelda. he believed her when she said she was from the future, he allowed her to work with him and he took her warnings as seriously as he could without any further proof. but he could not wage an unprompted war on ganondorf. that's just genuinely not practical, especially for a king who values peace among his people as much as rauru seems to. as soon as ganondorf DID attack, giving rauru confirmation that zelda's accounts of the future were real, he began making preparations to confront him. remember that zelda didn't KNOW that rauru and sonia were going to be casualties of the war--she didn't make the connection between rauru's arm in the future and rauru the king until AFTER sonia's death, when rauru made the decision to attack ganondorf directly. I think the imprisoning war and the casualties of it were less an issue of zelda being denied agency and more an issue of no one, including zelda, having full context for the events as they were unfolding. if zelda had KNOWN that sonia and rauru were going to die from the beginning and was still unable to prevent it that would be a different issue, but she didn't. none of them did.

I think another thing worth pointing out with rauru and his death irt zelda is that rauru is clearly written specifically as a foil to rhoam. this is evident in how he treats both zelda and link, with a constant kindness and understanding which is clearly opposite to rhoam's dismissiveness and disappointment. consider rhoam's death and the circumstances surrounding it. He died because, in zelda's eyes, she was unable to do her duty; the one thing he constantly berated her for. Rhoam's death solidified zelda's belief that she was a failure, a belief which she KNEW rhoam held as well. his death was doubly traumatic to her because she knew he died believing it was her fault. Now contrast that to the circumstances surrounding rauru's death. Rauru CHOSE to die despite zelda's warnings, because he wanted zelda and his kingdom to live. rauru's death was not agency-stripping for zelda; in fact, it functioned almost as an admission that he believed her capable of continuing to live in his place. With him gone, the fate of the kingdom fell to her and the sages. he KNEW that he would die and still went into that battle confidently, trusting zelda to make the right decisions once he was gone. where rhoam believed zelda incapable of doing ANYTHING without link, rauru trusted zelda COMPLETELY with the fate of his kingdom. several details in totk confirm that when rauru died there was no plan for zelda to draconify, that all happened after rauru was gone. it was HER plan, the plan which rauru trusted her to come up with once he was gone. and I think it's also worth noting that zelda's sacrifice with the draconification parallels rauru's!! Rauru gives up his life trusting the sages and his people to be able to continue his work in his place. Zelda gives up her physical form trusting link and the sages in the future to be able to figure out what to do and find her. these games in general have this recurring theme but totk specifically is all about love and trust and reliance on others. zelda relies on link, link relies on zelda, they both rely on the champions and the sages and rauru and sonia and they all rely each other. reliance on others isn't lack of agency, it's a constant choice they make, and that choice is the thing which allows them to triumph.

The draconification itself is something i view similarly to zelda's sacrifice in botw--a choice she makes which, symbolically & within the confines of the narrative, is a demonstration of her reclaimed agency and places her at the center of the narrative, but which ALSO removes her from much of the player's experience and robs her of any overt presence or decisionmaking within the gameplay. again, I think this is a solution to the macguffin-with-agency dilemma, and it's probably one of the better solutions they could have come up with. Would I have liked to see a game where zelda is more present within the actual gameplay? yes, but I also understand that at this point the writers aren't quite willing to deviate that much from their formula. the alternative within the confines of this story would be to let zelda DIE in the past, removing her from gameplay ENTIRELY, which is an infinitely worse option in my opinion. draconification allowed her to be present, centered the narrative around her, and allowed the writers to reiterate the game's theme of trust and teamwork when she assists the player in the final battle, which i think was a REALLY great choice, narratively speaking.

In any case, I don't think it's right to say that zelda was completely robbed of her agency in botw and totk. Agency doesn't always mean that she's unburdened and constantly present, it means she's given the freedom to make her own choices and that her choices are realistically written with HER in mind, not just the male characters around her, and I think botw/totk do a pretty good job of writing her and her choices realistically and with nuance.

[worstloki]

Thor 1 is fun because Loki suffers from overthinking before he does stuff and Thor suffers from not thinking until after he’s done stuff and they both end up with the same results: making bad decisions

[swatato]

I refuse to believe a damn thing I’m seeing thanks <3

[sammygender]

trans headcanons of the winchesters are always extremely fun to play around with and i can see most of them. but one that always rings slightly false to me, despite a love for it due to self-identification and the fact it’s definitely interesting, is transmasculine dean. simply because if you’re going according to canon this would require him to have transitioned at some point prior to johns death, probably much prior, probably as a youngish kid. and i genuinely do not think that ever could’ve happened. he values johns approval too much and is too scared of demanding too much of him.

like even aside from whether john is Actually transphobic (i doubt he’s like Cartoonishly transphobic he probably would be annoyed by it slash not care much, interpret ‘not caring’ however you want) just the whole Thing of coming out where you’re like. “Hey dad im actually a human person who has an internal sense of self and such that doesn’t happen to be You 2.0 and am not the gender you thought i was and i feel emotions to such an extent that i actually like need to transition”…….

no fucking way dean would ever be able to do that to john while he’s still alive. please. teenage transmasculine dean would be like Well yeah sure i want to be a guy but that’s not an option for me whatsofuckingever. and crucially he’d be like that even if he knew entirely about trans people. now this is why transfemme dean works so well. because you just know it would take her at least thirty years to even consider it for a singular second.

on the other hand transmasc sam works so well because you can picture teenage transmasculine sam realising he’s a boy and promptly making it part of the whole entirely justified and very cool and fun teen angst rebellion FUCK YOU DAD thing. he could let spite carry him to the point of coming out. dean? he is burying that shit deep.

[whatudottu]

Do y'all think object heads have a peculiar vision? Well I certainly do!

If DJSS is actually a supernova then assumption probably brings with it the idea they were a star, and being a star where it sends light in every direction and vision is directly correlated to light, what if that means omnidirectional vision?

[travalerray]

I am going to slap you myself

[sysig]

Care for your sparring partner (Patreon)

Bonus:

[arsenicflame]

do you guys ever think about how ed wouldn't intuitively recognise izzys steps anymore because ive been thinking about that a lot this week

[metanarrates]

What do you think about how most people summarize orv's themes as love. I saw one of your reblogs about how it's too simplified for other works?

my general opinion is that saying "x is about love" is usually too damn vague as an analysis. while love is not a universal emotion (shoutout to loveless aros,) it's a common enough human experience that I really think that you need to specify what ABOUT love is being explored. is this a work about the depths of love? is it about the transformative potential of love? there are a thousand different ways love can manifest, and about a billion different ways a story can offer insight on the nature of love. I think it doesn't do justice to a story if you're not specifying what exactly it has to say about love.

all that out of the way, yes. many of orv's major themes are about love. specifically, it relates the love a reader has for a story to the love that a person can have for another human being. a story, like a person, can contain depths unknown to both author and reader - it is impossible to ever reach a complete understanding. there is always some element that will be impossible to communicate. something left hidden behind a wall.

but you can love that story, that person, anyway. you can offer your own interpretations, and try to understand as best you can. and the love and effort you put in matters deeply. the way that you can affect other human beings, specifically, matters deeply. even if it seems like your efforts will never reach that person, even if they are justifiably hurt by your efforts, even if your interpretations are wrong, even if you are the sole reader of a story. it matters that you were there and tried to love it as best you could.

orv also has a lot to say about love, self-sacrifice, and salvation. kim dokja's love of the story and his companions is a major motivator to why he destroys himself over and over. it's paralleled to his own mother, who sacrificed herself for his sake, and who he resented all his life and yet can't stop making the same choice when it comes to the safety of others. that sort of love and salvation hurts as much as it saves. it's as selfish as it is selfless. it's the same choice his companions make in order to get him back. they love him. they would be able to live with his resentment and guilt if it meant he would survive.

kim dokja's love for yoo joonghyuk, specifically, is both selfish and selfless. it is his love for yoo joonghyuk that was (unintentionally) responsible for much of yoo joonghyuk's suffering. the choices kim dokja makes out of love are what mitigate yoo joonghyuk's suffering, and eventually are what allows him to free himself from his eternal cycle. again, it is the love a reader has for a story, and the way that a reader both craves conflict and craves for the characters they love to overcome it.

it is the same love that drives yoo joonghyuk and han sooyoung to repeat the cycle again, as a choice this time. selfishly and selflessly. han sooyoung damns the world to apocalypse because she wished to save kim dokja's life. yoo joonghyuk chooses both regressions and his time in space to grasp at the chance to keep kim dokja alive. neither of their choices is guaranteed to save him. they know that. love alone isn't enough to save someone. but they make this choice because they love him, knowing that he would hate the choice. they create the story together because they want their sole reader to be understood by it.

and that's the end theme of orv's meditations on love and the nature of stories. if you love a story enough that it saves you... well, perhaps it's possible that the story, too, loves you back.

none of this is easy to describe in a sentence. I agree that it's probably easier to just say "orv is about love?" but I wish more people identified it further beyond that, since that usually is where the discussion just stops. I find orv's discussions on love to be some of the most compelling presentations on the topic that I've ever seen in fiction, and I like discussing it! i want to treat it with the complexity that it deserves.

[dennisboobs]

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