#ETA to fix the S&T anomaly that was pointed out in the reblogs

[cboffshore]

I believe you're a Cyren fan so... Any thoughts about her?

Short answer: If Skybound is the missed opportunities/fridge horror capital of the world, Cyren isn't necessarily the most popular tourist spot - she's more like the little hole in the wall cafe you encounter by accident after you get separated from your tour group, and then you have the single best latte of your life there, but you can't find the place the next time you're in town. That is to say: yes, I do think about her, a lot, and I think she is criminally underappreciated, but I'm not too sure how to articulate it.

I'll try, though.

Long answer:

My knee-jerk reaction to someone mentioning Cyren is to think, oh, she was so cool! she had a kickass power and it's so sad we never got to see her use it. This, naturally, then reminds me of how she got that power, and then whoops! There we go down that whole mental rabbit hole.

A decent chunk of why I like Skybound so much is because what it doesn't directly say is frequently just as (if not more!) important as what it shows us directly, but only when those two work in tandem. I think Cyren is the single best - and most tragic - example of that.

Anon, I assume you know Cyren's backstory, but for anyone else seeing this who may need a refresher: Cyren's a Sky Pirate whose wish was to become a great singer. Nadakhan grants this by enchanting her voice to send listeners into a trance (and forgive me but I can't remember if it's just when she's singing or if it includes speech, but to be fair, it's not like they ever clarified it onscreen so I presume it's both), which is apparently a useful tool for making raids very easy... but, as you might guess, not great for performance reasons. Imagine showing up to see Fall Out Boy and passing out before Patrick can even finish asking if he's more than you bargained for yet.

Here's the problem: We never find this out in Skybound itself. Cyren does not have a Tall Tale, and if she did, it would be about as useful as the others anyway. Cyren never even speaks or has her name spoken. This information comes only from one of those old profile flavor text entries on the LEGO website at the time (which someone turned into the opening chunk of her history page on the wiki but I can no longer find in its original form). Later on I think it shows up in a few character dictionary type places, but that's a tangent - point is, this is another example of the secondary material doing wild shit to the main stuff.

A couple of things about this:

I can absolutely understand why they didn't show this off in the show - that's a game breaking power. You wouldn't have much of a fight scene to animate if you could just enforce nap time on everyone who forgot earplugs.

I would LOVE to know the order of operations here. Cyren's named on the set boxes, so I suppose they got pretty far into the process of establishing her, but... when did they scrap her? Did they ever scrap her? Was she even supposed to have that backstory, or did a web designer have a creative writing itch to scratch and a better understanding of the season's themes than the Hagemans seemed to? Was she ever supposed to do anything in the script?

Alternative to number 2, and my preferred option even though I always have to remind myself of it: why is this whole situation so much cooler with her silence?

The it girl weapon of Skybound is not the sword of souls; it's speech, and how you can use it to get what you want. Nadakhan's our entry-level example here - he tries to get his victims to say things he can reinterpret and aim back in their faces - and we see it with Jay and Nya, too. To put it very simply, Jay wants to be able to say the right thing to make Nya like him again; Nya wants to be able to say the right thing to get the world to listen to her and accept her for who she is and what she's trying to say. With those three, the key thing is that they're all able to determine what they want (even if they don't get it, of course) and tailor their speech to fit as best they can. (Obviously, this does not always work - but that starting option remains open all the time.)

Cyren does not get that. Cyren, if she speaks at all, automatically renders the listener unable to listen by sending them into a trance. The effect of her speech - no matter what she says or songs - is that she will be ignored. She's got the inverse of our leading trio: a guarantee that she will be heard long enough to influence the other party, but not the ability to choose what the influence is.

That's what makes Cyren the most gut-wrenching example of a weaponized wish in the season, at least in my eyes. She was able to use her voice to express this personal desire of hers - but it was the listener who held all the power, and heard her just long enough to pull the threads he could use, never mind what she actually meant. The end result is pretty much the exact opposite of what she asked for: a guarantee that her voice is no longer hers to use freely. To wish to be heard and appreciated and then to have your voice made so beautiful that it becomes the ultimate anesthetic.... ouch. OUCH.

In that way, I do think it's darkly, ironically perfect that Cyren never gets to speak, or climb all that far past the role of background Sky Pirate except for in the supplementary material. Again: absolutely devastating power. We wouldn't have any obstacles if they'd had it on the writer's table as an option, and without obstacles we wouldn't have had a story. She's a showstopper, literally, and it kind of fits that her power is too strong to actually be useful in the season. It's like showing up to a knife fight with a lawnmower.

And yet: we see her in action. We see Cyren a lot. Next time you watch Skybound, take a moment and count the background models in any given pirate crowd: there will only be one Cyren at a time (ETA: unless it's the Scrap n Tap scene, which plagues me for multiple reasons, including breaking my tidy absolutes in this ask) . There's a handful of repeating character models that show up a lot, often multiple times in the same small group, but Cyren is a standout. The most important appearance of hers I can name right now is during the end of 62 when she helps drag Nya out of the hidden basement - but even then, she's working with another bland background pirate.

That balance is so, so bittersweet to me - clearly there was something in the seasonal map keeping Cyren alive. She gets named on the set boxes and her own character profile, but she doesn't get a voice; she's seldom duplicated (ETA: again, except for the Scrap n Tap crowd) but never shown at full strength.

I don't know. I don't have a great way to end this. Something something actions speak louder than words, maybe? Something something secondary text?

In short: I love Cyren. I even love that she got shorted, because it makes her seem so much deeper, somehow, and it shouldn't work - but I'll take what I can get.