#analysis commentary = monologue

[shyjusticewarrior]

What's with Dick and green eyes

[alioopshi]

I’ve been having a lot of thoughts about all the nuance surrounding the name “Murderbot” in the books vs what we’ve seen so far in the first two episodes of the show. I’ve seen a couple other people referencing this difference too, but I haven’t seen an explanation anywhere and I felt compelled to write it

below the cut are detailed descriptions of events at the beginning of episode 1 of Murderbot, and several parts of All Systems Red, plus a little bit of commentary and an even smaller amount of analysis and speculation

In the show, the very first scene depicts SecUnit standing guard in a large group of humans, just finishing up a mining contract. Via voice over, SecUnit tells us that right now, it has to follow humans’ orders because if not, it’ll get its brain fried by the governor module. But not for much longer, because it’s been working on something. Some of the human workers, who are celebrating the end of the contract, approach SecUnit and begin harassing it, discussing how it must follow their commands. They tell it to raise its arm, and they use a blowtorch to burn SecUnit’s armored hand. They stop before causing enough damage to SecUnit to incur a fine from the company. After being left alone, SecUnit then enacts the plan it has been working on. With a “here goes nothing” and the risk of death and dismemberment if the plan doesn’t work, it disables the governor module’s ability to administer punishments for disobeying orders. SecUnit is shocked and amazed that it works. It then decides the first thing it needs to do is give itself a name, and after discarding a few ideas, it changes its own designation from its original serial number to “Murderbot.”

(which, side note, the end of the opening scene kind of makes me laugh because buddy, without any context, the name Murderbot is not any better than Freedom Unit or Security Bot or whatever the other options were. they’re all absolutely TERRIBLE names lmao)

This is quite the departure from what happens in the books. At the beginning, our protagonist does not have a name for itself at all. It just refers to SecUnits in general as “murderbots.” The lowercase-m “murderbots” is meant to be derogatory, in the same way it uses the term “sexbots” as a derogatory term for ComfortUnits. So, it’s a bit of a misunderstanding when Gurathin later reveals that “it calls itself Murderbot.” It does not pick Murderbot to be its name by choice! It is outraged at the invasion of privacy and also profoundly uncomfortable with being called that. From that point on, the PresAux humans only ever refer to it as SecUnit (and in later books it only ever introduces itself to new people as SecUnit). It isn’t until the very last line of the first book that it refers to itself as capital-M Murderbot. Throughout the entire rest of the series, uses of the name Murderbot are very rare, and most happen in its own internal monologue.

For the TV show only folks: you may come across some book-readers who primarily refer to SecUnit as SecUnit, and avoid using the name Murderbot (myself included) as much as possible. This is why. Book!Unit really really hates being called Murderbot by other people. The avoidance of the name Murderbot is coming from a place of empathy, not a place of disrespect/ignorance of SecUnit’s chosen name (I could see this being a logical conclusion if you’ve only seen the show). (atp I’m kinda leaning towards calling book!Unit “SecUnit” and the tv!Unit “Murderbot,” we’ll see, since the re-designation at the end of the opening scene definitely gives “this is the name I’m choosing for myself because it’s what I want” vibes that are completely absent from the book.)

I don’t think the show is necessarily wrong or that the book is necessarily better! they’re just very different in my eyes. I’m curious to see whether the derogatory lowercase-m “murderbots” gets used at all in the show, and whether it’s used by SecUnit or by any humans, and whether it’s used before or after the “it calls itself Murderbot” reveal. I said in another post that the show has left me wanting for the nuance that is present in the books, and I think some of the complexity surrounding its name could be introduced if Gurathin first reveals that “it calls itself Murderbot,” and then afterwards one of the hostile parties tells SecUnit “you’re nothing but a murderbot,” especially if this gets tied in with the mystery of SecUnit’s corrupted memory we glimpsed in the show.

[wingedshadowfan]

⚠️arcane s2 act iii spoilers // caitvi ending commentary ⚠️

the difference between the last individual scenes of vi and caitlyn, and the one they shared actually made me sob, so here's my analysis of what it all meant

caitlyn is at home, in her family mansion in piltover. her monologue seems to be a messege or an archive for the kirammans or historians after her; she's also looking at the kiramman house files, a family heirloom, a symbol of her legacy and her station, a connection to her mother. she's perhaps searching for something needed in order to start rebuilding the city, perhaps checking if jinx could still be somewhere out there, maybe even seeing what ekko saw about the undercity's vents and water ducts. she still seems to have purpose, or to be in search of one for herself.

vi is also in caitlyn's house in piltover, but she's not with caitlyn. in a city not her own, in a house not her own, it seems she's chosen to sit in a room alone with her thoughts, staring at the fireplace. we hear her humming the tune to a song her mother used to sing, the same one jinx was humming when we first saw her this season - vi's small comfort, the faintest memory from those before her, and nothing to leave to those after her. no roots and no legacy. she's grieving everyone and everything she's lost. stripped of will and void of purpose.

caitlyn is excited to hear vi humming a song. we don't know how long it's been since the war ended, but this implies she hasn't been doing much other than sitting by herself in silence in quite some time. she's become a shell of herself, and caitlyn is worried - she's there for her but doesn't want to push her either. she asks her if she's "still in the fight", and this is a loaded question that i can see two main meanings in - one notably sadder.

1) are you still in there?

what part of you is left, and is it strong enough to keep fighting this state you're in? do you have it in you to keep going? do you have the will to live in spite of it all? is there any fight left in you? are you still with me, or are you just in the room?

and i feel like caitlyn knows the answer but wants to hear it from vi, check in on her and encourage her to open up if she's feeling ready to. because she heard her humming to herself.

and when vi says she's the dirt under caitlyn's nails, she doesn't mean it in a cute, flirty or romantic way. she means it in a self-deprecating "i know i'm not being easy right now" kind of way.

i'm not fun to be around, to have to take care of and wait around for. i'm making things harder for you and i'm holding you back by not cooperating and just getting better. i can't help it.

and she adds onto this, "nothing's ever gonna clean me out"

you're stuck with me. i'm a nuisance to you but i can't leave you because you're all i have left. i think i'm lost and broken beyond repair. i'm crooked. i think i'll never be okay again.

2) have you given up on zaun?

are you still in on fighting the system? have you given up on trying to make others see your people for who you are? do you still have hope in the dream for unity and freedom for zaun?

it sounds like caitlyn does, and she's still up for it, just like she was in the latter half of the first season, before jinx kidnapped her, tried to get vi to kill her, and blew up the counsil building just as its members were about to vote for zaun's sovereignty, killing caitlyn's mother. but caitlyn can't do it on her own - it's vi's home, vi's people, vi's identity - and she needs to know if vi still believes they can change something.

and when vi says she's the dirt under caitlyn's nails, she doesn't literally mean caitlyn, or herself. she means the opposing poles they represent - piltover and zaun, oppressor and oppressed, a pristine policewoman and a crooked criminal. until piltover's view of the undercity and its people changes, zaun will always be a torn in its side, fighting it, defying it, trying to free itself from its clutches. small, perhaps insignificant, an inconvenience, but a part of it that it can't get rid of or erase. it'll always be there, it'll always fight back.

and when she says nothing's ever gonna clean her out, she means she'll never be bent out of shape and lose that part of herself - the ugly, dirty, raggedy part that grew up on the streets of zaun and was raised among all the tragedy, misery and poverty of the undercity. a product of the system. she'll never let that be "washed out" of her, she won't forget her origin or her goals. this is who she is, her identity - not just in the eyes of piltover, but in her own heart - a zaunite.

EDIT: i also saw this interpretation on tiktok if you're interested. to summarize: there's a spanish saying "like nails and dirt" which is used to refer to two people who are inseparable, so this is a testimony of vi's love for caitlyn having given her reason to keep going and stay by her.

[nanamineedstherapy]

Idk why I did this but... enjoy & bonus - I teach you how to do a basic analysis/decode meanings faster by my thought process.

🎤 CAST COMMENTARY - "Colors" by Halsey

(ft. Satoru Gojo, Toji Fushiguro, Ryomen Sukuna. Mentioned Megumi Fushiguro)

filed under: you shouldn’t let men have opinions, but here we are.

GOJO (too loud in the group chat):

ok first of all i just wanna say i’d kill to be described as a lilac sky like that is peak gender

second of all. this song? this song is what it feels like when ur the manic pixie dream boy and the girl wakes up one morning realizing she’s cold and alone and all u ever gave her was serotonin-colored smoke and withdrawal.

the boy in this song? he’s ME. but also I would never treat her like that. but also if i did. she’d still love me. bc charisma.

TOJI:

nah this is about a broke addict who thinks feeling sorry for himself makes him mysterious.

girl thought she could paint over rot.

ended up stained.

GOJO:

wait wait WAIT no bc toji you ARE him. “you’re ripped at every edge but you’re a masterpiece”? that’s literally what ur fangirls say when u kill people with a smile.

and let’s not ignore the 28 years old thing bc you didn’t even make it there and that’s foreshadowing

TOJI:

i wasn’t addicted to pills i was addicted to violence that’s different

also 28 is a fake number. real men die at 27 or disappear into domestic irrelevance.

SUKUNA (voice like wine and ash):

This composition is not a love song. It is an elegy.

The boy is already a corpse, embalmed in melancholy. She touches him and becomes a pallbearer of his suffering—

and calls it god.

You were red and you liked me ‘cause I was blue…

Such mortal poetry. She did not desire him.

She desired to be desired by him.

To be transformed into something more beautiful than herself.

But purple, alas, was not to his taste.

A union too honest.

Too alive.

He preferred decay.

GOJO:

sukuna what the HELL that was so unnecessarily deep who taught u Tumblr syntax??

also real talk this is literally megumi’s worst fear LMAO. emotional intimacy?? colors??? nah bro’s gonna “everything is grey” himself into an early grave

SUKUNA:

The brat lives in grayscale because it requires no courage. Color demands vulnerability.

TOJI:

he gets it from me.

i just don’t monologue about it.

GOJO:

ANYWAY the part that KILLED me was “i know i’ve only felt religion when i’ve lied with you.” like. that’s such a me line. spiritual awakening but make it horny and sad?

SUKUNA:

She does not know god. She only knows grief. She has confused the two.

TOJI:

she’s not confused

she’s codependent

GOJO:

guys be honest do u think she ever gets over him??

like do u think she dates again or does she just trauma spiral for five years and make niche embroidery accounts where she cross-stitches his initials in different shades of blue

TOJI:

she dates again but only emotionally unavailable men

so yeah basically she never gets over him

SUKUNA:

She dreams of resurrection.

But builds her altar in the ruins.

GOJO:

ur literally a war crime in human form and still said that prettier than a YA novelist on a deadline

TOJI:

don’t feed his ego

he already thinks metaphors count as moral superiority

GOJO:

ok but last point. this whole song is a warning.

you think you’re the main character but turns out you’re the background shade that ruins the painting

and the person who loved you?

they tried to turn trauma into art.

but it bled through the canvas.

SUKUNA:

All mortals bleed eventually.

But some—

do so beautifully.

Now the real analysis I did before that scene -

I know nothing about Halsey nor is this my favorite song or anything, this is just an objective from my perspective, so don't see this as a hate post 📯

Colors is a track soaked in psychological nuance, poetic fragmentation, and a painfully intimate portrait of loving someone who’s drowning—and pulling you under with them. It's not just about heartbreak. It's about the subtle erosion of self when you love someone who's deeply, fundamentally unwell.

Core Themes:

Depression & addiction (coded in “blue”)

Romantic idealization & disillusionment

The slow bleed of codependent identity loss

Unreciprocated emotional labor

Love as transformation—and rejection

Key Lines & Their Psychological Weight:

“Your little brother never tells you but he loves you so / You said your mother only smiled on her TV show”

You're introduced to a man emotionally neglected, disconnected from his family, and probably emotionally unavailable because of it.

The “mother” smiling only on TV implies a performative affection in the household—suggesting deep emotional repression. A man raised without warmth, who doesn’t know how to give it, only mimic it.

“You’re only happy when your sorry head is filled with dope / I hope you make it to the day you’re 28 years old”

This is addiction. The speaker is observing the self-medication, the chaos, the looming sense of early death.

“28” is specific—past the infamous 27 Club. There’s an unspoken grief that’s pre-grieving, the helplessness of watching someone spiral and being too in love to walk away.

“You’re ripped at every edge but you’re a masterpiece”

Classic trauma bonding. Loving the broken parts. Romanticizing them.

This is textbook for those with anxious-preoccupied attachment—thinking your love will “save” them, because you see the art in their damage. Even if they never see it themselves.

“Everything is blue / His pills, his hands, his jeans”

Color psychology:

Blue = sadness, numbness, overdose, death. But also: longing.

His entire existence is tinted with this depressive fog. Even things he touches or wears are soaked in it. It’s not just his mood—it’s his aura.

“I’m covered in the colors, pulled apart at the seams” = the speaker is absorbing his pain. She’s becoming blue by osmosis. A bleed-through of trauma.

“Everything is grey / His hair, his smoke, his dreams”

Blue was his body. Grey is his spirit.

He’s not just sad now—he’s empty. He doesn’t dream. He doesn’t feel. He’s devoid of color. Depression has moved from emotional to existential.

“I know I’ve only felt religion when I’ve lied with you”

This is where the speaker reveals her wound: he was her transcendence.

Not God. Him.

Love isn’t holy here—it’s carnal, dishonest, and desperately needed. It’s not salvation. It’s a substitute for it. A cult of him.

“You said you’ll never be forgiven 'til your boys are too”

His sense of worth is tied to collective guilt—maybe for something they’ve done, maybe just for surviving.

Survivor’s guilt? Addiction group? Brotherhood and trauma?

Either way: he refuses healing unless the whole damn house gets to rise. And he never believes that’s possible.

“You were red and you liked me ‘cause I was blue / But you touched me and suddenly I was a lilac sky / And you decided purple just wasn’t for you”

This is the kill shot.

She changed herself to merge with him.

Red (him) + Blue (her) = Purple (the compromise, the union). (bro this is a coincidence but please hallucinate that Gojo made me do it lmaoo)

But then he rejects it. Not because it’s bad—but because it’s not what he thought he wanted.

This is the fate of so many empathic people who try to heal others—they shift, mold, blend… only to be discarded the moment they stop being a fantasy.

Psychological Readout:

The male subject is emotionally unavailable, likely depressed, possibly an addict, and emotionally stuck in childhood wounds. He can’t commit, can’t feel, and doesn’t know how to receive love.

The narrator is an emotional caretaker—a textbook codependent with a savior complex, deeply sensitive, probably with a history of neglect herself. She sees beauty in broken people and thinks it’s her role to mend them by becoming what they need.

Their dynamic is toxic, but tragically familiar. The more he disappears into his fog, the more she paints herself in his colors—until she disappears too.

Conclusion:

"Colors" is not a breakup song. It’s a funeral for identity, a memorial to martyrdom in the name of love.

It’s what happens when you fall in love with a ghost, try to hold it—and vanish alongside it.

The song is a psychological portrait of codependent erosion: the high of being “needed,” the slow horror of losing yourself, and the final abandonment once you’re no longer palatable.

She loved him in full-spectrum.

He only ever saw blue.

Now what do you think? 😏

[sacredfixation]

Mobius files a report on the misuse of the metaphor kit he gave Loki

TVA REPORT – INCIDENT #58738:

Distribution and misuse of Dedicated Metaphor Kit, a Post-Incident Analysis

Filed by: Agent Mobius M. Mobius

Date: [REDACTED]

Subject: Laufeyson, Loki

Incident Summary:

Following a series of disruptions, including but not limited to the unauthorized confiscation of my lunch (henceforth referred to as The Salad Incident), a decision was made to provide Loki with a “Metaphor Kit.” The kit was intended as a pedagogical tool, designed to aid the Variant in understanding abstract concepts without resorting to the destruction of personal property. Items included:

• One (1) foam apple (temptation)

• One (1) rubber frog (chaotic leaps into action)

• One (1) small sand timer (time management and consequences)

• One (1) rubber chicken (disruption and disorder)

The kit was presented to the Variant under strict guidelines for appropriate use, which were immediately ignored.

Immediate Outcome:

• Loki expressed initial amusement, followed by sustained misuse of the provided materials.

• The foam apple became a recurring prop during mission debriefs, often accompanied by sarcastic monologues.

• The sand timer was repeatedly flipped during tense moments, exacerbating existing tensions in high-pressure situations.

• The rubber chicken was deployed in multiple inappropriate contexts, including as a distraction during a classified briefing.

• The rubber frog was used symbolically to mock my efforts at maintaining order, culminating in an unauthorized “leap” onto my desk during work hours.

Impact on Agent Mobius:

• Emotional Toll: Elevated stress levels resulting from constant ridicule and prop-related disruptions.

• Workplace Disruption: Significant time lost attempting to refocus Loki after metaphor kit-related antics.

• Personal Well-being: Persistent headaches reported, likely caused by repeated interactions with the rubber chicken.

Recommendations:

1. Discontinue the use of metaphor kits with Loki

2. Institute a stricter no-prop policy during debriefings.

3. Consider mandatory “Respecting Personal Space and Property” workshops for Loki.

4. Implement mandatory approval process for new teaching methods

Any future attempts to introduce non-standard educational tools or methods to Loki should require pre-approval from senior TVA staff, preferably after thorough risk assessment.

5. Establish designated metaphor-free zones

Common areas such as the cafeteria, briefing rooms, and hallways should be designated as metaphor-free zones to prevent Loki from staging impromptu ‘lessons.’

6. Introduce a post-incident recovery protocol for affected agents

Several agents expressed confusion and mild existential distress following Loki’s metaphor lessons. Consider introducing a support group or brief counseling sessions for agents exposed to prolonged philosophical ramblings.

7. Avoid future attempts to teach Loki lessons through tangible items, this approach is prone to backfire in unpredictable and highly irritating ways.

Agent Commentary:

I initially believed that providing Loki with a non-consumable, symbolic toolset would curb his tendency to disrupt order. Instead, I inadvertently handed him an arsenal of chaos disguised as learning aids. Loki now considers himself a ‘Master of Metaphors’ and insists on offering unsolicited ‘lessons’ to fellow agents, turning the office into something resembling a chaotic philosophy seminar. In hindsight, expecting Loki to handle anything with seriousness was a lapse in judgment. I regret everything.

Conclusion:

This experiment has proven that attempting to outsmart Loki Laufeyson with symbolic gestures or educational tools is futile. Future containment strategies should prioritize direct action over clever solutions. Attempts at intellectual engagement will inevitably lead to frustration, chaos, and, in my case, severe metaphor-induced migraines.

End of Report

[bangtanhoesthings]

I am happy about your blog, but skeptical. I love Vmin soooo much. No, I don't think they are a couple. I just love their friendship to the extreme. What I haven't been able to fathom is how any Jikooker or Jimin solo can say such horrible things about Tae or how any Taekooker or Tae solo can diss Jimin. It makes zero sense if you truly respect your favourite artist. Vmin LOVE eachother and are greatful for one another. They would hate seeing their fans push such negativity out there towards one of their best friends.

It also leads me to beleive that the Jikooker and Taekooker accounts that think Tae or Jimin could be sabotaging a possible romance have zero observational skills and their analysis abilities amount to a big fat zero! If they can't see Vmin love or ML love and the support they show one another then they aren't capable of rational analysis. Automatic block.

Sorry for the rant. I have ended up blocking hundreds of accounts and although I have found some positive Jimin loving Taekook accounts, I have yet to find a Tae loving Jikook one. My hopes are high. Don't let me town! 🤞

Funny how that works. I must be on the same quest as you but just trapped in a parallel universe because somehow, I still haven’t found a Jimin loving Taekook account that doesn’t eventually throw shade at him like it’s a spiritual obligation. Like at first, it’s subtle "no hate but…" (spoiler alert: hate incoming) or "just saying" (aka passive aggression unlocked). And then suddenly, we’ve connected the dots and Jimin is responsible for inflation, climate change, seasonal allergies and your ex leaving you in 2014. Like... is this a rite of passage? Is there a secret Taekook Temple where you unlock Level 3 Passive Aggressive Commentary after sacrificing a Jimin photocard under the light of a purple moon?

But I’m still out here like an unpaid intern looking for that rare Taekook account. With hope in my heart, pain in my eyes, and Jimin protection spells in both hands. Call me a masochist. Call me a delusional optimist with a dream and a Wi-Fi connection. Call me what you want, just don’t call me if you’re gonna disrespect Park Jimin.

I do understand your caution and skepticism, it is very valid. I also have been burnt by people I thought were sane but later spewing hateful rhetoric about either Jimin and Tae. I have been led to believe someone was a safe space, only to find them full on monologuing like a Disney villain about how Tae "isn't even close with Jimin anymore" while sipping tea brewed in delusion.

Let me be clear: I love Tae. He is the reason I fell headfirst into this beautiful mess of a fandom. Some days I don't know whether to thank him or curse him. His voice? Deep and rich like melted chocolate that’s been blessed by the vocal gods. His aura? Mysterious and magnetic, like a cat that might curse you or cuddle you, you just never know. His artistry? Off the charts. Whether it’s fashion, photography, or making me question my entire sense of identity every time he breathes, he’s got it. I love his quirks, his honesty, his chaotic good energy. I could go on and on.

And when I say I love Vmin, I mean it with my chest. They are my second favorite duo (also shoutout to Minimoni who have in the past year sneaked in to also occupy that second position because somehow Namjoon and Jimin manage to radiate therapist energy and chaotic academia at the same time). These two have been through it since their trainee days; laughing, crying, bickering, and just being there for each other. “Friends” and "4 o'clock" weren't just songs but an emotional ambush.So yeah. I don’t do slander. Not of Jimin, not of Tae, and definitely not of Vmin.

As I once humbly declared on my blog (okay, maybe not humbly): I am here to advance the Vminkook throuple agenda. And no, I will not be taking questions at this time. Honestly, if BTS ever confirmed a sub-unit with the three of them, I’ll be on the floor, sobbing. Until then, consider me the unofficial president of the Vminkook fan club....lol 😆😆

In all seriousness though, I really hope you find your people. They exist. The ones who love BTS without agenda, who cherish every bond without pitting members against each other, and who don’t use “just my opinion” as a smoke bomb for shade. They’re out there. Somewhere. Maybe even reading this post.

Good luck, Anon. And may your block list be long and your heart stay soft. 💜

[angeldeviloshi]

Mega Horsemen analysis thread compiled from my bsky.

Kinda wondering if the prophecy might be foretelling that Death is actually being summoned by Kiga through the sacrifices provided by Falling and Fire.

And that the narrative of it being "the age of devils" implants the idea of war in people which in turn strengthens Yoru in a world where she can't derive fear from wars in humanity's history as we know it.

Which allows Yoru to maybe regain enough power to turn Pochita's heart into a weapon that can erase Death while allowing Denji to live a normal life with a human heart instead.

But to do that both Denji's despair and Asa's guilt are important ingredients for this plan to work (Pochita's summoning and Asa's weapon) Asa has no connection to Pochita, but Pochita is connected to Denji.

She just has to think of Pochita as Denji's heart with all the relevant contexts that fuel her guilt and love through her connection to Denji. Doing right by her own heart to save him.

And I guess this leaves the question of whether or not Kiga is an unwitting instigator in a self-fulfilling prophecy or a fear-mongering orchestrator.

Cuz I've also been toying with the idea that the prophecy is just a framing device to present the conflict of part 2 while also being an unreliable lens much like what Aki was in part 1.

In that Nostradamus prophecies are viewed as glorified hoaxes irl and that can function as commentary for how the faith in it in-universe reflects the faith towards the csm. In the way the people project onto him as a vague concept to reflect the truth they see about the world.

And also yknow the way csm fans irl also predict the manga as it's ongoing to put forth their own truth for csm's world.

And Kiga's continuing mystery while she spends her screentime stuffing her face as the deadpan comic relief feeds into that while the scale of death continues to escalate with stuff like Aging's contract.

(Different thread)

I'm thinking about the horsemen's abilities and they all have the common theme of perception reliance and using those that can be deemed as lesser to them.

Control can control anything and anyone perceived as beneath her.

War can transform anything she perceives is hers into a weapon.

Famine can command the starved. But while Control and War can actively perform their abilities by themselves, Famine is reliant on the circumstances of starvation to enact her abilities.

The devils she summon being weaker could be due to this too with maybe the exception of Falling due to being a primal fear even if she could be nerfed.

And I wonder if the secret she tells AsaYoru could have been this all along so they're left unaware that they're being controlled by her vs when it's explained to Nayuta.

Given that Kiga is the only one so far who is able to not only see BOTH Asa and Yoru but also tangibly interact with them. (Her spiriting Asa away into Eternity's pocket dimension without Yoru) especially given that both Asa and Yoru are already starved to begin with in their respective hunger, both of which she stokes when she entered Asa's apartment.

And it's interesting? How this particular detail is never addressed in-universe by Asa or Yoru, or even the fact that Kiga doesn't address them when they're in the presence of other people. Only addressing AsaYoru as separate entities when there's no one else around.

Or at least in a situation where it wouldn't be obvious like with the guards when Guillotine was summoned.

While the story shows us at the front the blurring of the boundary of AsaYoru's identity as they're being seen as a single person by others, especially Denji. (And I wonder if the lack of Asa's inner monologue or the presence of the other out of body, post devil center rescue was meant to illustrate this) because AsaYoru must remain starved for her plans, to keep them under her control, which could also explain why she needs the fear of War to bolster AsaYoru to compensate for the nerfing she imposes onto them. A sharpened tool she's able to wield.

The hunger only deepens with their eyes fixed on the sustenance she dangles in her hand. True cult leader behaviour. Her power is exemplified in the presence of mass hunger but for there to be mass hunger there must first be something to hunger for, insatiably so. And even predators will submit when they're starved.

That Kiga turns on Control too with the Church, with Barem and Miri's hunger, the public's hunger for blood in the wake of loss. Using both her sisters to hollow out Denji's heart in the sushi restaurant.

Even her getting Asa to be the Church's poster girl alongside the fake Chainsaw Man serves to stoke Denji's hunger to push him away from the fulfilment of a normal life. And in turn the hunger of his fans to see him as their hero, their saviour. Fumiko's timely appearance reminding Denji of the choice he made in ch.93. The steak and the girlfriend.

And with all that said. I'm wondering about where Death fits in this. I've talked about the meta of Death inspiring hunger as creation against finality in this thread (covered here)

You can see how this fits into there being an "age of devils" especially with the Chainsaw Devil outbreak and the "Justice Devil" contracts. Humanity's desire to transcend their limitations with the power of concepts. The fear of Death and the finality it represents as catalyst for creation.

But the base idea of this is also carried over from the thoughts I've had simmering in my head from my Gun Aki AU about a devil I've been conceptualising lmfao. The overlap is just there.

The horsemen thus far operate on the subsuming of agency, in control, in objectification, in following, the horror of human exploitation through the power of authority.

And with Aging being a sort of precursor to death, the fear of Death can also represent the fear of impermanence in power, in belief, calling for the need for sacrifice to extend its presence, impact, through the loss it necessitates.

The cabinet's and Aging's desire to have aging erased to 'extend' the potential of humanity while humanity is also treated as a resource of the state via citizenship and its assets like Public Safety. Death as currency and necessity for prolongation.

Just as hunger operates transactionally with Kiga for satiation.

If Kiga's fear invites hunger, then Death could be similar in its invitation of death as sacrifice, Kiga's hunger gives meaning, craving for purpose to live. And Death potentially works against that, in its nullification and stripping of life for a justified end. And Kiga wishes for a world where hunger persists so food can exist.

The creation of humanity that combats hunger, makes life feel fuller.

(Follow-up threads)

So I know the whole Fumiko as Death Devil thing is a meme at this point. But after the long ass horsemen thread I made... technically this morning lmao, I'm actually thinking about her situation foreshadowing Death as well.

In her perception of her life as disposable, her willingness to jump into the jaws of death for a greater cause at the expense of herself, hollowing herself out as her life's purpose.

This is not exclusive to her of course. But that she's somewhat at the forefront of this with both Aging and the cabinet adds to the framing of death as exploit.

And I think the existing horsemen all embody her in some way due to this commonality they share.

In particular, Makima's Control as the necessary evil anchors agents to the state, makes them give up everything for the cause, one that takes lives.

Yoru's conquest for War weaponises lives both literal and figurative, transforming its meaning into its capacity for destruction and utility, as resource.

Kiga's inspiration of hunger through the church as Famine starves the people into wanting, such that they would tear themselves apart just to be fed.

Fumiko echoes all of this, as the state agent advocating for control, as the tool of the state against devils weaponising herself, as the Chainsaw Man fan who hungers for purpose through him. And now she finds herself on the verge of death, the sum of these constructs to its logical conclusion.

Death as the eldest sister the horsemen take after...

Something something, Death has power over whomever views their lives as lesser, worthy of death. The value of life only humans can perceive.

That she's the master fear her younger sisters lead to thereby making her the most powerful and unbeatable.

Kiga saying that War can be made to win is interesting w this line of thought given AsaYoru's duality esp it taking place in Falling arc.

Asa sees no value in her living while Yoru is desperate to sustain her existence. That Kiga says her plan was to starve AsaYoru with Falling in Justice's stomach.

It's here that Asa is made to hunger for Denji, the Chainsaw Man for his kindness, connection. And Yoru is starved in her helplessness and weakness against Falling, her inability to possess Asa as they're saved by her enemy.

Asa inheriting Yuko's justice for the Chainsaw Man, Yoru's inflamed justice for her identity and what she's owed.

This hunger driving Asa's reason to live as she's enlisted into the Church by Kiga. The context of "selfishness" in AsaYoru's revival at the start of p2, for her to overcome death with her hunger, her conquest.

Both of which converging at Chainsaw Man, to turn him into a weapon.

[atamascolily]

Lily liveblogs: Thunderbolt Fantasy 4x12 (Season Finale)

As a shipper, I feel fed. As a girlboss enjoyer, it's more of a mixed bag.

Cold open on Xing Hai watching the low-level demons placate the sleeping Cthulthu. Since this is a "weekly" ritual (though how anyone tells time underground is a mystery to me), this means that the entirety of S4 takes place in a single week. But what a week!

S4 has also felt very Shakespearean to me, and I feel like Xing Hai's monologue here is very classical and dramatic in this sense. I already wrote out a detailed analysis of Xing Hai's arc focusing on this episode, so I'm not going to focus on this as much here; this is a comedic shitpost recap.

have I mentioned how much I love her sleeve flips? because I do and there are a lot of them in this scene

Shang Bu Huan returns to the demon realm and what do you know, Lin Xue Ya is there waiting for him, complete with a dramatic silhouette

how long do you think he was waiting in that pose anyway

Lin: well, well, well, look who turned up out of retirement just as I predicted back in episode 1

of course Lin frames his own arrival in the Demon Realm as an inevitability, given TBF's preoccupation with fate/destiny (and more specifically, as a province of villains). Lin Xue Ya isn't a villain in the conventional sense, but he occupies an interesting middle ground, and his attitude here reflects this.

I love how this entire time, Shang has NO idea what's been going on, especially with Lang, and has to get brought up to speed on everything.

Lin: hmm, so you're okay with hanging out with demons if they're your friends? just asking for no reason. hahahahaha.

god it's so funny the way he's trying to feel out Shang's opinion on demons before revealing himself

Lin definitely belongs to the "remember, you can only tell him once" school and is clearly waiting for the most dramatic possible

the way Lin leans on Shang in this scene…. the way Shang LETS him… oh my god, my shipper heart

they're just so comfortable with each other here--Shang recognizes that Lin is being playful and is willing to listen to his bid for an alliance, and then he even grabs Lin by the shoulder later

cannot WAIT for the surprised telenovela zoom when Shang sees the demon king omg

I'm not going to ask about how Lin knows about Lie Mo Xian's whereabouts because pacing, let's just move on to the good stuff

That moment in the Scrying Mirror prison where the sky shatters… and then we cut to Lin Xue Ya throwing it around, ahhahahaha

Shang: when you said we were going to stage a "jailbreak", I didn't think you meant literally

the music for this scene is PERFECT, 10/10, no notes

THE MUTUAL JUMPSCARE

love how Shang gestures to his face when he's identifying Lie Mo Xian by his mask

more exposition for poor Shang, hahahahahahAAAAA

I love how Lin's commentary on Azibelpher is basically "game respects game", lol.

Shang: I DON'T CARE IF HE'S MAGIC, I'M GONNA HIT THAT BASTARD WITH A STICK, JUST WAIT.

how long do you think Xing Hai was waiting for her cue for the most dramatic entrance possible? LOL

I knew as soon as Urobuchi revealed that there were 8 seals that we were likely going to be in a race to see who could collect them first and/or have two demon god resurrections. What I didn't know until this episode is that you could get a partial transformation with just 3--I think this is why Xing Hai's form ends up asymmetrical, with space for a fourth eye elsewhere.

anyway, Lin just left powerful magical objects lying around, and Xing Hai was right there, so, uh, yeah, nice one, Lin

HIS LITTLE HEADSHAKE WHEN SHANG CALLS HIM OUT ON IT flkjflkgjflkdjglfkdgjlk

it was always unclear up to this point what the seals would actually DO and it turns out, it's giving the wielder both the power and the form of a demon god. This is, as Lie Mo Xian correctly points out, heretical magic with nasty side effects that transforms the wielder into a monster.

that said, Xing Hai's first form is extremely hot omg

the fight sequence that follows is extremely involved, and it took several rewatches in slow motion before I could follow all the action, especially when it's intercut by dialogue

one thing I didn't quite realize prior to now is that the scene where Lang takes the bug milk that puts him the cocoon is the han jiao lair from the first episode--after the assault on Azibelpher's castle failed, he retreated back there to brood against the sculpture with Kali's crest, and then moved there after he met Ansarto. So when Xing Hai throws Lin et al. out of the cave, they're back at place where Lang first fought the han jiao and you can see them use Kali's sculpture in this fight

the first sequence is our heroes getting their asses kicked to demonstrate Xing Hai's power-up. That one punch on Lin must have been very cathartic, lol

I don't love the CGI talismans in this scene, but this is a standard of the genre, so you just gotta roll with it

also it's fun to see how each character has their own way of handling the same attack: Lin uses Meteor Walking, Shang brute forces it with his sword by spinning in a circle (he's used this move before in other fights) and Lie Mo Xian uses his strings to fling objects to intercept it.

When her attack doesn't work, Xing Hai duplicates herself so she can fight all three at once

the music shift when Lin pulls out the Shen Hui Mo Xie he got from Wasp and Spider is PERFECT oh my god

Shang: HEY WHERE'D YOU STEAL THESE FROM?

Lin: hairflip Like you're one to talk, Mr. "Sword-Plundering Nemesis"

I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS EXCHANGE EVER SINCE THAT NAME FIRST CAME UP FLAKJFDLKGJD

of course shang gets the axe lol btw, the parallels between Shang and Lin vs. Wasp and Spider just keep growing LOL

once again, the moral is that humans are good at working together to defeat demons, especially when they have Shen Hui Mo Xie to level the playing field

Xing Hai powers up yet again, becoming even more monstrous in the process. How she talks with her mouth full of teeth like that, I have no idea.

SHANG AND LIN FIGHTING TOGETHER AS A DUAL UNIT THIS IS EVERYTHING MY SHIPPER HEART EVER WANTED AAAAAAA

I'm always a sucker for the "Shang uses Lin's sword as a springboard" technique, especially with Lie's strings involved

the next stage is for our heroes to use their ultimate techniques - first up is Lie Mo Xian against a corpse army

next up is Shang with a Wan Jun Po cameo as he borrows Jun Po's signature technique

Xing Hai tries the scrying mirror technique on the grounds that it's always worked before but it's too late--she should have done that FIRST, not as a last resort

Lin Xue Ya showing off his swordplay while being an asshole about it

GOD THAT HANDSPIN THOUGH

finally, we have Lin using his "Lunar Crater Vapor" technique against Xing Hai -- I prefer the more literal translation "Celestial Frost" because you can SEE him use that here when he freezes Xing Hai in place

also the blade is so cold that the resulting wound STEAMS for a second before Xing Hai is siced in half

unfortunately, the pacing is so tight we don't even get a moment of pathos for Xing Hai before moving on with the plot, sob

I SEE YOU PICKING UP THAT SCRYING MIRROR, SHANG. (You know better than to leave loose ends lying around, unlike a certain someone.)

Lin confirms this is a preview of what Azi intends for Lang and everyone looks at him in horror: YOU WERE GONNA MENTION THIS WHEN???

Locust gives Chao Feng a lecture about responsibilities but ultimately indulges her obsession by promoting her into the Order of the Divine Swarm

this scene is framed SO MUCH like Madoka Magica, with Locust in Kyubey's role, that I'm 100% serious when I call this Chao Feng's Dark Magical Girl Transformation

every time Locust does a hairflip to transition between roles, I giggle inside

anyway, this is what happens when you make a deal with Locust--you get an insect-themed power-up and costume. In Chao Feng's case, she gets Xie Ying Luo's scorpion crest.

[this may be why Locust is so damn cavalier about "Piao Miao" being a fake because he probably just cycles through the same five "roles" as people die!!! WORST BOSS EVER!!]

I feel like Locust should be a LITTLE more concerned given the high death rate in the Divine Swarm but who else is left at this point?? so he might as well, I guess

anyway, I don't think Chao Feng is Final Boss material, but she sure as hell got more dangerous as a result

In the Demon Realm, the Demon King announces his plan to release the demon gods and resume the War of Fading Dusk while Azibelpher snickers with glee. Lang's cocoon is now in an oven because he's not done cooking yet.

Inside Lang's dream, he wanders through the snowy mountain landscape, regressing back to his younger selves. He is then reunited with his mother, who hugs him and tells him to sleep, and they are frozen together in the snow.

… and that's the end of the episode.

the sheer GUTS to end on such a quiet, sad note

this scene guts me not only because of the contrast but because Lang is still very much a child grieving for his mother--this whole time, he's been driven by his pain and he just wants her back even though his revenge can never grant him the catharsis he seeks… MY HEART.

I thought going in that this episode would end with Dan Fei et al. staring down as demons pour out of the abyss, but apparently that's happening in the final movie, as is Lang waking up and his fight against Azibelpher.

GOD I WISH WE COULD HAVE HAD TWO FULL SEASONS OF THIS SLFKJFLKGJFLKGJLFKGJLJ

cannot WAIT for the final movie AAAAAAAAA

I have mixed feelings about this episode because on the one hand it was great and covered a lot of ground in a lot of time in a way that was catering to me personally, but at the cost of sacrificing one of the few female members of the cast, so it feels very bittersweet

overall, I enjoyed this season immensely in spite of a few missteps and rushed pacing, and I hope to do a more detailed thematic breakdown at some point when I can stop flailing. May not happen until after the movie comes out, though, especially since it's all one continous story.

[vaguely-concerned]

I've been giving some thought to why the device of colt's inner dialogue literally being written out across the environment works so well for me, and indeed why the mechanic of the heart in dishonored gives me the same satisfaction and seems to lend so much life and depth to the setting and characters when consulted. and I just had a flash of insight that duh. it's because it's written and structured like poetry haha. both these narrative devices have elements of poetry to them. shorter and more deliberate, more evocative, densely packed with meaning pieces of language, to contrast with the dialogue writing and all the various voices of the in-universe documents you find. turn the heart on a person in dishonored and you learn some vivid poignant details about them that shape your understanding of and feelings towards them. look at colt's train of thought scrawled all over the island, and you learn stuff both about the island and most importantly about him and his emotional landscape. and the effects of that are manifold.

for one it's able to deliver such subtlety of characterization when compared to the spoken lines. when we get to hear colt speak out loud, his register is mostly colloquial and straightforward, a little awkward/bumbling sometimes, even, when he's in situations he's not comfortable with (he's not a man for speeches <3). he's eloquent and incredibly funny in an off-handed blunt sort of way, with some growing palpable eccentricity thrown in as the loops go on (affectionate). however his internal dialogue (which as I understand really is kind of a dialogue and not a monologue except well. in the inevitable sense, because in the game files there are several distinct 'voices' from different loop versions of colt in there with their own affects) lends us insight into a different expressive side to him: his inner voice is sharp and consise, guarded, sardonic, sometimes verges on manic, shows off depths of insight and aptness of analysis of the people around him that belie his 'but just shooting a bunch of people is so FUN tho :'(' surface funnyman vibe. it's frequently more overtly threatening bordering on ominous than his light-hearted game of escalating death threats with julianna (awww bonding time <3<3<3). most of all it goes to some much darker emotional places than the stuff he seems willing to speak out loud. (there's one on fristad rock on the way to fia's bunker that seems to be about being stuck in substance abuse that has me like '...oh colt' every time.) it has the same lack of formality as his speaking voice -- all lower case, little punctuation, mostly very snappy and to the point language/vocabulary. some of it is observations like someone idly talking to themselves or quips there's no one else to respond to, some is pragmatic tactical consideration, some is pep talk, another genre (the most violent ones, often) read kind of like intrusive thoughts. you'd barely know what he really thinks of these people if not for this device.

ALSO it tells us without having to tell us that colt's amnesia isn't quite as complete as it first seems; he does have these fleeting impressions, emotional impulses and half-rememberances that linger on in the back of his mind, even if he doesn't know his own damn name right now haha. muscle memory of the soul to match the muscle memory of the trigger finger, if you will. also also. the diegetic feeling between the player and him in returning to some text you've seen before with new context and suddenly having that '...ah. so that's what that's about'. we both clearly see what you're thinking but we don't know why or what it means and you wont tell us (you won't tell yourself). sooooo crunchy. many thinky thoughts in my head. time making a stranger of yourself but that stranger keeps hanging out in your living room providing running commentary. damn.

and in some ways I think the twist on the heart concept from dishonored in having the poetry (AND genuinely useful gameplay tips! multifunctional. elegant. a very pleasing font too) be an inextricable part of the art direction and field of vision the whole way through that deathloop is pulling is vastly even more original, effective and fascinating, I've never seen a game quite do this before. it changes something to have these words actually visually, physically placed and embedded into the environment itself. we not only see snatches of what colt is thinking, we crucially see where he's thinking it, at what pace, where he's placing the inner landscape in the outer landscape and perhaps what he associates with each other -- we can use where and when the text pops up as additional context to read into the meaning of the words themselves. some text even gets some animation, flickers in a specific way to suggest excitement/agitation/intensity or anxiety!!! a whole game kinetic typography experience that is functional and stylish, who else is doing it like this!!

my favourite version of this may (predictably) be the remembered homoerotic guitar lesson in frank's club -- the way it unfolds through the room and into the next corridor unhurriedly, dwellingly, which gives it a dreamy, almost absent-minded feeling. the sense of being lost in a memory, how the way you traverse the room decides the pacing of what you're reading. how big and unavoidable the text is on the screen, telling you how much the recollection is occupying colt's mind in that moment. even if you ignore it and look around at other things, it stays there hovering in your peripheral vision. idk how they did this with just text, but it feels breathy and intimate in how it unfolds. taken together with all the other thoughts/messages scattered around the club -- angry, resentful, longing, wistful, fretful, sad, bitter, whatever unparalleled shrimp emotion just ...frank... hovering over where the guy himself is on the other side of a wall evokes in me -- it builds such an emotionally rich impression of what's gone down here and how colt feels about this place (and guy), even though we've barely learned a clear detail of the actual circumstances of the relationship or what lead to the break, and had nary a spoken voice line from colt to guide us. we don't get to know exactly what happened, but we sure do get to know how colt feels about it (a lot of very complicated things all at the same time, as it turns out). which again shows that emotional memory lingers longer and looms larger than factual memory here. a whole-level poem greater than the sum of its parts!! and so much of the game's narrative works like that and I LOVE it I love it so much I want to eat it why isn't everyone talking about this all the time now this is some fucking design!!!!!!!!!

like how often in a game do you literally walk through a poem and thus become part of how it's expressed???? (even more so, when did you last walk through a tender poem that's barely even subtextually about learning to give a gay handjob (to join the bitter breakup poem about even more barely subtextual gay blowjobs) lmao I love this game)? again, I've never seen a game do something quite this before, certainly not so skillfully nor consistently. I'm studying it with my little magnifying glass and a heart full of wonder

[acaplaya-musings]

VoicePlay Thriller - thoughts/commentary

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Oh my god that was PERFECT! Unexpected in a few ways, but so amazing! And just enough spookiness and creepiness without actually being scary to me! Honestly I think it's tied with Be Prepared for my favourite VP release of 2024.

Obviously this is getting a VoicePlay Visuals; the video was amazing, I absolutely loved it, and all my concerns were for naught! It's so fun and cool! However, this post is just to share my thoughts on the arrangement and vocals and stuff. All my thoughts about the on-screen stuff are waiting for my proper visual analysis!

More yelling/rambling of mine below the cut!

Oh god, I'm gonna have to make this into a two-part Voiceplay Visuals, aren't I? Like what I did for Classical Chaos. There is so! Much! To talk about!!!

UPDATE: I actually went through and did a sort of "image tally", like just noting down tally marks to make a rough estimate of how many screenshots I might want to include in a post for this (e.g. "I might take one here" or "I might want two pics for this moment" or "I might grab three screencaps from this moment"), and yeah I ended up with just under 60 - this is absolutely becoming a two-part Visuals post.

Right out the gate it started to become clear that VoicePlay absolutely made this song their own (while still definitely "paying respect" to the original), which I suppose I shouldn't be surprised about - this was arranged by Geoff, after all, and he almost never arranges covers to be just a carbon-copy of the original, and this is certainly no exception!

Geoff's bassline is shorter than I thought it would be (not exactly like the original), and starting with vocals right out the gate definitely caught me off guard (UPDATE: actually Geoff's bassline changes and is pretty dynamic in this song and it's amazing actually)

With that being said, I GOT MY WISH!!!! Basically as soon as Geoff began the whole "darkness falls across the land" spiel I think I nearly exploded with joy.

While doing my image estimation tally, I also went back (for like my 5th watch) and took down some notes on the music arrangement and stuff, because this video has a lot of stuff in it, my memory is not always great, and I wanted more to talk about here.

The "I'm gonna thrill you tonight" bit obviously isn't in the start of the original song, but it is in there! Originally it's part of the "filler/adlib" (?) part in between the two halves of the spooky monologue (I don't know fancy song terminology don't @ me)

On the line "you see a sight that almost stops your heart", J removes the word "stop" (he momentarily stops singing, get it?), and then before you've even fully processed that surprise change, he follows it up with a riff down on the word "heart"!

So if you've ever watched the full-length Thriller music video, you'll know that it's a bit "odd" in the fact that it re-orders the parts of the song, so it goes 'verse-verse-verse-monologue-chorus-chorus-chorus', and I'm pretty sure it leaves out the bridge entirely? The album version goes the more typical route of 'verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus-chorus- monologue' (though having a verse after the bridge section is something I feel you don't really see that often in songs nowadays?).

VoicePlay, meanwhile, take a bit of inspiration from both versions of the song, and they go 'verse-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus-verse-chorus-monologue-chorus'. Also, they take the chorus that was originally in between the first and second verses and stick it in between verse 2 and the bridge instead, meaning that we don't get the line "there ain't no second chance against the thing with forty eyes", which is a small shame because that line has always been a memorable one for me, but eh, minor personal hangup, it's no big deal. And the original music video version didn't have that chorus either I'm pretty sure

(Am I just stating the obvious? Perhaps. Am I actually making a point here? No. But this is as much for my own interest as for anything else).

ANYWAY, time for more actual song cover thoughts:

I loved how each person really got a chance to shine in this - everyone got plenty of parts to sing! (Well, except Layne who was just on backing harmonies and beatboxing, but he still very much got to shine on-screen, which I will say more about in my visual analysis!)

After the line "you hear the door slam" there's a percussion sound effect that kinda sounds like something slamming shut!

The lead-in to the first chorus here???? Like the way it goes "cause this is- cause this is- cause this is THRILLER!" with like the muffled audio effect on the first repeat, like dang it's honestly so groovy and funky

"You're fighting for your life inside a killer, thriller toniiiiight" yeah that was smooth

But seriously THE MONOLOGUE!!!! That was utter freaking perfection; guess Geoff's experience with doing narrations really came in handy, huh? I love the little inflection he put on "to terrorize y'all's neighbourhood" (and yes the "y'all" is part of the original too), I love the groove/percussion behind the second half of it, and of course the spooky/evil laugh at the end of the song is great. Honestly if Layne had arranged this song instead, I feel like he too would have definitely given Geoff the narration bit, because like duh! It's got his name written all over it! Hell, I made a post on my Discord like over two months ago specifically hoping for VoicePlay to do Thriller, and I said that Geoff would be perfect for Vincent Price's narration, and I was right!!!

But yeah everyone brought their A-game for this, this was such a fun arrangement, had me absolutely grooving, and I shall see you in a few days (probably) from when this is posted for my Voiceplay Visuals post for this video!

[snezenie]

utsugi and minoru: the divorce manifesto

longform analysis about noriyuki utsugi and minoru harada's relationship, as i see it. there's a lot of room for interpretation in their relationship, so of course these are my thoughts only.

contains spoilers for the full series.

word count: ~8,600

images are from this youtube translation, i got lazy so not everything has image support. if you see a random little tagline like 'ch 7' that means the evidence comes from there but i was too lazy to screengrab it yet (or ever, i don't know)

outline: i. the completion of each other ii. a deep and mutual understanding iii. the emphasis of their cruelty iv. the concealment of their kindness v. family and cycles vi. other allusions vii. conclusion

part one: equality and lack there of

how minoru and utsugi are presented as equals in some manner (whether in reality, presentation, thoughts, or otherwise) and how they circumvent it 

1a. utsugi-kun, did you fuck my wife?

'jealousy' is a big theme with these two— in the context of utsugi's interactions with rai and hajime, as described by minoru, and similarly with utsugi taking up minoru’s place in his own family.

their interpersonal relationships are the greatest source of their conflicts, as is clear with all their arguing and sniping at one another in the base game. there are two clear 'pairs' that become intertwined with one another: rai and minoru, and hajime and utsugi.

utsugi is someone who finally felt needed, the only thing he’d ever wanted, and then it's slowly taken from him as hajime becomes less willing to depend on utsugi. utsugi had uprooted his entire life to follow hajime, and he considers hajime's life and happiness to be his sole goal in life. it's natural to become agitated when it starts to become obvious that he might be sacrificing everything for someone who doesn’t want it. 

minoru states in the base game that utsugi is jealous of him, this is supported by how in some way minoru seems to have similarly occupied that supporting role as someone that hajime does depend on with utsugi. but is this true?

utsugi never mentions that he thinks hajime likes minoru more, or that he's jealous of minoru in his monologues. these plain descriptions of his inner thoughts are some of the only things about him that can be taken mostly at face value, he will only lie to himself if he benefits from being in denial. he mentions his various grievances with minoru (below), so why would jealousy never come up?

utsugi isn't jealous of minoru, that's why it doesn’t come up. minoru wants them to have a symmetrical relationship, something easily explained: utsugi has what i want, but i have what utsugi wants. so naturally i am jealous of utsugi and utsugi must be jealous of me.

but this is the admission of hajime and minoru’s friendship in utsugi’s mind: perfectly plain and devoid of criticism. 

utsugi doesn’t mind (or at least, it isn’t a major concern for him) that hajime and minoru are close. he genuinely likes minoru, and is distressed at the thought that he would hurt minoru by continuing to be around him. this is his commentary around the time he learns both about the ‘factor of catastrophe’ surrounding their families, and haruki is born, cementing the fact that making minoru leave will be difficult. 

instead, a lot of the grievances utsugi has with minoru in these thoughts is more indicative that his greater problems with minoru were really 1) that his interference harms utsugi’s plans for hajime to believe he is a savior and 2) grief that minoru insists on staying when utsugi’s plan for him is to go. 

but again, none of this is jealousy. utsugi’s apparent jealousy towards minoru is merely the product of minoru’s attempt to understand his abrupt change in behavior when he doesn’t have the full picture. and it is a projection of minoru’s own strife around utsugi’s position with haruki and rai. 

utsugi is more of a father to haruki than minoru was, and minoru explicitly recognizes this a few times. utsugi helps haruki with homework, calls him a good boy, and they sit together and sip juice. in contrast, minoru can hardly talk to haruki without losing his temper after he learns of haruki’s experiment status. 

his complicated feelings towards utsugi and haruki's relationship are clearly illustrated in his outburst in the train station, where he frantically tells haruki that he is his father, not hajime or utsugi. he still has a sense of ownership and duty to haruki, and wants the mantle of fatherhood. and yet his own fears and selfishness won out, burying those feelings. 

the same unnatural setup can be observed in the complicated way rai, minoru, and utsugi’s relationship develops. rai makes multiple choices to the detriment of the family in order to stay on utsugi’s good side and appease him, and minoru himself is kept in the dark about haruki much, much longer than utsugi. this all creates a feeling of isolation from his own family, and utsugi manages to ‘replace’ him wholly in some ways, where both haruki and rai are placing higher importance on their relationship with utsugi than they do minoru. minoru notes in retrospect that he was more deeply in love with rai than she was with him, likely adding to this insecurity.

the isoi’s importance to minoru is underlined by the mundanity of his ambitions. he wants to be happy, he wants a family and friends, he wants for everyone to get along. there is no grand higher purpose for minoru. this desire for a mundane, happy family is possibly inspired by his original orphaning, where both parents blamed minoru in part for their issues before leaving his life entirely. notably, hajime also makes up most of utsugi’s ambitions and desires, further paralleling the two pairs. 

and relating to minoru's upbring, there are also multiple points in the game where the concept of affairs and cheating comes up, strengthening the existing concept of jealousy and insecurities within marriage. most prominently, minoru questions if utsugi likes rai in the reference room scene of DLC. 

to utsugi, to the viewer, to rai, this sounds like complete laughable nonsense. but minoru seems to ask it seriously, showing the depths to which he has started to question his importance to his family. it’s emphasized that he wasn’t merely asking this in jest when utsugi laughs in response and minoru seems confused by the reaction. 

further references include that it comes up that both the harada and isoi families previously had incidents with their mothers cheating, shown as a symptom of the crumbling marriage. and again, minoru brings up an affair when affirming that haruki is his kid to hajime in a flashback scene in chapter 7 of the base game. 

minoru’s feelings about rai and utsugi are never addressed as explicitly as minoru’s feelings about haruki and fatherhood, but this concept of infidelity has come up too many times to be mere coincidence. minoru probably, at least momentarily in times of insecurity or irrationality, considered the idea that rai and utsugi might have something between them. 

when considering how obvious utsugi’s single-minded devotion to hajime is (and minoru knew this!), it is a rather insane leap of logic. but minoru doesn't tend to make smart decisions, especially under duress. many of his ill-fated decisions in game are led by his human fallibility. most prominently, he misses his window to escape with haruki and reiji in 1999 because he goes back to sleep after receiving the text to move up the plan.

he wasn't ignorant or blind to utsugi’s devotion to hajime, his own insecurity, jealousy, and confusion over utsugi’s sudden changes in attitude ended up creating impossible possibilities in his mind. he has been so completely replaced in importance to both his wife and his son, his family being the only thing he ever wanted, that he doesn't know how to cope with it.

both minoru and utsugi’s most important relationships are fraught with strife over the other person, and thus we can see how they are equal/replacing each other in some way. utsugi slots into the isoi family naturally as minoru’s relationships with his wife and son splinters. and while minoru shows hajime a simple way to live happily and without expectations, at the same time, utsugi is unsuccessful in his own pursuits to make hajime happy. utsugi has no jealousy over minoru’s relationship to hajime, and yet it is true that minoru ‘replaces’ utsugi in a just as important way as utsugi ‘replaces’ minoru. 

1b. the one who knew everything, and the one who knew nothing

their positions of power and authority show equality in other ways: utsugi is clearly jealous of minoru’s apparent easy, unburdened existence, and minoru in turn wishes for the power and influence utsugi has.

utsugi's complex is shown best when utsugi responds to minoru in the reference room: describing his demeanor as ignorant and disrespectful. he's frustrated that minoru can continue living obliviously while utsugi is in pain, even as utsugi himself maintains this state by keeping minoru in the dark about many things. he perceives minoru’s life to be easy and guilt-free, in a contrast to his own life of willingly taking on more and more burdens. 

at the same time, minoru is also feeling the stress and problems of the failing institute and his own crumbling family. it’s not inaccurate to call minoru ignorant, but utsugi exaggerates the depth to which minoru doesn’t understand the problems occuring. minoru eventually calls out the problems and failings he clearly sees, but he lacks the power to execute any real change. as an example, he calls for the removal of utsugi and the recognition of the crimes of the institute in the scene where utsugi orders him to leave, and no one takes him seriously, and things continue as normal.

minoru picks up on symptoms of the problem, but lacks the knowledge to get to the root. he sees utsugi acting out, hajime staying silent, and the increase in human experimentation. but he never indicates that he’s connected the dots on things like the reason why utsugi is acting out, why hajime is silent, and why human experimentation is ramping up. 

utsugi is the one who holds the power and authority to act on solutions to minoru’s concerns. he also has all the information and understanding that minoru lacks on multiple people close to him, including hajime, utsugi himself, and his family. he stands as the archbishop of EHRI and the main executor of hajime’s will, so it is utsugi who is pushing EHRI chiefly along its dark path. minoru wants the ability to hold onto the people he treasures and save his life from ruin, but he lacks the conviction and action-taking of utsugi.

for the most part, hajime takes the role of a passive observer, minoru is an outsider with no clout, and all the other bishops answer to utsugi, who answers to the sponsors.

to further explore how this difference in status and authority shapes their dynamic, minoru’s status as an outsider establishes him as more equal to utsugi than anyone else in the game. the previously talked through jealousy and give-and-take relationship between them supports this, putting them on the equal level of both having things of value to each other. 

it is revealed in DLC that utsugi never bought into hajime’s status as a savior. but even then he treats hajime with a carefulness and fragility that keeps their relationship from being one of mutual reliance and equal footing. he doesn't feel he can tell hajime of his struggles due to his devotion to being an infallible support for hajime. the support only flows one way, hajime being perceived as too delicate to take on utsugi’s problems. 

hajime aside, most everyone else in path to empireo (excluding seodore, minoru, and some of the other sponsors/stakeholders) see utsugi as the highest position of power and authority. he builds a powerful persona, and gradually we see the other members of path to empireo call him ‘utsugi-sama’ more than ‘utsugi-kun,’ showing his complete evolution into someone who is no longer equal and approachable to the others. meanwhile, minoru never changes the honorific, and even wishes to drop it entirely, but utsugi insists on it due to his upbringing. 

that minoru has neither bought into utsugi's leader persona (perhaps because he remembers how utsugi was when they first met: awkward, unconfident, reticent) nor become a worshipper that utsugi has direct power over, nor a sponsor with direct influence over utsugi means he sees things more clearly. he exists somewhere completely outside the power structure of EHRI, where he can see utsugi for who he is.

many of the other researchers we see (the enomotos, rai) don’t seem to quite be unaware of how utsugi is deteriorating, but they do seem to not have the mental capacity to do anything when their own problems are consuming them. rai in particular explicitly struggles with feeling the need to please utsugi, making it so she cannot portray her true self to utsugi or provoke him. 

but minoru frequently provokes utsugi, and he is the only person who is comfortable demanding answers from him. it’s not a coincidence that they have multiple scenes where they come to physical blows, showing the depth to which there is no power barrier between them. they both possess psychic powers from the cells, but only use their bare, human hands on one another. 

1c. love languages  

they show an inversion of each other again in their ways of taking action and expressing themselves: utsugi’s motivations and care are impactful, but quite silent and unsaid; while minoru talks loudly without being able to back it up with action. 

minoru calls out that utsugi cared for those around him when he could (when it didn’t conflict with hajime’s will) and with a little investigating, the viewer can also pick up on this notion.

one example is utsugi may have allowed or accepted noa’s blame for killing rai, when the clear culprits of rai’s death were always seodore and noa herself. 

or that utsugi tried to create an exit for the isoi family both by proposing the plan of a second child and by using haruki to research reversing the cells influence, which has little other application. 

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utsugi only ties his own hands when caring for others would directly interfere with hajime’s wishes, which gives rise to things like haruki’s original existence as an experiment (as a note, hajime’s regret of this situation may have played into utsugi’s eventual willingness to reverse it.)

but even then, he does his best to play around the lines of his ultimate obligation to hajime and shows reluctance in carrying out harm. this is illustrated best by how, in one of his dlc monologues, he hoped haruki would have a negative reaction to the cells. 

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this would put path to empireo out a potential experiment, arguably hindering hajime’s ultimate dream. however, a negative reaction would keep utsugi from having to navigate the potential situation of a positive reaction, which would surely be difficult for the isoi family. 

in most, if not all of these situations, utsugi's thoughts and actions are not seen as mercies by anyone involved. they’re difficult solutions that are hard to accept. utsugi never presents his help as mercy, nor does he ever asks for gratitude from the people he helps.

we can see utsugi’s affection for minoru persist until modern day, similarly completely unsaid but easily seen from his actions. utsugi holds onto minoru’s books for years and years, keeping them in a backroom without disposing of them. there is no reason for someone so logical and thorough as utsugi to not dispose of these books unless he has sentimental attachment to them.

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the room behind utsugi’s statue is also minoru’s old room from before he was married, and not only does utsugi preserve it, but he blocks it off so no one would enter it. it can be confirmed as minoru's room when hajime reads a note from minoru in the room in a flashback in the base game, as well as the shape and set-up being the same when it appears in minoru's dlc. 

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the furniture in it is likely different from minoru’s room in the flashbacks because he took his furniture with him after he moved out with the isoi family, but it has not been repurposed.

utsugi also clearly remembers many things about minoru– his demeanor, how his sign feels, his appearance– and uses all these to easily identify reiji and haruki as his sons. when he’s blinded in his boss fight, he remembers how minoru’s sign ‘feels’ enough to believe that he is fighting him (when it is in actuality his sons.) 

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with utsugi’s deteriorating mental state after 1999 as well as that year being his last meeting with minoru, it would’ve been natural for utsugi to forget minoru inadvertently or on purpose. but it seems like he makes a conscious effort to remember his friend after their split, betraying his lasting attachment. 

to further compare minoru and utsugi’s actions, utsugi is extremely private and single-minded. he decides on things with little hesitation, and never ruminates on what could have been or what went wrong until everything is over and done. this is best illustrated in how we never see him breathe a negative word of hajime until they both lay dying.

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he also insists on having no regrets, even when the only audience to his words is his own self. this is clearly contradicted when he shows clear distress and desire to start over multiple times, most clearly in his second fight with minoru in 1999 and in the reference room scene. but in asserting to himself that he has no regret, he can better stay focused on what really matters instead of wallowing in the past.

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minoru is the opposite, being someone who talks a lot about what is wrong and what he wants to do, but either can’t or won’t take action. he is unable to commit to the same decisive choices as utsugi. 

in the case of can’t take action, his status as an outsider keeps him from enacting real change in EHRI, even as he points out its flaws repeatedly and loudly. he has no real power and thus his words are all he has.

in the case of won’t, it is shown best in the reference room scene with utsugi. minoru is angrily insistent that utsugi confide further in him and help him understand his situation and struggles, but he only maintains this sentiment up to a point. utsugi pushes back hard, feeling that minoru’s words are useless and would not help him. ironically, this proves true as minoru swiftly backs down from his previous words after utsugi starts choking him. it shows a clear line that minoru will give up on his convictions when pushed past. 

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in contrast, utsugi lacks this same bottom line. he is subjected to many counts of violence and pain while fulfilling his promise to hajime, but doesn’t ever think of giving up on their promise. utsugi avoids lying to others in the beginning (possibly as a side effect from the pain of being accused of being a liar in his youth when he was telling the truth) and he prefers total silence over promising anything he cannot guarantee.

he becomes much more comfortable lying and acting as time goes on, but in the 70’s and 80’s his word is trustable. one solid example is how, in 1999 in the train station, he refuses to promise anyone’s safety to noa besides hajime’s, despite her pleas. as someone who tried to treat others well, it would make sense to lie to her to put her fears to rest, but utsugi refuses to make the same flimsy promises as minoru.

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this difference in conviction is also what respectively saves and dooms them. it’s merely a possibility that if minoru had committed to taking action and causing change that he could have saved his friends and family at EHRI; however, it is unmistakable and undeniable that his ability to walk away is what actually saves his own self. utsugi similarly is capable/able of walking out, especially in 1999 when the organization is in shambles, but his intense conviction and loyalty to hajime holds him back and ultimately takes him to his ruin. 

in a game very centrally about the power of ‘will’ this feels significant and should be a good thing, but under a different lens it can also be seen as a passive role. utsugi never tries to re-assess his and hajime’s wishes and change his path to fit a more accurate dream. he never has the courage to change or abandon his doomed love to pursue a new one, whereas you can say that minoru does find that courage, to great success in ultimately finding a new home and purpose with LDL.

part two: the one who understood me the best

while minoru and utsugi’s relationship is not free of the facades, misunderstandings, and miscommunications that color so many relationships in this series, there is a deep understanding between them. perhaps brought about by the clarity of existing as equals in so many capacities. 

utsugi says that minoru understood him the most in the end, and even as their relationship was in tatters, minoru is the only character utsugi confides in of his own free will, in the reference room scene.

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all other confessions of truth and struggles we get from utsugi are either done privately or inadvertently. he tells misumi about his true motives, but only because he hallucinated that there was no one there. 

utsugi’s understanding of minoru in turn is a less clear cut subject, due to the fact that minoru is more of an open book in general, and more characters know of his pain. the position of understanding utsugi is a unique one, but multiple people empathize with minoru.

minoru speaks sardonically to cover up his stress and puts up a happy facade a lot of the time, but it’s still far from how deep utsugi has isolated himself. minoru at the least confides in multiple people and is more willing to talk about issues directly in order to draw out a solution. 

their understanding of each other is not a perfect understanding, and this series shows well how difficult it is to achieve a perfect understanding while possessing all the natural baggage of communicating and existing. so these two inevitably misunderstand several key things about each other. their relationship is one of two people who understand each other the 'most', but this understanding still falls quite short of perfection.

utsugi himself seems to fall for minoru’s apparent happy/care-free facade, as discussed earlier. utsugi isn’t ignorant to the issues of the isoi family, considering how much he does behind the scenes to patch things up for them (getting rai to have a second kid and leave, wanting haruki to have a negative reaction are two solid ones, and there are more actions that can be debatably attributed to the same motive.) but he still doesn’t think minoru understands the gravity of his and utsugi’s situations. it’s true, in a sense, that minoru has deeply false impressions of/has been withheld information about characters like hajime, utsugi, and rai. but utsugi over-emphasizes minoru’s ignorance and carefreeness, since he is seeing it in direct contrast to his own heavy burdens. 

these two only begin to approach the deep and near-perfect understanding of each other when they hit bottom together in 1999. 

2a. their mutual suffering

minoru gives up any sort of facade after the events of 1999, he’s lost everything and desires nothing anymore, so there’s no need to pretend. utsugi sees this and even directly brings this change about with how cruelly and falsely he presents minoru with the trashbags (representing rai and reiji’s remains, but there was nothing in them.)

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in my opinion, it can be read that utsugi’s cruelty here was a rather malicious attempt to finally bring minoru to ‘reality’ and see his oblivious facade drop (except, it wasn’t seen as a facade to utsugi) for his own reasons. these reasons are things like hating seeing him smiling all the time,  wanting them to share in mutual misery, wanting him to understand the full situation, shielding him from the complicated truth of rai and OG reiji’s fate, any of them or multiple could work here.

the end result is the same, utsugi finally gets the satisfaction of seeing minoru taking something ‘seriously.’ and he finally understands that minoru too is capable of pain and regret.

their mutual understanding is high at this point; that both of them reach rock bottom at the same time is significant. they lose the people who are most important to them at the same time, and struggle with finding their new purpose and reason to live. minoru walks away, and utsugi continues with the same path as always. the consequences of this are clearly shown when minoru finds happiness and a new family but utsugi just falls deeper into his own lies and violence. 

they fight twice in 1999: the first time is with fists, the most human and least lethal force they possess. they do injure each other (utsugi leaving sanemitsu’s famous and enduring head scar here) but it is a deeply human scene: both of them ineffectually lashing out in misery at someone who had little immediate causation of their pain.

the series has established that man-made things like guns and fists are ‘more human’ and ‘honorable’ (through jabuchi’s own ruminations on how he wanted to kill his coworkers and nina) whereas using empyrean abilities is ‘monstrous.’ minoru mentions this is the only time he sees utsugi use his fists, and that this is the most desperate and human he's ever seen utsugi. 

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but we don’t see the full extent of utsugi’s regret and turmoil until the second fight. 

utsugi’s motives for saving, confining, and later chasing and fighting minoru in 1999 feel ambiguous, the best clues we have are a set of lines right before the conclusion of their fight. utsugi laments the state minoru has ended up in, going on to doubt his own humanity and then lament the feelings minoru left him with.

mnr dlc

utsugi makes reference to still being human, and killing minoru while he still maintains that humanity. how i interpreted these was utsugi believing that he may lose control to the cells in the future, and wanting to kill minoru ‘as a human’ if he were to die regardless. notably, this again mirrors jabuchi’s plans, that there is honor and respect in being killed by human means. it also implies that he didn't think escape was an option for minoru, inevitably thinking he'll stay in the institute, alive or dead.

one of the most important points of the whole conflict is at the end when utsugi implies that— aside from hajime's happiness— there was one more thing he desired. he wasn't supposed to value his relationship with minoru to this extent, but he acknowledges that he did want it, even as they beat each other bloody. 

mnr dlc (utg?)

not even utsugi's remaining affection can stand in the way of his yearning for mutual understanding, and his cruelty towards minoru is unreserved in 1999.

to bring this back to the main point, it shows further the ill effects of misunderstanding in their relationship. minoru’s inability to understand utsugi’s motivations sews rifts in their friendship and leads to their ultimate split, while utsugi’s misunderstanding of minoru enables him to knock minoru down to his lowest point in life, where even death is a preferred alternative. 

to reiterate exactly what minoru misunderstands with utsugi, it is another thing that is laid out quite explicitly, as it leads to their falling out. minoru never puzzled out why utsugi was so insistent in the way he treated hajime as a ‘star’ and rather took it at face value that utsugi had no ulterior motive aside from religious mania. 

utg dlc

in reality, it was an act utsugi put on for what he believed was hajime’s own benefit, but minoru couldn’t begin to comprehend that. his own viewpoint was that it benefits hajime to think of himself as human, and he thinks of this as an obvious conclusion. there is a fundamental disconnect in both how minoru understands utsugi’s mindset here, and also in how minoru understands and treats hajime, who minoru similarly doesn’t understand fully. 

the other key misunderstanding is that it is dubious if minoru figures out the reason utsugi’s attitude towards him changed. his theories include things like utsugi was jealous of his friendship with hajime (untrue) or utsugi was upset at hajime’s poor state (partially true) or that utsugi liked rai romantically (wholly false).

it is my opinion that the (largest, but not only) reason utsugi distanced himself from minoru was because of the reveal of the existence of factors. he believed that furthering their relationship was ill-fated, as he was warned of on the phone by mari orie. 

utg dlc

he also may have lost faith in the authenticity of their friendship, as shown by his thoughts in 1999, where he panics that they only feel positively towards each other because of the effect of factors. 

utg dlc

minoru both knew about factors (unclear to me as to when exactly in the timeline he understands they affect reality and weren’t just something kazaru used for fiction) and that utsugi was researching them, but it seems doubtful to me that he put it together before he leaves path to empireo for good. later on, he may have belatedly understood what utsugi was researching. 

2b. the understanding they reached in the end

another recurring concept within their relationship is the belated realizations they have. as covered earlier, 1999 is the point where they understand each other best and the last time they see each other. minoru ultimately sees utsugi’s memories by using the power of the pen, and finally understands the events that lead to this point. 

it’s also of note that the only way minoru was able to understand utsugi totally was because of the power of the pen. he had to directly see utsugi’s memories, it was never possible for the truth to come directly from utsugi’s own mouth. only when treating utsugi as a character to be ‘read’ does minoru truly understand him. 

directly after this understanding dawns, utsugi tells him to leave forever. things have proceeded beyond the point of intervention, and it seems that any action taken now cannot undo the massive upheaval that has already taken place. 

this sad ending may feel like it points to saying that the furthering of their understanding was all for nothing, but it comes back into play sixteen years later.

their relationship had long fallen into complete nothingness, and yet minoru is the one utsugi trusts with his final wish, a final happiness for a man meeting a pathetic end. their understanding of each other did nothing to save their relationship in life, but it leaves minoru as the only one who can remember utsugi closest to how he was in reality.

hermit room 

in turn, minoru is the key to how we, as the viewer, also get to understand utsugi beyond all his lies, acts, and facades. it’s heavily implied that minoru has a hand in constructing the narrative of the entire series, and especially of dlc, which is named after him.

to give some more evidence to that point, the main support is drawn from the 'truth only i know' book by code:dante (sanemitsu) that is readable after completing S+ in a new game. in the book he refers to a 'record,' reminiscent of 'the records of sanemitsu isoi' (the title of dlc) where the truth is told. and he says that if there is something only he knows, that he can tell that truth through fiction.

s+

further tying this book to utsugi and sanemitsu, there is the egregious addition that sanemitsu addresses the declaration to his beloved.

s+

where this can be traced back to them in specific is that ‘la vita nuova’/’a new life’ is the real dante alighieri’s book about his beloved, beatrice. and the only time it appears in base game is as the fallen book you can examine to get reiji to comment on sanemitsu’s lasting relationship with utsugi.

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thus the book about writing the truth is by code:dante, about his estranged beloved, beatrice, and dante and beatrice are only ever referenced in the game in relation to utsugi and sanemitsu’s relationship. 

the 'truth' we learn in dlc is mostly exposed in utsugi's arc. we learn new things about all the characters, but none of them were concealing their true self to the extent that utsugi was. they all had other people who understood the truth about them, and only utsugi could say that sanemitsu was the only person who ever fully understood him.

utsugi also directly asks sanemitsu to write his story as a final parting wish, and indeed the way his story is initially told follows that last wish. he is an evil villain in the base game, easy to condemn and forget, and this irredeemable and unsympathetic person is how he wanted to be remembered. 

utg dlc

in the forking paths scene, he says that it's alright to think of him as a villain and not acknowledge that he had human emotions too. the illusions in this scene likely come from haruki’s own hopes and fears, and this being the ‘correct’ utsugi establishes that at least haruki believed his act. 

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dlc contradicts this completely by pulling back the curtain on what utsugi did behind the scene, so how can it still be said that sanemitsu honors his wish? there are plenty of people who played the base game but not dlc. the separation of these two stories ensures that some people will never get to see utsugi as sympathetic. sanemitsu couldn't stand to let the truth die with him, but he could leave enough breathing room so that utsugi's last wish would be fulfilled somewhere, with someone.

part three: unintentional cruelty, hidden kindness

3a. how do i hurt thee? let me count the ways

tying into both the failed good intentions of their actions and whether their will or lack thereof affected their relationship, there are multiple interesting ways in which they are unintentionally cruel to each other within the confines of their own relationship. 

one of the strongest examples we see is that utsugi digs up minoru’s insecurities in the process of trying to help him. starting with kazaru’s suicide note, minoru has been impressed with the idea that his very existence was a mistake, and he should not have been born. utsugi pushes him away in the end, telling him the only thing he can do for utsugi is to disappear and leave.

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in a way, this is a kindness as it is an escape route from the sinking ship that is path to empireo. but simultaneously, it is one of the cruelest ways utsugi can show ‘goodwill.’ it compounds upon kazaru’s original idea, directly pointing to the conclusion that minoru’s very existence is what causes utsugi distress, and thus there are no possible actions minoru can take to help utsugi besides disappearing. it doesn’t feel like a positive or meaningful solution to utsugi’s problems due to minoru simultaneously being the problem when framed like this. 

the previous sections already cover how much utsugi is intentionally cruel to minoru, from specifically digging up anything he can to hurt minoru in 1999 to intentionally sabotaging their relationship without discussion. but this 'solution' that utsugi offers minoru is unique in that it doesn't seem to be aware of how much it will hurt minoru.

moving onto minoru, i’ve discussed a few times already that minoru fails utsugi in the reference room scene, but it feels particularly cruel due to the uniqueness of the situation. it’s the first and only time utsugi directly reaches out for help, possibly ever, and he has nothing to show for it. minoru’s ultimate failure to deliver in that situation only heavily reinforces to utsugi the uselessness of depending on others. 

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he remembers the excuse he gave to minoru in that room, and it’s the only excuse he can come up with to cover up the real reasons he never told minoru when they fight in 1999.

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utsugi wishes for reciprocity, that he should be able to offer value to anyone else in the way that he desires love and tenderness from others. it stems from his childhood, children naturally want love and attention from their parents and he was denied all familial love. his family largely regarded him as useless and thus unloveable, and this leads him to believe that if he is 'useful' to someone then they might love him back. 

his grandpa is a key example of this, loving (but abusing) utsugi only because of his birthday, which made him useful to rangiri's delusions. this is the only love he receives as a child, and does much to shape his mindset.

utsugi’s final plea to minoru in the reference room is “if you’re willing to do everything for me-,” which feels reminiscent of what utsugi has already promised hajime (to stay by his side until they both die, it is all of his life, everything.) utsugi could promise everything to a stranger in distress on a whim, and he wishes (impossibly) that minoru could do the same for him.

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in a sense, the sentiment of ‘save me’ in that scene already indicates that utsugi has been previously failed by hajime. the original dialogue he shares with hajime (that he clearly remembers and references even many years later) includes the idea that hajime will save everyone, and utsugi will save hajime. 

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since utsugi still feels he needs saving, it means hajime has not been able to deliver on his promise of saving everyone. the title of the scene being ‘the hand i failed to take’ show minoru as also clearly failing in this respect. in the end, no one can save utsugi. 

dlc screen(?)

and yet, similarly to utsugi, minoru’s cruelty has good intentions. maybe there was no good way out of that situation, it certainly seems both that utsugi was unwilling to accept help and minoru unable to provide it. utsugi knows minoru can't help him, and he makes these grand demands of minoru as a way of self-sabotage: he already knows minoru will never be able to promise everything to him. minoru has a family, and utsugi will never be his first priority.

on another tragic note, utsugi directly pleads to minoru for a way out of his misery, but hasn’t minoru already been showing him the way out? if hajime accepted being human and wanted to live simply, there would be no need to continue the crimes and experiments. minoru pushes hajime towards humanity but utsugi directly opposes it, showing how unamenable utsugi is to minoru’s idea of helping. 

both of them are people who could've helped each other, but didn't have the proper communication skills or ability at the time they crossed paths. in their struggle to save each other, they only hurt one another more, intentionally or unintentionally.

the base game hides almost all of the kind sides to their cruelty, they're barely even shown as friends. minoru's friendship innately humanizes utsugi, he's the only utsugi confesses his pain to, fights with, and takes out his stress and fears on. minoru witnesses all these emotions he buries with anyone else. they're emotions that make him sympathetic and wholly human, and thus something that cannot be learned about utsugi until dlc.

minoru also repeatedly (undeservedly) forgives utsugi for his unkindness. utsugi is responsible for a lot of pain in minoru's life: surrendering haruki to experiments, leading path to empireo down a dark path, violently pushing him out of both path to empireo and their own friendship, the list continues on for a long while. and while minoru does resent him at points for how much he's suffered at utsugi's hand, he never stops caring for utsugi.

he says things like he shouldn't have ever considered utsugi a friend, utsugi has gone mad, and they come to blows multiple times. but minoru always caves later, still showing concern for utsugi. after their big fight where minoru leaves path to empireo, he asks hajime about utsugi's condition on a visit back. in 1999, after they'd just grievously injured one another, he still laments that utsugi never depended on him.

ch 7

mnr dlc

the way sanemitsu talks about utsugi after they part is not described as happily, sanemitsu insults him to reiji and reiji is certain sanemitsu believed utsugi hated him. but he doesn't allow roses in his house, and reiji says that sanemitsu seems lonely when discussing utsugi. 

ch 8

???dlc beginning

by all rights, sanemitsu should have no warm feelings left for utsugi. the way the narrative repeatedly highlights their pain underscores that, but neither of them can truly let the other go. sanemitsu holds onto the scars utsugi gave him, and utsugi holds onto sanemitsu’s books. even in their physical absence from one another, the memories persist. 

3b. back to the beginning

with how much establishing i’ve done of only harsh things like cruelty, failures, jealousy, disappointment, it’s easy to think utsugi and minoru had a relationship that was only negative. but, the narrative guides us through their relationship in a rather complex timeline: we start with the middle and the consequences before we see the beginning and ending. 

base game shows their relationship as something fraught with arguments, leading up to their first major falling out where minoru leaves path to empireo for the first time and begins to avoid utsugi. there is little shown here that indicates that they had a complicated relationship, it feels like they were simply two people who didn’t get along. the tidbits indicating more depth are generally missable dialogue and details. 

this is somewhat due to all the flashbacks being shown through hajime’s perspective, so that we only see these two as they are around hajime and only while having conversations that concern hajime. 

throughout dlc, this pattern repeats, and there is no great upheaval in the viewer’s understanding until minoru’s dlc episode. the episodes leading up continue to breadcrumb their true nature, with hints like sanemitsu disliking roses in his house, sanemitsu expressing that utsugi took responsibility for everything while drunk in reiji’s episode, utsugi compliments minoru in rai’s dlc, and they have a few exchanges that are more lighthearted in tone than the constant fighting in base game.

minoru’s dlc finally throws the curtain back entirely, where it is fully revealed that, once upon a time, they were true and proper friends. their first meeting is amicable and remarkably normal, utsugi talking to minoru about his reporting and behaving awkwardly about a compliment paid to him. 

mnr dlc

we know utsugi values compliments highly, since he vows his life to hajime after hajime calls him kind and gentle (among other reasons.) so that minoru compliments utsugi on his sermon and speaking ability, something that truly belongs to him (in comparison to something like a birthday, which is random), is especially meaningful to utsugi.

mnr dlc

in the following scenes, we see them teasing each other and talking frankly about developments in their lives. utsugi sets up several arrangements for the isoi’s marriage and seems to seriously wish them well.

mnr dlc

their friendship couldn’t be more normal, save for utsugi carefully keeping his distance and drawing a line between them due to his obligation to hajime. he seems to like being around minoru, but deflects admitting any personal attachment when questioned, using hajime’s like of minoru instead. this foreshadows just how much he will put hajime above anyone else, even those he also likes, and how he has carefully sculpted his other relationships to fit within that hierarchy in advance. 

of course, he ultimately fails in sectioning minoru out. there are a number of other characters (haruki, noa, etc.) that utsugi is kind to, but he doesn't form the same attachment to them that he does to minoru. in the end, when he's saying his goodbyes, the only people he mentions are minoru and hajime. hajime, as the person he loved; the world, as something he hated; and minoru as something between the two. 

part five: generational yaoi

one of the most impactful things revealed about the relation between minoru and utsugi in dlc is that it spanned multiple generations. the actions of their grandparents caused so many shock waves that there is a belief (whether true or not) that the story now actively resists the interaction of the two families. i’ve already touched heavily on the idea of the factors of their families: they are certainly the largest reason utsugi abruptly changes, dooming the friendship between him and minoru. the series has lots of commentary on the hereditary way our family shapes us and cycles of behavior, and minoru and utsugi are no exception. 

part 5a. carrying on the family legacy 

both utsugi and minoru have intense family issues, coming to shun their family name and legacy in time. but they both inevitably carry it forward, regardless.

utsugi leaves his family’s company and doesn’t pursue pharmacy or business leadership in a strict sense, instead, he becomes a medical researcher and executive in path to empireo. ironically, while he could not come into his own as a confident leader under the guidance of his family, he naturally grows into that confidence after he leaves. he needed purpose and passion to grow into his full potential as a scientist and leader, something he lacked when his family neglected him.

similarly, minoru breaks from the family tradition of fiction writers to become a reporter. but even then, he shows in DLC that he is preparing to write novels. it fits with his character arc: reporters passively observe reality but writers actively create it, and he himself is starting to reclaim control and power in his own life. but still, it places him among the company of the many fiction writers of the harada line. sanemitsu certainly has some measure of control over the narrative and way it is told, shown by his position in system n.h., the group credited with the creation of this series of games. this places his actions as remarkably similar to mutei harada’s designs on manipulating characters and creating stages. 

part 5b. the cycle 

both minoru and utsugi are haunted by their childhoods, which build up to their issues that cause ruin in their interpersonal relationships. these are issues that are inflicted on them by their parents: utsugi’s parents reinforcing utsugi’s ideal of isolation and self-dependency, and minoru’s parents showing him how to run away from love and regret being born. and naturally, these beliefs were likely initially formed in turn by how mutei and rangiri treated the next generation. 

they cannot escape the influence of their respective families in this fashion, and also in how they explicitly won’t let the other forget their lineage. minoru is not actually ‘minoru harada’ in the series for very long, he marries rai isoi early on to become ‘minoru isoi.’ but names are a social thing, and neither hajime nor utsugi let go of the harada surname. that both utsugi and minoru address each other by their family names instead of given names is important, they both stand as friends who could use more familiar terms of address and choose not to. their relationship is undeniably shaped by their family history though, and so these family names are inescapable. 

their relationship is similarly cyclical, where they attempt to break out of their patterns and yet return to them in the end. minoru’s relationships are best shaped by his fear of gaining love and then losing it, thinking it better to not have loved in the first place. utsugi’s relationships are best shaped by inequality, where he is accustomed to loving someone more than he receives in turn. 

their relationship starts out subverting these concepts, beginning with how utsugi is hesitant in closing the distance with minoru. minoru then quickly pushes to be closer, upsetting utsugi’s status quo and newly putting him in the position of not being the one who loves more. and the lack of a deep relationship to lose gives minoru confidence to keep arguing with and pursuing utsugi, even as their mundane friendship melts into animosity, something that should usually scare minoru off. utsugi was always a bit cold to minoru, so what warmth and kindness would minoru stand to lose by upsetting him?

but, in the end we see the relationship ultimately return to the forms they are most familiar with. minoru runs away in 1999, abandoning utsugi and certainly being saddled with the painful regret of lost love. utsugi remains behind, having settled back into his typical unequal relationships. he remembers and thinks of minoru even sixteen years later, while minoru has moved on and found a new family. 

part six: other allusions

aside from the clear line to how they both represent their families, there's several other allusions baked into their relationship. one of the most significant being how they tie into the divine comedy.

minoru is born on the day of dante's death, and utsugi shares a birthday with the poet virgil. minoru both is and isn't dante, he fails earlier in life to fulfil to reach any kind of enlightenment (thus the death day being his birthday) but later on he becomes "code:dante." haruki is notably also representative of dante, the whole harada line having a close tie to the author.

utsugi is tied to virgil by his birth and also by his relation to both minoru and haruki. virgil is a mentor, a guide, and a friend. he is close and intimate with dante, assisting him on his journey through hell but unable to accompany him in heaven. utsugi similarly is a figment of sanemitsu's difficult past, a valued friend who cannot accompany him in the lighter, easier parts of his life.

the utsugi line isn't all associated with virgil in the same way the harada line ties to dante, noriyuki utsugi alone is the 'guide.'

their relationship is similarly foreshadowed in the similarities it holds to nina and jabuchi's relationship. there's much to say here, but to keep it basic: jabuchi and nina start out happy, jabuchi goes down a difficult path without telling nina, nina finds out the truth too late and cannot save jabuchi, but she decides to honors his memory by witnessing and remembering his death. it's a clear parallel to the way sanemitsu and utsugi's relationship develops, where similarly utsugi suffers silently and pushes minoru away, and the only thing minoru can do is honor his death. read more here: TODO

part seven: conclusion

overall, i think i touched on many things i wanted to say about these two, and i still have many more words… but this was already very long, i imagine. i hope you got something out of it. this is solely my interpretation, and i think there are room for many more. 

one of the best things about the relationship between utsugi and minoru to me is that it is so ambiguous. love existed but it was not merely love, and hate existed but there was not merely hate. anything in-between those black and white values can be argued. minoru has the more clear-cut regret and affection, but still mocks and curses utsugi at times, showing the depth to which they hurt each other. 

and still, they clearly love each other. they sacrifice, remember, and pray for one another. they were friends in the very beginning, and sanemitsu is the last person utsugi ever addresses, entrusting him with his final wish. in turn, sanemitsu never lets the wounds utsugi gave him heal. 

[tarisilmarwen]

Rebels Rewatch: "Twin Suns"

In which the end of the Malachor arc is profoundly beautiful.

First off, obligatory live reaction version from 2017.

Second, I would be remiss if I did not link back to this close read of "Twin Suns" (by greenreticule here on Tumblr), from which I draw quite a bit of my own analysis and opinions about the themes and messages of the episode. Check it out sometime, there's ten parts (technically eleven but the last post in the series is more of a memoir/personal reflection by the author and therefore not as relevant to our meta purposes) and it is a loooooong read but worth it, in my opinion. I don't always agree with every single point of the analysis (the stuff about the Sequel Trilogy, for example) but there's a lot of things that resonate and that I incorporate into my own interpretation of the episode so I figured I'd mention the source.

Onwards!

Rather appropriately we open on a shot of the titular twin suns themselves.

The next series of shots are stark and empty, nothing but the vast white desert, emphasizing the loneliness and isolation of both Tatooine itself, and Maul in particular.

And he is not, ah... taking Ezra's rejection or the long wanderings out in the desert well. To say the least.

From this first opening monologue we can already tell that Maul is fraying. He spent ten years in the depths of madness and it seems like he's descending into madness once again. Even his clothing reflects this, sandblasted and torn, a ragged hood recalling the one he wore at the beginning of Malachor as he feigned being weak and decrepit, and uneven wrappings circling his arms, asymmetrically.

His mood swings from "Visions and Voices" are more pronounced, one moment warbling pitifully about being lost, about being so close to his target, the next shrieking Obi-Wan's name skyward like an obscenity.

Obi-Wan has managed to elude him all this time since Dathomir, and Maul is beginning to get desperate.

RIGHT, SO THIS IS THE PART WHERE I GET BACK INTO MY BLUBBERING KENOBI SHOW FEELINGS BECAUSE "JEDI CANNOT HELP WHAT THEY ARE. THEIR COMPASSION LEAVES A TRAIL. THE JEDI CODE IS LIKE AN ITCH. [THEY] CANNOT HELP IT." AND SOB FOREVER ABOUT HOW WHOEVER IT WAS ON THE WRITING TEAM THAT CAME UP WITH THAT RAW-ASS LINE, THEY UNDERSTOOD THE ASSIGNMENT.

So not only is this a callback to the previous times Maul lured Obi-Wan out to him in TCW, this now also a call-forward to Kenobi and I just want y'all to appreciate for a moment that Maul is using the exact same tactic on two different Jedi, simultaneously.

Maul is luring Ezra and taking advantage of Ezra's compassion, hero complex, guilt complex, and sense of hyper-responsibility, in order to then exploit Obi-Wan's compassion and protector-guardian streak, so that he can kill Obi-Wan when Obi-Wan comes to Ezra's rescue.

Because that's what Jedi do, that's what Jedi are, the Jedi Code is like an itch they cannot help it--frick man, I'm already emotional and we're not even two minutes in.

A general overview of the music this episode, and I'll comment on specific cues as they happen, but I mostly want to point out the frequent lack of music, actually. This episode is very stripped down in terms of theme and instrumentation and there are long stretches of utter silence, to help us absorb the atmosphere. It's very effective in making Tatooine feel utterly desolate, like we're alone on this journey with the characters.

This episode had originally been very ambitious, we've been told from behind-the-scenes commentary, longer, more complex, a lot more plot points, but as it was coming together they very wisely pared it way down to the barebone tacks, cutting out all the excesses and stripping things down to a simple character journey narrative, making the resulting story that much more profound and intimate.

(Plus the saved budget allowed us to get some absolutely gorgeous animation and new pajamas for Ezra. XD)

He looks so comfy in them.

This sequence is heavily styled after the cold open in "Legacy", camera movement and shot choice almost exactly matching. This is not a coincidence, as the basic premise of both episodes is the same: Ezra receives a vision through the Force, and it moves him to action.

Unlike in "Legacy", however, when the Force itself was moving to comfort Ezra and connect him to the voices and images of his parents one last time before their death, this vision is artificially constructed, sent to him by Maul--like the ones in "Visions and Voices"--to deliberately manipulate him, pull him away from his support network, make him act out of fear.

A false Call To Action, in an artificial Hero's Journey narrative that Maul has constructed for Ezra to follow. (More on that later.)

Side note, completely unrelated to all this meta, but an observation I just want to point out: It's the middle of the night and Kanan is not in his room on the Ghost. Where exactly was he eh? Perhaps a certain Twi'lek pilot's room? *eyebrow waggle*

Anyway, after Ezra's Weird Force Tele-Distance Holocron Call we move to a scene that is a bit heavy in the exposition department, by virtue of it having to hold the burden of the extra plotlines they pared down. It's maybe not quite as effective as it could have been but it serves its purpose: It establishes that they identified the "desert planet with two suns" as Tatooine sometime offscreen, and that they asked about Obi-Wan and Bail Organa lied through his teeth about the man being dead. So therefore they must have decided to give the matter up, and let Maul chase ghosts in the Tatooine sands.

Rex being clearly distraught at Obi-Wan's assumed death. :(

Kanan also reminds Ezra that the last visions he got from and about Maul were a trick designed to manipulate him.

Ezra's insistent though, as he always tends to be whenever the notion of being able to obtain "the key to destroying the Sith" pops up. So Hera takes him aside for a moment.

Her face and how often she touches Ezra's arms and shoulders in this scene hurts. :( And the strain in her voice when she asserts that if Obi-Wan were alive he wouldn't be hiding in the desert, he'd be helping them, Hera understands Jedi nature too, she just hasn't gotten the full picture, doesn't know the reason why Obi-Wan is doing... well... exactly that.

This is where the story beat parallels to "Legacy" end, because this time, Ezra does not receive Hera's blessing to go. Instead she reminds him, rather sternly, that he is supposed to be there with them, planning the attack on Lothal, she needs him and his focus here.

Recall Yoda's line about Luke: "Never his mind on where he was. What he was doing." Since all the way back in Season Two, when his mere presence started to become a danger to the safety of his friends, Ezra has been growing more and more obsessed with finding a way to kill the Sith, whenever Maul turns up more distracted. It ties straight back into his motivation for becoming a Jedi in the first place that he told Yoda in "Path of the Jedi".

"I just want to protect myself and my friends. And not just them, everyone. I'll protect everyone."

Ezra has an abundance of that natural Jedi urge to protect (planted by his parents, nurtured by Hera), the itch inside him intermingles with his clingyness and attachment to his Ghost family in particular. When everything went wrong on Malachor he internalized that failure severely, and his natural Jedi compulsions went overdrive into a crippling sense of hyper-responsibility, magnified by his guilt and leading him down the same path Anakin walked--seeking more power, from dubious and deceitful sources, in order to prevent another personal tragedy from happening to him again.

His desire to protect got twisted into attachment, into a clingy possessiveness, into a fear of more potential loss. In this way his flirtations with the Dark Side mirrored Anakin's, though ultimately Ezra never went far enough that he wasn't able to come back, the disaster at Reklam and his reconciliation with Kanan enough of a kick in the head from the Force for him to be all, "NOPE, I REGRET EVERYTHING, I'M NOT DOING THAT AGAIN."

But even though Ezra came to his senses and rejected the Dark Side, he was still not on the right path. The aftereffects of Malachor remained and he kept letting that Sisyphean unattainable goal of defeating the Sith--himself, personally, or else personally enabling it to happen--pull him away. Kept letting it move him out of place in the narrative.

He was supposed to be here, Hera needed him here. "You're in the wrong place, Ezra Bridger," Obi-Wan tells him gently, later. Ezra lets Maul, lets his obsession with destroying the Sith, yank him out of order in the cosmic destiny of things.

The Force has a place for him. But it is here and not there.

But he kind of has to go on this perilous journey for it to finally kick in.

(One of the scenes I do kind of wish they had kept from the original extended plot is the one where Hera and Kanan and Zeb all kind of commiserate about how "the kids", meaning Ezra and Sabine, are growing up and leaving home, and how they have to let them go, even if they might make bad choices, really playing into that whole parental angle and explaining why they didn't immediately rush off after Ezra.)

Despite Ezra's half-hearted assurance to Hera, it's clear he has no intention of obeying her order to stay put. His sense of impulsive hyper-responsibility is too strong, he's following the same instincts that led him to obsess over and misinterpret his other two major Force visions.

So he swipes a training A-wing.

He's such a little shit I love him. <3

This is the point of no return and Ezra is unwittingly drawn into Maul's trap, which mimics the beats of a classic Campbell Hero's Journey.

Joseph Campbell, for reference, is a writer and philosopher who purported the idea of the monomyth, that in all stories and all mythologies across cultures there are similar patterns and cycles. His Hero's Journey is often styled as a closed circle ("It ends where it began."), with a dividing line between the Known and Unknown worlds and various stops and characters and plot elements mentioned along the sides. The Hero's Journey monomyth, incidentally, was one of George Lucas's major inspirations for writing Star Wars, wanting to create one such classic mythological narrative.

So we have all the elements in place here. We have the Call To Adventure (the distorted holocron message). We have the Refusal Of The Call (Hera ordering Ezra to stay and him initially not fighting her). We have the Supernatural Aid (the pieces of the holocron that function as some kind of magic compass). We've outmaneuvered the Threshold Guardian and crossed over into the Unknown (Ezra swiping the A-wing from under the technician's nose). Along the way we'll pick up the Ally or Helper (it's revealed Chopper snuck along and went with him). And we will be facing Trials, Tests, and Tribulations (everything from the initial Tusken attack to braving the harsh elements of Tatooine's unforgiving sand and heat).

...But it's all wrong.

See, Ezra has already answered the Call to his own Hero's Journey, the one that started for him all the way back in the pilot, when he returned Kanan's lightsaber and crossed the Threshold into the Unknown world of being a Rebel and a Jedi Padawan. This falsely constructed cycle Maul has drawn him into is not his narrative. It was never intended to bring him enlightenment, never intended to complete, only to be used to further Maul's selfish ends.

That Ezra manages to find enlightenment and complete the cycle anyway is something that happens in spite of Maul, and not because of him, and takes some severe course-correcting from Obi-Wan. Over and over this episode we'll hear this idea repeated, that this was not where Ezra was supposed to be in the story, it's not his job or responsibility to deal with Maul, he is where "[he] should never have been".

We'll table that for now and come back to it, have a moment to enjoy some pretty caps.

Thus far, music-wise, we've had a couple ominous cues, and a bouncy jaunt full of Rebellion flutes and brass as Ezra made his escape, in between a couple of the aforementioned long bouts of silence. There's a bubbly little bit when Chopper is discovered. (And I can't even tell you how much I love the touch with Ezra startling so bad he smacks the A-wing cockpit window and bumps the steering column so that the ship swerves out of place--PART OF THE METAPHOR MUCH?) Soft vocals filter in as Ezra consults the holocron shards, holding in long, mystical notes. A lone viola sounds, mournfully. Higher strings sound with spiritual reverence as Ezra gets out of the A-wing, as if to suggest his goal, his enlightenment, is just up ahead.

Then, darker notes like a pulsing heartbeat. The voices go discordant.

Then the Tuskens attack and hell breaks loose.

One of the underlying threads this episode is Ezra and Chopper's devotion and loyalty to each other so I really like how, even though Ezra told him to find cover, Chopper doesn't and charges in to get a Tusken off Ezra instead. Ezra in turn shields him with his own body when the Tuskens score hits that make the A-wing explode.

And that's Ezra's, "I'm in so much trouble." look lol.

Maul, meanwhile, decides to go ahead and murder all the Tuskens and I would not fault you for thinking back to another lightsaber-fueled Tusken massacre.

In fact, probably any parallel or allusion you think of during this episode is in all likelihood deliberate. Frankly I'd argue that this is one of the most important episodes of the show, with how integral it is to Ezra's character arc.

Which is why it was so annoying and asinine that people complained that Ezra took up most of the episode's focus and whined that it should have been only about Maul. Hello, do you understand the concept of a protagonist?!

Speaking of allusions though, we get some lovely call backs to "Visions And Voices" with Maul once again letting Ezra hear him inside his head and catch fleeting glimpses of him, this time in order to lure him further out into the desert. Maul is still trying to keep him in the false cycle, tempting him away from escape.

And Ezra's sense of hyper-responsibility, of This is all my fault and I have to fix it, leads him right down Maul's preordained path.

"I have to help Master Kenobi, if I can." As if Obi-Wan needs any help dealing with Maul, ha ha.

Another moment of pure heartwarming loyalty from Chopper here, he has the opportunity to keep going along the path to safety, but begrudgingly chooses instead to stay with Ezra, through thick and thin.

Ezra once again returns the favor by refusing to leave his side when he runs out of power.

Subtle animation appreciation moment: The way Ezra staggers, looking completely exhausted. Also the sandblasting in his hair and clothes kjhfkasjfha.

Taylor's acting here is heartbreaking, he makes Ezra sound SO lost and scared. :(((((((

Maul decides to rub things in a bit and oh hey some mirror dialogue here, eerily similar to a certain exchange in "Gathering Forces". :D

Grand Inquisitor: The Darkness is too strong for you, orphan. It'll swallow you up even now. Ezra: No. Grand Inquisitor: Your master will die. Ezra: No! Grand Inquisitor: Your friends will die, and everything you've hoped for will be lost. This is the way the story ends. Ezra: NO!

And in comparison:

Maul: He is dead... He is dead. Ezra: No... Maul: You led me to him. Ezra: No. Maul: You failed your friends. Ezra: No! Maul: You will DIE!" Ezra: NOOOO!

~It's like poetry, it rhymes.~

Also this is terrifying.

So I've legitimately teared up like... twice watching this show. This was one of the times. This moment right here where Obi-Wan's feet step softly into frame.

Yeah it got me.

Cut to... Night. A quiet campfire. Ezra comes to and things are suddenly put into perspective.

"You're in the wrong place, Ezra Bridger."

(The voice they got for Obi-Wan is perfect btw, sounds just like Alec Guinness.)

Obi-Wan explains gently that he is not "the key to defeating the Sith". He never was. Maul's desires muddied the holocron vision, he used Ezra to get his own answers and left Ezra with only partial answers. Because Obi-Wan is associated with the key to defeating the Sith but he's not the Chosen One.

And neither is Ezra.

He is a narrative "chosen one", a key player picked by the Force, imbued with purpose, but defeating Vader, killing the Emperor... that was never his task to take. After the loss he suffered in "Legacy" Ezra had been letting himself get obsessed with the idea that he could fix that problem--the problem of the Sith--himself.

But that is not his role in the story.

It is not yet sunrise (Luke and Leia). So the moon (Ezra) must endure.

"You win by killing an Inquisitor." "No, you win by surviving."

Ever since before Malachor, Ezra has been stepping outside his station, trying to do things he was never meant to do, instead of what he was supposed to do, which was to help the people in front of him, right now, do what good he can in the moment. (Something that he'd gain clarity on via a falling out with Saw in Season Four.)

"What you need, you already have."

Ezra lost sight of that in the grief over his parents, in his guilt over Malachor. He was never going to be the one to defeat the Sith. Yoda and Obi-Wan both knew the only ones who even stood a chance... would be Vader's children. Maybe Ahsoka. Perhaps that was even why Yoda advised going to Malachor, to test and see if Vader could be saved, or killed, by his former padawan. Someone who he might have had a strong enough attachment to that it would cloud his judgement. (Just as Obi-Wan's mere presence would drive Vader mad with irrational murderous rage and yet, paradoxically, a cloying need to have him back.)

"We asked for a chance to destroy the Sith... and we failed."

Vader has no connection to Ezra, therefore Ezra will not be the one to end him.

His task is to endure, keep the darkness back, and hold the line until the narrative chosen one who will do that task (Luke) is ready to take up the sword. This is not Ezra's role in the story. He has his own destiny, his own part to play in the Rebellion.

And he needs to return to it.

Obi-Wan closes the broken cycle for Ezra, rescuing him from The Ordeal or Abyss, and sending him back to the Known world with the Boon (his sage wisdom) irregardless of how false the path there to him was. Ezra is freed from the obligations, responsibilities, and burdens he wrongly took on himself... to return home, and rejoin his own Hero Cycle.

And then all that's left is to "mend this old wound". (Maul)

Maul has what he wanted, or so he thinks. His old enemy, his past, ready for the killing. His future and legacy, his apprentice, within reach for taking.

But things have changed. Obi-Wan is older, wiser, more serene and at peace with himself and with the Force, in spite of all he's suffered. He has grown from his failures, let go of the past, and found balance, while Maul has regressed, repeated the same mistakes, clung to the hurt and pain in his past and deteriorated, been sucked almost dry by the Dark Side.

And Obi-Wan pities him.

Maul is scalded by this, upset that after everything he's endured, Obi-Wan seems to have taken no ill effect. And it's not like Order 66 and Anakin's betrayal didn't hurt him (hell we have all of the Kenobi show to demonstrate otherwise) but that he's processed those emotions and feelings and traumas, and returned to a settled baseline. He is more a Jedi now than ever, and revenge is not the Jedi way.

And can I flail a little bit inarticulately for a moment about the dichotomy between Obi-Wan's "I had no intention of fighting him, though that seems inevitable now." and Thrawn's "It was not my intention to utterly destroy Lothal but that is inevitable now."?

So Maul digs for something to bait Obi-Wan with, touching about the reason he's there on Tatooine to begin with, discerning that there is someone that Obi-Wan is protecting. Notes of Sith vocals creep into the music here, a sequence that sounds like Maul's arrival on Tatooine from Phantom Menace ("It ends where it began.").

And with this implicit threat towards Luke, Obi-Wan ignites his saber.

SO much ink has been spilled about this duel. I was surprised at how short it was at first too, but it makes perfect thematic sense in hindsight. The way Obi-Wan slowly baits Maul, drawing Maul's mental frame of mind back to Naboo, because he knows that Maul is stuck in the past, constantly reliving that moment of triumph and defeat over and over again, fixated on it as the shatterpoint where things in his life first went wrong. He can't let it go. He can't move on. He has to keep going back to that moment over and over to make things "correct" and kill the one he pins the blame on for his pain. (But this will not fix him, even if he accomplishes it.)

An entire story is told solely through foot placement and stances. Maul moves through the stances he's used in duels with Obi-Wan before. Obi-Wan shifts through his classic New Hope lightsaber grip, to his iconic Soresu.

And then he switches to Ataru, to the same stance Qui-Gon used.

The music has been tense throughout, but now the Force Theme creeps in. There's a flare of recognition in Maul's eyes; He knows this, this is familiar.

So he lunges, using the same lightsaber trick that he used to kill Qui-Gon...

...except it doesn't work.

I love the look of quiet realization and acceptance in Maul's expression. It's just like, "......Oh."

Maul submits and falls in defeat, into his enemy's arms, yet another parallel to Phantom Menace, to the start of everything between these two men. And then he asks something heartbreaking: Is Obi-Wan protecting the Chosen One? The one who would defeat the Sith?

And because Obi-Wan no longer believes that Vader can be saved, he answers yes. (Amazing how well this scene fits with the later Kenobi show.)

With his dying breath, Maul finally recognizes his true enemy, accepts and forgives Obi-Wan as his brother, as a fellow victim of Palpatine, and declares with almost prophetic insight, "He... will avenge us."

Not take revenge, avenge. As Trilla Sundari would admonish Cal Kestis in the Jedi Fallen Order video game, Maul also asks for restitution and justice with his last words.

(I do kind of wish we got one brief reaction shot from Ezra as he sensed Maul passing, just for confirmation that he knows. It's inferred but still.)

Back with Ezra as he returns home with the Boon, and he's also claimed the prize of Maul's ship, the Mandalorian gauntlet. (Again, just the briefest scene of him finding it, that would have been nice.)

"I was wrong. This is where I'm supposed to be. You're my family. And we should go home."

Ezra has finally forgiven himself for Malachor, completed the arc he started in "Legacy" (or maybe even earlier), and returned to his proper place. His family accepts him back with the laying of hands like a benediction.

And meanwhile, just to wring your heart one last time, we return to Tatooine, to watch Obi-Wan watch over Luke from a distance, a scene drenched in OT nostalgia, from using the exact audio of Aunt Beru calling Luke to closing us out with Luke's Theme and Binary Sunset for the credits, reminding us that the shadow will not hold sway forever.

Eventually, the sun will rise. And a new hope will emerge.

Trust in the Force.

Man, there aren't enough words to tell you how much I love this episode. It's so beautiful and poetic and thematic. It's the lynchpin of Ezra's character development, he needed to be in this episode, to go on this journey. It's gorgeously animated and there are so many many layers of parallels and themes, motifs and archetypes, that tie into the monomyth in general and Star Wars in particular. I'm astonished how well it melds with later canon material (JFO and Kenobi), but I guess that just speaks to how true to the spirit and essence of Star Wars it is.

It's just beautiful.

[brickleandfickle]

Billy Bat: Thoughts & Analysis

I finished Billy Bat recently so I thought to throw my hat into the ring and try dissecting it. All my thoughts are under the cut since I don't want to clog up anyone's dash. Much love <3

Note: I am in no way saying that my analysis is correct. It is simply my interpretation. Thank you if you choose to read this all the way through haha. Also I wrote all this at 1 AM so there may be some points that I ungracefully explain but hey, that's how we roll.

I finished reading Billy Bat within the span of the week. Overall it was an 8/10. I think I got the message but it felt bogged down by certain sections of the story. To me, the central intention is directed towards artists. Artists take what is going on around them and reflect it through their art. Essentially, genuine artists are the greatest historians since they cover everything as they see it, not biased through any political affiliations. Biased artists are not applicable to be carriers of Billy Bat. There is also a theme about legacy, not that artists necessarily steal from one another, but how artists build upon other’s work. All artists are self-conscious and worried that their work will never come out correctly or that their work can’t compete with others. However, through solidarity and legacy, one can persevere to continue drawing what they imagine in their head, following through on their visions (either of their independent work or trying to create a statement about the world). After all, most art is realism with a dash of fantasy.

At the start of the manga, Kevin Yamagata said that artists have a responsibility towards their work and their audience, stating that art has the power to instill hope. This same value is reiterated with Chuck since he wanted to use the Toon version to shift the world into darkness. Artwork itself is powerful for both uniting and separating people since at the core, art itself is born from the act of creation spawned from reactions to real life.

I don’t have the patience to leave specific sources but Billy’s attitude is cheekily remarking that he can’t do anything since it was the artist who created the art, not Billy. My interpretation is that Billy can deliver predictions/inspiration, but the artist is the carrier. Although one can argue (as both Kevins do) that they are not the source of the prophecies, the fact that the images themselves were transcribed incites responsibility for the artist. After all, the pride of creation deems that one embraces their work above all else, even if no one else does. Also, as previously stated, artists chosen by Billy are supposed to be the most unbiased historians. The act of creating the Billy Bat stories with accurate predictions, anyone can do it. Timmy did it. My point is that the chosen carriers only get a nudge from Billy to follow through and create, as if giving them a gentle nod that Kevin is following the right path. This is all proven when Billy’s last decree is to “Draw”, not noting what to draw, just trusting Kevin to keep drawing no matter what. 

The political intrigue and conspiracy were also top-notch. My man Urasawa clearly did his homework as usual :^D Let’s goooo. I think the general commentary is that there is an innate human desire for mankind to both preserve and destroy itself simultaneously. It is sad yet fascinating. My interpretation of artists ‘making predictions based upon reflecting the world to the reader’ comes full circle when Timmy goes on his monologue about democratic backsliding, America playing cop, the EU crumbling, water becoming a scarce resource, etc. These are all things that could happen in real life, making Urasawa’s manga itself a prediction of the future.

All right, let me end this with a tangent about what I didn’t like about this series. I love Urasawa’s work and admit that he is great at slow burns, but Christ almighty, some sections were weighted down with bricks. There was never anything unnecessary nor anything to slow down the pace to a halt, but some sections felt meandering. The ‘Kevin Goodman vs. Walt Disney’ arc was the worst offender and felt as slow as paint drying. I love Kevin Goodman. It was this arc though that I kept thinking “Where are we going with this?” and not in a good way. To me, suspense can not be properly built unless I know the stakes. After the scroll was taken, I felt like the stakes became more ambiguous. Still palatable, but foggy nonetheless. I remember so clearly when I was reading Chapter 150 and thinking, “Dude, this manga is ending in 15 chapters and it doesn’t even feel like the finale. Where is the payoff?”

I can report though that the last 5 chapters rescued this manga from the jaws of defeat. It left me feeling pensive, as if I'd gone on a satisfying journey. All I could do is take my dog out for a walk ... all the while staring up at that fuckass moon.

TLDR: Damn Urasawa, I didn’t know you were chill like that.

[ihavevisions]

Listen I just went through your 7k posts and you GET IT?? You get the craze, the hype, the force. You get how criminally underrated Yong and Nuru are!! You also seem to get how strong Varian is (and not the blameless weepy cinnamon roll that the fandom portrays him as)! You get Varigo!! This is a huge discovery. Good vat7k analysis in 2025…

Spent a good amount of time thinking about this message specifically and ahgsjshs thank you?? Means a lot, really, especially since most of my “analysis” as you put it are born out of spontaneous bursts of inspiration and half-asleep thinking, it’s always nice to know it makes sense to other people.

Long ass fucking rant below what

Nuru and Yong are literally my most beloved little darlings and I treat them as such. Rarely ever drawn them because I’m so so scared of not doing justice to them, they’re in my brain 24/7 though, primarily Yong. I love my Firecracker <33 I usually don’t talk a lot about their characteristics and arcs since they’d be kind of?? Spoilers?? For my iteration?? Since the outline we got for the story doesn’t really care about them ngl (which, fair, they were never the point + Hugo was already wayyy more fleshed out, having been with Anna for as long as he had). It think I’m committing the art sin of Greed with that but oh well.

I like trying to make both of them fit their age, Nuru has the single most positive character arc of them all but I feel like that’s due to the fact that she’s already so tragic I don’t want to give her anymore weight over her shoulders (opposite treatment to what I give to Hugo but that’s just because you need to break a repressed character down and force them to deal with what their soul has been screaming at them to deal with and acknowledge). Nuru is more of a symbol in her country, kind of. I wanted to give a reason for her to not have ever appeared on any international events and then I looked at her golden eyes and magic dress and went “oooooh, she’s like the avatar” but not really and not at all. She’s symbolic of a star come down to Earth but not literal like Rapunzel or Varian (tbh even Varian is not that impressive, he’s just like a creature to me, failed experiment and whatnot). She was also in control of the mass funerals in her kingdom since very little, so that’s something. Her arc is primarily focused on letting herself get to know the girl beyond the princess and embrace her as the girl becomes a woman; for that it’s mostly positive with the occasional obligatory down. She’s like that one girl raised in a highly restrictive household that becomes the single wildest person you’ve ever met as soon as she leaves her parent’s house.

Yong has arguably the worst arc but it’s because his situation is terrible. My guy just wanted a mentorship and now he’s in the middle of all this, also he’s supposed to be a parallel to Varian. That’s such a terrible narrative existence. My Yong is heavily based on (say it with me) the Prodigal Son’s Someone Saw Me Monologue because ever since I read that he’s had many mentors before I went “ooooh, he’s messed up in the head”. He really wants to not be such a gigantic failure like he feels he is to his family and ngl the fact that all of his mentors seem to think he Is (and abandon him for it) does not help. At all. I like the idea of him having terrible awful bad luck and high-key that’s what got him here but also not but also. He’s still sweet and well-intentioned and all that jazz but I like delving into his mind a little bit more, he’s a very interesting character and I’m so soft for children it’s insane. Also he’s!! An animal whisperer!!! Because he spends so much time of his life not being heard at all he kind of relates to them for that, he befriends Prometheus because he feels like the donkey is kind of left aside most of the time and relates to that (haha, do you get the meta commentary), he’s also a big admirer of how calm and unbothered the animal is most of the time and he’s a very, very good listener (which is nice since Yong usually has to be the good listener). He’s highly defensive of him and likes using him as support for mostly everything. I like Yong, he’s nice, I’m patting his head.

Now Varian— TELL ME ABOUT IT, God and this one mutual of mine knows how much I’ve complained about the fandom’s view of Varian. Which! Makes no sense because 1) have you ever seen a teenage boy before 2) have you ever watched a Varian scene on its full context like ever. My country’s dub helps a lot methinks (God bless Thiago Longo) since he already holds himself with that very subtle but very much there air of cockiness. Uhhh, what else, there’s a point I’ve brought up to another person who’s not my mutual but who I kinda am friends with maybe (still getting a hang of this mutual thing!!) which is that Varian is not nearly as insecure of himself as people make him out to be, he Knows he’s hot shit (= a genius), his problem lies on his Usefulness and his morality. After season one or two most of his internal struggle would be regarding his past and his actions (also! if Varian himself admits his faults, who are we to excuse him of any and all judgment? It doesn’t feel fair to his journey to completely discredit the complexity that comes with his villain arc), which is. Obvious. Buuuuut! A less obvious thing that I mentioned before is that Varian is very high on Helping, that’s his nature and that’s precisely why he’s so malleable (at least at first; also his name literally means Variable bffr), and the fact that his main drive canonically are his father and his village. Old Corona’s little deer, love to see it. I feel like he has very strong identity issues, like with connecting whatever the hell he sees when he looks in the mirror with himself before all the shit that went down on his life. He’s also! An accident! (/hc) Which I love to mention and which is very important to his character To Me. Also very important to his relationship with Ulla. Whether he knows it or not is still to be decided

Being told I get Varigo is the single biggest compliment one can get in this fandom so ahsjhjsh thanks again!!! I’ve cried for these two more times than I can count, it’s so fun to me how Hugo starts up as “a little better than Varian” and really super looks down on Varian (literally and figuratively) and THEN as the story progresses the whole thing shifts on it’s head as Hugo sees Varian as so much more than him and Varian fully believes they’re equals. Varian is seeing this relationship through the lens of Heaven while Hugo is full-on Shame. And even before we get to the romanticism of it they’re soooo fun intellectually, like, they’re a feast to each other. Since alchemists (apparently!!! Allegedly!!! I didn’t know the fuckers!!!!) never ever agreed on most things, not even the basics, I like to think that their methods are vastly different but. Like. It’s still the same basis, kinda (artificer Hugo let’s goo 🎉🎉����) and they subconsciously learn from each other, primarily from going “how the fuck did this bitch do that?? Why the fuck is that bitch doing that and not me??” and then they go “oh, this guy’s brain cogs are interesting actually”. Shaking them. And then!!!! They balance each other but it’s not always and not usually (in the beginning) all soft. Because Hugo is awful and thinks he’s much more than he actually is (in terms of intimidation and whatnot) and there’s this guy smashes all of his acts down and stands right up on his level to show he’s not that much shit at all, and Varian’s fire has honest to Goodness started to fade away with all the making his passion his work at the ripe age of sixteen and there’s this guy who’s almost entirely a performer and who doubts his own intellect (like who does he even think he is) which makes him put his head right back into the game, and then y’know what actually the other is pretty fun to talk to and they learn so much from each other (<- crucial aspect) and the fact that they saw each other as the worst at first makes it so that they’re essentially incapable of putting each other up on the pedestal of perfection and they’re both people who run on wonder and love and some part of them can feel that every time they interact even if it’s not clear to their conscious mind and they want to talk to each other forever and they want to learn more about other until there’s nothing left to uncover and even after that and they want to continue being part of each other’s routines and days until the day they become dust and one of them thinks they can and the other knows they can’t.

Sorry for the gigantic text but it’s just that this meant a lot to me and I’m like a broken wind-up doll, the second you turn my key I only shut up if you smash me with a hammer

[misc-obeyme]

CC, I desperately need to know. When commenting on or reblogging your fics, are suoer simple feedback comments still really nice to get? Like "This was beautiful" or something?

I'm struggling with feeling guilty because I am having a hard time getting energy to give longer comments and stuff. I usually write a few things about the story or related to the story but right now even just writing "I really like this!" has been taking a lot of energy.

Also, do you have an Solomon🤍 anon? If not...

~ Solomon🤍

Hey there anon! I don't have a Solomon🤍 anon, so I will be sure to add that to the anon list!

Now, as it happens, I have thoughts about this specific thing. I can't speak for all writers/artists, but I think my sentiments are somewhat universal since we're all creating and sharing on the same platform. I've also been on Tumblr since the very beginning, so that might have an impact on my personal perspective.

To begin, let me give you the short and easy answer: It is always nice to get any kind of feedback, even short and sweet comments like the ones you've given as examples. Please don't feel guilty about not leaving massively long, in depth commentary on things. Most people understand that not everybody has the spoons for that kind of thing all the time. It's honestly just nice to know that someone liked it at all.

That being said, I feel the need to give you a little bit more nuance about this particular issue, as someone who gets a lot of notifs nowadays.

Quite honestly, the fact that you reblogged it at all is really nice, even if all you do is tag it as "obey me" or something along those lines.

I get hundreds of notifications every day. And most of those are likes. I would say perhaps like 90%? It's a lot. And when one post is getting a lot of attention, my notifs just group them together. So it'll be like "username, username, and 12 other people" and then it'll indicate the post and that it was liked by all those people.

That means that if you reblog it, even without tags, it pops up as a separate notification. And to me, that's always nice to see. I'm always like OH! That person liked it enough to reblog! Thank you, friend!

I'm not kidding, that's my internal monologue lol.

I know there's a lot of discourse about reblogging vs liking, but I'm not really talking about any of that (I'm willing to share my thoughts if people ask though). I'm just telling you what it's like from my perspective.

Things that always catch my attention are reblogs with or without tags, a direct comment on a post, and asks.

Specifically about reblogs, there are different things that are more noticeable.

Like, yes, I'm going to notice if someone leaves a lot of tags gushing about how much they liked the story. I have screenshotted tags and comments that have made me happy just so I can go back and read them.

I often reread the reblogged tags on posts. It's writer-fuel.

And when I'm looking at the reblogs of a post all at once, I'm scrolling through and seeing one that's really in depth and one that's just "AAAAHHH" and i love them both equally.

Is it always going to be more meaningful and impactful if someone reblogs with a dissertation in the tags or even a whole analysis added to the post? Of course. But that is a rare occurrence and not something I ever expect to see. Nor would I personally want someone to force themselves to give more feedback than they can manage.

I just like to know that reading it meant something to you. Likes tell me you liked it, tagless reblogs let me know that you liked it enough to share it, but they don't really tell me much beyond that. A reblog that says "I really loved this!" lets me know that this piece of writing touched you enough for you to actually write a little response to me. You might even say something like, "I love *character*" or perhaps "that last line oof" or even just "a;lksdfkljasdfklj" - all of that conveys so much more to me than a like or tagless reblog. It doesn't have to be a lot. And when like five people do this on one post, it really adds up, too, you know? So I'm like Oh, the people like this one!! LOL!

So I guess what I'm trying to say is, the more interaction you can give is always appreciated, but nobody wants you to force yourself to have elaborate comments. Just a reblog is also appreciated.

That being said, if you want to get elaborate in the tags PLEASE DO. You don't need to push yourself, but you don't need to hold back, either!

I appreciate every bit of interaction I receive, of course. And I'm thankful for everyone that has followed me and enjoyed my writing!

I hope that answered the question, I'm sorry for rambling a bit lol. I just figured I could take the opportunity to talk a little bit about what it's like from my side of things! Thank you for asking, honestly, I appreciate that you're worried about making fic writers feel the love on their works! But you don't need to feel guilty, you're already doing more than most by reblogging and leaving any tags at all. 💕💕

[firespirited]

Rewatching DUNC (1-2 together) over the next few days to immerse myself in that universe and get deep into film analysis. get out of my head and deep in the weeds of another universe.

I have a whole new appreciation for Villeneuve translating what is essentially internal monologue into a visual language and just not treating sci-fi/fantasy as a junk genre à la JJ Abrams/B&B.

They're very different universes: one speaks to me with all its religious/patriotic/self-improvement fervour as a dangerous cultural backdrop and the other speaks to me by using space or the future to talk about contemporary issues.

I'm in a very BOTH IS GOOD mood (which will probably wear thin once the IP is stretched to 5 movies, 2 netflix shows and a cheap edgy adult cartoon without the same thoughtfulness) because i've landed on a clear understanding of where DUNC operates:

Basically, in the DUNC version of the Butlerian jihad, the people who refused to commit to the idea that only humans could have souls and that souls are absolutely real were *not* killed off with the machines. It's a universe closer to our own where faith in a higher power or cause is not *the* defining element of its people and cultural ties in general.

In Dune (the books), faith is a law like gravity, a base instinct of human nature that asserts itself almost despite ourselves and is easily stoked. It's also a very philosophical world with the kind of "higher power in all things" aspect to nature and buildings and art; the inanimate being infused with its own soul (think Miyazaki films if you're not familiar with Hinduism).

The sacred, mystical nature is missing in favour of a slight x-men style genetic augmentation... but removing the faith from the masses while leaving just groups of fanatics does allow for more direct commentary on greed, demagoguery, power, vengeance and the real human price of world powering resources. I can only hope the message lands on a subconscious level long before we get DUNC Messiah.