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twobitmulder · 4 years ago

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When did Storm Shadow Become a Villain?

There is a scene in GI Joe Resolute where Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow are having their obligatory Ninja Battle and (Spoilers I Guess) Storm Shadow reveals that he orchestrated his uncle, The Hard Master’s, death and that he fully meant to kill Snake Eyes as well, out of jealousy and because his uncle would not teach him the final secret to killing a man in seven steps, fearing that young Storm Shadow was too volatile and violent. Towards the end of the battle Storm Shadows wrist bands come off, revealing his Arashikage tattoo on one arm and a Cobra Sigil on the other.

This version of Storm Shadow (Voiced by “every Beagle Boy on Ducktales” Eric Bauza) stands out amongst his post-2000 incarnations as an unrepentant psychopath, but still falls in line with the prominent view of Storm Shadow as a villain--one of the main villains with a special hatred for his GI Joe counterpart.

This is the version I grew up with. GI Joe vs Cobra through Sigma 6 were the prominent Joe adaptations when I was the target demographic and all throughout Storm Shadow was a bad guy to varying degrees.

I knew in the classic Hama stuff he eventually defected, but I was not prepared for just how much he’s a heroic character from the start. There’s no big sword dual with Snake Eyes, no Anakin and Obi Wan style “friend turned bitter enemy” dynamic. It’s made clear from jump that Tommy is undercover in Cobra and remains an honorable man in search of justice. He leaves Cobra quickly and is branded as a Joe in all his figures until 2000--when they started packing their characters in two-packs with one Joe and one Cobra. In all appearances, Storm Shadow is more a Joe than a Cobra. So what led to the the modern view of Storm Shadow as a bad guy, who, even when he gets his redemption, still has a mean streak and a cruel manner? How did a character in a toy driven franchise who had more toys as a hero than a villain end up as one of the franchise’s most consistent villains?

*(For simplicity’s sake, this is only going to cover film and television portrayals of the character).

*Spoilers for pretty much every GI Joe adaptation to follow.

The first portrayal of Storm Shadow as Cobra Commander’s loyal and competent hatchet man (one of the few) is not too much older than Hama’s original Marvel version. The Sunbow version of Storm Shadow (voiced by “guy you’ve heard in everything” Keone Young) remained a loyal cobra agent--with none of the Hama version’s depth.

He had what you might call “standard cartoon Ninja honor” where he clearly had some kind of code of ethics, but was primarily an arrogant killer (as much as he could be in a cartoon) who fought primarily with Spirit and Quick Kick (voiced by wonderfully talented “guy you’ve seen in everything” Francois Chau) as Snake Eyes was largely shunted to the side in the cartoon. The echoes of Sunbow Storm Shadow can be seen in pretty much every non-comic adaptation that followed.

Skipping right over the Dic continuation of the Sunbow cartoon because Storm Shadow actually is a Joe in that, as he was in the comics and figures of the time (and because I haven’t seen it) we come to the 2000′s era.

The Spy Troops and Valor vs. Venom DTV movies had a Storm Shadow (voiced by “guy who got his blood ripped out by Magneto in X2: X-Men United” Ty Olsson) who was essentially his Sunbow self with one major change. He actually had a history with Snake Eyes, and a bitter rivalry. The details are not gone into in either film (you get a little more in the figure file cards and mini-comics of the era) but Storm Shadow accuses Snake Eyes of betraying the Arashikage. The implication being that either Storm Shadow blames Snake Eyes for some crime or another or that there was a schism in clan.

The File cards of the time movie go from acknowledging Storm Shadow’s time as a Joe, and claiming he’s working with Cobra again for unknown reasons, to establishing their own canon that Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow were once best friends and “Sword Brothers” before Storm Shadow fell to the dark side and joined Cobra. Though Storm Shadow’s file card does end with the ominous implication that he’s got his own agenda in working with Cobra (just like his Hama incarnation) the DTV films imply that he’s a Cobra loyalist in addition to his feud with Snake Eyes.

Spy Troops and Valor vs. Venom lead in a semi-canonical way to GI Joe Sigma 6 where Storm Shadow (voiced by “guy whose only other role I recognize is pulling double duty as Zeke Stane and Living Laser in the Iron Man 3 videogame” Tom Wayland) more or less continues the previous two iterations’ version of Storm Shadow. He once again accuses Snake Eyes of some great betrayal that broke their friendship. The GI Joe website at the time includes the detail that Storm Shadow was infiltrating Cobra when he was brainwashed into becoming a loyal Cobra agent. It’s another concession, like his 2001 file card, to Hama’s heroic double agent, while still portraying him in line with Sunbow’s villainous henchman.

GI Joe Resolute comes next, where we see a departure from any pretense of Storm Shadow being a good guy. Resolute, in many ways, comes off as a gritty direct continuation of the Sunbow series, and it takes Sunbow’s villainous Storm Shadow and strips him of even the token bits of honor and humanity he had. It also, as near as I can tell, begins the trend of Storm Shadow outright resenting Snake Eyes, rather than being his one time friend.

As an irrelevant aside, I have my problems with Resolute but I do love everyone’s character designs and Eric Bauza does a fantastic job as one fourth of the cast. His Sean Connery impression for Destro is particularly inspired.

This brings us to the big ones. GI Joe: RIse of Cobra and GI Joe: Retaliation where Storm Shadow is brought to the big screen by Lee Byung-Hun (who I don’t have a snarky/informative aside for because shamefully despite how prolific he is I’ve only seen him in these movies and The Magnificent 7 remake) and as a child by Brandon Soo Hoo (he’s also been in a lot of stuff, but I particularly liked his turn as Beast Boy in the animated New 52 DC movies).

Lee’s Storm Shadow in the first film falls in line with his portrayals up to this point, probably skewing most closely towards Sunbow. He has a code of ethics (he doesn’t kill women apparently) but he’s still a bad guy and he seems to quite like it. Lee brings a charm to the character that had not really existed up until that point. He also spends a lot of time maskless (and it’s hard to blame the production team for that one, he’s a very handsome dude) which was a shock for anyone who grew up with the 2001 era storm shadow where the thought of him without a mask was so insane that it was relegated to a mail in figure (As a kid I seriously thought he had some Mandalorian style code of not removing it)

His origin in this version takes bits of Hama and bits of Resolute (or Resolute took from this, Resolute came out first but this might have been in development). It is, as far as I can tell, the first version to have Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes train together as children and it portrays Storm Shadow, even as a child, as an arrogant and jealous person.

Now, at least in my opinion, it’s fairly obvious that the first movie fully intended Storm Shadow to be a baddie, full stop. There’s a little wiggle room given that we never see him stab The Hard Master in the flashback (the Hard Master in this version is Storm Shadow’s father rather than his uncle) but the way he taunts Snake Eyes about it during their final confrontation makes a pretty compelling case for his having committed patricide.

The sequel would bring back elements of the Hama backstory. Zartan killed The Hard Master and Storm Shadow had to infiltrate Cobra to discover that. Given Cobra Commander and Storm Shadow are of roughly the same age (Storm Shadow being a bit older I think) and this event occurred when they were both children it’s unclear on who’s orders Zartan did this but we do know it was done to turn the already volatile young man into the perfect angry ninja assassin (given this canon is pretty much over we’ll probably never know for sure, but my guess based on the IDW movie universe comics is that Zartan either did it at the behest of the Red Ninja Clan or just to have a tiny assassin of his own, probably the former since they seem to regard each other as unpleasant colleagues who sometimes work together).

What I particularly like about this version is that, because the first movie portrayed him as this charmingly sadistic Bond Villain henchman, even after he switches sides in the sequel he’s still kind of a belligerent dick. It’s a fun piece of characterization that even once he’s cleared his name, avenged his father, and made his peace with his family, it doesn’t change the fundamental fact that he’s not a very nice person.

This is something that would persist into the next (and for the moment last, but more on that later) onscreen version of Storm Shadow.

GI Joe Renegades (the best GI Joe Cartoon, fight me) saw Storm Shadow (voiced by “holy crap this guy originated the role of Saw Gerrera in Clone Wars” Andrew Kishino) as the leader of the Arashikage Clan (explicitly a crime syndicate, harkening back to implications in Hama’s version) who operates independent of Cobra except very briefly and only to fulfill his own ends (again bringing him closer to Hama’s version than any of his predecessors). Falling in line with the implications of the movie and Resolute, he and Snake Eyes were uneasy classmates more than friends and trained together as teenagers. An attempt to kill Snake Eyes went awry and resulted in the death of the Hard Master (who again, seemed to favor Snake Eyes over his own nephew). Storm Shadow believes Snake Eyes to have killed The Hard Master(somehow failing to connect the dots given his own murder plan failed the same night Snake Eyes allegedly murdered his uncle--or hell he’s probably just in denial until the truth slaps him in the face).

Also, irrelevant aside number 2, in contrast with Resolute I really don’t like this character design. Renegades had pretty good character design all around, neatly bringing together various versions in a way that felt coherent but I don’t like the little tufts of hair sticking out of the mask or the way it kinda hangs in front of his mouth. Is he hiding his face or not? It seems like he’s not so much wearing a mask as a bandana and an oversized turtleneck.

This version neatly ties together the “Snake Eyes betrayed us” of the early 2000′s, the “arrogant unfavorite” of the mid 2000s and the “out for justice assassin” of Hama’s run. He is, again, an arrogant prick from the start, but his genuine shame and resolve to abandon his quest for vengeance and his extremely short partnership with Cobra make his eventual redemption (or the start of what you assume would have been a longer redemption arc had the series continued) more believable than the live action movies--if a mite less fun.

And that’s where it ends, at least until the much delayed Snake Eyes live action movie is finally released, where Storm Shadow is set to be played by “guy from the best episode of American Gods Season 2″ Andrew Koji. I quite like the look of the cast of this movie, and I’m excited to see what Koji brings to the role. Will Storm Shadow be arrogant, murderous, honorable, charming, brooding, misunderstood, cruel, vengeful...some impossible combination of all of the above? We’ll have to wait and see.

*Including the various alternate comic book versions probably would have painted a more complete picture, but I’ve only read Hama’s run and the IDW reboot (where Storm Shadow is kind of a non-entity), besides this was more about tracing Storm Shadow through the adaptations I watched as a kid.

*None of the adaptations seem to go with Hama’s original detail that Storm Shadow and Jinx were from Northern California. On the one hand I see why you transplant them to Japan with the rest of their family (it’s a globetrotting element and makes the cast more cosmopolitan) but I always liked the idea of that they were children of immigrants.

*Adaptations have been touch and go about casting Japanese actors in the role but I was impressed to find out that Sunbow cast Japanese Americans as both Storm Shadow and Jinx, making them probably the most faithful casting in relation to their original backstories.

*Apologies for my complete inability to get screenshots of roughly the same size or resolution.

#gi joe #storm shadow

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ariainstars · 5 years ago

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Did Princess Leia Love Her Son?

Warning: long post. (And possible unpopular opinions ahead.)

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This entry is slightly more personal than my others; I might be kicking up some dust but I will try to approach a subject that to most people is unthinkable. I went through psychical abuse for decades, so I believe I know what I’m talking about.

Some mothers don’t love their children.

I am aware that most people on this planet are convinced that a mother, any mother, will love her child no matter what. Unfortunately, the idea is seen through very rose-tinted glasses.

Some mothers don’t love their children because they can’t.

The reasons can vary - honestly, I don’t see many parallels between Leia and my own mother. But I know the signs. And the more I think about it the more I get the distinct impression that Leia did not love for her son, if we define “love” as the faith in someone’s goodness. Padmé knew that there still was good in her husband until her last breath, and Luke believed the same of Vader, even though his father had done nothing but hunting and terrorizing him and his friends. Leia, on the contrary, feared her son since before he was born, and her conviction of his evil nature never abated although he never hurt anyone for many years. The fact that her fear runs so deep says volumes; even more so when we consider that she is the only one who did not directly get hurt by him. Han was stabbed through by his son, before Chewie’s eyes; and Luke was left by his nephew for dead, even if the tragedy at the temple had not been intentional on Ben’s side (see The Rise of Kylo Ren by Charles Soule, the story therein is officially part of the canon).

I anticipate, again, that I think one of the sequel’s worst faults was to explain so little and leave so much to the audience to deduce from things unsaid, hints, and parallel situations throughout the saga. (One of the reasons being, I guess, the release of The Last Jedi: we saw from the general audience’s reactions on social media what can happen when unpopular though realistic things are said.)

Leia - A Princess Without a Realm

Let us recapitulate what we know about Leia. She grew up serene and protected on a beautiful planet with adoptive parents who loved her and gave her a good education. She is an intelligent, confident woman, strong in her ideals and beliefs. She never shows fear or sorrow, not even when her home planet is blown up before her eyes, when she is held prisoner and tortured, when she has to watch the man she loves being frozen in carbonite before her eyes, when she finds her brother crippled, when she is held by a disgusting lecher like Jabba, or when she learns that Vader is her own father.

Being raised a princess, Leia was probably taught very strong self-control: no matter what she had to endure, she never buckled down or lost her countenance. It cannot be denied however that much of her adult life was traumatic. What we euphemistically see as “adventures” and “all’s well that ends well” in the classic films would leave any person with a huge post-traumatic stress disorder; and Star Wars is, as far as I can judge, a psychologically well-studied story.

From the novels we learn that Han and Leia got married shortly after the battle of Endor, and that their son was born about a year later. One year is not much to recover after a war that cost so many lives and made all of them suffer so much. Han was probably more resilient than the twins due to the life he led before he met them; but he had been through a lot, too. Even if they loved their son with parental instinct, they both were not ready for the task of parenthood. And Ben was not an easy child: from his adult self we can deduce that he was always oversensitive and very intelligent. His family, like many well-meaning families, chose his future (his profession, we might say) and never explained his family’s past to him. But like any child with an emotional nature, Ben sensed that something was wrong about him; he did not know what it was since nobody told him about his grandfather; and wanting desperately to be loved, he began to blame himself, accepting the connotation “I am a monster” since he was still a child.

Leia had felt both her son’s power in the Force and Snoke’s influence on his mind since he was still in her womb. Let us only try to imagine the horror she must have felt, knowing that a new Darth Vader might come from her! It is difficult to say for whom she feared most - her son, herself or the galaxy at large. Leia was adamant that he had to become a Jedi, hence her quarrels with her husband, which their son sometimes overheard. But since he was ultimately sent to training with his uncle, he also understood that his father had not managed to prevent his being sent away, like a defective item that needed to be fixed.

Kylo told Rey that “Han would have disappointed her” and later said to her and Finn “Han Solo can’t protect you”: so, he obviously felt Han had come short of a father’s primary duty, i.e. keeping his child safe. Let us remember for a moment how crucially important this message always was through the saga: Shmi let her son, the only thing that had made her happy, join the Jedi so he could be free. Owen and Beru sacrificed themselves to prevent the Imperial stormtroopers from finding Luke together with the droid. Anakin betrayed the Jedi order in his despair to keep his family (wife and unborn children) safe. And Ben fell to the dark not due to Snoke’s influence, he resisted him for over twenty years; he only rebelled and left his uncle’s temple after an attempt on his safety.

We do not learn (to my knowledge) whether Ben was in contact with his parents during his years at Luke’s temple. It is not mentioned however, so I assume that even if he was, nothing noticeable happened. Han sees his son again when he is a grown man… and I find it interesting that the scene has a sexual connotation. Ben does not notice his old man at all, although he can sense him in the Force (later on Starkiller Base he does), he only cares about securing Rey. And Han sees him carrying her away like a bride, probably wondering how his little boy grew to be this unknown, dark, hooded figure, who wreaks terror on Takodana yet is surprisingly gentle with a girl.

From The Rise of Kylo Ren we learn that Ben had not intentionally caused the fire at his uncle’s temple; but he had been blamed for it by his surviving fellow students and chased by them off the planet. In TFA, we learn Leia did not doubt for one moment that Luke’s narration of the night at the temple was true. She blamed Snoke, but it never occurred to her that Ben might be innocent - her own son. She did not try to communicate once in all the years he was Kylo Ren but left him alone while he damned his soul committing crime after crime. Luke never told her the truth, even when he met her again one last time, and she did not question it. Leia did send her estranged husband to “get their son back”, but obviously she did not consider actively participating in this task. We only see mother and son “interact” emotionally from time to time; they never meet and never talk. Ben sees his father, has a conversation with him, Han even touches him; Luke does not touch him and they don’t exactly have a dialogue, but at least they meet. To me, that is significant.

When mother and son sense one another on two different ships at the beginning of The Last Jedi, Leia’s mind is perfectly silent. We merely see that Ben feels his mother is aboard, which makes him pull his finger from the trigger. But his expression changes: from belligerent and angry, he becomes vulnerable, shy. He even looks more boyish. Ben is aware that his mother disapproves of his choices, but he has no chance to explain to her how things could come this far.

„You can’t go back to her now. Just like I can’t.” Kylo (intending Leia) to Rey in The Rise of Skywalker

Leia does not know her son. She wants him back “home”, but to her, that means fighting by her side; it does not occur to her that her son is fighting for his life, that he became a war criminal without having wanted it, and that he can’t simply go back and put himself to trial: he is aware that nobody would believe him. Fatalism caught up with him and his family the way it already had with Anakin. His mother and uncle always felt that he was doomed; and since they believed it, the galaxy at large believes it, too. Snoke knew that by pushing Ben to patricide he would shut all remaining doors for his apprentice - nothing but self-hatred left for him, no way to go back even if he had found the courage. What was he supposed to do, go back and say, “Hi mom, sorry I killed dad (your husband)”? It baffles me to this day how many fans believe that he that he “chose the Dark Side” and that he could just as easily switch sides, like nothing had happened.

Leia never trusted anyone who was not on her side. In ANH she immediately hit it off with Luke, who not surprisingly turns out to be her twin brother; and as we learn in TFA, she and Han fought all through their marriage, though that didn’t prevent them from loving one another. Leia either expects someone to think the way she does, or to be only just so different that she can keep him in check.

“Han - don’t do it.” “Do what?” “Whatever you have in mind - just don’t do it!” Han and Leia in The Force Awakens

This reaches a sad and somehow grotesque turn when Leia takes Rey as her apprentice. With her brother dead, Leia is the only one left to do it; and though it is understandable that someone must carry on the Jedi knowledge, I myself would be extremely wary of training a girl who is none other than the flesh and blood of the man I fought against for years and who caused so much death and terror throughout the entire galaxy.

Leia had not met Palpatine though; her horror of the Dark Side was embodied by Vader, who had imprisoned and tortured her, forced her to watch while her home planet was blown up before her eyes, frozen her boyfriend in carbonite and maimed her brother. Leia never forgave Vader, and even if unconsciously, she probably blamed him for having somehow come back in the son she was carrying. I doubt whether Luke ever talked to his sister about Vader and told her about the broken, sad old man he found behind the mask. There is nothing suggesting that they did, and besides Luke and Leia both do not seem to me like two people very prone to introspection, they always look to the future. (Which is of course a good thing, but then again denying traumata always backfires.)

„Skywalker, still looking to the horizon. Never here… The need in front of your nose.” Yoda in The Last Jedi

Leia did not want to repeat with Rey the mistakes she had made with Ben and that’s good and well; however, she feared her son but was not in the least afraid of Rey. Maybe she “always knew who Rey was”, but she obviously never knew who her own son was. As Count Dooku once said to Obi-Wan, the Dark Side clouded her judgement - preventing her from seeing the human in Ben, and from seeing the monster in Rey. This is not due to their respective bloodlines, but because Rey’s uncompromising attitude is familiar to Leia, while her son’s stormy, questioning mind is unfamiliar and frightening to her.

Though Leia did not actively order Rey to kill Kylo, they were on opposite sides of the war; and Rey practically kills him with his own mother’s help and thanks to her training. Both women know what they are doing and they are acting on their own initiative. Obi-Wan and Yoda also had wanted to groom Luke into killing Anakin, but this one was not aware of his connection to him; and Obi-Wan in particular was not plotting against his own flesh and blood, even though he did raise Anakin like a younger brother.

Comparing Leia with the other Star Wars mothers makes her failure even more evident. Shmi was an ordinary slave, probably not even learned, but she raised her son to be a good boy and always believed in him; giving him away was a sacrifice for her. Her son was everything she had, which is why she gave him so much in return. Leia has her background as a princess, her military and political career, her husband, her brother, her friends: so, of course her son wasn’t everything for her. Leia gave Ben away hoping that Luke would form him into a powerful ally for her Cause. The mistake both women made was thinking that growing up as Jedi would be good for their sons. When Anakin left his mother, he had everything to gain: freedom, a place in life, and (he hoped) the chance to come back and free his mother as well. When Ben left home, he had everything to lose: his family to which he most probably had no contact, his wish of becoming a pilot, the chance of a family of his own since a Jedi is not supposed to get married. The ways of the Jedi let each of them down, although their backgrounds couldn’t differ more.

Many fans criticize that in RotS Padmé, the brilliant strategist and brave fighter of the first two prequel films, is ostensibly reduced to “barefoot and pregnant”. It is true that Padmé has laid down her mandate and of course she wants to protect her unborn, but that does not make her passive: shortly after having witnessed a political putsch and with it the end of all her political aims, she walks into the lion’s den on Mustafar, vulnerable and alone, to get her husband out of there, although she was told that he committed a carnage at the Jedi Temple and knew that he was capable of that (years prior, he had told her about the Tusken village himself). But she still believed in him.

There is an obscure flashback scene in The Rise of Skywalker, where during their training Leia says to Luke that she will become a Jedi only on the death of her son. This makes perfect sense: a Jedi always must face his own darkness to finish his training. Being in a way the reincarnation of her father, her son is her Dark Side, the one she refuses to face. Leia already knows or senses that she and her son will be on opposite sides, and that in order to become a Jedi and become one with the Force, she will have to confront her own child. The act is physically carried out by Rey’s hand: Rey was her pupil, she was like an adopted daughter in her son’s stead to her, Leia had sent her on the mission to retrieve the wayfinder, she was the one who called Ben when they were dueling, so in a way, it actually is Leia who kills Ben. It is her incapacity to love her son for being himself, as a person and not as a projection of her own darkness, that causes his tragic fate.

Leia is oddly distanced from her son; she expects him to deliver, i.e. become a good Jedi, or at least submit himself to her mercy. She never understood his dilemma in the slightest - that he never wished to be a Jedi, and that he also had not wanted to become an evil warlord but was pushed into it when there was nothing left for him to do. He had to become a Jedi or nothing; she would not have accepted him simply for being himself (the way his father did).

Ben - Child and Grandchild Of War

Leia and Luke fail to rebuild the “better world” of the Old Republic because they both don’t acknowledge that this world does no longer exist and that it can’t be restored. Leia is a princess, but Alderaan is gone; Luke is the last Jedi, and the Jedi are extinct. It is their refusal to accept that the past is over that ultimately leads both of them to disaster. And in a way, Ben understands that the way Luke does, eventually.

“Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. It’s the only way to become what you were meant to be.” Kylo Ren in The Last Jedi “It’s time for the Jedi to end.” Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi

Ben is a child and grandchild of war; both generations before him had to watch people they cared or were responsible for suffer and die. He grows up in a period of peace, but like any child whose parents have not overcome war traumata, their pain is handed down to him like a cursed heritage. His family keeps him warm and fed, clothed and instructed, but they fail capitally when it comes to his emotional needs; as for any questions he may have, they choose to simply ignore them. They fail him long before the disaster at Luke’s temple: it is only the last drop. Like Anakin before him, he feels betrayed, abandoned and left behind by the ones whom he chiefly ought to be able to put his trust into.

We are confronted over and over with the strength of the Light in Ben: even when he commits the patricide he hates what he is doing, and afterwards he is traumatized, his self-hatred deeper than ever. While Anakin projected his anger and frustration to the outside, Ben will rather hate himself. But their emotional reaction to their mothers are the same - both could not be by their mothers’ side in her dying moment, and both feel like they let her down, taking the blame on themselves.

Remember how Ben turns around immediately, on the Death Star ruin, right in the middle of a fight with the girl he loves, who is in the throes of the Dark Side, who he wants to protect from herself at all costs - all because his mother calls him? It looks like she is trying to prevent him from doing evil; but if that is the case, it only proves how little she understands him. Her son was not doing anything bad, on the contrary, he had found the girl whom she herself had trained under the influence of her own malignant self, and was trying to make her reason and accept herself instead of projecting her fears and her anger onto him.

“The Dark Side is in our nature. Surrender to it.“ Kylo Ren in The Rise of Skywalker

In TFA, Han faced his son personally; on that fatal bridge on Starkiller base Ben at first walked away from him although he sensed him, when Han called him he did not turn around, and he resisted Snoke’s order to kill him as long as he could; he would not have managed to do it had Han not understood what was going on and allowed his son to kill him so he could save his soul with his forgiveness and unconditional love.

On the bridge of the ruins of the second Death Star, Ben does not struggle at all when his mother calls him. Maybe because he feels that she’s dying; but I also believe that it was what he had waited for all along - his mother finally reaching out to him. In that moment his fate is sealed: Rey stabs him through, annihilating his Kylo Ren persona. From now on, he’s Ben, the name his mother called him by. This is the moment of his redemption and also the beginning of his end.

Ben did need Kylo. Kylo Ren was his Dark Side, and like his grandfather Anakin, Ben Solo was meant to be the Balance. We could already have guessed, in this moment, that he was not meant to survive; in order to live he ought to have learned to reconcile both parts of himself, Light and Dark, not to shed one of them. His moments of heroism on Exegol, thought few, show us how powerful he can be when he is in balance. But neither Rey nor Leia (or Han, for that matter) ever acknowledged Kylo’s right to exist, or understood the importance of Balance for lasting peace.

This scene just proves how desperate Ben was for his mother’s approval. All it needed was one gesture, one word. He did not want to be a Jedi; my guess is that he accepted to be his uncle’s apprentice in hopes that this would teach him to become more the kind of man his mother wanted him to be. Luke was an unreachable role model before his eyes; no matter what he did, Ben was always aware that he could not come up to his standard. Luke was a galactic legend, a savior, a saint-like figure ever since Ben was a child, and Ben neither was that way nor did he want to: in his heart, Ben is a normal boy who wants to be seen as a person. Anakin and Luke were affectionate and searching for emotional connection, too, but both also wanted to prove themselves. Ben does not strike me at all as being ambitious. He is neither truly hero nor villain but, in the first place, someone who wants to love and be loved. He wants to live his own life, make his own choices, have control over his own fate, protect his dignity as a human being and as a man. This is often misinterpreted as being “power-hungry”, but to me, these are very natural desires. And he has to carve his own way; he can’t simply embrace the path of the follower, because he is by nature both blessed and cursed with an extraordinary power which sets him apart from others. This is nobody’s fault. And it is much more frustrating for him than for the world around him, where, each in his way, everybody seems to think “If only he would behave!”

Ben is aware of the fact that he never was first for anyone in his life. His parents and uncle were much more attached to one another than to him. Ben is someone who tries so hard to change, only to realize over and over that it’s not enough. And this reaches a sad and terrible peak that night at the Jedi temple, when he has to learn that despite all his efforts, Luke thinks he would be better off dead. No wonder all of his anger and frustration come to the surface when he sees his uncle again on Crait, this is obviously a rage born from a conflict of long standing. From his point of view, Luke destroyed his life. And although Luke had not wanted that, it cannot be denied that in a way he did, and worse, that he ran from his guilt instead of trying to repair the damage.

The alternative, Ben has to find out, is not better though: the Knights of Ren and Snoke make him give up all the rest of what he is, and Snoke keeps demanding more - the ultimate sacrifice of his father, the person who was closest to him, by his own hand.

I am aware that many fans find Kylo / Ben “embarrassing” due to his emotional tantrums. His mother, his father or uncle, or his grandfather would never have behaved like this! When they killed someone, it always had style, so it was justified… even if Kylo’s tantrums are directed towards machinery and not taken on people. Few seem to consider that he is not “immature and childish”: he is a man who was pushed to the limits of emotional endurance throughout his life. (This is also a bit personal for me - I know situations like that from own experience, smashing household articles simply because I couldn’t take it anymore. Lifelong abuse is no laughing matter.)

Ben is in a vicious circle: his strong emotionality makes him vulnerable, the abuse makes him even more emotionally unsteady, and so it goes on and on. He has no way out, except for the faint hope to find someone who will see him as a person at last.

“I have no choice and I never did... Whether it’s Luke Skywalker or Snoke, neither one sees me as a person. I’m just a legacy, a set of expectations.” Ben Solo in The Rise of Kylo Ren, 4

That Ben loves both his mother and Rey despite the fact that one took the other as her apprentice and the other uses this training to kill him only proves the depth of his dedication. At no time we see him being jealous towards Rey, or angry at his mother because of her double standard. Ben’s love for his mother is unconditional. And his love is also unconditional for Rey, whose soul and body he saves giving up his own although she took everything from him, including his life the moment he lowered his defense.

Rey and Leia represent the general audience’s point of view: how could anyone not wish to be someone as cool as a Jedi, and getting the chance to fight against the bad guys? Ben is the other point of view, someone who indeed does not want it at all. It takes him a long time to find out what he actually wants to do with his powers: “Give a new order to the galaxy”, together with Rey. When she refuses and leaves him, he feels not only betrayed but humiliated. All he is left with is the maddening desire to burn the house down for good, the ultimate sin his uncle saves him from by sacrificing himself on Crait.

Conclusions

One of the troubles with a weak, absent, violent or otherwise dysfunctional father figure is their repercussion on the mother figures: Padmé can’t be a mother because she is physically absent, and Leia can’t because she is emotionally absent. Much as Ben may love Leia, he knows her. He knows that to her he always was more a burden than someone she loved having around; he is aware of her fear of him, which is why he rightly assumes, after the tragedy at the temple, that she will never believe it was not his doing.

And this is what brings me to my first point: a mother may not be capable of loving her child. She may nourish fond memories of the sweet baby and cute toddler she used to take care of, but the more the child grows, the more a traumatized mother will be terrified by the emerging personality of an intelligent child which might see through her carefully built-up walls, and even more scared of the child’s emotional development into a person she can no longer keep in control, who might doubt her, and want to make his own choices. Of course, being born with the Force is a huge responsibility. However, it cannot be denied that the Jedi Order failed, and that both Leia and her brother did not question their ways; instead, they did everything to prevent Ben from questioning them.

The actual tragedy of a dysfunctional mother-child relationship is that a mother may not really love her child, but a child instinctively loves the mother because its psychological balance roots in its faith in the mother’s love.

If unavoidable, in extreme cases the child can of course learn to let go, accept that its own mother could not love it, and that this was neither her nor the child’s fault in the first place; but that takes time and effort and needs a lot of support from other sources. Things Ben never had, because he had to fight for his life while his own mother was the general of the Resistance, each and every member of which would have killed him in cold blood had they had the chance. (Remember how Poe tried to shoot him in the back in TFA, and Rey shot at him in TLJ when he was in sickbay, wounded and unarmed? And these are the good guys.) He’s the Bad Guy, remember? Not Leia’s son. Just like Rey is the Good Heroine, not Palpatine’s heir. Nobody questions what the Good Guys do.

Leia may have loved Ben to a certain extent, but of one thing I am fairly sure: unconditional is not what her love for him was. Leia knew that there was still light in her son, but she did not realize that he was desperately searching for Balance between both sides. Leia did want him back, but only if he was willing to embrace only the Light Side and to shed the darkness in him, like that was even possible. Luke and Leia, like almost all the Jedi before them, pretended that there was no darkness in them… which made the darkness all the more powerful in someone who was closely connected to with them.

Ben, like his grandfather, is more honest and authentic with his feelings than the people he knows. That he so often errs results from lack of judgement; Ben reminds me of someone who keeps stumbling because he’s left in the dark. His grandfather’s is also the story of a human tragedy, precisely because Anakin, too, did not know what was going on behind stage. Luke’s story is eventually a success because Vader tells him the truth, which first shocks him but then makes him develop a strong and mature personality.

Star Wars is about a family made unhappy by a distorted idea of masculinity; an idea mostly brought up and propagated by the Jedi. Both the detached type like Mace Windu, Obi-Wan or Yoda and the cruel and sardonic Vader are a product of this attitude. We have until now never seen a happy family during the course of the whole saga, with a united couple of parents growing and protecting their children together. Anakin became a villain simultaneously with being a father; I find it interesting that his son Luke seems to have escaped this fate partly because he never was confronted with fatherhood.

Leia wants her son back as her child; she does not expect him to become a grown man who makes his own choices. One of the things that make the final trilogy of the saga so dissatisfying is, to me, that a Skywalker man again was denied the dignity to be on his own, to develop a healthy masculinity and to make his own choices instead of being expected to simply do what he was told.

Not surprisingly, Ben is saved by his father, the most human of the bunch. Smuggler, adventurer, “nobody”, cheater, thief, war general… Han Solo was always first and foremost himself, which is why he understands his son’s human side best. As Luke is a Jedi, Leia is a princess. She never is a mother above everything else, the way Shmi was. Unconsciously or not, she places power above family. Ben calls his father “Dad” in TRoS (in TFA he referred to him by his name); he never calls Leia “mother”.

Of course, like Luke, Obi-Wan and all the Jedi before them, Leia has no truly bad intentions. She does want her son to be safe and happy - on her conditions. She cannot understand his desire to reconcile with the darkness inside of him, respectively to take Vader’s skeleton from the family closet; she accepts only a part of him. When Ben finally “comes home”, in death, it is as Han’s and Leia’s child. And this also, unbeknownst to her, causes Rey’s lonely fate since her mate, her other half in the dyad, is gone.

The heroes of old have proved incapable of giving their son and heir the support he would have needed; when they faced their guilt it was too late; and still after death, none of them accepted the Dark Side’s right to exist. Ben “comes home” purged from his sins, without having integrated the two parts of himself, and leaving the greatest power in the galaxy in the hands of a young woman who is very far from understanding Balance in the Force, or only the necessity and importance of it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What does all of this mean for us, as the audience? Maybe that it’s time to grow up. Becoming an adult has much to do with seeing the limitations of the people (heroes) you used to trust blindly when you were a child. Many people never accept that, or feel let down for life. I think the wisest course is to learn how to grow and mature together with your people you used to admire, to learn from one another precisely because none of us is perfect, but we all can grow and mature the ones through the others.

The Rise of Skywalker told us, among other things (though not saying so openly) that even a positive and universally liked character like Princess Leia is not immune to the Dark Side of the Force, and that she may support it fully convinced of doing the right thing. It does not make the good she did undone, and does not deny her positive sides. And it does not say that we can’t love her any more. Anyone is entitled to be annoyed by these revelations. Leia is not a bad person, she’s human. But waking up from our ideals of heroism and happy endings may be more to the point for our own growth.

Our parents, our heroes, anyone can err for many reasons. To see their mistakes does not mean giving up on their or our ideals; the good things they stand for are still valid. Yet seeing their weaknesses and finding our own way to honor those ideals is perhaps a better way to get on with our lives than thinking that there is someone, anyone in the world we can look up to because they are, and always will be, perfect.

Side Note: Speculations

Although many affronted fans claim so, the heroes of the OT were not dismantled by the ST: Luke, Han and Leia each in his own way show their heroism again in their respective situations. But it is also made abundantly clear that where they failed was their duty towards the next generation. The thought is of course disturbing because a mother is supposed to give affection to a child, a father to offer it protection and advice, a mentor to foster its capacities. In Ben’s case, all three of them failed blatantly. That they managed to do so with Rey, a perfect stranger to their family, would be acceptable if she were not the offspring of Palpatine of all people. As it is, her “inheritance” of the Skywalker legacy feels as unearned as Ben’s failure and death feel undeserved.

Parents in Star Wars always have failed their children because they were in some way absent. Anakin, Luke and Ben, all three generations of Skywalkers, suffer from a father trauma. Anakin was always a father, never a son; Luke always a son, never a father. Which brings me back to the point I can’t give up on: a healthy father figure, someone who was a son and becomes a father, who went to the Dark Side but came back, who was not only redeemed but also rehabilitated, and finds an equally strong mother figure by his side, is essential if the galaxy is ever to find lasting Balance. I am not giving up hope. 😉

#star wars #leia organa #ben solo #kylo ren #han solo #luke skywalker #anakin skywalker #darth vader #palpatine #the force awakens #the last jedi #the rise of skywalker #padme amidala #shmi skywalker #dysfunctional family #read more #princess leia #motherhood

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wiseabsol · 4 years ago

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WA Reviews “Dominion” by Aurelia le, Chapter 13: A Start

Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6383825/13/Dominion

Summary: For the Fire Nation royal siblings, love has always warred with hate. But neither the outward accomplishment of peace nor Azula’s defeat have brought the respite Zuko expected. Will his sister’s plans answer this, or only destroy them both?

Content Warnings: This story contains discussions and depictions of child abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, and incest. This story also explores the idea that Zuko’s redemption arc (and his unlearning of abuse) is not as complete as the show suggested, and that Azula is not a sociopath (with the story having a lot of sympathy for her). If that doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, I would strongly recommend steering clear of this story and my reviews of it.

Note: Because these were originally posted as chapter reviews/commentaries, I will often be talking to the author in them (though sometimes I will also snarkily address the characters). While I’ve also tried not to spoil later events in the story in these reviews, I would strongly recommend reading through chapter 28 before reading these, just to be safe.

Now on to chapter 13!

CHAPTER 13: A START

Alright, on to chapter thirteen. Before I begin, since there have been some people in the comments expressing interest in my full reviews, they can be found at: wiseabsol (dot) tumblr (dot) com (slash) tagged (slash) dominion (percent sign) 20by (percent sign) 20aurelia (percent sign) 20le. I might also run the idea of setting up a forum for “Dominion” by Aurelia. That way, you all would have someplace to read my reviews on this website, as well as discuss the story with each other outside of the reviews section.

On to the review. Zuko has slept past sunrise, which may be an indication of how bad a shape he’s in, since firebenders are supposed to rise with the sun (Azula, note, still rose with the sun while hospitalized). But he managed to sleep the night through without nightmares, which is progress for him. Turns out he’s achieved that by drinking a sedating tea left by Iroh.

“The old man had even gone do far as to pretend Mai told him, to try to get Zuko to talk. It was the kind of thing Azula would do.”—Iroh and Azula are both cunning, strategic thinkers, which may be part of why she makes Iroh uncomfortable. She probably reminds him of himself when he was younger. If she’d been a boy, it’s possible that he might have tried to take Azula under his wing…but given that she was a girl, and thus had gender roles that she was supposed to conform to (hence him giving her a doll), he didn’t. That and Ozai snapped her up quickly, with Iroh soon afterwards writing her off as Ozai’s “creature.” But I wouldn’t be surprised if we later find out that part of why Iroh considered her so dangerous was because she reminded him of his younger self, rather than Ozai.

Apparently Zuko blew up at Iroh for the deception, and said some things he shouldn’t have. Old habits die hard.

“What his uncle couldn’t know was that there was no help for what he did.”—Yeah, sleeping with your sister is not something you can take back.

Zuko has some manservants in the room with him, who offer him fruit, foot washing, and hot towels, which he doesn’t accept. What even is the point of being royalty if you can’t enjoy some nice things, Zuko? Though you probably don’t think you deserve nice things. As the manservants go about getting him ready, Zuko has this pleasant memory of Mai: “Mai used to put his hair up for him, when she woke at the same time as Zuko. She wasn’t much good with hair, in truth, but that hardly mattered. More often than not, it was just thinly veiled foreplay”—So they were a genuinely sweet couple at one point.

But then it’s time to go to Squicktown: “But when he tried to recall those mornings now, it was his sister’s slim fingers that raked through his hair, her mouth that he tasted, the warmth of her skin—“—That’s gross, buddy. While we could chalk this up to being a sign of his continued obsession with Azula, it could also be a sign of trauma. Good memories triggering associations that trigger bad memories. If he was wanking off to the memory of Azula, then I’d say it was an obsession thing. As it is, it’s causing him distress, so trauma seems more likely.

“A memory made all the more painful by having to wonder how much of that Azula did at their father’s command, those years he abused her under the guise of training….”—Sadly, I think Ozai does believe it was training. Though this is also the dude who believes that suffering is instructive.

“With such dark thoughts as he had for company, he barely noticed the comings and goings of the palace staff anymore.”—Losing your situational awareness is not good, Zuko. Especially when you know there are people who aren’t happy with your reign.

“Uncle thought it started shortly after Zuko was banished. She would have been eleven.”—Ugh. That is vile. Though I suspect that Ozai was grooming her before then.

Ozai is dying from his burns. While I’m inclined to say “Good riddance,” if he dies, it means that Zuko will have committed patricide, which will cause a public outcry and earn him more enemies. Also, Azula will never forgive him for it.

“The man lived to plague him, he knew.”—Ozai is absolutely that spiteful.

“He remembered asking Iroh if his banishment might have been planned. If his father might have sent him away just to do that to Azula, to remove the last family member she might have turned to for defense, the last witness to his crimes. He remembered the look his uncle gave him then, when he said they may never know.”—I think it’s probable that Ozai was looking for an excuse to get rid of Zuko, just like he did with Mai and Ty Lee. He wanted to isolate Azula, but he also wanted to get Zuko out of the picture so he could make Azula first in line for the throne.

That being said, I don’t think Ozai believed that Azula would turn to Zuko for help. The siblings were already poisoned against each other back then. I think the look Iroh gave Zuko wasn’t because he knew the answer to the question—it was because he knew that it wouldn’t have mattered whether Zuko was there or not. Ozai would have done this to Azula anyway, and given how careful they were to hide it, I don’t think Zuko would have noticed that something was wrong until the abortion. I doubt that Iroh would have noticed either, since he was so focused on Zuko. While the idea of, “If I was there, I could have done something!” is a comforting one, it’s also naïve on Zuko’s part. He was a child then, too. And given Zuko’s disposition at that age—to confront evil head on, without thinking through the potential consequences—he probably would have ended up in a much worse position than he did in canon. He would have been a security risk to Ozai—a security risk that can’t lie well. No, I think Zuko being there would have resulted in disaster. Iroh, on the other hand, might have been able to figure out a quiet solution. But he wasn’t there, and so the possibility passed.

Iroh, in any case, left after receiving a letter from Rai, without telling Zuko the contents of said letter. Iroh says this is so Zuko can have plausible deniability, but because Zuko is in bad mental shape, he’s slipping into some paranoia about it—paranoia rather like Azula’s at the end of the series. He’s unkempt, he can’t sleep, he is wracked with self-hatred and guilt (Azula was, too, though her mind expressed it through Ursa’s hallucination). If he starts banishing people, it will probably start rumors that madness runs in the family.

“He wondered if his uncle began to mistrust him around Azula. If he knew what you did, he would never trust you with her again, he reminded himself.”—Which would be fair of him, Zuko. But Iroh is too convinced of your goodness to suspect that you would hurt her intentionally. He was ready to handwave away you killing her as an act of self-defense.

“And Mai would not receive the old general at her parents’ house, sparking rumors she had left the palace to avoid him, rather than her husband.”—I think because Mai knows that Iroh will side with Zuko in a conflict, and that’s not something that she wants to deal with right now. I do not blame her.

Zuko continues to contemplate Iroh’s visit, sliding into self-pity as he thinks of how tired Iroh must be getting of him: “[Iroh] was probably just as relieved to go as Zuko was to see him away….”

“‘It isn’t fair,’ [ . . . ] That one mistake with Azula should poison the only healthy, loving relationship he had with any blood relative. It wasn’t fair.”—Zuko thinks this, but he’s the one who is pushing Iroh away. I think he could have told Iroh a portion of the truth—that he and Azula argued, that he got angry and intentionally hurt her, and that he feels horrible about it now. I think that would shake Iroh’s faith in Zuko, but I think he would still be supportive, and would understand, finally, that Zuko still has lingering behavioral problems from Ozai’s abuse that need to be worked through. It might have opened up some routes to healing faster…though I daresay that Mai wouldn’t have been pleased with Zuko giving his uncle a sanitized version of the truth.

Zuko’s chamberlain comes in, with a list of what sounds like some very important meetings that Zuko should go to, but Zuko has other plans for his day. He’ll still keep the meeting with the “Advisory Board for the Reformation of Asylums,” which Zuko created sometime in the last few weeks. For now, though, Zuko is going to see Mai and Lu Ten.

We transition to Iroh meeting with Rai. Apparently, Iroh recruited her after her banishment from the Fire Nation. Rai catches Iroh up on how her time with Azula went, but feels that she could have done more for Azula. Iroh interrupts her by placing a hand on her knee—weird choice there, Iroh—and says that it was for the best that she didn’t reveal that she knew who Azula was, because, “‘She might even have killed you.’”

Rai, though, has more faith in Azula than Iroh does: “‘No.’ The cook shook her head, surprising Iroh. ‘She makes threats when she’s under duress. And she certainly knows how to sell them [ . . . ] But she never struck me as particularly bloodthirsty, either then or now. She would avoid unnecessary violence, if only to keep a low profile.’”—Thank you, Rai!

Rai, bless her, also dismisses Iroh’s question of whether the wounds could have been self-inflicted. I see why he would ask this, given the self-harm Azula committed in the asylum, but it does make it clear that he hasn’t seen her any time recently, after she started getting better. He then wonders if maybe the asylum had been mistreating her and covered up the signs, since his visits were announced in advance and he only ever saw her from a distance.

Then he wonders if Zuko was the one who injured Azula—ding, ding, Iroh, you are correct! “It would go a long way toward explaining his obvious guilt, and Zuko had always been given to emotional excesses.”—No kidding. In regards to the burn, he thinks, “He could not see what purpose it had served, except to hurt her…”—CORRECT AGAIN!

Rai, meanwhile, wonders about Azula being sent to the asylum. She thought that Azula might have been jailed or banished by Zuko instead. This ticks Iroh off: “Her brother showed her compassion,” he insists, but Rai is not convinced, since the workers at the asylum might have hurt Azula. When she expresses that, Iroh responds hotly, “‘He knew naught of this, woman,’” and breathes out flames. I’m not fond of him calling her “woman” here, because when men do that, it’s often meant to be dismissive or demeaning. The show of flames is also not cool of him. Control yourself, Iroh.

Rai isn’t impressed by him and plans to leave, but Iroh has more questions. He asks what happened to the man who assaulted Azula, and Rai responds: “‘Dead,’ Rai told the woodplank floor, her voice barely breaking a whisper when she crossed white arms under her ample bust.”—Why are you noticing the size of her breasts, Iroh? But also, this does seem hard for Rai to talk about.

Iroh assumes Azula killed the guy, but Rai corrects him, telling him that she did it herself. “The woman raised her eyes to his, and Iroh was reminded uncannily of his missing sister-in-law.” Oh, I hope that Ursa kills Ozai. I feel like it’s improbable that that will happen, but I want it. Also, the phrase “silk hiding steel” comes to mind here, both for Rai and Ursa.

Rai discusses her reasons for killing Lee—both to give Azula a measure of protection and for justice—and how her own husband, Shou, abused her. “If she had been abused, of course this cook would look coldly on what she likely viewed as excuses for the abuse of Azula. Her own husband probably made her parrot lines like that, that it was an accident, she did it to herself….”—As much as I obviously empathize with Azula, I should point out that there is, theoretically, some danger in Rai doing the same. If Azula had continued to behave abusively towards others, Rai’s empathy for Azula’s suffering might have made her inclined to excuse Azula’s actions, much like Iroh currently does for Zuko. And if she’s excusing those actions, then she might have been caught off guard and hurt by Azula during their time together.

That being said, in this case, Rai’s empathy is refreshing, and also lends itself to a more accurate reading of Azula’s character than Iroh has. Iroh, very confused by this point, asks Rai why she would go to such lengths to help his niece. As it turns out, Rai worked in the kitchens at the palace, while her husband was an imperial firebender. She couldn’t accuse him of abuse or get away from him, but when Azula started banishing people, Rai was banished before he was—and so she managed to escape and stay ahead of him all of this time.

“‘Rai,’ he said quietly, a little concerned for her sanity at this point, ‘you must know she didn’t mean to help you. She banished her servants because she was crazy, not out if any altruistic urge.’”—It rubs me the wrong way that Iroh thinks that Rai might be crazy. There’s a part of me that wants to throw at him, “You only think that because you’ve never known what it’s like to be helpless,” but I know that’s not true. It’s not like Azulon was compassionate to Iroh or cared about his emotional needs, and losing Lu Ten would definitely have made Iroh feel helpless. Still, this grates on me, possibly because Iroh is a very privileged man and hasn’t faced the same hardships as Rai. I feel like Ursa would understand Rai, though. I don’t know if they would get along—somehow, I doubt it, since Rai has faith in Azula and Ursa does not—but I’d love to see a conversation between them someday.

Much to Iroh’s discomfort, Rai talks about how the palace staff knew that Ozai was mistreating Azula, and hints that there were rumors about the sexual abuse, too: “Those years Prince Zuko was banished, her father kept her so close [ . . . ] She turned up all manner of strange injuries [ . . . ] and even disappeared for a week once. There were some as said he killed her. And those were the least of the rumors. [ . . . ] There was something…wrong there. [ . . . ] Everyone knew it. And no one did anything. [ . . . ] Not even me.”

When Iroh points out that Ozai was the Fire Lord and there was nothing that she could have done, Rai is not consoled: “‘And she was a piece of work,’ Rai finished bluntly, holding his gaze. ‘I know. She was also a child, with no one to treat her like one. I thought I might be someone to look out for her, even years too late’”—God, it’s so nice to hear someone point out that no matter how cruel Azula was, she was a kid and didn’t deserve what happened to her. It’s so good to see someone want to look out for her and help her. I’ve never thought that Rai could have been an inspiration for Tam, but she’s hitting the same points, even if she’s a very different person. I wish we had more of Rai in this, but I suspect her role in the story is done by the end of this chapter.

As their conversation winds down, Iroh reassures Rai that she did help Azula and pays her for the information. Rai urges him to help Azula, even if Azula pushes him away. “‘She really seems to hate you,’” Rai says, and I think that’s due to, A.) Ozai turning Azula against Iroh, B.) Iroh’s claim of killing the last dragon, C.) Iroh sending Azula gifts that catered more towards who Ursa wanted her to be, rather than who Azula wanted to be, and D.) Iroh choosing Zuko and telling Zuko to confront Azula and take her crown from her. Iroh says his goal is to help Azula, but he inwardly admits that he’s not sure how.

We shift back to Zuko, who is just arriving at Mai��s place. Mai’s uncle, the warden from the Boiling Rock, is there, and isn’t happy to see Zuko. He escorts Zuko in, and there is a brief exchange with Mai’s parents, during which her mother seems to imply that Mai’s uncle better not mess things up with the Fire Lord. Once the rest of the family is gone, Tsutomu quickly establishes that if it weren’t for Mai, he’d gut Zuko, because Mai has told him everything.

I’m not sure this was a wise call on Mai’s part—the more people who know a secret, the harder it is to keep—but I understand why she did it. She knows that her uncle is loyal to her. She knows that he doesn’t like Zuko. It would feel safe to go to him with this. That and he has contacts who could help her.

“Zuko was glad Mai had him to support her through this. But the warden would have done his utmost to poison her against him”—You did that yourself, Zuko.

“But then, a man who lays with his sister and tries to kill his father, what would you know about [family]?”—Woof, yeah, Zuko is a walking Greek tragedy. I’m curious about what Hu Xin did to be considered an equivalent.

“And I’m not sure that’s something I can allow in my niece’s life, regardless of her wishes.”—Fair, but you can’t support Mai if you’re executed for committing treason and regicide, Tsutomu.

Zuko asks if Mai’s parents know, but Tsutomu dismisses the idea: “‘They still think you fucked that waterbender.’” I am slightly amused by the confusion there, but not amused by the warden calling Katara a “nubile little savage” right afterwards. Gross and racist, Tsutomu.

“Zuko could only stare at him, sick with the realization that Mai’s parents suspected he cheated on her, even if they didn’t know with whom. And they still treated Zuko better than their daughter.”—More evidence that monarchies and patriarchies are terrible. The warden acknowledges that, saying that Mai’s parents expect this sort of thing from a noble husband, and that they think that Mai should suck it up and make sure her son’s and her family’s futures are secure, rather than let her hurt feelings get in the way. Which the warden thinks is bullshit, and as much as I don’t like him, I agree with him.

“‘Be the man that she deserves,’” he tells Zuko, and I’m like, “You tell him, Scary Warden.”

Zuko goes to find Mai, who is still wearing her crown. “She wouldn’t if she meant to desert him, would she?”—Dude, she earned that. I wouldn’t give it up without a fight either. Like, I don’t like monarchies, and I’d set up a council if someone gave me a crown…but like hell if I’m giving up that crown! It’s shiny!

Mai has been waiting for him to approach her to talk. I don’t know if I’m supposed to find the bed exchange amusing, but—Mai, come on. The bed needed to go. How could you sleep in it again knowing that Azula was raped and impregnated there? No, let it burn. Throw some oil on it while you’re at it. There’s bad juju in that mattress. I don’t think making Lu Ten in that bed erased the aura of squick. Though also, Zuko, you should have offered her a different bed. Come on, my dude.

“‘Really?’ Mai sprang like the jaws of a trap snapping closed. ‘So you were thinking of me the whole time you were with her?’”—Yikes!

Mai continues to press him on why he slept with Azula, with him getting “unaccountable angry that she wouldn’t just accept his explanation.” She doesn’t buy that the fight spun out of control, though that was a part of what happened. But that isn’t why it happened. Zuko reveals the ugly truth of it: “‘She made me so angry [ . . . ] I just lost control.’”—Meaning that Zuko didn’t have sex with Azula because he loved her. He did it to punish her.

Mai then asks why Azula would sleep with Zuko, and Zuko tries to explain that it’s because Ozai abused Azula. Mai isn’t convinced by this—maybe she thinks that this is some kind of Morgana plot on Azula’s part—and doesn’t believe that Ozai would admit to the abuse, either.

“‘He just let it slip, in a moment of anger!’” Zuko says, to which Mai responds, “‘Really? Because that sounds a lot more like you.’”—Yes. Yes, Mai, Zuko and Ozai are very similar people. Similar explosive angers, similar self-centered natures, similar disregard for Azula’s personhood. Yes, you got it in one, even if you don’t realize it yet.

“‘You’re a fool if you think it ever happened.’”—This is so ugly. Mai, don’t be this person. Don’t be the person who thinks that the rape victim is lying.

“‘Because I know Azula, I know how she thinks [ . . . ] She makes you feel sorry for her, you give her want she wants. You let her bend again when she starved herself, maybe you’ll give her a royal pardon when it turns out Daddy fu—’”—Mai, I don’t think you’ve ever understood Azula. Not really. Right now, you sound like all of the Azula-haters out there, who see Azula as a conniving snake, rather than a deeply troubled girl. And honestly, when did Azula ever act weak to try to get what she wanted? And why would she want this story to be spreading about her? It will make everyone look at her differently. At best, they’ll pity her; at worst, they’ll find a way to blame her for what happened, or say that it served her right, even though she was a child.

Zuko raises a hand to strike Mai at this point, almost adding wife-beater to his sin list, but Mai intercepts him and tries to kiss and come onto him. When Zuko pushes her away, Mai asks him why he didn’t push Azula away, too—which HE SHOULD HAVE. Which he had opportunities to do! But he didn’t and he doesn’t know why.

Mai has a theory, though: “‘It wasn’t just the fight. You wanted her. You lusted after her. Your own sister. [ . . . ] You act like you caught some disease that impaired your judgement. [ . . . ] But people don’t do what you did without feeling that way for a long time. And you never said a word to me.”—I think Mai is correct here, though this doesn’t touch on how his resentment towards and his desire to dominate Azula pushed him over the edge. I also want to sit her down and say, “He didn’t know, so he couldn’t have told you,” because I don’t think that Zuko knew on a conscious level what he felt for Azula, besides anger. Also, Mai, would him telling you have made it better, somehow?

“‘You would never talk about her! I had no one I could talk to about her—’”—Ty Lee is glaring at you from the other side of the planet, Zuko.

Mai accuses Zuko of raping Azula, which he denies, but Mai asserts what I’ve been saying for chapters now: “‘If she was crazy, how could she give consent?’”—Thank you, Mai! Thank you for calling him out on this!

Mai wants to play the blame game, either having Azula or Zuko be entirely at fault for what happened. It’s not that simple, though. The truest answer here is probably Ozai—he’s the one who messed both of his children up—but at the same time, Zuko was in full control of his actions, unlike Azula. So we can’t and shouldn’t absolve him of responsibility.

As Mai starts to cry, Zuko tries to hug her, but she pushes him away. “‘I want my husband [ . . . ] I want the man who would never do this! I want the man I trusted!’”—This reflects the pain that people feel when they find out that one of their loved ones has abused someone, except without the denial that usually comes with it. It feels impossible to reconcile the person you thought you knew and cared about with who they’ve been revealed to be. As much as I don’t like how Mai demonizes Azula, I understand and feel for her here.

Zuko asks if this means that she won’t come back, but she clarifies that she will, with some conditions. After all, there’s Lu Ten to think of. “‘He asks for you every day.’ A tear dripped from her chin, and watching this, Zuko needed a moment to realize she was talking about their son.’”—Dude, think more about your son! You barely seem to!

Mai’s conditions are reasonable: Talk to her before telling their son about what’s going on. Give her her own quarters. Don’t come into them unless she summons him. Keep her in the loop about the search for Azula. She’ll probably have more requests in the future, but this is a good start.

We switch over to Aang and Katara, who are visiting Bumi in Omashu. Bumi captured Azula at one point and she escaped, which is what the pair are here to discuss with him. We get the detail that there are now bounty hunters looking for Azula, and that the people of the Fire Nation aren’t thrilled with the search.

“[Aang] began to realize that he was not these people’s hero. He wondered if Azula might be.”—Honestly, Aang? Yeah, she is. Their princess is the youngest firebender master in centuries, she has blue fire (which could be seen as a sign of Agni’s blessing), and she conquered Ba Sing Se with only two comrades, after their most famous general failed to. Iroh and Zuko are also, technically, traitors to the Fire Nation, since they defected and helped overthrow the king. This isn’t even touching on the dismantling of the Fire Nation’s military, the trials against many of the Fire Nation’s nobles and generals, or the massive amounts of reparations that Zuko has given to the other countries. Are these things, in the broader sense, justified? Of course. The Fire Nation’s imperialist regime brought 100 years of suffering to the world, suffering that is still fresh for the other countries. But from the perspective of the people of the Fire Nation, this looks like a deep betrayal from their leaders. The fact that the economy is tanking and the crops aren’t good must look like further signs that Zuko is bringing disaster onto the realm. Of course the people would look up to Azula instead. She brought them glory. Zuko is forcing them to feel shame. It’s little wonder that they prefer her to him.

Moving on. Bumi is apparently 117 years old now. I know that Kyoshi lived to 230, but this is still wild to me. It’s also wild that Bumi became the king of Omashu, considering that he was a commoner and is still illiterate. Not that there’s anything wrong with either of those things—I think that compassion is a much more important quality in a leader, and Bumi has that in spades—but I’m surprised that the Earth Kingdom allowed it. I have to assume his prodigious earthbending was part of what elevated him. I bet there’s a whole story there, which we’ll sadly never see.

Katara is offended to learn that Bumi shared a meal with Azula, but Bumi reminds her that he shared a meal with them, too, when they were prisoners. “It’s the little things that count, you know, Aang [ . . . ] Never forget that.”—Bumi knows how important kindness is, and probably suspects how little of it Azula has been shown in her life.

Bumi doesn’t buy that Azula is crazy and dismisses the danger she poses if angered: “‘Oh, all Fire Nation people are like that’”—Which is too much of a generalization for my tastes. He thinks that Iroh might be an exception, but given that Iroh breathed out flames at the suggestion that Zuko put Azula into an abusive environment, I’m not convinced.

When Bumi compares Azula to her “prince” brother, Aang worries that he might be going senile, but Bumi gently corrects him. They then get back to business—Bumi reveals that Azula stowed away in a cargo caravan and was caught by inspectors when she fell asleep. Aang is surprised by this, but Bumi reminds him that Azula was sick during her stay in Omashu. Azula was with Bumi for two days—god, I would have loved to see that—before he let her go. Aang and Katara are shocked and ask why. Bumi confides that he’s worried that Azula’s capture and death will lead to war, since Zuko threatened as much.

Aang and Katara don’t believe Bumi at first, with Aang going so far as to say, “‘He wouldn’t endanger [the peace] for personal concerns.’”—I’m sorry, Aang, but have you met Zuko? Family is super important to him, even if that family is dysfunctional. Katara understands, since she’s the girl who went on a revenge quest to murder her mother’s killer, but only stopped when she realized that the killer wasn’t worth damaging her soul over. But if Sokka’s life was on the line, you better believe that she would start a war for him. Katara is just as ruled by her emotions as Zuko is, and just as inclined toward dramatic gestures. Aang’s own culture works against him somewhat here, since it emphasizes the communal over blood relations (which are functionally erased, though there must have been someone keeping records of who was related to who, to avoid accidental incest). It makes it difficult for him to grasp how deep a bond with a family member can go, even one who you have a bad relationship with. Zuko and Azula are parts of each other’s identity, difficult though that is for both of them to accept.

Bumi points out that the Earth Kingdom is part of why he didn’t turn Azula over to the Fire Nation or Aang—the Earth Kingdom is more of a collection of countries in a trench-coat, rather than a single, organized government. If Omashu defied the wishes of Ba Sing Se by turning Azula over to safety, rather than to them, the people of Omashu would pay the price. We also learn that since Bumi outed himself as a White Lotus member, he hasn’t had access to privileged information, like Azula’s trial in absentia.

Regardless of who catches Azula, though, the Earth Kingdom sees it as a win. Either they catch and kill her and restore their honor, or Zuko shelters her from them and they can start a war over it—a war which would help them seize Fire Nation resources and recover from the occupation. Zuko has, apparently, suspended reparations to them.

Bumi adds that a war with the Earth Kingdom would be extremely difficult to fight: “‘A continent this vast supplies almost unlimited troops, and plenty of places to hide private armies. And our chain of command is more convoluted than the 52nd Earth King’s family tree.’” The technological gap between the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom has also been closing since the war ended, and with the Fire Nation’s military gutted, it would be challenge for them to get an edge on the Earth Kingdom again. Overall, our heroes are in a bind, but there’s still time for them to find a way out of it. Until Azula is captured, that is—that will force the issue.

At this point, some letters arrive. The Gaang, thinking that Azula went to Kyoshi Island to recruit Ty Lee, are relieved that Ty Le “refused.” In truth, Ty Lee would have gone with Azula, but Azula told her no, because she understands the pain that she caused Ty Lee by forcing her to choose between her friends, and doesn’t want to do that again. Zuko tells them that he’s going to Kyoshi Island himself to ask questions, and that they shouldn’t waste the trip, which they accept…but Aang is starting to feel like he can’t trust Zuko, which troubles him.

We cut to Zuko as he arrives on the island. It turns out that Kaede actually bought that Azula and Ty Lee were fighting, and gave Ty Lee some light work to cheer her up. Zuko thinks that maybe Azula told Ty Lee everything and that’s why she’s not acting like herself. I wish that Azula had told Ty Lee, since it would be good for her to have someone in her corner who knows what happened from her perspective. But I understand why Azula didn’t say anything—it’s a memory that causes her shame, she’s used to keeping stuff like this a secret, Ty Lee might have let it slip to someone else, and it would have driven a wedge between Ty Lee and her other friends, something Azula is being careful not to do. But even so, I wish Azula had someone who knew and was supporting her in the aftermath, rather than her carrying it on her shoulders alone. But Azula isn’t used to accepting help from others, especially with things that are this sensitive.

When Ty Lee and Zuko meet, Ty Lee says that she didn’t think that Zuko would want to see her, and Zuko contradicts this with, “‘We’re friends, aren’t we?’” I don’t think that is true, given how Zuko thinks about her and how dismissive he’s been to her in the past. Zuko tries to apologize for that, but Ty Lee is more upset about how he’s treated Azula than with how he’s treated her. Zuko gets to the point: he wants information about Azula, such as why she was crying. Ty Lee refuses to give him that info because it’s personal to Azula, which tells us that Ty Lee wouldn’t have shared what happened to Azula if Azula had told her.

When Zuko says that he’s just trying to help Azula, Ty Lee calls bullshit. “‘You’re just trying to help yourself! She never would have ran if she thought there was any chance of you ever letting her out! But you never saw her; you wouldn’t even answer her letters! [ . . . ] Even I could tell you just dropped her there to forget about her—”—So true, Ty Lee. Especially the part about him never seeing her, which works on both a literal and figurative level.

“‘I never forgot!” Zuko insists, but this is actually more damning. It suggests that he kept Azula there so he would always know where she was and have control over her life.

“‘You never helped her, either [ . . . ] I know she didn’t always treat you right. I know, because she hurt me too. [ . . . ] But that’s not all she was. She’s not a monster. [ . . . ] She feels remorse, and she can repay kindness with kindness. She’s just—seen so little of that, I don’t know if she knows what it looks like anymore.��”—Clearly Ty Lee dumped most of her character creation points into Wisdom (and Dexterity). She might not be cunning, but she understands people, Azula included, much better than most of the other characters do. She has a lot of empathy, which I deeply appreciate.

Interrupting their conversation, though, June the bounty hunter storms into the clearing, with her shirsu paralyzing Ty Lee with a lash of its tongue. And that brings us to the end of another chapter! As always, thank you for the read, Aurelia!

Sincerely,

WiseAbsol

#Dominion by Aurelia le #Azula #avatar: the last airbender #Fanfiction #Review #WiseAbsol

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neuxue · 6 years ago

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Wheel of Time liveblogging: The Gathering Storm ch 48

It’s like reading a reaction-gif summary of the previous chapter except every gif is just pain and also made of words instead. With bonus prophecy.

Chapter 48: Reading the Commentary

Min sat in Cadsuane’s small room, waiting—with the others—to hear the result of Rand’s meeting with his father.

Yeah about that.

A low fire burned in the fireplace

And a much less low (bale)fire burned in Rand’s hands…

Mix that with Min’s discomfort around Rand lately

The fact that even Min feels ‘discomfort’ around Rand is uh. Telling.

Though perhaps, just maybe, he turned a corner of sorts in that last chapter. Via attempted patricide, but whatever works.

Then again, maybe that’s just wishful thinking on my part and he’s gone off to incinerate someone else instead.

But the pattern of the narrative points more towards the former, I think.

Min’s uncomfortable about Rand, and a very different sort of uncomfortable about Cadsuane—or perhaps ‘ambivalent’ is a better word. Cadsuane does not make for an easy ally, but she does have her talents, and their aims do align even if just about everything else about them differs.

So Cadsuane’s planning and Min’s reading commentaries on the Prophecies of the Dragon. This ought to be interesting.

One line in [the Commentary] teased at her, a sentence mostly ignored by those who had written commentary. He shall hold a blade of light in his hands, and the three shall be one.

OH OKAY PROPHECY INTERPRETATION TIME. HERE WE GO.

The blade of light seems like it has to be Callandor, especially given Rand’s own musings about it last chapter.

And the three shall be one…the first thing that comes to mind is the fact that Callandor can only safely be used in a circle of three. Which Rand currently sees as a box, as strings tied to him, as a trap…but flip that around and it’s an image of balance and unity and trust. So that’s definitely an option.

Or maybe it’s something else entirely; maybe the ‘blade of light’ is another reference to ‘he shall slay his people with the sword of peace’ and the three that shall be one are…maybe the three major groups of people? The Aiel, the Seanchan, and the ‘wetlands’? That feels like a bit of a reach; the three people in a circle to use Callandor safely seems more likely.

Though apparently various scholars fall more on the nations side of things and tend to think it’s about three major cities or kingdoms. In that case I’d side with my own choice of three rather than just three wetland nations, but either way if that’s given as the default opinion in the text it’s almost certainly wrong, so I guess we can throw that one out.

Min, no, you’re not useless.

And what of Min’s own relationship with Rand? She was still welcome in his presence; that hadn’t changed. But there was something wrong, something off. He put up walls when she was near—not to keep her out, but to keep the real him in. As if he was afraid of what the real him would do, or could do, to those he loved…

Rand, fix this. Min Farshaw deserves better.

But now he has been brought directly to that point of crisis, to looking down at his own father and weaving the balefire that would erase him from existence, and thinking, truthfully, that it is no more than I’ve done before. His own fear of that exact fate brought him to that point—so was he right to be afraid? Or is it the fear that made it into a near-reality, as he fought so hard to deny it or prevent it that he ended up in a war with himself that made it into not just a possibility but a near-inevitability?

It’s perceptive of Min, though, to recognise that he’s not keeping her out but trying to hold himself in. Even Rand can’t quite see it that way, because he is in effect locking himself into a box of his own making and calling it liberation.

And it would be so easy for Min to be hurt by it and think it was directed at her, think that he was indeed trying to wall her out; that’s a pretty common response from anyone who’s being kept at a distance by someone they care about. But Min is Min, by which I mean she’s fucking incredible, and so she sees past that and to the truth: that this isn’t about her; it’s a war of Rand against himself and she is a casualty, not a cause. And not just that, but she sees the reason why, and sees much closer to the truth of what it’s doing to him, and instead of being angry or offended she’s trying to find any way she can to help him.

Again, Rand, Min deserves better and you should thank her profusely when you uh…sort some of your shit out.

He’s in pain again, she thought, feeling him through the bond. Such anger. What was going on?

Do you really want to know?

Still, it’s more than the flat nothingness he’s felt when committing atrocities in the past. Because that’s what that last scene was: a shattering of the ice, and a point of collision of everything Rand’s tried to hold at bay, a collapse of all those walls and barriers and a flood of the feelings he’s tried to suppress. But hopefully it’s an implosion rather than an explosion; Rand’s been externalising his pain without really…acknowledging that he’s doing it for so long, when what he needs to do is actually deal with it and with everything else about himself he’s been trying to ignore or suppress.

She had to trust in Cadsuane’s plan. It was a good one.

The sad thing is that it really is a good plan. By which I mean it has—on paper—a good chance of succeeding at Cadsuane’s goal of getting Rand to re-learn laughter and tears (well, a better chance than just about anything else at this point), but it also is simply good for Rand himself. He needed to see Tam, and Tam is someone who can offer him the kind of help and support and love he so desperately needs but can’t ask for. And Tam, as his father, is going to see him as Rand, the boy he raised, rather than as the Dragon Reborn who owes salvation to the world. It’s a good plan because while there is of course a motive outside of simple concern for Rand’s wellbeing, it’s not a trick or a trap even if Rand sees it as such. It’s just…something good for him. Something he and Tam both want and need and should get to have.

And the fact that it fails precisely because it’s Cadsuane’s plan is sort of a cruel twist and yet at the same time a fitting case of catastrophic consequences.

Cadsuane and Rand get along like oil and water. Or perhaps like flint and steel, striking sparks when they interact simply because of who they are.

Cadsuane’s intentions are good—she wants to save the world and she has, at a few points, actually said out loud (and she cannot lie) that she is trying to do what is good for Rand, not for her or for the White Tower or anyone else. She’s trying, in the best way she knows how. And she’s right about so many things: that he needs to relearn laughter and tears, that he cannot face the Last Battle as he is now, that in many ways he still is just a boy and he’s lost and without direction or guidance, that like it or not he carries the task of saving the world, that he’s becoming too cold, that balefire is dangerous, that he needs to see his father.

Her aims are good, and even some of her reasoning for how to accomplish them is fairly solid. She tries putting Rand off-balance and making it clear that she is not going to be cowed by the simple fact of who he is…which again comes very close to being exactly what he needs. If she fears him he will not respect her, and if she doesn’t push him he will never listen to her.

But it falls apart when it comes to her specific methods. She means well, and her follow-through is almost what he needs…and then veers off in the opposite direction. It’s part of why I appreciate her so much as a character, I think, because that’s such a fascinating dynamic to watch. And it’s a fascinating way to show absolute failure: by anchoring it in very good reasoning and insight and perception and logic, and letting it come very close to something that will work, and then just…swerving away at the last second. It’s frustrating and agonising at times and yet feels so much more real than if she were just hopelessly misguided from the start.

Instead, it comes down to personality and communication and trust, as so many parts of this series do. It’s a conflict of personality and a misunderstanding of motive and a lack of communication; two strong personalities shouting at each other across a room and refusing to budge, rather than taking a step towards where the other stands and meeting somewhere in the middle.

So when she fails it doesn’t feel like the cheap failure of a plan that was stupid and doomed from the start, the way you often see in fiction. Instead, it feels like the frustrating failure of an intelligent, capable woman who tried her best and executed a plan that could have worked but that fell apart because of a chance word and a clash of personalities and a problem of methods.

Though I wonder.

Did she fail? I’m framing it as if she had, but in a way…she was right that Tam was, probably, exactly the person Rand needed most to see. The one person who might be able to get through to him, and force him out of the mindset he’s in one way or another. And…well, he sort of did, I think. Could anything else have brought Rand to that point? Would anyone else have survived that moment where he came closer to that last line, to repeating Lews Therin’s last deed? Would anyone else, watching Rand weave balefire in terror, have caused him to question, and at the last moment make a different choice?

It’s certainly not the precise outcome Cadsuane might have intended or expected or hoped for, but…was it really a failure?

And the other side of the question is: if this does work, and if the result of all of this is somehow Rand coming back to himself (or some version thereof), does it really matter who gets the credit? Would it be Cadsuane, for orchestrating this, or Tam, for being exactly who Rand needed and also just an all-around excellent father, or Rand himself, for holding back, or anyone else all the way along the chain of causality?

In the end, can any one person take credit for what ultimately has to be one man’s choice?

I guess we’ll just need to see what the actual aftermath of that last chapter looks like. After all, Rand made…I think…the right choice in that moment but what comes next? Does the collapse continue, and can he pull some of himself out of it intact? Or will he turn away again and drag those walls up again and set another city on fire? Personally I lean towards the former but we’ll see.

What were Rand and Tam discussing? Would Rand’s father be able to turn him?

That’s…still an open question at this point, I think. But it looks like maybe yes. Kind of. Perhaps. Just about. Indirectly. By way of balefire and internal crisis and memory of the worst moment of his last life. You know, as you do.

“Cadsuane,” Min said, holding up the book. “I think the interpretation of this phrase is wrong.”

Round of applause for Min! Imposter syndrome who?

Seriously, stating outright disagreement with the opinions of a well-respected scholar when you’re the equivalent of an undergrad is hard. Especially when your audience is Cadsuane.

Beldeine seems to take the standard view that Min is an undergrad and therefore has no idea what she’s talking about. Well, Beldeine, unfortunately for you Min is on the protagonist side of the narrative so she’s probably right.

Nobody could humiliate one more soundly than an Aes Sedai, for they did it without malice. Moiraine had explained it to Min once in simple terms.

That alone is astonishing: an Aes Sedai explaining anything in simple terms is practically unheard-of.

Aes Sedai would be very good at the icily professional business email of shame.

“And why,” Cadsuane said, “is it that you think you know more than a respected scholar of the prophecies?”

“Because,” Min said, bristling, “the theory doesn’t make sense. Rand only really holds one crown. There might have been a good argument here if he hadn’t given away Tear to Darlin. But the theory doesn’t hold any longer. I think the passage refers to some way he has to use Callandor.”

“I see,” Cadsuane said, turning yet another page in her own book. “That is a very unconventional interpretation.” Beldeine smiled thinly, turning back to her embroidery. “Of course,” Cadsuane added, “you are quite right.”

So while we’re on the topic of Cadsuane’s methods…

It’s a harsh challenge to Min, especially as it plays directly into what she must know are Min’s insecurities about her position as a young self-taught scholar. At the same time…actually, I think the main reason I don’t have any problem at all with this is because I’ve had professors like this. The ones who push you in precisely the places where you’re most uncertain because they want to see if you can create a strong argument against the exact challenges you’d get from the field as a whole. It’s a case of ‘this is what you’re going to face if you publish this, so you’d better be prepared for it and have a sound argument’.

Does Cadsuane have to say it the way she does? No. But in a way, this is her giving Min a fighting chance to prove herself. Cadsuane is old and competent and walks a line between highly confident and arrogant, but she does listen to young people and unconventional ideas when she genuinely thinks they have merit. It isn’t always easy, and she absolutely has her biases that prevent her from being fully open-minded, but she is capable of changing her mind. So she’s giving Min a chance here, because she believes in giving people what they deserve. She’s not going to dismiss Min on the same basis Beldeine did; she’s going to credit or dismiss Min based on how sound her ideas are.

Cadsuane’s methods often centre on challenging people, and pushing them in directions that make them uncomfortable, and yeah there are all kinds of problems with that and she sometimes comes down on the wrong side of it. But at other times there’s value in the way she does it. It’s just that, like anything else, taken to extreme or excess it’s a problem, and it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution, and she’s a flawed person like most people so sometimes she fucks up by letting her own confidence/arrogance carry her across the line from challenging and somewhat abrasive into unnecessarily harsh and somewhat abusive.

Anyway, Min seems to have acquitted herself well in this mini thesis defence here, but…it makes me wonder if it’s too simple a win to actually be correct.

“Through a great deal of searching I discovered that the sword could only be used properly in a circle of three. That is likely the ultimate meaning of the passage.”

As soon as a character says ‘that’s probably what it really means’, I begin to doubt. Especially because there’s sort of a rule of threes, here. We get the first explanation from the scholars’ interpretation, which is there to be proven wrong. Then you get the protagonists’ first interpretation, which is usually closer but ultimately also either wrong or incomplete. And then at some stage you get the third and ‘true’ explanation, in which everything comes together.

Sanderson holds to this particular rule of threes in his other work, so the pattern seems especially…likely, here.

So what else do we have three of? Past, present, future would be an interesting one. There’s the trio of Elayne, Min, and Aviendha but that doesn’t seem to fit here. There are far more than three people in Rand’s head at this point or else I’d have posited an outside guess at Rand, Lews Therin, and Moridin.

There are a lot of dualities in this series, but fewer trios than one might expect from epic fantasy. I blame the gender binary.

But seriously, there are so many opposing or balanced pairs—Light and Shadow, Creator and Dark One, saidin and saidar, salvation and destruction, White Tower and Black Tower, men and women, what hand shelters, what hand slays?, chaos and order, Rand and Lews Therin…it’s a series that deals with this idea of balance, and of what happens when one side of a balanced system is thrown off, and of how to find that balance between opposing or antagonistic forces without erasing one or the other. Which is fascinating and all, but right now I need sets of three.

I guess there’s technically the True Power along with saidin and saidar.

Okay actually that’s interesting. Rand has channelled the True Power, after all. And according to Lews Therin, his attempt last Age failed because ‘we used saidin, but we touched it to the Dark One. It was the only way! Something has to touch him, something to close the gap, but he was able to taint it.’

And Rand touching the True Power, while it certainly served to turn that scene into…*waves hands wildly in the direction of everything That Scene is*…that, seems like yet another of those things, like Callandor, that should have some further purpose. What good does dragging your character to that point of absolute horror do, if it can’t then be flipped around later into some kind of key?

Well, I mean, it causes great pain and suffering for the character and thus for the readers, which really is plenty of purpose in and of itself and I’m sure as hell not complaining, but. My point is. That right there is a loose end that, used correctly, could be part of a really satisfying twist or tying-off.

But then how does that relate to Callandor? Unless it’s just that he needs to be in a circle of three, and thus allowing flows of saidin and saidar to be controlled, and then he separately but alongside that channels the True Power as well? Hmm. When I try to put it all together it doesn’t fit as well as I thought it would. So either I’m wrong or I’m still missing something.

But it would fit with the rule of threes I was playing with earlier (first answer characters come to is wrong, second is closer but incomplete or slightly incorrect, third is a late realisation that brings it all together) in that it would allow Min and Casuane to be partially but not completely right: Rand needs to be in a circle but there’s more to it somehow.

Maybe.

Nynaeve is in the room as well, being Nynaeve. In case anyone was wondering.

And…what was that vision that was suddenly hovering above Nynaeve’s head? She was kneeling over someone’s corpse in a posture of grief.

Min was just thinking about Lan so that seems like the connection we’re supposed to make here, which of course makes me doubt it. I also am still holding on to my certainty that Lan is going to live (denial? What are you talking about?). And the fact that this is appearing suddenly, given that we know exactly what’s happening in another part of the palace, suggests that it’s related to something Rand has just done or decided, something that has tipped the future towards this outcome.

And that makes me think of Egwene’s own dreams, and Min’s other viewings, of Rand and corpses and funeral biers or pyres, and mourners. Which of course brings us back to that whole question of what happens to Rand? Thanks, Aelfinn, for your clear-as-mud answer on that topic.

At one point, when all the Forsaken were coming back in different bodies, I thought maybe Rand had a chance of something similar, especially as there are definitely some lines that seem to point in that direction…but so far that seems like the Dark One’s domain, so now I’m not so sure. Maybe to live, you must die really does just mean he has to die in order to be part of the cycle of rebirth again. Or maybe he could be reborn immediately, and given a chance to live in peace in the world he has bought with his sacrifice? Or, with Egwene’s dream of a funeral pyre, some sort of phoenix-like death-and-rebirth healing or renewal of body and soul? It would fit the Fisher King theme we’re working with: the land renewed and changed and maybe healed, and so the Dragon getting the same, through some kind of cleansing fire type thing. Rising from his own death, finally healed of the wounds he has carried and thus taking part in the renewal, but no longer recognisable as who he once was, because this will be a different Age and the man who had to play that role is effectively dead (at peace), allowing Rand al’Thor to have a life?

I don’t know. I predict metaphysical fuckery, and beyond that I give up.

“Cadsuane,” she said. “This is still wrong. There’s more here. Something we haven’t discovered.”

“About Callandor?” the woman asked.

Min nodded.

“I suspect so as well,” Cadsuane replied.

Well at least they agree with my little rule of threes.

Oh hi Tam.

“What have you done to him?” he demanded.

Cadsuane lowered her book. “I have done nothing to the boy, other than to encourage him toward civility. Something, it seems, other members of the family could learn as well.”

“Watch your tongue, Aes Sedai,” Tam snarled. “Have you seen him? The enitre room seemed to grow darker when he entered. And that face—I’ve seen more emotion in the eyes of a corpse! What has happened to my son?”

Oh, Tam.

He’s furious here, and it’s directed at Cadsuane, and perhaps rightly so…but I think there’s another layer to this, which is that he has just seen his son, who seems barely alive and is surrounded by darkness and Tam had to stand there and talk to him and still feel powerless to help. He’s grieving.

And it’s an excellent counterpoint to the Tam we saw last chapter, because it’s a way to almost watch the scene again through his eyes. We saw him filtered through Rand’s, and we saw him careful and gentle and offering anything he thought Rand might take. He pushed Rand a bit, towards the end, but even then he was absolutely the father trying to help his wounded child.

Here, though, we see Tam’s side of it. We get his impression of Rand, we get his shock at the darkness that surrounds him—a shock he absolutely could not let Rand see.

We see his pain now, when he tried so hard to hide it in that last scene for Rand’s sake.

Tam al’Thor is a good parent and this hurts.

And I also really like how the love that pushes Rand to this breaking point, to the point of repeating but then rejecting Lews Therin’s past, is the love between parent and child rather than, say, the love he feels for Min or Elayne or Aviendha. And it’s not even the second cliché of a mother’s love; it’s the bond between an adoptive father and his son. I mean sure, that comes up plenty in the genre as well, but it’s just nice that that’s the tipping point. It’s something a little different and it’s lovely.

Tam took a deep breath, and the anger seemed to suddenly flow out of him. He was still firm, his eyes displeased, but the rage was gone.

Tam was the one who taught Rand the trick of the flame and the void, after all. And he’s using it here because now he’s feeling more than he can deal with; it’s all too much all at once. But he knows, too, how to steady himself.

“He tried to kill me,” Tam said in a level voice. “My own son. Once he was as gentle and faithful a lad as a father could hope for. Tonight, he channelled the One Power and turned it against me.”

I am emotionally compromised.

And he’s not even angry at Rand for that, because it’s all so wrong, and so instead it’s just pain. Pain for Rand’s own pain, shock at what Rand has become, grief for the boy he was who—by his own words and Tam’s acceptance—may as well be dead now, and something almost like disbelief that they could have come to this. I think he even knows that it’s not really personal, but that doesn’t make it better. This is his son except he’s so lost and broken that Tam doesn’t know how to bring him back.

Because at this point Rand is the only one who can do that. If he chooses to.

The words brought back memories of Rand looming over her, trying to kill her.

But that hadn’t been him! It had been Semirhage. Hadn’t it? Oh, Rand, she thought, understanding the pain she’d felt through the bond. What have you done?

This is precisely the distinction I tried to make last chapter, but it gets harder and harder to hold those things separate, and now Min has to wrestle with that and face what Rand has just done of his own volition, and that’s twice now that he’s almost killed those he loves most, and the first time he was controlled by Semirhage, but what does it mean that he almost did the same now?

Does it help, Min, that he’s asking himself that exact same question? What am I DOING?

There’s so much pain in these chapters it’s overflowing the book and I’m FINE.

Of course Tam went immediately off-script. That feels like a genuine flaw in Cadsuane’s plan; she shouldn’t have given him a script at all. She should have known that wouldn’t help, that Tam and Rand needed to be able to just…talk.

“I don’t know what you did to him, woman, but I recognise hatred when I see it. You have a lot to explain to—”

On the one hand, Tam does certainly have cause to be angry with Cadsuane. On the other hand, Rand’s state of mind is not Cadsuane’s doing, any more than it’s any single person’s doing. It’s the result of two years of torment and responsibility and trying to endure the unendurable.

But then, can you fault Tam for being angry, and looking to any target he can find? This is his son, and what he’s just seen is horrific, and he has to do something.

In short, we’re all emotionally compromised.

Except Rand, who has simply compromised his emotions.

Cadsuane calling Tam ‘boy’ is…grating. Though she does have several centuries on him. Still.

“Cadsuane!” Nynaeve said. “You don’t need to—”

“It’s all right, Wisdom,” Tam said.

HE CALLS HER ‘WISDOM’. I mean, with a second or so to think about it, of course he does. But given all she’s struggled with, and her entire character arc of growing beyond Wisdom of Emond’s Field and finding her strength and authority in a world so much larger than her village, and learning to make her place and claim respect in her own right…it’s just really lovely for her to get this nod from Tam. To him, she is still Wisdom, and he accords her that respect without even a moment’s hesitation.

It’s like Rand said: Tam is one person who hasn’t changed. He’s a fixed point in a world where so much is uncertain and so much is shifting.

Tam stared [Cadsuane] in the eyes. “I’ve known men who, when challenged, always turn to their fists for answers. I’ve never liked Aes Sedai; I was happy to be rid of them when I returned to my farm. A bully is a bully, whether she uses the strength of her arm or other means.”

…fair enough.

And it’s good to see someone challenging Cadsuane on that point, especially someone like Tam who can sustain that challenge. He’s like Gareth Bryne that way: he’s damn near unflappable, and she can’t get a reaction out of him through her usual tactics. It’s the sort of thing a character like her needs to run into sometimes, because the thing with Cadsuane is that she’s been on top for so long, and in the Aes Sedai power structure that means no one challenges her. And so there’s no check on arrogance that can so easily creep in to what once was simply confidence, no pushback when she takes something too far. That’s not good for anyone.

“Didn’t we warn you that Rand had grown unstable?”

“Unstable?” Tam asked. “Nynaeve, that boy is right near insane. What has happened to him? I understand what battle can do to a man, but…”

Ow ow ow this hurts.

(I feel like the whole second half of this book, and especially the last several chapters, have been basically just…[not pictured: me, trying to walk quickly across hot sand sprinkled liberally with broken glass and burning coals, mostly failing and going ‘ow’ a lot]).

One thing that stands out here is how differently Tam responds to Rand’s…‘instability’…than so many other characters do, or would. Because once again, he responds entirely as a parent, above all else. He doesn’t shiver in fear of what this might mean for the world, or simply stop at stating that Rand hardly seems sane as if that’s all that needs to be said, or suggest a course of action. No, he just asks, calmly but with this undercurrent still of loss and something like desperation, what has happened. He hasn’t seen Rand in years and now he sees this, and he wants to know what has hurt his child.

It stands out especially given that Cadsuane’s next statement is to tell him that’s irrelevant. Because she is one who looks to the world first, and the person second. (And I’ve said this before, but her viewpoint absolutely has its place as well, but it’s that as well that’s important. You also need people like Tam or Nynaeve who look to the person first).

Tam knows what PTSD looks like and this is something else, and he’s angry, yes, but mostly I think everything about his response in this whole scene is just a manifestation of…shock and grief and confusion and pain at seeing his son hurt in a way that he doesn’t even know how to identify, much less help.

I am not a parent, so I could be completely off-base about all of this, but this seems like it has to be right up there with a parent’s worst nightmare: to see their child so hurt and so far gone and to be helpless to do anything at all to save them. I mean, Rand outright said that the Rand Tam knew, the Rand Tam raised, was dead. And Tam just had to stand there and take that, and again I’m not a parent but even I know that no parent should have to bury their child, much less stand there and watch him bury himself.

And that feels like the root of Tam’s responses here: his gentleness with Rand; his pushback when he thought he had just enough of Rand’s attention that maybe, maybe Rand would listen; his horror at watching Rand weave balefire because I think he was just as afraid for Rand as of him in that moment; his uncontrolled anger at Cadsuane when there’s no other way to release what he’s feeling; his shock and confusion now as he tries to figure out what has happened to his son.

This is not Tam al’Thor’s best day, is what I’m getting at here. He rescued an infant from the slopes of Dragonmount, only to find that some part of that child never truly left that mountain and everythign hurts and nothing is okay and I would like ten million more chapters of this please.

“If you’d explained to me how he regarded you,” Tam said, “it might have gone differently.”

He’s probably right, there. That’s one she really should have been more open about.

But she has a point, too: there’s no use going over the woulds and shoulds and maybes. And…I have to wonder if there was really any way for that conversation to end other than it did. If it hadn’t been the mention of Cadsuane, it could just as easily have been something else that set Rand off. A rage in him fit to burn the world, and he holds it by a hair. That’s more true now than it was even when Cadsuane first said it; he is unstable for all that he thinks he is cold and controlled, and he has almost no limits on what he is willing to do (except perhaps one), and that whole conversation was, in retrospect, a time bomb.

Because at this point, given how far he has gone, I don’t think anyone could truly just…call Rand back in a single conversation. I think it has to come from him; and I think with all the walls he’s built and all the damage he’s done to himself, with this war he’s been fighting against himself as much as on the field, a violent moment of crisis might really have been inevitable, and possibly the only way to force him to face that.

So passing blame around like a hot-potato is…an understandable part of the process, because they’re human (silly mortals), but ultimately probably not going to accomplish anything.

“This is what we all get,” Min said, “for assuming we can make him do what we want.”

The room fell still.

Okay so.

On the one hand, this is a great line, and to a certain extent I agree…

But. On the other hand, it feels a bit…I don’t know. Cheap? Simplistic? Not quite true? Because at least three of the people in this room are among those very very few who do actually look at Rand as a person, as the person he was, rather than as the Dragon Reborn, saviour and destroyer of the world. Nynaeve followed him out of Emond’s Field, with the others, and followed him into a dream battle and said ‘at least let me heal you’ because there was nothing else she could do. Min has stood by Rand through most of the series purely because she loves him, and when so many other people’s perceptions of him were changing, she told him ‘I see you, Rand. I see you.’ Tam al’Thor is Rand’s father, and hasn’t had a chance to do much for him directly, but he hiked to Tar Valon to try to find him, and then specifically stayed out of his way because he thought that was the best thing he could do for him.

These are not people who have been trying all along to manipulate Rand into doing what they wanted.

And even this…this is an intervention, more than anything else. When your friend, lover, son, former babysittee, whatever is willing to annihilate cities, I think it’s fair to step in.

What help would they be to him if they just stood by and watched his descent this entire time? What good would it do anyone—Rand included—for them to never push back when they thought he was going too far, to never question his decisions? It’s like I was just saying above regarding Cadsuane: it’s not good for anyone to live unquestioned and unchallenged, especially if they hold that kind of power, authority, or influence.

And when talking to someone stops working, when reasoning with them stops working, when begging them stops working, and when, again, they’re ready to annihilate entire cities…yeah, you’re going to have to look at other options.

But none of them started at that point, and they’re some of the few who really haven’t been manipulating him to their own ends in general, and so this feels a bit…unfair, I guess.

I love Min, but I’m not sure I completely agree with her here. It would be a very true and very fair statement if made in just about any other company, but to Nynaeve and Tam? Not sure I buy it.

That said, in light of everything happening, I think everyone’s entitled to a bit of unfairness and anger and shock and all the other emotions flying around because hell, I’m emotionally compromised and I’m just the reader.

“He opened one of those gateways right on the balcony. Left me alive, though I could have sworn—looking in his eyes—that he meant to kill me.”

It has to mean something that he stopped himself. That has to be the turning point we’ve been waiting for. It’s too perfect a mirror/inversion of The Last That Could Be Done for it not to be…right?

Also someone please just sit Tam down with a giant mug of hot chocolate. This genre is not easy on parents even when they survive the first chapter, as it turns out.

“I’ve seen that look in the eyes of men before, and one of the two of us always ended up bleeding on the floor.”

Wow, okay, uh, sure, that’s…a line. Damn. There’s a whole conversation to be had here about swords and ploughshares and men who have seen too much and yet find a peaceful life for themselves in the aftermath but I don’t have much more than an ‘in this essay I will…’ for that so I’ll leave it for now.

But I think, in that exchange, it’s Rand who is left bleeding.

That moment tore open the wound he’s been trying to stifle and ignore, the gaping wound in his past life that led him to his own suicide once and that he is now forced to remember but has never been able to process. How the hell do you even begin to process something you never did, except a past you did do it, and suddenly you get that just…dropped into your brain and it’s yours but not yours and is it any surprise Rand has ended up where he is?

It tore that wide open by forcing Rand to face it head-on (no more than I’ve done before) and face it as himself rather than as a memory of a past existence that he can try to shove away. And it tore down his walls and threw emotions like knives at the shields he’s been trying to hold up and even if he’s not bleeding physically, he is absolutely bleeding.

And so is Tam, if we’re talking metaphorically here. That conversation was not without casualties.

“Ebou Dar,” Min said, surprising them all. “He’s gone to destroy the Seanchan. Just as he told the Maidens he would.”

But that would mean closing down anything that might have come of that conversation and realisation, shoving it all away back behind those walls of ice, and I’m no more a therapist than I am a parent but I’m pretty sure genocide is not a recommended coping mechanism for…uh…anything.

“Light preserve us,” Corele whispered.

Rand’s been evoking that reaction a lot, lately. It’s become something of a repeated chapter ending the way ‘Tarmon Gai’don’ echoed throughout Knife of Dreams.

Next (TGS ch 49) Previous (TGS ch 47)

#someone give Tam a hug #Wheel of Time #neuxue liveblogs WoT #The Gathering Storm

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jasperlion · 6 years ago

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A study to big for a man(but an Emperor is no ordinary man) is now his own, within it it containing many a writings and secrets of the man he’d never know.

Who are you? He asks, knowing he’d get no reply. What were you thinking? Perhaps the letters would offer but a glimpse, and yet Alm felt the knowledge would never truly reach him.

Did you really want me to kill you? Did you relish the thought of your son committing patricide?

His thoughts grow and grow more into accusations laced with venom and hurt, and yet a part of him nags at him. It rings unfair, unfair for a man who could no longer speak for himself. Who could only have his friends speak for him. ‘A mercy’, said Mycen, firm and cold as the Rigelian winter. ‘I don’t know’, offered Massena with apologies and a sad sort of smile.

Hands card through the missives, orders and correspondence. Most is not his own writing, Alm knows, but writing given to him. And yet, with this, he hopes to grow closer still to the father he murdered.

Fingers waver at letters wrapped in a cord, all from Ram. His mind flashes back to the letters he’d see Mycen write until twilight and send out in secret. Letters he stopped sending at the same time that trouble began to brew in the north of Zofia, when Lima IV had first refused Rigel’s plea for food. Eyes rove over the creasing paper, remembering, only just, that he himself had decided to write to Mycen’s mysterious pen pal too. Thank him for writing to his lonely grandfather.

Hah. Haha.

How could he have known?! Why did Mycen let him?

Eyes blur from tears as he grits his teeth, hands gripping the crinkling paper harder and harder still as he struggles with every fiber of his being not to toss them away, to throw them in the hearth and be done with it. No, no, aside from creases of travel and the ones he had just done himself, the letters themselves seemed immaculate and well-kept.

... Aside from circular stains which he chose to ignore out of his own hurt.

He’s angry. He’s hurt. There’s so many emotions running through his body, and yet even as his hands shake from it he sets the bundle down, pushes it aside. He can’t open the lid of that box, not when he feels so...

... He’s not even sure how he feels.

Alm had never known his father, known Rudolf, and yet seeing the man before him upon the parapet had only drawn a longing, a familiarity. Even so, he pushed it away. He himself shoved it aside to do what he must do: what the Deliverance needed him to do, what Zofia demanded... and what his father had wanted. Perhaps this family was indeed full of monsters, monsters who could set aside something so important for the lust of battle. He was one of them, Alm was sure of that now. Giving in to his duty he had drained the life out of his own flesh and blood, and then once more with his cousin. The Royal Sword, wielded only by royalty, had all but ended Rigel’s line by the hands of its inheritor.

What a farce.

There’s so much blood on his hands, so many people he’s killed. This path lead to nothing but pain on all sides. The path he chose, the path Celica begged him not to take.

And yet, as emotions course through him like flame licking at oil, it is a tired exhale that leaves him as he lets himself fall upon the chair that his father once spent hours on, almost crumpling forth like a useless doll.

He had so many questions that would never be answered, both of his parents and of what life had been like. Of what destiny had stripped him from, of what his father’s plan entailed. Why. Why. WHy. WHY?

In finding his heritage he destroyed it with his own hands. In seeking to bring justice to a man responsible for a war he tore his own country apart. He is lauded as a hero, and yet he can’t help but feel empty, sitting himself on the place his Father meant for him, through the path his Father wanted for him... and yet he doesn’t know WHY.

He doesn’t even know himself. Who he thought he was was stripped from him as a simple question was answered for him, destroying all he was and all he stood for in one fell swoop. He’s not Alm from Ram, grandson of Mycen and leader of the Deliverance. He’s Rigel’s lost prince, he’s the killer of their Emperor, a boy that grew up on a farce, who thought himself a peasant when he was of royal blood, who was kicked by nobility when their heads would have been rolling in court for the same, who thought that in leading the Deliverance he could represent the common man... when he had been none of that. He thought himself not of noble blood, out to prove that anyone could make a difference, when he himself was destined to from the beginning. A sham to his own ideals, a pawn of his father’s making, a horrible cretin of a Rigelian who through war took both countries under his wing without knowing what he was doing.

The room was too big for a man, even if an emperor was more than that. And yet, it felt like the walls closed in, akin to his diminishing self worth as he stared blankly at a pile of well-loved cards.

Cheeks damp and tears rolling, he felt more the boy he was now than he ever had, lost and wearing shoes far too big for him — alone without the guidance of his Father and the gentle words of a Mother he didn’t even know the name of.

What a sad, sad look for a creature that ripped the Gods from this world. It couldn’t be more fitting.

#once upon a time | drabble #long post #:)#this isn’t where things end for us | postgame verse #[ me: i ever wrote out just why alm feels so bad abt the rudolf thing ]#[ also me: this doesnt even cover the questions he had for rudolf ]

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engelchenyugi · 6 years ago

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Someone to believe in

Rivalshipping is one of the ships I actually see working out in canon-verse which is more thanks to Takahashi and his illustration for them.

(It feels great that one of my head-canons turned out to be realistic enough for even the mangaka to consider as a possibility.（๑✧∀✧๑）)

I see them forming a business relationship. Kaiba who came back from the Ancient times and made his peace with Atem now has to keep his eyes open in order to find a new rival which is Yuugi. There are quite a few things about Kaiba's and Yuugi's relationship people often seem to overlook. It wasn't Atem who first saw through Kaiba's mask but Yuugi. Yuugi who always had been an outsider in his class must have been used watching people.

He learned to read them because he adapted to them. He never wanted to make people angry or have them think ill of him which of course lead to him being more or less ignored by his classmates. Yuugi has shyness issues in the manga and he can't really say what he thinks as he fears hurting other people or being misunderstood. The manga explains Yuugi's personality, his complexes and how he deals with the people around him perfectly. When the manga starts, Yuugi has been in his class for quite a while but to the reader it is described in a way as if Yuugi was new there. He explains the minor characters and seems to have a lot of knowledge about them although he never actively talked to them. This way of narrative is pretty interesting and unusual.

He is wishing for friends and wants people to see him which is interesting as it shows that Yuugi has spent a lot of time just observing the people around him which explains why Yuugi can tell if someone lies or tells the truth. He has the ability to look through other people's lies which became all the more clearer when Kaiba exchanges his Blue Eyes White Dragon card with a copy.

No, even before that, we see Yuugi look at Kaiba with some kind of concern. He knows that Kaiba is up to something and he is sweating. Kaiba is smiling. Kaiba is acting. He acts like a normal teenager and if we see the whole picture, Kaiba is loved by the masses and he has fans all around the world which is also explained by the shareholders of Kaiba Corporation who only choose Kaiba as the CEO because of his popularity and his reputation among gamers. Kaiba is known as a genius. More than that, he knows how to manipulate people and make them like him. Kaiba is faking a smile and acts like a likable and kind person – which he is absolutely not, as he is pretty devious, self-centered and so full of himself.

Yuugi was the first person who ever saw through his masquerade and Kaiba should have paid more attention to Yuugi and not only to Atem. This is something he will learn after DSOD. I'm pretty sure that Kaiba will accept Yuugi as his true rival (since he already did acknowledge his skills in the end of DSOD) and that they will get closer in a human level during their work on Spherium. I like to imagine how this change slowly comes to them and how Kaiba more and more understands how much he needs people around him, especially his brother and Yuugi. Although Kaiba would never say so, he does need people around him, because if he is all by himself he is rather destructive. He pays no attention to himself and easily gets absorbed in his job, fully forgetting everything around him because he can't deal with his own weaknesses.

And this is something I find very interesting. Yuugi has full right to hate Kaiba. To avoid him, but he chooses not to. Yuugi makes a decision which is surprising to the reader (mostly to Jounouchi) and to Kaiba. He calls Kaiba a friend, saying that they have the same passion and that they're alike. He visits Kaiba in the hospital, fully knowing that he is not going to wake up. This alone shows that Yuugi has forgiven him and that he is even worried about his well-being. The man who put his friends in danger and tried to kill them. The man who would captivate him and make him face his own weaknesses. It's so difficult to understand why Yuugi would forgive him after everything he's done. It’s easy to say that Yuugi is in general a kind boy, but it’s not like he can’t be angry or hate people. Even Yuugi can be quite unforgiving and hold grudges, but there must have been something he gained from his encounter with Kaiba – something he realized during Death-T he wouldn’t have been able without him.

Kaiba and Yuugi have some kind of special bond between them and both know that. Maybe Yuugi is grateful to Kaiba because only due to Death-T he was finally able to address his true feelings and the possibility that there might be someone else inside him that is taking control over his body once he loses consciousness. He needed an extreme situation to say what was bothering him. Without the severe situation they were in, he would have never had the guts to tell his friends his fears. It was the whole situation, facing deaths and not knowing what's happening next, that made him despaired enough to address this matter – which was a good thing and helped him to overcome his fear and realize that his friends would always be there for him, even if he had another person inside him.

Yuugi calls Kaiba a friend. He offers him help. Both manga and anime. He never shows negative feelings towards the man who put him into hell and even laughed at his misery. There is a lot of respect between them, especially coming from Yuugi’s side who would address him with “Kaiba-kun” while Kaiba would just call him by his forename. Yuugi has a lot of respect for Kaiba and seems to admire him in a way. Yuugi, just like Atem, considers Kaiba a noble duelist. And this way of thinking, the way he sees Kaiba, is to me really exciting to explore.

Kaiba must have realized that, too. Kaiba knows what a kind person Yuugi is and that it makes no difference for their awkward relationship whether he pushes him away, because Yuugi keeps coming back. Yuugi does not give him up and that is something Kaiba needs. Kaiba needs a person who is willing and able to stand up against him and does not mind being rejected. Kaiba rejects Yuugi so many times and shows him that he does not believe in his friendship-is-magic bullshit that one should think Yuugi would finally give up on him. But the more often Kaiba rejects him, the more likely for Yuugi to come back.

And that's why I like their relationship. Kaiba is an asshole and Yuugi still chooses to be nice to him and call him a friend. This whole relationship is messed up and the older they get, the more Kaiba will understand how important Yuugi is for him.

Personally, I really have problems imagining Kaiba in a lovey-dovey relationship because he is does not like showing his weak sides since he is afraid people might take advantage of him. Due to his past with Gozaburo he was taught to suppress his own emotions and strive for success. As the mangaka said, Gozaburo truly thought that this was the best and he actually considered himself a good father which is why he never realized the slowly growing madness inside his son. Furthermore, Kaiba truly regrets having killed his father. He considers himself a patricide and this burdens him. Even stated by the author of the manga:

“To Kaiba, he was a father, but he just wasn't a "typical" father. When he carried out his administration shift, Seto didn't think that Gozaburo would die. Now without a foe due to Gozaburo taking his own life, he slowly started to lose his sanity. He himself felt guilty of committing "patricide." Being an important keyword in this series, the word "patricide" always haunts him. You could say Gozaburo implanted the design that "games equal death" into Seto.”

Kaiba has emotions. Kaiba is easily manipulated. Kaiba is a human-being and it's not like he never regrets anything. There are plenty of things that haunt him. He is obsessed with crushing the past and find a way to the future, because he himself can't go on. He can't do that. He can't forget his past and is chained down by his memories. He needs to repeat these words so often not to convince Yuugi-tachi but himself. Fighting against his own emotions, his past and bounds to other people gives him strength and he seems to believe that this is the only way to reach the future. Abandoning anything around you is the only way to focus.The only way to create a path to the future is to destroy everything. Kaiba tends to think in extremes. All or nothing. Black or white. There is no middle way and he is not willing to accept any other people who oppose his way of thinking.

I'd like to quote something that Takahashi said about Yuugi's and Kaiba's relationship:

“[...]Seto searched for the meaning in fighting said to take down your opponent down in a game on your own. Fighting, and, for example, what's known as war, is a battle between two nations, while Seto considers fighting a personal war to the bitter end. That's why I think Yuugi's character is so significant. Seto, without Yuugi as his rival and without an enemy that he must topple, would not be able to exist.“

Kaiba can't exist without Yuugi, because he would choose the path of destruction and lose himself. Although the mangaka is talking about Yami no Yuugi, rather Atem, it’s something that I see as a general character trait of Kaiba. Kaiba needs someone who gives him a reason to keep fighting, someone to believe in. As shown in DSOD, Kaiba can't deal loss. He absolutely can't. He would never openly admit it or say it out loud, there is a special connection between him and Atem. (I know that the dub destroyed this moment and made him say something he wouldn't say, but I just ignore the bullshit America once again came up for Yuugiou and instead pay more attention to the original version.)

Kaiba does not need to say what he thinks, because it's obvious. His expression shows how he truly feels and that this rivalry-thingy he has going on with Atem is much more than that, equaling the love to an important brother you need to have by your side to realize your own mistakes and show you the way. Atem is Kaiba’s mentor. Kaiba is focused so much on Atem that he can’t see the world around him anymore. That’s just what he is and even in the future, Kaiba will need someone who gives him a reason to be alive. Someone who motivates him to grow and improve and the only one fitting for that role is Yuugi. Yuugi is the only only capable of handling him and has proven that he is worthy to be his next rival.

The movie makes sure to show that Kaibas has a place to return to and that meeting Atem is not the last or the ending of his journey but only a stepping stone to a brighter future where his past stops haunting him.

And later on, it's Yuugi who will fill this role, even going far beyond that. Working together, sharing their passion for games and being able to live their dreams and make anything happen they desire will help Kaiba to regain his humanity. Of course, he will never go head over heels for Yuugi and tell him how much he loves him, because his actions and his looks are enough to ensure Yuugi that Kaiba absolutely treasures him.

#Rivalshipping #Seto Kaiba #Yuugi Mutou #YGO DM #YuGiOh! Duel Monsters #YGO Musings #Kaiba x Yuugi

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