#forest talks too much

[fei-rest]

Short Analyses of Every Life Series Finale: How Each Finale Is Connected to Respective Season Themes/Gimmicks

Analysed through the lense of Watcher lore/Martyn’s EaE AU (Real Life not included because it’s an April Fools special but Cleo’s win still counts)

Very general analysis, I just noticed some kind of connections/coincidences and wanted to write them down.

3rd Life 🏜️

The first season. Intended to hopefully be a fun, collaborative game, but turned into an epic drama filled with both tragedy and comedy (as the Watchers meant it to be, a death game). Grian’s final duel with Scar sets the tone for the entire series and the seasons to come, being that while this series is comedic in elements, but it’s ultimately a tragedy from all perspectives.

Last Life ⚔️

A season centred around deception and the breaking of alliances from paranoia and betrayal. Scott rejects the Boogeyman curse and the honourable PvP duel at the end is a great antithesis to this season’s entire tone and theme, suggesting that hope and honour can still be held onto even with all this uncertainty and betrayal. (Crudely speaking: Last Life finale is a big fuck you to the Watchers)

Double Life 💔

A season centred around relationships and bonds. Pearl is isolated and rejected by not just her soul bound, but the entire server. At the end, forgiveness is achieved with sacrifice, an action that could be considered the ultimate act of love within a death game, reinforcing the theme of bonds, love and honour in the face of suffering.

Limited Life ⏳

A season centred around the desperation for time. The clock is constantly ticking. When every player will die anyway, it’s just a matter of who dies last. Martyn’s final betrayal emphasises the ambition to win and desperation for time in this season. He tells us that honour actually means little in the Life Series and it is still every player for themselves, thus breaking the “return to honour” pattern established previously.

Secret Life 📜

A season centred around secrets and keeping secrets can have dire consequences. Scar was made a villain by the secrets and subsequently isolated from the server. In the end, he embraces this villain persona and claims victory with no secret to keep, as the final task was “Win Secret Life”. One that is truly alone has no secrets to keep from others, as who is there left to care about their secrets?

Wild Life 🎲

A season centred around unpredictability, with many patterns established in the previous seasons broken. In a season where player agency centred around the wildcard gimmick, the final fight gave the final players back that choice to take charge of their journey and fight for victory. Joel, the wildest player of the cast, seizes his victory with confidence. Having held in his typical wild and chaotic self for the entire season, he embraces whatever fun that the death games have at the end. His win tells us that the players are starting to truly have fun with the situation they are in and are now playing for themselves, and no longer for the prying eyes of the Watchers, no longer obeying patterns inflicted onto them.

[fei-rest]

Brief analysis time because I really like this piece of EaE lore:

I always come back to this piece of EaE lore when trying to do my own lore interpretations and analysis, as it helps me balance between the melodrama/tragedy of the life series and the comedy side of it (I like the goofier side a lot, as much as I do the dramatic side)

This piece of lore is I think very clear to see and relevant with Wild Life, the newest season, as it’s arguably the first season where every lifer was laughing and having fun and there was not as much drama as the previous seasons. As well as the fact most of the established fanon patterns and in game coincidences across seasons were broken (ie: Canary Curse, Scott’s Ally Blessing, Joel going red early game, Scott in single digit placements, Celestial Symbol stuff because the bloody car).

And this is the season where c!Grian was arguably the most Watcher like ever in a Life Series season.

(My guy even had to say to everyone in session 7, while laughing, as they were goofing around with the superpowers wildcard, “Let’s not forget this is a PvP series! Stop having fun!”, which could be seen as still trying to appease the actual evil Watchers???)

(Once again, some silly Watsonian style lore interpretations from me, the Doylist side of all this is that I was really happy to see and hear that all the CCs had a lot of fun with making and recording Wild Life and the Life Series in general, it’s really nice to see)

as my final thought before i go to bed and then disappear off tumblr for the whole day tomorrow in order to avoid limited life spoilers, i leave you with something about watcher grian in the traffic series.

specifically, this ask from martyn regarding watchers feeding on negative energy.

i'm not focusing on the feeding aspect so much as i am about how martyn says "[grian's] chaotic / mischievous nature actually takes the edge off for a lot of players. Helping them revel in the twists and turns, adopting a more 'the games the game' mindset actually sours the soup so to speak." this is in reference to the watchers feeding on negative energy, and implying that grian disrupts that by trying to make people have fun.

and somehow. THIS HAS JUST BEEN SITTING IN MY MIND FOR DAYS. it's the way that grian isn't, at least at this point, able to break them out of the games, but he is able to cause the watchers annoyance and disrupt their plans. it also dovetails very nicely between the rp "this is a death game loop everyone is trapped in" and the irl "this is a game the creators choose to participate in."

it's a death game but grian's there, smile on his face and pain behind his eyes, trying to coax everyone into having as much of a good time as they can instead.

we also tend to view a lot of grian's more....violent and chaotic incidents in the traffic series as a flaw or negative trait when we do more serious-readings of the series. but this concept, and martyn's wording of "helping [the players] revel in the twists and turns of the game" really imply otherwise. sure, grian kills gleefully and takes a lot of joy in causing trouble, but he is far from the only one. if everyone is encouraged to have fun making traps and scheming, giving in to some of these worse desires--and they are and they do--then they're actively going against the watcher's expected outcomes. they all die in the end, either way. if they can take some fun from dropping tnt minecarts on each other, then at least they died AND pissed off the watchers right?

idk idk it's the tiny bit of control over a hopeless situation that's getting me with this. martyn notes that grian is consistently been an annoyance to the watchers and they haven't been able to stop him, but grian is also clearly unable to stop the death games. (of course the meta reason is the CCs like making them, but from an rp standpoint he would gave ended it by now if it were an easy task.) it's like a stand-off. he can keep causing them problems. they can keep the games going. he can't break everyone out of the games, but he can ensure the games don't go the way they want them to. the players in the games don't have much control over their situation, but if they can find some fun in not taking it so seriously, then that's just a tiny bit more control that they have.

so it's just....a watcher!grian doing the best he can in a bad situation. finding a bright spot in it and trying to make others enjoy it too. and thus the traffic series is goofy and silly, filled with laughter that covers and undercurrent of despair.

grian and scar laughed while they fought in the cactus ring in 3rd life, remember?

[loony-moonsims]

Only she is allowed to look him in the eyes

[rebouks]

Previous // Next

Ivan: If y'don't get that thing outta my face I'mma smash the fuck outta yours. Oscar: C'monnn you haven't eaten all day. Ivan: I ain't fuckin' hungry!

[icarusredwings]

Me: Do you think Daredevil ever just looks at his emails when patrol is slow and the other lawyers are just like 'why is he always awnsering at 3 am?'

My friend: ...Looks?

Me, disappointed and ahsamed of myself:

FUCK

[fei-rest]

To add to this: Life series being a cosmic horror tragicomedy is my main viewpoint of it. Every character tries to operate within the games and make the best of their situations even though their efforts matter little against the grand idea of the death game, which is to win or to try and be the last person standing. If we include Watcher lore in this, then it’s the players vs the fact their fates and lives are ultimately entertainment for a bunch of cosmic beings. This inherent conflict between “I want to try and make the game more fun for me despite its endpoint” and “We’re going to have to kill each other anyway” contributes to conflicts between the characters/players themselves.

TLDR: (Sorry if it’s a bit nihilistic) The characters are mostly aware that their efforts with alliances and relationships doesn’t matter too much against the concept of a death game, but that doesn’t stop everyone from trying.

If you are trying to analyze the life series characters, can you please remember one (1) little detail...

IT'S A DEATH GAME.

In canon. In universe. Everyone knows that it will have to end in bloodbath!!!! Especially after the 1st season, but even in the first season, SURVIVAL was a thing from the beginning.

You can't talk about character's reasons, plans, and morals without applying this lens, it's just ridiculous.

[ki1ldeer]

Strangely colored Liam because it’s my BIRTHDAY

[wannabemasterofwindintraining]

So like we all know that ninjago pulls inspiration from other Asian cultures not just Japanese culture right?

Well does this apply to only ninjago? (Like the realm not the show)

We don't really see much of the other realms but are they also solely based on asian cultures or are they free to pull from any culture

[tenaciouslyobsessed]

How I feel rn

[fei-rest]

Life series thoughts: If Lizzie wins a Life Series season, I really want to animate her to Warrior by AURORA. I just think it fits her vibes wise and I’m thinking

[starfallforest]

Can we talk about the duality of Xavier and his light evol. Can we talk about how his evol can be gentle and soft, like imitating fireflies in the night, or sharp and penetrating a la his sword imagery, his shattering windows in trains, etc.

Can we talk about how that parallels Xavier as a “switch-up” persona, where he can be unassuming and kind one minute and dark and dangerous the next. Can we talk about how you can’t have light without shadow. Can we talk abo

[snekthedemonnoodle]

hey guys

guys

ima tell u a secret

josh isnt real

[museofthepyre]

your art really fits your appearance... are you the real life sydney sargent? i'd be freaking out if you were sydney sargent ahh

Well, yes.

I could explain my multi-year spanning selfhood/ ID situation in depth… buuuut we would be here for hours. Short answer for all intents and purposes is: yes.

[quixot1sm]

i think, and this may just be my zekrom bias speaking, that if someone wants to experience the full value of bw's story it's better to play through white first. black has the issue of coming off as very dismissive towards plasma's legitimate and well-founded claims that pokemon abuse DOES occur (and it does! from the kanto games' marowak to bw2's liepard there's instances where it's put in the spotlight, so it certainly does happen)... by assigning the protagonist to truth, it feels pretty evident that n's beliefs are "wrong", and the game just seems to brush any questioning aside.

on the other hand, white giving n the hero of truth role means we're basically forced to think about what that means for the relationship of people and pokemon at large. to translate a point n makes in chargestone cave: if you allow people to coexist with pokemon, even if the majority of trainers treat them well, there will always be someone somewhere out there who abuses or neglects them instead. are we okay with that? should those pokemon still be allowed to suffer, just because what they experience is an outlier to the general rule? while not outright stated, zekrom's association with hope and the strive for the ideal suggests that we don't brush off these facts, but instead take them into consideration, and aim to change the world based off of them... like how in bw2 society in unova puts a lot more emphasis on the bond between people and pokemon, and on pokemon as equals (see: iris's dialogue before entering your team info the hall of fame).

i think black version has its own unique avenues to explore, but on the surface level, it's a much more cut and dry, "no, you're just wrong", type of story that kind of makes you work harder to fit it into bw's overall theming of "the world's not black and white, there's not a singular objective right or wrong perspective."

[pulchrasilva]

I am clearly much more insane about ursula le guin than either I or anyone else bargained for

[crescenthistory]

hey, love. this might be overstepping (and if so, i'm sorry), but i have recently just lost my friend. i don't know anyone who has experienced close loss like this and i'm not sure where to turn to with advice, but i remember you being quite open about grief. could you share any advice? only if you're comfortable ♥️

tw: grief, death

hi there lovie<33 first of, i am terribly sorry to hear about your loss. death and grief is never easy, especially the first time around 🤍

thank you for being so respectful, i can absolutely give you any advice you need. though, there really is no proper way to advise on loss in my opinion -- it's so different for everyone and just shit no matter what you do. however, if you have anything specific you want advice on, feel free to ask specific questions (don't worry about overstepping, if it breaches any boundaries i will take it in stride<3) either here or over dm.

my main problem with grief has always been guilt. i always feel guilty for grieving too much, too little or in the "wrong" way. my best solution for this in my own experiences has been to imagine my dead loved one grieving me in the way i am currently grieving them. in 10 out of 10 cases, i would not fault them for grieving the way they are, and considering that i usually think of them as better people than me anyway, i can then know in my heart that they would be okay with however i am grieving.

another thing is of course reaching out and/or accepting help. do it. it's so hard, but do it. it always makes it easier, even if it's really awful in the moment. the worst thing that can happen if you reach out is that they say no, and most of the times, that's a survivable offense. and help can be so many different things, and there's always some help to find, if you're brave enough to look.

considering this is your first loss, it's going to be hard. in my case, it never really went away either, but i've managed over time to consider it a "good" thing. with every new loss, i am grieving everyone all over again. my best friend, my uncle, my grandmother, my cousin, etc. but it is such a blessing that i get to think about them as often as i do, it's the next best thing to having them here. while you're probably not in the space to think that far ahead now, just know that it will be okay🤍

sending you big big hugs 🫂🫂 soldier on