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jd104 · 10 months ago

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Sibling Relationships in "Walking on a Star Unknown"

Like Segawa's other games, "Walking on a Star Unknown" is heavy on themes of trauma. Despite the relatively light tone of the game, the natives of Calpucca still haven't forgotten the Starling War, and spirits still linger in Yunerium and Fort Baobab, unable to move on due to their hate, fear, and anger. Some Calpuccans are still wary of aliens, like the king himself, Giera Toph.

Some traumas, however, are present on a smaller — yet no less significant — scale, such as the death of a parent. (Now that I think about it, where are all the parents in this game??) In this meta, I will examine the parallels between three sibling relationships, the way Segawa integrates trauma into them as a theme, and how the relationships present by the end of the game.

Spoilers ahead!

Eddie and Fukuro

First up, our main characters. Right off the bat, we can see that the two of them have a very healthy relationship: They address each other with terms of affection, complement each other's abilities and weaknesses, and have each other's backs no matter what. They're nearly inseparable throughout the main game, and in the bonus room, if you ask Eddie as Twelam whether he's lonely without Fukuro, he readily admits that, "to be honest," he is. The two even sleep and bathe together, which Twelam is shocked by.

The Owul siblings rarely get mad at each other, except for when Eddie apparently takes food from Fukuro. Overall, they exhibit secure attachment to their late mother (in whose memory they're travelling the cosmos) and each other. Attachment styles describe patterns of how a person interacts with their relationships, beginning in childhood and extending into adulthood; as adults, individuals with secure attachment:

Have trusting, lasting relationships

Tend to have good self-esteem

Share feelings with partners and friends

Seek out social support

(VeryWellMind)

Given the sheer amount of friends they make on Calpucca, their trust in one another, and their deep love for their mother, we can see that Eddie and Fukuro fulfil points 1 and 4. They rarely ever show self-doubt or low self-esteem and are always up for the challenge, demonstrating point 2. And the Owul siblings pretty freely express themselves to others even with Fukuro's naturally reserved nature, demonstrating point 3. The Owul siblings are a really healthy pair of siblings, which has undoubtedly helped them prop each other up after the loss of their mother. Thanks to the immense love and care they grew up with, they are happy, healthy kids who protect each other from harm and difficulty. Even when things happen to them that are frightful or disturbing (such as the hallucinations in Yunerium or Nuage), they don't appear to remain fazed after the event. One can only imagine the methods they have of cheering each other up if the other ever feels scared or down.

Rius and Toph

By contrast, Rius and Toph, the royals of Calpucca, have a somewhat tense relationship at the beginning of the game. Part of this may be the much larger age gap between them — Rius is 27 while Toph is 13, so there's nearly a generation between them — but as we learn with each passing day, the real issue is Toph's distrust of aliens. Rius, of course, is married to one.

Rius and Toph's relationship is, in my opinion, particularly fascinating due to the role trauma plays in it. Pretty much all of the hurt lands in Toph's court, which we'll discuss later on — but also, intergenerational trauma plays a big role in why they can't see eye to eye. Rius, an independent-minded, optimistic woman who self-admittedly lives for love, forfeits her royal privileges when she marries the alien Daios after he wins the Gourmate Cooking Tournament; in her opinion, it's high time they adopt a more progressive outlook, in part because she wants Toph to accept her and Daios for who they are. Toph, on the other hand, would have been taught as the future ruler of Calpucca what aliens had done to his people and his planet during the invasion of Megalopolis, and from what I understand, xenophobia has been a recurring theme with Calpucca's rulers, not just with Toph. With this history lesson firmly established, Rius eloping with Daios must have been a confirmation of the things he had learnt. "Aliens are dangerous. One has even stolen my sister!"

At the time Rius left, Toph would have also been eight — a tender age to be abandoned by an older sibling, one he obviously looks up to. As children, we are often ill-equipped to process everything we're feeling, and we see that in Toph, too. We see that he does feel abandoned, because he keeps muttering to himself that he wishes Rius would come back to live at the castle. He asks — borderline demands — this of her whenever they meet, and she draws a firm boundary every time: "I love you, but I can't lie to you or myself about what I want." Just like how his understanding of the past prevents Toph from showing goodwill towards aliens, Toph's desire for how things were before Rius left prevents him from seeing the potential of reconnecting with her in the present. It's not until the Owul siblings lend a hand that the situation is able to change, and Toph himself remarks on the nature of the Owuls' relationship several times, unable to help being reminded of his sister.

Happily, the two are able to reconcile by the end of the game due to a family crisis (and some cats) pulling them together, and we see the surest sign of progress between them in the Bonus Room: Rius and Daios have a daughter, the result of love between a royal and an alien, and "Unca Toph" is just as concerned for her well-being and future as he would be his sister's.

Guntram and Twelam

Where Fukuro and Eddie are close siblings, and Rius and Toph would be close if not for Toph's stubbornness and unwillingness to change, Guntram and Twelam are completely dysfunctional and probably always will be. These two are my favourite, as will soon become apparent, but just so you know, I have a personal hypothesis that Segawa designed these two to be foils to the Owul siblings. After all:

Both sibling pairs have incredibly similar designs to each other. (Rius and Toph too, but the resemblance is lessened by the age difference.)

Both sibling pairs are four years apart (Eddie and Fukuro: 17 and 13; Guntram and Twelam: 32 and 28).

Both have an older brother and a younger sister.

Eddie and Fukuro's main colour is red, while Guntram and Twelam's is green (complementary colours).

Both sibling pairs have recently lost a parent (the Owuls their mother, the Hamelins their father).

Eddie and Fukuro have a stable, securely attached sibling relationship, while Guntram and Twelam... don't.

Despite their many similarities (music as a career, love of children, taste in style/fashion, the same tendency to get lost in thought, deep loneliness), there's no sense of warmth or intimacy between the Hamelins at all. Where Eddie and Fukuro are inseparable, you meet the two of them conducting their own independent investigations on Day 2 in Sirene — they even view each other as competition! Though they live in the same house, they rarely occupy the same room, and they don't intersect much in their professional careers. Eddie's and Fukuro's differences make up for where the other is weak or not as skilled; Guntram and Twelam's differences are sources of tension, with Guntram thinking Twelam is too wild and impulsive and Twelam thinking Guntram is stuffy, timid, and gloomy. To really hammer it in, they live in the always-cold northern town of Eluta, where their parents' legacy haunts them.

And yet — one gets the sense that they do care about each other, if they can't exactly show it. Guntram nags Twelam, trying to look after her in his own way. When she has complaints about Guntram, Twelam will air them, but she's not so straightforward when she's concerned for him: "Oshino misses him," she'll say. Or she'll lash out in anger, threatening to burn down everything he cares for so that he can move on.

Because there is something for the two of them to move on from, an intergenerational trauma on a smaller scale than Toph and the Starling War: their relationship with, and the death of, their parents. After his wife's death, Guntram's father became punishing to the point that Guntram abandoned his own interests and dreams out of deference; he loves, fears, and respects his father, as even at 32 he's struggling to find a direction in life he can call his own. The siblings' mother died shortly after Twelam was born, meanwhile; she grew up emotionally neglected, with her brother being the main focus of their father's tutelage and no memory of the same warmth and kindness her brother remembers of Meryl. The two are not close because they were never taught to be; Guntram was pushed and pushed to become the best musician he could, while Twelam took off in her own direction and was praised for her assertiveness.

As you get closer to the Hamelin siblings, their arcs involve little of each other at all: Instead, Guntram realises his dream of putting on a children's concert, while Twelam is finally able to grasp the piece in her family history she always felt was missing (just like the music box was missing its key). Twelam is envious of the Owuls' closeness, while Guntram thinks far more about his father than his younger sister. There's potential for the Hamelin siblings to reconnect, but they don't by the end of their stories like Rius and Toph. Probably they'll have to really work at it to get anywhere, but the game doesn't give us, the audience, that guarantee. Their problems are larger than Fukuro or Eddie are capable of mending: They're so independent of one another that it's up to them to approach the beast on their own.

Conclusion

There are three main sibling relationships present in "Walking on a Star Unknown": the Owul siblings (Fukuro and Eddie), the royals (Rius and Toph), and the Hamelins (Guntram and Twelam). Of the three, Eddie and Fukuro are the closest and the most secure, able to work in tandem to address challenges and overcome obstacles. Rius and Toph are divided by their differing perspectives on aliens, largely based on Toph's personal feelings of abandonment and distrust in the aftermath of the Starling War, but Fukuro and Eddie are the final straw in his acceptance of them (and Rius's marriage to Daios). Finally, Guntram and Twelam have the most dysfunctional sibling relationship in the game, something that stems from the vastly different treatment they received from their father: Guntram was overly controlled, while Twelam was left to follow her whims.

While all three sibling pairs have experienced sadness and hardship, Eddie and Fukuro are so supportive of one another that their mother's legacy has been turned into something that brings joy to themselves and others, not pain; Rius and Toph can't see eye to eye until Toph is made to break out of his preexisting beliefs and see the error of his ways; and Guntram and Twelam, despite coming to understand themselves better over the course of the game, have only begun laying the groundwork for the improvement of their relationship. If there's anything the game tells us, though, it's that Eddie and Fukuro's relationship has had a positive influence on the other two — they may not have fixed everything overnight, but even three days is sufficient to make changes, one that will make a difference in the others' lives forever. Really, that's a theme that runs strong in all of the character routes in Walking On A Star Unknown: There's a sense that, however brief the contact, how far away they are in the universe, or how long it will be until they see each other again, Eddie and Fukuro lit up their friends' lives just as the Langturns did their paths through Calpucca. Because of their status as aliens and their strong familial bonds, they are able to show the others that there are other ways of being, other ways of seeing. In turn, the residents of Calpucca have indelibly left a mark on the Owuls, as well.

#walking on a star unknown #woasu #woasu eddie #woasu fukuro #giera rius #giera toph #guntram hamelin #twelam hamelin #woasu meta

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