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secret-engima · 4 years ago

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Lunafreya Nox Fleuret DoTF Characterization Rant

OKAY, ME RANT RAMBLING ON LUNA’S CHARACTERIZATION IN DAWN OF THE FUTURE IS A GO.

This is … likely going to get messy, but I’ll try to keep it at least moderately coherent. Lemme start by saying that- for the most part- I did actually enjoy Luna’s chap. I’ve been enjoying the book (kinda-sorta-mostly, I really liked Aranea’s chap at least) and I don’t think it’s like- a BAD book? Necessarily? But I feel like it is extremely telling in regards to how the characterization/lore is treated that my brain is automatically filing this thing under “fanfic that’s not my HC but is okay-ish” rather than “canon I will be gleefully tweaking as I please”. My brain is literally looking at this officially licensed book and equating it to fanfic. To fanfic that NEEDS EDITING.

With that out of the way, lemme attempt to summarize my (main) issues with Luna’s Characterization and then I’ll expand on them from there. Get ready for the salt.

1. Luna’s backstory is inconsistent. She herself states multiple times that Oracle training is grueling and involves both physical and mental trials as well as things like fasting for long periods of time WHILE doing said training, yet she is mostly treated like a well-meaning but overall pampered, naive princess who is only now being forced into hard circumstances and has to adapt accordingly. She is also treated like she doesn’t know “common people” that well and doesn’t know how to interact or pick up things like lies (????). A common example is how she treats Sol as trustworthy but reserved when according to Sol’s POV she is literally debating shooting Luna as a possible threat. And Luna supposedly doesn’t pick up on this danger. But we’ll get back to that.

2. Luna is characterized as being oblivious to how people outside Rich Oracle Circles live. That despite traveling all over the world she has never really seen it’s “ugly” sides because she’s always traveled in fancy guarded processions with the sick brought to her. Pretty sure the book specifically mentions at one point that she’s never “considered” what it would be like to be anything other than an Oracle. Admittedly this issue could go under number 1 or 3a but I’m putting it here because I’m salty.

3a. This and the next problem are heavily intertwined and, not going to lie, I could make an entire rant just about these two issues all by themselves, not just in Luna’s context. The first is that Luna is portrayed as not being able to make her own decisions, not even wanting to make her own decisions, until she is forced to or has her “eyes opened” by Sol, our jaded Long Night survivor character. The author treats Luna’s sense of duty as some form of social brainwashing she needs to “get over” and spoiler alert I hate it with every fiber of my being.

3b. Playing right off the whole “Luna is incapable of making her own decisions and that’s why she does her freaking job until someone ‘opens her eyes’” is the idea that Luna’s faith is a character flaw. Lemme reiterate. The story treats Luna’s faith. As a character flaw. Rather than the entire cornerstone to her character and one of the big reasons she’s as amazing as she is. Her faith is treated as foolish and shortsighted, something that has only survived for this long because it has never been challenged and, heads up, the rant I am going to go into on this one specific thing is going to be long and extremely salty.

Alright I think I’ve covered the basics. Starting from the top, BRING ON THE SALT.

…

1. Luna is pampered, well-meaning but naive and bad at reading ulterior motives of people.

….*slow, deep breath* Luna. The Oracle. Who became the youngest Oracle in history. Because her mother was murdered in front of her while her home was burned down and conquered by the people who then proceeded to rule her country, subvert her brother to their cause, and generally control and monitor every aspect of her life that they could. Luna, who was fully prepared to take a single suitcase and escape her own home and run off alone to get to Altissia and had to be stopped by her own brother (who you’ll note brought a bunch of soldiers with him, which indicates he did not expect a submissive response if he came alone).

This girl who was canonically physically abused as a child by a Niflheim officer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZHzBtIfpdg slow this down if you need to confirm, but she is grabbed and manhandled and hit by an adult man when she only looks to be twelve, around the age Tenebrae first fell), who has spent twelve years living under the rule of a nation that is not only aggressively atheist but has willfully attempted to kill one of the very beings she serves and openly plans to do so again. The woman who successfully survived the fall of Insomnia with only one magic-less glaive as her backup for most of the event, then evaded the search efforts of an entire empire with only her own wits, a dog, a Messenger who has only ever been shown to talk rather than fight, and the extremely grudging on-off help of her brother who works for said empire. All while waking up the Astrals and forging covenants that were slowly killing her from the strain, which is the exact thing the empire was trying to prevent her from doing. Then, when it became necessary to complete the last covenant, turned herself in to the very same empire that has imprisoned her since she was a child and has been actively hunting/trying to stop or kill her since Insomnia’s fall.

That girl. Is pampered. Is naive. Is bad at reading people and telling when they have ulterior motives or are lying.

Pull the other one. I’ll kick you.

But seriously, how are we supposed to believe this? Luna’s life post Tenebrae’s fall to Niflheim is only pampered in the sense that she was given fancy clothes and fed regularly (outside the grueling fasting periods mentioned in this same book). She had no freedom, no privacy, her guards were all either men who wore the same uniform as those who killed her mother or were monsters infected with the very scourge she is sworn to purify. The Oracle is famous, is revered by the people. To keep the people on their side, the Empire would have flaunted her, would have taken her to all the shiny events. Luna would have had to dine with, converse with, even dance with the very same people who ordered and condoned the murder of her mother, her own imprisonment, and the brainwashing of her own brother to the enemy side. She would have been the epitome of a bird in a gilded cage or a dog on a silk leash and humans are not meant to live like that.

Am I really expected to think she survived a situation that oppressive, that toxic, that actively hurtful, for years by being naive and bad at reading people? Am I really expected to believe that she cannot tell when people are out to use her or hurt her or are lying to her? Am I really expected to believe that she is pampered and doesn’t have, at the very least, PTSD from seeing her mother murdered and her brother join the very people who did it, let alone everything else that would have followed over those years?

Really?

Luna didn’t have a pampered life. She suffered abuse. Longterm emotional abuse, likely sporadic physical abuse until she learned to play along well enough to escape such punishments, and almost certainly gaslighting (again: religious leader being held captive by an aggressively atheist nation that wants to kill the pantheon this religious leader communes with).

Luna would have learned to navigate the canonically cutthroat politics of Niflheim while being at best an outsider and at worst a target because of her beliefs, her nationality, and her loyalties to the Lucians (nobody was surprised when Luna went on the run. Nobody. Her continued devotion and loyalty to the Lucians -Niflheim’s enemy- was absolutely a well known factor). She would have learned to pick truth from lie and when to pretend she hadn’t noticed in order to survive. She would have lived twelve years knowing that any mistakes or misplaced moments of trust would be paid for in either her suffering of the suffering of the people close to her like her servants, or just the citizens of Tenebrae in general.

And none of this is taking into account her Oracle training, which the book does not elaborate on but repeatedly states was hard and grueling and she completed it years earlier than any Oracle in history.

There are a lot of words I would use to describe Luna, but pampered and naive are not among them.

…

2. Luna is oblivious to how people outside her rich circles live and has never considered being anything else but an Oracle until Sol specifically points it out.

The book states that she mostly travels in procession (ie, with tons of servants to serve her every need and bodyguards to keep the masses at bay) so clearly she can’t go anywhere too dangerous, otherwise her servants wouldn’t be able to come. Right? Oh boy where do I start with this.

I know! Let’s start with the fact that Luna canonically maintains the blessings on Havens! You know those things. They’re your only safe place to camp at night and they can be found in all sorts of nifty locations like the middle of the wilderness where cars can’t go, chocobos won’t go, packs of wild animals will literally leap out of the bushes to eat you (Voretooth packs can get up to twelve or more members all trying to eat you at once, fun fact), and poor choice in clothes will lead to broken ankles at best? The ones that can be found in the depths of locations so dangerous that even the Hunters are leary of going inside and are actively forbidden from approaching unless they are a very high rank?

Off the top of my head some of the Havens that come to mind is the one in the middle of Malmalam thicket, the top of an active volcano, multiple spots in the middle of the voretooth and coeurl infested desert, two up in Vesperpool aka the home of all demon crocodiles and flocks of cockatrice that are bigger than the average car and can literally turn you into stone if you aren’t careful.

Yeah those places. She maintains those. Depending on how often Havens need to be maintained and if the weather/nature shortens that time then she might also have to periodically enter the dungeons Noctis explores in game that also have Havens hidden inside where it is always dark all the time and infested with daemons.

The book also states that the sick (who are highly infectious and not supposed to be touched by people who can’t heal the scourge and in the later stages of sickness become extremely violent and prone to biting in order to infect other people) are … brought to her…

By whom? Exactly?

Moving on from that giant and obvious plot hole to the “never seen or considered other lifestyles” bit: Luna has traveled literally all over the world. In her duties of healing the otherwise incurable she has gone all over Niflheim, Tenebrae, and Lucis. She has walked through the streets of cities filled with lights and glamor and stood on the dirt roads of towns so small they have to go to the next town an hour or more away to buy groceries or check their mailbox and who’s royal hotel suite is just a caravan with a new coat of paint and “welcome Oracle!” sign. Luna’s work is to cure the Starscourge, which is a disease that I can almost promise the rich don’t get. Because the rich and fancy do not risk their lives by going into daemon territory (Prompto, a middle class Insomnian, didn’t even know what wild animals would be like, you expect the rich and famous to be any better?).

The vast majority of Luna’s patients would be people like Dave the Hunter, or Sania the scientist who wades into the wilds. The truck drivers and the farmers and the electricians risking their lives to repair power lines in the middle of nowhere. She wouldn’t be going to cities except to talk to the refugees who fled there from the outside and thus picked up the Scourge. Her only two social circles would be Niflheim’s cutthroat nobility and the “unwashed masses” who come to her for healing. Guess which ones she’ll be more invested in getting to know on a personal/friendly basis and interacting with.

Of course Luna has interacted with and understands “common folk”. Luna is a caregiver, not just physically, but emotionally. She is beloved by the people because she is kind. That means she talks to them. More importantly, she listens. She has held the hands of the farmer as he begs her to heal him, because the harvest season is so close, and if he can’t work, if he dies, then what will become of his wife or the people his farm feeds? She has embraced the sobbing refugee mother as the other breaks down in gratitude for a child who’s skin is a healthy shade and who’s veins no longer bulge a sickly purple. She has met people who are not rich, but who are content. Who have lives that do not hinge on the razor thin dance of staying true to self and not exposing weakness to those who want to eat her alive. Who can laugh with their neighbors and kiss that nice boy down the street just for the fun of it, who can defy curfew to dance in the rain with the person they love and risk, at most, a lecture and a weekend grounding.

And no, they aren’t rich, no, they aren’t influential or powerful, but they are peaceful. They are happy.

Am I really expected to believe that Luna has not looked on these people’s lives from afar, listened to their rambles as they try to distract themselves from the sickness she is drawing from their veins, and not yearned to be the same? That she hasn’t thought over and over again about running away and being free from her gilded cage? That she doesn’t know anything about the lives of the people she heals even as she walks down their streets and steps into their houses so she can heal those who are too sick or too violent to be safely taken out of their room? That she has never thought about what life could be like if she wasn’t an Oracle as she watches the landscape roll by and walks through the wilderness to find the lonely farmsteads that the townsfolk tell her has sick children that cannot be let out of the shed for fear they will bite?

Setting all of that to one side, what human hasn’t thought of being someone else? What person on this planet, hasn’t looked at another person’s life that is so very different from their own and gone “huh, I wonder what that would be like” even if only for a moment before moving on and forgetting about it? Humans are creatures that dream by nature, that are curious by nature. To assume that Luna is not just because she gets to have the fancy dresses and servants is stupid.

…

3a: Luna is unable to make her own decisions and is only the dutiful Oracle because she doesn’t know any better and needs a “wiser” rebellious character to “open her eyes”.

Okay buckle up. I have tried to suppress the salt until now but over these last two points I don’t care. I will be salty. I will be sarcastic. I will be mean. I will reference Real World faiths (tho I’ll try to keep that to a minimum).

Both 3a and 3b are actually systemic issues in storytelling (particularly noticeable in movies/shows but maybe that’s because I’m pretty lucky with my book choices) that I despise with a passion. Specifically 3a relates to the chronic issue writers seem to have with characters not being allowed to be happy with their role in life. There’s this persistent thought, this narrative push, that if a character is following in the footsteps of their family, is entering the “traditional” profession that their parents (or grandparents, or entire generations of predecessors) have been in before them then they must be unhappy with their lot in life. That this is clearly the character being “repressed” and that if they are content then they are either a bad guy (see: every antagonist from a proud military family or every ruler who thinks they are better than everyone because of bloodline ever) or they are just blind to their own unhappiness.

Now, the basic idea of “character discovers they are unhappy in current role and seeks a new one” can actually be done really well. But those stories that do it well have a lot of internal conflict, a lot of self-reflection and searching and choosing to take a new path after really giving it some thought. Maybe they have help along the way, or encouragement, or another character to show that it’s possible by example and that’s okay.

What is not okay is infantilizing a strong, intelligent character by saying “oh it just never occurred to them until they are told that they are unhappy by this much more worldly wise character and then they went and did it”. That is not okay. It not only trivializes the efforts of every real person who has proudly followed in a parent’s footsteps to become something (a doctor, a missionary, a soldier, an actor, even an electrician, pick a life goal and I promise someone has been inspired to do that by their parent being one before them) but it also takes an otherwise strong, dedicated character and implies that they are too stupid to think for themselves or have any free will until the plot and a Shinier Character demands it.

Lunafreya Nox Fleuret is an Oracle, as her mother was before her, and her mother before her, and all the way back two thousand years to the very first Oracle we see in canon. Possibly back even farther, depending on if any of Aera’s ancestors were Oracles too. That isn’t a suffocating tradition, that is a heritage, that is a culture, that is a necessary, life-saving service that canon proves literally kept the world from falling into eternal darkness (Luna was the last Oracle, the day after she dies is literally the last time we players see sunlight until the end of the game when Noctis dies to restore it). Luna is not stupid or repressed for following in those footsteps, she is breathtakingly strong for shouldering her heritage as the Last Oracle with pride even when the forces controlling every other aspect of her life want her to be ashamed of it and give it up.

The empire that took over her home when she was twelve are actively anti-magic and anti-Astral. Luna is someone who speaks to the Astrals and is born with a magic that can heal the very sickness they want to weaponize. They couldn’t outright forbid her from training to be the next Oracle because that would cause the people to riot, but they could and absolutely would try to make her give up in any way they could. They would have insulted her, demeaned her, hurt her, and imprisoned her. They wouldn’t have wanted a “real” Oracle, they would have wanted a puppet who said pretty promises and then did nothing to stop them.

It would have been so easy for Luna to go down the same path her brother did. To give in to the empire and it’s propaganda that she would have been forced to listen to every single day of her life for twelve whole years. It would have made her life so much easier to be a puppet Oracle who didn’t have to walk miles through the wilderness to maintain Havens, or defy the empire by maintaining loyalty to Lucis, or leave her manor home to heal the sick that could not come to her themselves. As a puppet Oracle she could have stayed in the Manor and only treated cases that could reach her doors and were vetted by the empire. She could have eaten the finest foods and worn the best dresses and never had to worry about a pack of hungry Voretooths or a rogue Behemoth tearing her apart. Most of all, Niflheim wouldn’t have been nearly as oppressive or violent. They would have gladly given her the illusion of freedom and control as long as she played along rather than been fully willing and prepared to run into the jungle with a suitcase just to escape as seen in the movie.

Luna was not blindly fitting into a mold and she was not and has never been incapable of making a decision. The fact that she shows up in canon as a strong, dedicated woman who is in control of her emotions and not afraid to face down a giant sea monster with the power to summon tidal waves with just her words and a glorified pointy stick proves that. The idea that she needs a “wiser” character to come alongside her and “free her” from her own duties is not only stupid, it undermines one of the key things that makes Luna such a strong character despite her relative lack of screentime.

Furthermore, canonically, one of Luna’s main reasons for sticking with her duty as Oracle isn’t because it’s tradition, it’s because of what Niflheim did. In the Kingsglaive movie, when Nyx Ulric is getting angry at Luna for doing really reckless, life-threatening things, she tells him quote:

“I do not fear death. What I fear is doing nothing and losing everything.”

That’s not a woman who is blindly following a path laid out for her. That is a woman who is desperately, furiously fighting against the people who killed her mother in front of her the best way she can: by being the Oracle they cannot stand for her to be.

But sure. Luna is only the Oracle because she doesn’t know better and it never occurred to her to be anything else until some jaded kid with a shotgun made a snide comment about it.

3b: Luna’s faith is a character flaw that has only survived this long because it wasn’t challenged by a worldly wise character who knows better.

Not going to lie but words cannot express how much I hate this trope. This is another thing that shows up a lot in television/movies but also in books too, and that is that a character is not allowed to have a faith in something/religion unless they are 1. Foolish, 2. Brainwashed/tricked into it, 3. A crazy fanatic, or 4. It’s a character flaw they have to overcome by becoming more jaded and atheist and hateful.

Because … that’s not how it works. There are- millions (billions) of people all over the real world who are intelligent, well educated, thoughtful, kind, and religious. And no I’m not just talking about Christianity (tho I am Christian so you can see why this trope grinds my gears so hard). There’s Hinduism, there’s Islam, there’s Buddhism, there’s Judaism, there’s so many faiths and belief systems okay. And no we don’t tend to play well with each other or accept the validity of the others but that doesn’t mean we’re fanatics or brainwashed or stupid. And no we really don’t appreciate it when media introduces a character who follows a religion (even fictional ones!) only to make them an antagonist or rip it away from them in the name of “improving their character”. Just like every other cultural group ever who really doesn’t like their heritage and culture being used as a butt of jokes or is turned into a caricature or used as the basis for the antagonist being Evil™.

But no. We can’t possibly have a character who’s faith makes them strong or gives them comfort in times of hardship unless they are deluded. We can’t possibly have a character who is both intelligent and faithful. We can’t possibly show a character who is breathtakingly courageous and selfless as well as religious unless we point at their faith and go oh look a horrible character flaw to overcome by having non-believer characters open their eyes via sarcastic commentary.

And look. Look. I am well aware that the plot of Dawn of the Future has Bahamut as the Bad Guy™. I am fully aware of that. But if you want to be purely honest and technical, that doesn’t invalidate Luna’s faith because (spoilers) the other Astrals fight Bahamut to save the world. They hear her cries and the come to fight on behalf of Lucis and Noctis and all of Eos and they kill Bahamut even when that ensures their own destruction.

But we’re not actually here to talk about whether the Astrals deserve Luna’s faith in them, we’re here to talk about why insisting Luna’s faith is, by nature of being a faith, treated like a flaw and why it is treated like something so weak it only survived to this point because Luna didn’t face anything “bad” enough to “snap her out of it”.

Spoiler alert, it’s not a flaw and it’s not weak.

Going back to something I have mentioned several times already: Niflheim is an empire run by people who actively want to kill the very beings most of the planetary population worships. The very same people in charge of Luna’s life for twelve years, starting from when she was twelve and very emotionally vulnerable and traumatized, hate the Astrals. I repeat: They hate the Astrals. They have devised weapons to try (and spectacularly fail) to kill them. Half their continent is a winter nightmare-land because they tried to kill Shiva the Glacian and she went “haha, nice try, lemme leave a fake corpse here that constantly pumps out freezing temperatures and blizzards”.

Am I seriously, honestly, supposed to believe that these people didn’t try to tear down her faith at every single opportunity? That Ravus wouldn’t have tried to bully and cajole and harass her into abandoning her faith because he knew that her faith was what kept her walking her chosen path as Oracle and that said path was destined to kill her? Am I seriously supposed to believe that Luna didn’t spend those twelve years having to sit there and bite her tongue to keep from raging at these cutthroat nobles as they gloated and sneered and spat on the names of the Astrals who gave Luna the very magic she uses to heal those in need?

Luna never needed Sol to come along and say “what have the Astrals ever done for you?” because I promise that she’s heard some variation of that exact phrase from everyone in her life. From her own brother to the Emperor himself she has heard some form of this question, this taunt. In the Kingsglaive movie, General Glauca even says something to the order of, “To what god do you pray? The gods do not listen.” Right before he kidnaps her.

Luna’s faith isn’t something blind, and it is not a flaw. It is a cornerstone of her character. Luna’s faith is a bloody, stubborn, tenacious thing that she has nurtured and shored up and been steadied by through twelve years of emotional abuse and physical imprisonment. Luna’s faith is an unshakeable thing that can only come from long nights spent crying into the silent dark of the room and asking “is this real? Am I right? Should I give up? This hurts so much, what do I do?” and finding the answer to be “yes this is real. Yes I am right. No, I won’t give up even though it kills me. Yes it hurts, but what I believe in is stronger than this pain.”

Faith is not optimism and it is not fanaticism. Optimism can be broken by hardship and fanaticism has no room for selfless kindness or acceptance of other people not being as devoted as they are. Faith is personal. Faith is a bedrock, and maybe it’s a bedrock that makes no sense to people on the outside, but it is a bedrock and it can make mountains move.

Just as Luna proves when she runs rings around an Empire to win the respect and cooperation of Titan and of Ramuh, to stand amid the rain and tell an enraged TideMother that “it is in mercy that men offer praise, and in shedding grace that the gods solicit worship” and not flinch because she knows she is right.

Luna’s faith is a fierce, scarred thing that has taken every kind of suppression and propaganda and poison the empire could throw at it and kept on going.

Furthermore. Luna’s faith is treated by Sol as something empty. Because when did the Astrals ever help her or comfort her or save her?

I can answer that. They helped her when they gave her Umbra and Pryna, who kept her company through her life and gave her a way to talk to Noctis. A way to reach out to a person who was not either imperial, warped by imperial propaganda, or too afraid to speak out against the empire for fear of dying. They comforted her when Gentiana became a second mother for Luna after the death of Queen Sylva. A physical shoulder to cry on, a sounding board to bounce fears off of, a well of advice when it was asked of her, a rock to retreat to when Ravus turned away from her and the empire continued to control as much of her life as they could.

Gentiana, who is really Shiva in disguise, has been with Luna since she was a small child.

One of the Astrals themselves has been with Luna for almost her entire life. Has guided her, has comforted her, has led her to safety as she fled Insomnia’s ruins.

Shiva had no reason to do that. The Oracles have done their duty since the time of Aera without her help or company. Shiva didn’t have to stay. She didn’t have to linger and offer comfort and become Luna’s friend. She didn’t have to listen to the last words of a scared young woman who wanted only to see her fiancé one last time and promise to carry them to Noctis in the event of her death. Shiva didn’t have to cry on behalf of Luna. Shiva didn’t have to help Luna remember what it was like to be an ordinary woman (“Yet others need not hide their grief. Is she [Luna] so different from them?”), and in fact, if Shiva had played up to most of the stereotypes, she would have done the opposite and done her hardest to suppress any part of Luna’s personality that wasn’t her Oracle duties.

But she did. Shiva was there, and she remembered. Shiva loved and we as a fandom may yell at the Astrals a lot for not doing more to take care of the Starscourge, but of all of them Shiva gave the most because she came down and she lived, and walked, and loved this Oracle, this scared child, this frightened, weary woman who couldn’t even turn to her own family for comfort. Shiva’s husband Ifrit was betrayed by humankind and yet Shiva still defended them, she kills Ifrit to protect the man (the king) that Luna loved.

And at the end of the game, in those final moments outside the Citadel, when it’s just Noctis and his Retinue against all of Ardyn’s armies of daemons, when Luna calls out to these Astrals whom she has remained faithful to her entire life, even unto her death…

They answer.

Every. Last. Astral. Who is not corrupted like Ifrit, comes down at her prayer and fights. Even Leviathan who’s only voiced lines are screaming wrath against the humanity that forgot her, even Bahamut who otherwise remains aloof in his plane of magic beyond the concerns of the mortal world. Luna calls, and they answer her.

“What have the Astrals ever done for her” indeed.

Luna’s faith is a driving force of her character, it is irrevocably intertwined with her duty, with her choices, with her desire to help people and save the world even if it costs her own life, and in the end her faith is rewarded. Not in the way we want for her, because we love the ultimate happy endings where everyone lives and nobody dies. But Final Fantasy XV was never a story about happy endings. It was a story about coming of age, and tragedy, and sacrifice. Of holding onto hope against all opposition, and of having faith that someday the dawn will return, even if bringing about that dawn requires personal sacrifice.

…

Okay this is over 5k words, I’m tired, and I’m extremely salty so I can’t really figure out how to wrap this up but there we go, my salty personal rant about why I think Dawn of the Future messed up some really critical parts of Luna’s characterization and why it’s Really Bad that they messed up those specific things.

Also I kinda despise them making Bahamut the bad guy in DotF because yes he’s a jerk and yes he really could have done the whole Prophecy thing a ton better, but in the original FFXV one of the things that made the game so heartbreakingly tragic to me is that most of the characters involved weren’t pure evil. They could be greedy, and flawed, and crazy, but in the end the source of the problem was too big to pin on one character.

Do you pin the entire thing on the god of war for his mistakes in trying to bring about peace, or the god of fire for trying to destroy humanity and no longer being there to do his job and purify the plague? Do you blame the Astrals for their hubris or humanity for theirs, because Ifrit loved humanity until they betrayed him so deeply he went mad? Do you hate Ardyn for causing the Long Night or pity him for being a victim of Somnus’s greed? Can you blame Somnus for everything even though the Scourge was going on long before him and kept spreading long after he sealed Ardyn away? The whole thing is a tragedy because at this point it’s a problem too big to fix without someone paying a price too heavy and we hate that because the characters who pay that price are the ones we grow to love over the game.

But that is an entirely different rant for an entirely different day when I am not so tired and my hands no longer hurt from writing this much in one sitting. Thank you and good night.

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blue-honeycomb · 5 years ago

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Quiet Devotion 4 [Hawks x Reader]

I'll edit this at a later date...

Summary: Part 4 of the 'Quiet Devotion' series… Somehow this story's managed to wring yet another part out of me. What am I doing with my life?

Reader Details: Emotional, humble, loyal, introspective, independent.

Quirk: Life Fiber (A.K.A Soul Silk).

Masterlist

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

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Six Years Ago

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Fast doesn't even begin to cover the sheer speed the winged hero is capable of, and coupled with his reaction time and environmental awareness he seems down right inhuman at times. As far as you can tell there are few skills he's incapable of executing mid-combat and you find it all the more admiral that a considerable amount of that talent is focused on support and rescue work. It says much for his character that life takes precedence over the promise of glory

Memories of darkness and pain nip harshly at the back of your mind, the fear that'd overcome you when the car fire had finally died out was printed red on the backs of your eyelids. You can still smell the stench of burning gasoline and the heavy tinge of sweet iron, the feel of sand in your hair.

You dream of it sometimes, even a year later. You don't usually get back to sleep afterwards either, despite the tear inducing exhaustion riping painfully though your body. Instead you pull up the 24/7 Hero News website and hope that you'll catch a glimpse of red feathers flashing across the screen, hear that smooth, masculine voice quipping at his comrades, snarking at his opponents.

Anything to make you feel safe again. Anything to remind yourself that the dark of your room is only temporary, that the blankets tucked tightly (too tightly, always too tightly) around you are soft and pliant under your hands.

The news plays in the background as you finish washing the night's dishes, reporters droning on about Hawk's exploits in a seemingly endless stream of praise and condescension. Rapidly cooling water drips down the front of the kitchen sink and soaks the front of your shirt despite your best efforts, and you take a moment to unstick the cloth from your skin with water-wrinkled fingers.

The fabric is sopping in some places still, heavy and discolored with dish water despite the wringing you give it. The rain outside seems to somehow add to that feeling of dampness despite you having not been outside all day, the pitter-patter of icy droplets battering your window like icecubes caressing your spine.

It's as you lament the condition of your clothes and the weather that the beginnings of a though begins to take root in your mind.

'If only my clothes were made from my quirk.' You thought exasperatedly, not for the first time, while entering the livingroom to watch the rest of the report before you had to do laundry. 'Then I'd never have to worry about wet clothes again.'

On the news Hawks stands before the cameras with his trademark devil-may-care smile on his lips, eyes half-lidded and entire hero persona picture perfect but for the way his clothes seem to sag and darken unevenly from the rain. A more aggressive reporter manages to sneak in a baiting question about the teenager's glaring inexperience in the field and the winged hero quips back in response, water dripping from the tips of his long deflated hair.

He looks miserable standing in the rain, the bright colors so characteristic of him dulled and darkened by the gray overcast, by the rain soaking him to the bone. Even as he's smiling you can tell it doesn't reach his eyes, barely even manages to fully form on his lips as question after intrusive question is hurled at him from the hoard of intent faces. You don't miss the way he glanced to the side occasionally, towards a rail thin man standing quietly beside him, meeting the teen's gaze every time with a narrow-eyed stare.

You don't think you've ever seen Hawks so unhappy before. Not on the battle field with hellfire raining down around him, nor any of his interviews with a panel of venomous snakes breathing down his back. Not even when he'd misstepped during his first solo multi-villian battle and had more than half of his left wing exploded right off his back.

No. You'd never seen him looking so miserable before and more than anything that quiet discontent in his eyes racked your soul with a sad, profound longing. Without conscious thought the tips of your fingers begun to warm and turn black, dark roots creeping up the veins in your fingers and fading at the knuckles. Moments later the beginnings of your silk spilling forth onto your lap and latching onto your pant legs catches your attention.

It did that from time to time when you got overly emotional. Frankly, the lack of control was embarrassing and never failed to remind you of why you were never able to train it past its current potential. Your doctor had said it was nothing to worry about though, and that you could maintain a normal life even with the occasional accident.

You'd thought about going to a quirk specialist shortly after you'd hit your current limit, but ultimately decided against it when you caught sight of the price tag attached to each visit. You reasoned that even if you managed to start producing more silk there'd be little use for it besides having readily available materials on hand if you ever felt the need to sew. So you dropped the matter entirely and carried on with your life.

Until a year ago, that is, when your whole world came crashing down around you.

You quickly shake those thoughts away, instead focusing on detaching the silk from your clothes before they can weave into the fabric they're touching. Yet another oddity you've had to learn the hard way. For the first twenty or so seconds before it cools and solidifies, the silk will try to latch onto any available surface and meld to it. Honestly, it was more annoying than anything and sometimes you regretted not being able to get it checked out by a specialist.

It took a few moments but you eventually managed to get the silk separated into their individual strains. They're each around ten inches long, though some had managed to stick together at the ends to more than double their length.

Exasperated, you pluck up the longest of the bunch with the tips of your darkened fingers, holding it before you with a frown. The black strands remain stuck together and you knew from experience they'd now be impossible to disconnect.

The flash of red on the television catches your attention for a moment and your sight blurs as it attempts to refocus. In that brief second, however, the black of your silk melded seamlessly into the darkened cloth of Hawk's soaked jacket and undershirt. In that exact moment, the quiet thought came to your mind.

'My quirk has never been useful to me. But maybe, with enough patience and effort, it can be of use to someone who deserves it more than anyone.'

And so begun the trials of your labor. The physical manifestation of your unspoken devotion.

---

Present Day

Hawks wasn't sure what expression had managed to slip past his usually perfect control, but whatever it was must have been fearsome indeed because the young researcher before him was sweating bullets beside his mentor. Said mentor was glancing disappointedly at his assistant and had yet to step in, instead opting to shake his head and cross his arms with quiet exasperation.

"So." Hawks begun in a slow drawl, still smiling but for the way his eyes narrowed. "We're just throwing civilian names into hero politics now are we?" The assistant lowered his head, but remained silent. "Making sure to break all those confidential clauses, huh? I've got to admire your spirit though. Go big or go home is the name of the game in this industry, after all." The winged hero clapped a hand over the other's shoulder, making sure to look him right in the eye as he finished. "How's it feel to be the uncontested winner?"

The assistant took a deep, fortifying breath before finally speaking. "I got carried away. My actions were a direct violation of Proper Hero Agency Conduct and I understand there will be repercussions. I-" The young man pauses again, almost breaking eye contact but the hand tightening on his shoulder quickly made him reconsider. "I let my pride get in the way of proper procedure and it's potentially put a civilian in danger." The assistant grit his teeth and closed his eyes. "I didn't win anything. I fucked up. Knew it the moment their name came out of my mouth."

There was a tense silence before Hawks himself broke it with a loud, exaggerated sigh. "It can't be helped I guess. Chicks gotta break a few eggs before they can grow after all." Everyone pointedly ignore the fact the Hawks was only a few years older than the assistant. Most of all the assistant.

The winged hero threw his head back, letting his entire posture slump and his face crumple into an irritated frown. "They're probably having a heart attack right now."

You were panicking. Inwardly, for the time being, but you weren't too far from having a total breakdown. For three hours your phone has been blowing up with an unknown number of texts and calls, half of them demanding your compliance and the other your service, all of them wanting your attention. None of them were making much sense.

The bit about various hero agencies wanting you to work for them was clear, what wasn't though was the why in this situation? The only thing you could think of was the uniform you'd given Hawks (you were well aware you'd probably been on camera the entire time you'd been near Hawk's agency), but such things were dime a dozen in the hero industry and you didn't believe for a moment Endeavor's agency was hurting for costume designers.

The next thing you could think would prompt this response was that there was something about your quirk you were unaware of. Something, apparently, heros deemed valuable enough to look for. What it was you weren't sure, but you knew enough about yourself to know your quirk, while fairly simplistic, was still an unknown to you in many regards.

Still, the sudden influx of unexpected messages was stressful enough. Add that to the fact most of them were from distinguished hero agencies with members that could literally demolish mountains and you were feeling more than a little pressured. Even a little frightened by some of the more demanding messages you'd managed to glimpse before retreating to the other side of the workshop.

You could barely move your furniture across the room most days, what could you do if the likes of Best Jeanist or Gang Orca decided to pay you an unexpected visit?

Okay, that was the panic talking. Not only was that scenario completely illogical, the jab at Gang Orca for having a stereotypical villian aesthetic was uncalled for. Time to recenter yourself and get some much needed fresh air into your lungs before you start accusing All Might of fraud or some such nonsense.

It takes a few minutes to get the muscles in your back to loosen and your mind to stop spitting out half-coherent worst case scenarios, but you manage with a few intense rounds of breathing exercises. By the end of the ordeal you're exhausted, even a little sore from the lack of air before hand. You're functioning again though, and that's what matters.

Now in better control of your thoughts the most obvious solution to your current predicament comes to you with little prompting. You don't even hesitate. There is not a single doubt in your mind as to what you must do.

This is your chance to finally pay back the man you owe your life too. This may very well be the only chance you'll ever get and you've learned that life is far too short to squander the moments that matter.

Your slip on your coat and gloves, making a few last minute adjustments around the shop before stepping out the door and locking up behind you. With your purse on your shoulder and your eyes lit with hopeful determination you walk out into the world with renewed purpose.

You leave the phone.

Nothing they have to offer matters. It never has and you doubt it ever will. They could offer you jewels and they'd collect dust, the world and it'd keep on spinning. They could grant you eternal life and you'd have given it up in a heartbeat for this one chance.

He's the only one that matters. The only one whose attention means something.

He is your priority. He is your only priority.

#Takami Keigo #Takami Keigo x Reader #Hawks #Hawks x Reader #BNHA

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itsbquick-blog · 6 years ago

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Blake Quick

English Composition 1

Mr.Mcculloch

15 October 2018

Broken Spirits

All of a sudden the crowd stopped cheering, the players stopped playing. My coach immediately ran onto the field with a sense of urgency, calling the physical trainer to aid me. I couldn't move it at all, I couldn't put any weight on my right leg without immense pain. Never in my life have I experienced anything that felt like this before. As the ref made me some space from all my concerned teammates, I was helped into the trainer's cart. As I made my way off the field I made eye contact with my mom. She had this look of overwhelming concern on her face, she knew just as well as me that my days of playing soccer were over.

The trainer met my parents near my mother's car in the parking lot close by. My mind was racing beyond belief so many thoughts were racing through my head. “Is this really happening? How bad is it? What does this mean for my future playing career?” All of which I would learn the answer to shortly.

Getting into the car was incredibly difficult, I remember looking at my mom still in shock. She was trying to hold back tears, she didn't like to see her son in so much pain. As I was helped into my mom's car by my father, mother, and the trainer all I could feel was my leg. Every single little adjustment sent shooting pain up my shin, I couldn't hold back the tears anymore the pain was unbearable. Once they got me in the car my mother kissed me on the forehead and told me not to worry.

My mom took the driver's seat, me in the passenger's, and my concerned father took to the back seat. He keeps talking intently trying to keep my mind off the pain, he continued to talk about his countless injuries growing up. He even got me to crack the slightest of smiles for a moment. Even though the ride to Newton hospital was only a 20-minute ride, it felt like an eternity. With every curve and bump in the road, the pain arched up my leg keeping me in tears. I vividly remember the feeling of uncertainty, and the feeling of knowing something is wrong, this kept me in a state of confusion and panic. No matter how many times my mother reassured me that it was okay, I knew it was not.

As we made it to the hospital, my mom pulled the car right up to the door of the emergency room. At this point my leg was still in an almost unbearable state, the throbbing pain felt like someone repeatedly hitting my shin with a hammer over and over.

Getting out of the car was no easier than getting into it. Luckily we ran into some very kind strangers who helped get me into a wheelchair. My father wheeled me into the room, my leg felt every single bump and turn we made. As soon as I entered the room there were many sad, and concerned eyes of others all looking my way. I was a crying, sniffling mess just wanting the pain to leave. My mother took care of checking me in, while my father took me to a more secluded part of the room continuing his efforts to calm me.

The wait to be helped had to be the worst part of the day. The anxiety of thinking about how bad the injury could actually be kept running through my head. I started to shake as if I was cold, I couldn't control myself anymore. All I wanted to go back 24 hours when everything was perfect. I had just started my senior year, my last year to play varsity soccer, my last chance to play with my best friends in the world. Now that came crumbling down, my season, my senior year all of sudden was in jeopardy. Everything I wanted to do in the next coming months would be almost impossible with a big injury.

Soon a very nice nurse came to bring me to the doctor, she wheeled me into this room and gingerly helped me into the soft bed. Soon the doctor came into the room with the best attitude she could to examine my leg, every way she twisted and turned my leg ended in excruciating pain. Despite all my pain and screaming, she didn't believe my leg was broken! This news sent chills up my body, a sense of relief, happiness flooded over me. With the good news, the doctor wanted to check over my X-rays, just to make sure everything was alright. While the doctor was away, I managed to stop crying, I managed to relax for a minute.

I almost didn't even notice that the doctor had returned. She had this solemn look in her eyes, this made me uneasy. In a very somber tone, she said the words “I'm very sorry for getting your hopes up, but it looks like your leg is broken, your tibia is broken clean through”. These words hit me like a freight train, my whole world collapsed for a moment. My thoughts just kept echoing “It is over, my season is gone” over and over in my head. I burst into tears, everyone around me came together and cried with me. My best friends couldn't take the news either, I've never seen them this emotional before. My mom was a mess, and you could even see the hurt in my father's eyes. Watching me play soccer is one of his joys in life.

Finally, it was time to leave I was exhausted, depressed, and in tremendous pain. This time I had to sit across the back seat of my mother's car since I could not bend my knee. Then we were homebound, this time I didn't feel the bumps or curves from the road in my leg. I didn't feel this sense of overwhelming confusion anymore. However I was just a shell, my spirit was shattered, my season was over, life was about to get really hard for the next 10-12 weeks. This experience would prove to be one of the hardest things obstacles, not only physically but mentally. Over the next few months the feelings of being left out, the pain, incapability to do simple tasks. This all led to me being a better person.

Looking back now almost a year since I hurt my leg, I am realizing how much it actually changed me. That broken leg led me to become a stronger person, because of that leg half of my senior year was absolutely terrible. I couldn't go out with my friends, I couldn’t sleep, and it was almost impossible to pay attention in class. Even to this day, I walk with a slight limp because of the injury. This was one of the biggest tests to my character that I have ever faced, getting over that bump in my life was significant to me. It helped me see that life can be very shitty to you sometimes but that doesn't mean that you have to sit down and take it. It helped me to not take the good things in life for granted cause you never know when something bad is going to happen.

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a-woman-apart · 7 years ago

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On Being Suicidal

In this Tedx Talk Mark Henick explains his perception as a seriously suicidal adolescent. He describes dealing with mental illness and suicidal thoughts as a “contracting” of his perception. He summarizes it well when he says, “How can suicide be a choice, when it is the only choice that there is?” He explains how someone’s perception can become so narrow that that is the only option that they see as available to them.

I was experiencing that feeling when everything started coming down on me two weeks ago. Suddenly it seemed like I was drowning, like I was being sucked into this deep, dark valley of misery that I was unable to escape. It really felt a lot like being at the bottom of a giant cup, with slippery sides that offered no traction for climbing out. Somehow, I just couldn’t “get a grip.” There was nothing to hold on to anymore.

I didn’t want to die, and I still don’t, but I just wanted the incredibly intense emotional pain that I was experiencing to go away. “You’re not good enough. You’re not smart enough. You’re not enough.” Mark Henick describes these words as the chorus that kept playing over and over in his head. Those of us who have experienced suicidal ideation- myself included- strongly relate to this experience. It suddenly felt as though all my efforts at trying to graduate had been wasted. I felt like I was foolish and naïve and incapable of success. Suddenly all the memories of how I had worked hard and persevered had become incredibly difficult to recall. As I described before, it felt like all my “accomplishments” had been achieved by someone else. My mind was consumed with thoughts of my own unworthiness and inadequacy. I couldn’t see how I was going to cope with anything.

Now that I am on the other side of it- as friends had promised I would be- I question the entire experience. How could I have seriously considered killing myself? My energy is coming back, I am feeling more motivated, and almost everything that I complained about in my last journal entries has been taken care of: laundry, cleaning, sheet music. I went to my friend’s house as planned and got a great new hairstyle. Visiting with her lifted my spirits tremendously. As it stands now, my suicidal ideation seems like a bad dream, but it is a very vivid one. It is the kind of dream that lingers with you long after you have awoken from sleep.

The main thing that concerns me is how I tend to vacillate between the two states of being basically content, to being in a melancholic crisis. I am afraid that one day I will go back to that dark place, and I won’t make it out alive. No matter how much I try to tell myself, “Brain, remember all of this important stuff about there being hope and good things so you don’t kill yourself” my renegade brain always forgets. On a purely intellectual level, my brain is very aware of all the “reasons to live” (Henick addresses this as well in his talk).

In my case, I knew that I should stay for my family, who loved me. My nephew is only two years old, and my brother and his wife are expecting another child- a child who would never know me if I opted out of life. I knew that I should stay for my best friend and my other friends. I knew that I should stay for the small pleasures like the taste of a burger, the smell of lavender, or the sound of music. I should stay because there is always a chance that things will improve. There is always the possibility of success and good fortune, or of unexpected turnarounds.

After speaking to my psychiatrist, she said that I should have called the crisis line or checked myself into a mental hospital, so that they could observe me over night. At first, when she said those things, I thought, “I haven’t been to the hospital in almost five years, and I have a life that I need to live” which doesn’t make any sense if you’re thinking about suicide. If you are suicidal, you have already devalued your own life; you aren’t interested in saving it. Despite that, I put forward the excuse, “Well there is a difference between suicidal ideation and planning a suicide” to which she responded, “You don’t need to get on the internet when you’re having these thoughts” because of course my research (beforehand mind you) had led me to those specific conclusions.

The way I explained it to my friend, was about how some people who have taken a bunch of pills or taken other steps towards ending their own life, suddenly begin to think about inane worries like that they haven’t checked the mail, turned off the sprinklers, or picked up their clothes from the dry cleaners. Those things should be the least of their concerns, and yet they pop up. I had a similar experience in that I was worried about saving my job and my reputation when my life was literally on the line. So naturally I felt defensive when she called me out, but now I see that maybe there was a lot of wisdom in her suggestions. If I am really thinking about suicide- which I was- that isn’t a time to worry about how serious my concerns really are. It isn’t a time to worry about being “locked up.”

I have made a decision now, that if I really feel that I cannot handle the level of suicidal thoughts and might harm myself, that I will call a hotline and/or check myself in to the hospital. Never mind the fact that I was taught- in the hospital- that with each hospitalization your level of functioning decreases. Even if this is true, that I may lose my routine for a while, it will be better than losing my life. I may not be able to control whether or not I deteriorate, but I can make a decision that I will reach out for help if things become too much for me to handle.

There are no guarantees for me in any of this. Even with therapy and changes in my medication, depression may still prove to be a problem for me. The key is in me learning to manage the highs and lows a little better than I am now. I will always have bipolar disorder. It isn’t going anywhere. The key is being able to experience some quality of life, in spite of it. I have had a lot of good times with the bad times, so I have a lot to be grateful for. I just know that things aren’t quite as good as they could be.

Feelings are not “just” feelings as they say; they can mean the difference between life and death. Depression is not mere sadness, but it is a serious illness. Depression does have physical symptoms, such as fatigue, body aches, and disorientation. I was experiencing all of these when I was suicidal. Treatment is so important.

So if you are thinking about ending your life, please seek help. I was able to receive help from friends and family members, but I had to reach out to them. Sometimes people are not even aware of everything that you are going through, until you tell them. I wish I could promise you that it gets better, but I can’t do that. All I can tell you is that with the sorrow, there can be joy as well, so if you have the choice to stay here, please take it. Remember, hope is “just a spark” but it’s enough to keep you going. Just hold on.

#suicide #suicidal ideation #suicidal thoughts #don't kill yourself #how to live #choose life #depression #bipolar depression #mental illness #mental health #mark henick #tedx talks #why we choose suicide #you are stronger than you know #how to be brave

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filmdaguardare · 8 years ago

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In 1993 David Bowie compiled a double CD for friends. Titled All Saints it combined instrumentals from Low and "Heroes" with more contemporary tracks and signalled the singer's rediscovery of the electronic sounds that revolutionised his music in 1977. Delving deep into All Saints, Jon Savage examines the impact of Bowie's sonic revolution on post-punk, electronica and, in the end, Bowie himself.

1993 was a fantastic year for electronic music. Six years after Steve 'Silk' Hurley's Jack Your Body - the UK's first house Number 1 - the pure energy of house and techno had diversified into more than just a series of artificially stimulated genres: it had become a whole new sound world that had very little to do with what had gone before, and that meant rock. Despite the best efforts of Suede and Nirvana that year, electronica sounded like the future.

Passing from the irresistible Euro cheese of 2 Unlimited's No Limit - Number 1 in February - to Acen's brutal classic Window In The Sky - collected on the early junglist compilation Hard Leaders III: Enter The Darkside, there were several releases by Richard ]ames/Aphex Twin, including Polygon Window's Surfing On Sine Waves; Richie Hawtin's first album on Warp, Dimension Intrusion as F.U.S.E., Underworld's Rez, Sabres Of Paradise's Smokebelch II and the R&S compilation In Order To Dance 4 - brilliant records all.

1993 was also the year that David Bowie rediscovered his mojo, It had been a decade since Let's Dance - the rock/R&B fusion that launched him into the global mainstream for the first time. The subsequent years saw Bowie blindsided by that somewhat unexpected success: after two poor studio albums (Tonight and Never Let Me Down), an attempt to recapture his rock roots with Tin Machine had been unsuccessful - despite a couple of good songs. So what to do next?"

"A way through the labyrinth was offered by the past: going forward by going back. During 1991, Rykodisc undertook a comprehensive reissue programme of all the albums between 1967's David Bowie and 1980's Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), trailed in 1989 by the successful 3-CD compilation Sound + Vision. The cumulative effect of these fifteen records - including the electronic highpoints, Low and "Heroes" - reaffirmed Bowie's status as modernist and innovator.

Released in April 1993, Black Tie White Noise was Bowie's first solo album for six years. It contains what would, with variations, become his basic template for the next decade: mature, almost crooning vocals; iconic covers, in this case Cream's I Feel Free and The Walker Brothers' Nite Flights; an interest in black dance rhythms (assisted here by Nile Rodgers); and futuristic ideas integrated within a full, enveloping sound. It went to Number 1.

Bowie has always been a synthesist of contemporary modes: unlike many rock stars, he actually likes music. His commercial renaissance in 1993 coincided with a greater receptivity to the world around him and a corresponding reassessment of his achievements. Pallas Athena is a string-drenched baggy shuffle, while the title track, Black Tie White Noise, matches a lyric about the 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles with a guest vocal from New Jack Swing singer Al B. Sure!

That November, Nirvana plugged Bowie right into the heart of contemporary rock music with their version of The Man Who Sold The World on MTV Unplugged. A month later, Bowie released his second album of 1993, The Buddha Of Suburbia, an album of all new, subtly electronic material - inspired by his soundtrack work on the BBC Film of Hanif Kureishi's novel, set in their shared south London locale of Bromley - a forgotten gem in his catalogue.

Right from the opening track, which collages the riff from Space Oddity and the chorus from All The Madmen, The Buddha Of Suburbia plugs Bowie back into his avant-garde past. This was deliberate: as Bowie wrote in the linernotes, "My personal brief for this collection was to marry my present way of writing and playing with the stockpile of residue from the 1970s." That meant a list of inspirations that included free association lyrics, Brücke-Museum, Kraftwerk, Eno and Neu!

As if to celebrate the continued influence of Eno on his "working forms", Bowie put together his third release of the year: a double CD compilation called All Saints, produced in an edition of a hundred and fifty and handed out to friends. This was an explicit homage to electronica: mixing all the instrumentals from Low and "Heroes" with stray outtakes like Abdulmajid and All Saints, as well as relevant material from Black Tie White Noise and The Buddha Of Suburbia.

The result is surprisingly homogeneous: sixteen years of material collaged into a flowing whole, with the The Buddha Of Suburbia material, The Mysteries and Ian Fish UK Heir, among the strongest. Which prompts a few questions. If Low and "Heroes" represent Bowie's highpoint of formal inspiration, then how did he get there? Why did they sound so good in the context of their time, and what has their influence been - not just on his own music - but electronica in general? Did that future happen?

It all began, appropriately enough, in science fiction. During the mid to late summer of 1975, Bowie was in New Mexico and other southern locations, filming Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell To Earth. His central role required him to play the part of Thomas Jerome Newton, an extraterrestrial visitor on a quest to find water for his dying planet. Newton is charming, cold, and totally emotionless: as Bowie later admitted, he hardly had to act because that's how he felt at the time.

Space travel and aliens have been a constant theme in Bowie's songs, from Space Oddity through Life On Mars?, Ashes To Ashes and Hello Spaceboy. The possibility of other worlds - and the transformation achieved by leaving this one - is a sure-re way of abstracting from any problems that one has on this Earth. Bowie had always felt apart, and much of his work - for instance, his first masterpiece, 1966's The London Boys - centres around the themes of being in or out, between belonging and not belonging.

His first big hit, 1969's Space Oddity, was a trip to nowhere, in the short term. Bowie achieved fusion in his second phase of chart success: he understood and identified with his new audience, a mixture of weirdos, gays, urban stylists and teenyboppers. But superstardom and artistic restlessness drove him into new, uncharted areas: as he continued his sequence of hyper-speed transformations in 1974 and 1975 - from Aladdin Sane to Diamond Dogs and Young Americans - he became more and more remote.

In summer 1975 he was coked-out and fame blitzed. But The Man Who Fell To Earth offered a lifeline. Saturated in science fiction, becoming the alien, Bowie was able to project forward, into his future, into the future - out of a barren, bleak and occasionally terrifying present. (At the time he was living in Los Angeles, beset by demons, imagined or otherwise, and involved in a sequence of paralysing business disputes).

The first sign of this change was all over his next album. Recorded in autumn 1973, Station To Station was a compelling mixture of abstracted disco and contemporary crooning. TVC 15 set to a vicious funk rhythm the famous scene in The Man Who Fell To Earth, where Newton, rendered incapable by alcohol, goggles at a wall of TV sets: "I give my complete attention to a very good friend of mine / He's quadrophonic / He's a / He's got more channels/ So hologramic / Oh my TVC 15."

The title track was a ten-minute tour de force, with as many twists and turns as a 1967 single or a prog epic, that charted a spiritual journey from the darkside ("Here I am / Dredging the ocean / Lost in my circle") to some kind of possibility that life could continue. Whether consciously or not, Bowie was visualising his own escape: "The European canon is here." Here also are the first traces of modern German music: the motorik rhythms, the panoramic sweep of the train sounds.

The idea of a physical journey was stimulated by the most successful German record to date, Kraftwerk's Autobahn - the title track of which aimed to capture the feeling of driving along the German A roads without speed limits. You hear the car starting, a horn toots, and then you're off into a repetitive, hypnotic twenty-two-minute journey that reflects the different, phasing perspectives of travelling fast as well as the boredom of motorway driving.

As important as the idea of simulating shifts through time and space was Kraftwerk's use of synthesizers to express a melodic sensibility that, at various points, suggested distance, loss, cosiness and large horizons. The two wordless versions of Kometenmelodie, on the album's second side, are saturated in deep, warm analogue synth sounds. This was a futuristic, self-generated, distinct European sensibility that had very little American or English influence.

An edited single of Autobahn went to Number 11 in the UK charts in June 1975. The Kosmische Musik was going overground in 1974/5 just as it hit an artistic peak, with records by Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream (Phaedra and Ricochet), Cluster (Zuckerzeit), Harmonia (Muzik Von Harmonia), Can (Soon Over Babaluma), Neu! (Neu! 75), and Faust, whose Faust IV began with an earth-shaking drone that satirised the flip name given to the genre by British journalists - Krautrock.

This was a music born out of a national rupture: Germany's post-war devastation and reconstruction. As Kraftwerk's Ralf Hütter told this writer in 1991: "When we started it was like, shock, silence. Where do we stand? Nothing. The classical music being nineteenth century, but in the twentieth century: nothing. We had no father figures, no continuous tradition of entertainment. Through the '50s and '60s, everything was Americanised, directed towards consumer behaviour.

"We were part of this '68 movement, where suddenly there were possibilities: we performed at happenings and art situations. Then we founded our Kling Klang studio. German word for sound is 'klang', 'kling' is the verb. Phonetics, establishing the sound, we added more electronics. You had performances from Cologne Radio, Stockhausen, and something new was in the air, with electronic sounds, tape machines. We were a younger generation, we came up with different textures."

With a cover that used a still taken from The Man Who Fell To Earth, Station To Station was released in January 1976, followed a couple of months later by the film: a double whammy that kept Bowie at the forefront of popular culture. In February, Bowie began the sixty-four-date Station To Station tour - for many fans, his peak as a performer - which, after forty or so dates in the US, visited Germany in April. He liked it so much that, in late summer 1976, he moved to Berlin with Iggy Pop in tow.

In the late '70s, Berlin was a schizophrenic city, brutally divided in two by the heavily policed wall that separated the two warring super-power systems of the day - Cold War zoning in excelsis. Totally surrounded by the communist Deutsche Demokratische Republik, the Western side was an oasis of capitalist values, half depressed and half manically liberated. (For two contrasting views, see the contemporary Berlin films Taxi Zum Klo and Christiane F..

Berlin had come back from nothing. It allowed Bowie anonymity, a safe enough haven within which to reconstitute himself and an environment that matched his own psychological state. It also had layers of history that went back beyond the Cold War and World War II: always visually stimulated, Bowie was fascinated by the Brücke-Museum, an institution dedicated to the often stark Work of the first expressionists, the 'Brücke', or Bridge, who celebrated spontaneity and raw emotion.

It also allowed Bowie to immerse himself further in German music: that year he met Edgar Froese, Giorgio Moroder, and Kraftwerk - who would write about it in 1977's Trans-Europe Express: "From station to station / Back to Dusseldorf city / Meet Iggy Pop and David Bowie." This was the melting pot that would go into the four key 1977 albums that Bowie began recording that summer: first Iggy Pop's The Idiot, then his next, begun in France and finished at the Hansa Tonstudio ("By the wall") in Berlin.

Low was a major surprise when it came out in early 1977 but it's a perfect record - conceptually and emotionally. Adorned with a treated cover still from The Man Who Fell To Earth, it's split into two halves: a first side of seven tracks - two instrumentals and ve songs clipped brutally short - and a second of almost wordless, hypnotic instrumentals. The entire album is drenched in electronics, used to evoke a variety of emotions - not the least of which is a strange serenity: the curious comfort in near-total withdrawal.

The record fades in on Speed Of Life, a theme that tied into one of the preoccupations of punk; as Bowie stated in 1977, "People simply can't cope with the rate of change in this world. It's all far too fast." This instrumental matches a ferocious Dennis Davis snare drum sound - achieved by Tony Visconti's Eventide Harmonizer, which fed back a dying echo to the drummer as he played - with synthesizer textures that were at once harsh and melodic, uplifting and decaying.

These were provided by Brian Eno, Bowie's principal collaborator, who was already saturated in German music. During the sessions for Low, he recorded with Harmonia, while his 1975 album, Another Green World, had been partly inspired by Cluster's Zuckerzeit, an album of playful, sugary but relentless synthesizer instrumentals, and the oscillation between recognisable, if slightly swerved pop songs and ambient instrumentals were what Bowie was aiming to achieve.

The five songs on Low's first side are almost randomly edited, formally unconventional - the vocal on the hit, Sound And Vision, doesn't come in for a minute and a half - and almost autistically uncommunicative. Normally profligate with words and storylines, Bowie here offers fragments from unpleasant scenarios that thrust themselves up into the consciousness (Always Crashing In The Same Car, Breaking Glass) or almost desperate attempts at connection (Be My Wife).

The excitement of the record's formal innovations - the successful integration of a new electronic sound with pop/rock music: just listen to the popping synth in What In The World - contrast with a mood that is shut down, cocooned. This feeling of remoteness is deepened by the four instrumentals that begin with Warszawa. Mixing minimalism with random elements, like the discarded Vibraphone found in the studio, they remain shape-shifting pulses of great clarity and beauty.

Low might have alienated the Americans, but it reached Number 2 in the UK: at the same time, Sound And Vision was a UK Top 3 single. While not of punk, it seemed to share a similar mood: the clipped feel, the acceleration, the traumatised emotions - on the surface at least. It was quickly followed by another album, this time totally recorded at the Hansa Tonstudio in Berlin: "Heroes". Although sharing the same split format as Low, this was a very different beast.

The first thing that you notice is that the songs are longer. There are synthesizers and randomness - like the flat interjection on Joe The Lion: "It's Monday" - but the feeling is generally more expansive, as though Bowie has begun to open up to the world again. The sound is fuller, and reaches a peak on the justly celebrated title track, inspired by two lovers meeting under the Berlin Wall, which, with a totally committed, if not desperate vocal, celebrates the uncertain possibility that love can transcend geopolitics.

The second side is like a waking dream. The Kraftwerk homage V-2 Schneider begins with a downward sweep - like a jet, or a rocket terror weapon, levelling out - before hitting a heavy motorik groove as relentless as anything on Neu! 75. Sense Of Doubt leaves a descending, four-note theme hanging in atmospherics and synthesizer washes: you can hear the dripping rain and feel the physical and mental as psychology matches environment.

Moss Garden takes from Edgar Froese's Epsilon In Malaysian Pale in mood - that lush, exotic soundscape - and in its repeating synth whorls. Bowie added a deep, machine-like hum that travels across the channels, and an improvisation played on a koto: the Japanese stringed instrument. The final instrumental, Neuköln, features Bowie's saxophone in a strangulated, highly Expressionist evocation of a drab Berlin district then mainly populated by Turkish immigrants.

These four tracks are the high point of Bowie's career, his point of furthest formal and expressive outreach: sound paintings that have all the complexity and power of a feature film, they take you there, right into their emotional and physical landscape. Just as much as the purely instrumental albums that Brian Eno would release over the next few years, they represent the beginnings of ambient music, certainly in the form that would become popular in the early 1990s.

The impact of Low and "Heroes" was immediate. Both albums were signposts to the young musicians who would come to the fore in 1978 and 1979, after punk's fury had dissipated: among them were Gary Numan, whose super-alienated chart-topper, Are 'Friends' Electric, welded TVC 15 with Speed Of Life, and Joy Division, originally called Warsaw after the opening instrumental on side two of Low, who took that album's distinctive drum sound, mixed with a lot of Can, into their vision of rock and electronics.

The influence went even further. Berlin and bleak Mitteleurope became a pop trope in the late '70s, with the cold wave of The Human League, Ultravox's Vienna and Joy Division's haunted Komakino, written after a visit to the city. The Mobiles went kitsch with the melodramatic Drowning In Berlin, while Spandau Ballet, the breakthrough group of the new romantics (true children of Bowie all), took their name from the district to the west of the city.

Part of this was just pop faddishness, but Low and "Heroes" had, by the end of 1977, offered a way out of punk's stylistic cul-de-sac. Electronics had been a definite no-no for punks - "Moog synthe-si-zer" Joe Strummer had sneered on London Weekend Television in November 1976 - but they returned with a vengeance after Donna Summer's I Feel Love and Space's Magic Fly, with great 1978 singles by The Normal, Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire and The Human League, plus key albums by Suicide and Kraftwerk.

Punk had been the future, but that was quickly superseded by real-time, political events. In the polarising atmosphere of late 1977 and early 1978, it was all too easy to feel shot by both sides. As they had to David Bowie, electronics offered a way of side-stepping impossible demands, while their association with various physical and psychological states - movement late in the night through the city, withdrawal and isolation - were attractive to alienated youth.

In many ways, it was the return of psychedelia, only darker in keeping with the mood of the time. The counter-intuitive analogue synth sound was key: it was deep enough to create an environment and bleak enough to evoke estrangement, while at the same time enveloping the listener in a warm bath of ambience, that "sensurround sound" that would be explored further by The Human League (The Dignity Of Labour Parts 1-4), Joy Division (Atmosphere, The Eternal) and PiL (Radio 4).

Like his post-punk acolytes, Bowie too kept coming back to these albums in the later '70s and early '80s. In 1978, he played Warszawa and Sense Of Doubt on the long Isolar II tour, later collected on the Stage live album. Both also cropped up, together with V-2 Schneider and "Heroes"/Helden on the soundtrack of Christiane F., a stark but overlong depiction of teenage heroin addicts at the central Berlin station that became one of the most popular German films ever.

But apart from Crystal Japan, a Japanese B-side, Bowie retreated from pure electronica thereafter. By the time that he returned with Let's Dance in 1983, the spores he had helped to cast to the wind were beginning to bear fruit in the most unexpected way, as the late '70s white synthetic sound was taken up by black Americans, most notably in rap and techno tracks by Cybotron - 1981's Alleys Of Your Mind and 1984's Techno City - and Afrika Bambaataa And Soulsonic Force on 1983's Planet Rock.

While Bowie busied himself in the mainstream, dance culture proliferated into a myriad forms, assisted by the onset of digital and sampling technology. With such an eclectic, voracious and fast-moving culture, it was hardly surprising that it began to loop back to the analogue late '70s. Just as Low and "Heroes" reappeared on CD in 1991, with several extra tracks, the first products of ambient's second wave were being released: Aphex Twin's Didgeridoo and Biosphere's classic Microgravity.

Reconnecting with his electronic past gave Bowie a burst of energy that has taken him through the '90s and, in fact, the rest of his career to date. During 1992, the year that Philip Glass put out the Low Symphony, he reunited with Brian Eno - on "synthesizers, treatments, and strategies" - for the ambitious 1.Outside. Released in 1995, this was a return to the dystopian landscape of Diamond Dogs with added pre-millennial tension and extra technological weirdness.

The fourteen songs on 1.Outside stretch time and form. Random reappears in the cut-up lyrics, while the constant 4/4 of house phases in-and-out of funk and baggy beats, in the segues Bowie's voice is varispeeded through time and space: one minute he's a fourteen-year-old girl, another a forty-six-year-old "Tyrannical Futurist". The album's big hit, Hello Spaceboy, has hints of Rebel Rebel and Space Oddity. By this stage, in his late forties, Bowie could look back at his catalogue and his obsessions, and still move forward.

The motion was even more extreme on 1997's direct, uptempo and intense Earthling, in which Bowie mixed heavily sampled often squeezed into squalling riffs, as on the opener Little Wonder, with self-generated drum'n'bass rhythms that co-existed with rave patterns (Dead Man Walking). With hints of The Prodigy and Underworld, this was Bowie's most dance-friendly album, adding remixes by Moby, Danny Saber, Nine Inch Nails, and Junior Vasquez.

Both 1.Outside and Earthling made the UK Top 10, as did the more eclectic and uptempo Hours..., from 1999. Two years later, Bowie finally released All Saints as a single disc: dropping the Black Tie White Noise tracks and South Horizon from The Buddha Of Suburbia, and adding Crystal Japan and Brilliant Adventure from Hours.... The result is eminently playable, Bowie's purest, most elemental electronic album.

The extraordinary thing about 2001's All Saints is how well it all hangs together, with nine tracks from 1977 flowing easily in and out of the material from the 1990s, the most recent being the brief, but beautiful Brilliant Adventure. The Mysteries could have segued straight into the second side of "Heroes", and Moss Garden into The Buddha Of Suburbia. That continuity is not a result of standing still, but of being able to retain a love of sound, the wish to move forward.

The long loop of All Saints, from 1977 to 1993 and, finally, 2001, takes Bowie near the close of his musical career to date. In 2002 he released Heathen, an excellent record with tinges of sadness and mortality alongside a surprising cover of Neil Young's I've Been Waiting For You. The next year there was Reality and since then there has been nothing. In a strange way All Saints feels like a closing of the circle: a celebration of an extraordinary breakthrough that remained an inspiration and a talisman.

Just as the prophecies of The Man Who Fell To Earth have come to pass - that bank of TV screens, all showing different channels: if only someone could have told us how boring that would become - then the startling futurism of Low and "Heroes" has been borne out by the events of the last thirty-five years. A radical departure then, seemingly out of their time, they continue to exist in their own world, but they also remain signposts to a future that came to pass.

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