#if this is supposed to be a representation of his journey

[rosquinn]

the fact that I cannot find any YouTube videos/articles discussing gender themes (in depth) in Demian upsets me greatly. im considering taking matters into my own hands (<- has never completed a project ever in her life)

skgjsjsjf I get you I wish people looked more into it because there's a lot to talk about... Dont get me wrong it's nice to see people discuss how stupidly homoerotic the whole thing is because it's true but I wish there was more discussion about the themes around gender, specially surrounding Frau Eva? An idealized representation of motherhood, who shows up at the end of the journey and makes you feel safe and secured and on top of that is as androgynous as her kid?? How Sinclair associates motherhood and specially femininity with the world of light since childhood???? How the guy who's supposed to represent the duality of the two worlds has being androgynous as one of his main features???Whatever this was??

Theres a lot of "bro you gotta fuse with a woman" and "this woman represents your fate and inner self" stuff going around Sinclair and religious meaning aside the way femininity and masculinity are treated separately + the (bad) relationship Sinclair has with masculinity and masculine roles like fatherhood is so interesting. Theres something Big going on in here.

[lxvi-gloria]

New photos of this statue! 🥹

[poisoncupids]

say what u want about it but jiper really is for people who didn't know they were gay until after the majority of their teen years

[prince-geo]

literally pleased with almost all of the new atla trailer except as per usual, Zuko's scar, idk why studios are so scared to commit to the intensity of the thing, its supposed to be shocking and obvious and textured and the first thing you see... that's the point, Zuko is supposed to struggle with feeling like it defines and brands him before finally coming to the point in his journey where he defines it.

Hollywood/big studios are known to hesitate or straight up avoid properly and honestly and unapologetically showing people with disfigurements/disabilities/facial differences etc. with the realism they deserve. Which is a shame in general for representation and humanization but ESPECIALLY in this case as its minimization actively harms it's narrative purpose as well

I promise making the scar more intense (shrivel up the ear a bit, make it intrude in his hairline, make his eye in a permanent squint due to nerve damage, for god sake REMOVE THE EYEBROW IT WAS BURNED OFF) will not make Zuko "ugly", (the actor is incapable of looking ugly and also the implication that scars make people too unappealing? yikes) but will actually do the character and his journey justice, not to mention really show Ozai's brutality, another essential narrative tool. Especially when he's bald like hello??? It should be even more stark and intense when he doesn't have hair to distract from it and cover his ear!!!

When transitioning from 2D to live action, of course some visuals are up for interpretation but that usually involved ADDING detail because the constraints of having to stay on modeling frame to frame is gone, not minimizing, removing or airbrushing. Doing Zuko's scar right to me is absolutely essential and I'm disappointed they seem just as as scared to go there as I thought they might. It doesn't have to be gory, if you've ever seen burn victims in real life or in pictures or even cosplayers/artists who are skilled in realistic burn makeup you'd know its possible to balance realism with humanity. It's possible especially with their resources to avoid the "scary Halloween makeup" route while not holding back on the brutality of the original injury.

Budget is definitely not an issue, or "scaring the kids" considering this remake is likely aiming to go a lil darker in tone than the cartoon (which was already super dark with its target audience of nickelodeon 7 year olds so no excuses) Audiences SHOULD be unsettled and upset when they see him but not because he's hard/disturbing to look at but because we are human and do not want to imagine someone doing that to a child.

It's a deliberate choice out of the all too common fear/hesitation to allow someone who is destined to eventually become a protagonist and is meant to be sympathized with to be "too ugly" while this hesitation is very rarely applied to straight up villains (again we come back to media's historic villainization of facial deformity). It's a trend that's always ticked me off in fanart too. The boy's face was melted, for gods sake. Zuko was always portrayed as an attractive boy in the cartoon (fire nation girls fawn over him) even with the intensity of his scar which is something I've always admired! People exist with scars similar to Zuko's in real life, and should not only be permitted to be represented as good guys and/or as attractive when their scars are toned down to be "palatable"

Like I said there's more that I loved than didn't love about the trailer, that can be a whole essay on it's own but I needed to get this very specific vent off my chest because it missed the mark so hard and stands out like a sore thumb in comparison to all the other visuals that hit the nail on the head to me

[cregansdingdong]

ᴍᴇʀᴄʏ.

Cregan Stark x fem!reader | no use of y/n | warnings: NSFW, porn without plot, m!receiving oral, very sloppy blowjob good stuff, starts off slow but then there's some face-fucking, swearing, one *tiny* face smack (its not bad i promise), he’s gonna come in her throat for giving him attitude; yeah the gif is the perfect representation for this tbh

Hot stuff under the cut. 18+ only. I'm not responsible for the content you choose to consume. ty.

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“What was I supposed to do then? Refuse the Lord Commander?” Cregan raises a brow, head tilted up at the ceiling as his wife stood there in front of his desk, hands on her hips. “I didn’t say that, Cregan. He could’ve waited a moment rather than storm into breakfast. And for what? To report a runaway from Castle Black? He could’ve sent a raven and saved himself all the trouble. I think he just wanted a small getaway.” He barks out a laugh at her accusation. “And I think you’re spoiled. My spoiled little wife who does not like having my attention taken away.”

“And so what if I don’t?” She huffs, lips morphing into a scowl. “Especially not during meal times—you’re a busy man and breakfast is Cregan time, not Lord Stark. My time with my husband. Lord Commander Markus surely was exhausted from his journey—but the entire thing was needlessly frantic. You are not a dog he may call on the moment he prefers it.” Cregan, since the day they'd married, had been a fairly patient man. She had a southern temper, which he had to learn how to douse and maintain just as she did. That's not to say his wife wasn't capable of controlling herself—she merely didn't care how she spoke to him.

His glance is lined with warning, but she either didn't catch it or ignored it completely. He guesses the latter. “Those sorts of matters are my responsibility. Deserters must be punished by my hand, wife. That is the way of the North, which you know well by now. Refrain from comparisons.” Neither of them were backing down. “Of course that is the only thing you take away from what I'm saying.” She scoffs. “My comparison is correct. When he calls, you bark. When he arrives, you heel. Are you his Warden Wolf or his pup? Because I'm not sure I can tell the difference any—”

“Get on your knees.”

“...what?” The surprise on her face would be etched into his memory forever. “On your knees. I won’t tell you again, wife.” His voice was low in the quiet of the room; daunting, even. “Right here.” Cregan scoots his chair back from the desk, thighs spread, gray eyes unblinking as he waits. She debated walking away, but she knew better. He watched as she took a few meager steps around his desk, the hem of her gown slowly gathering on the floor. Maybe she'd pushed him too far this time. “I think you've forgotten yourself—who's wife you are.” He squeezes her chin in his large hand, pleased by her soft sound of protest. “Yes, you have.” He grunts, stopping the words from leaving her mouth. “And now, you’re going to do exactly what I tell you—when I tell you. Do you understand?”

He seemed fairly satisfied with her little nod. “Good, pup. Unlace my breeches.” His wife reaches out to fumble with the ties after only a moment, his hand releasing the grip on her flushed face. She tugs the laces with a fervor, feeling him harden under her fingertips. It didn’t take much, honestly. He murmurs something she doesn’t catch as she gently wriggles him out of the confines of his breeches, brows furrowed in concentration. “You don’t deserve my cock in your mouth yet. Kiss only. Use your tongue if you have such a lack of self-restraint. You’re good at that.” The jab was directed and shot, but the weight of him in her hand had her head spinning too fast to say anything smart in return. Her lips meet his tip with a quiet, pleased hum, her tongue dipping into the crease where his precum dribbled. 

Cregan’s reaction was immediate. “Like that…” He sighs, head tilting back, just savoring the relief. Fire thrummed in her stomach. She kisses down the underside of his cock, ignoring the tickle of the dark hair at the base of him as it brushed against her jaw.

His arms were slack on the rests, fingers twitching with every small suction of her lips on him. Kiss by kiss, he hardens fully under her hands, and lines of swears erupt from his throat like mantras. “In your mouth now, pup.” He looks down at her with hooded eyes, looking like he was trying not to smile but failing anyway. To be fair, it was Cregan. The slight quirk of his lips was upturned enough to count. She situates herself a little further between his thick thighs, resting her elbows down midway as her palms lay over his. And then she took him into her mouth.

“Fuck..” He groans, something low and sinful that brought her butterflies. It was quite the sight to see the Warden of the North melt so easily by a tongue. He wasn’t like most men sometimes—usually. This, though. He certainly was. Not much longer before he’d forget what she said to him in the first place. The thought drove her to sink deeper on him, barely able to go halfway but that was already enough to get his tip in the far end of her mouth. He curses more—although entirely unintelligible this time—and his hands lift, presumably to tangle themselves in her hair. But they don’t make it there. She might’ve been trapped there on the floor between his legs, but that didn’t mean he was going to get all that he wanted. Her nails dig hard into the back of his hands, close to the wrists, and keep them firmly planted against the armrests.

He hisses momentarily in surprise. With his thick skin, it was more likely his ego was more hurt than his hands. She bobs her head with a vengeance of her own, and he slumps in the chair with a growl, thoroughly annoyed to be held back. “I’m going…to give you…five seconds...wife. Release me.” Her nails dig harder in response, pinching the skin hard enough for him to react. Cregan’s thighs tense more under her elbows. She counted down in her mind as she was sure he was doing in his. It was absolutely worth a bit of punishment. Saliva coated his cock, the drool slithering down the underside of it enough to make it sound even more lewd. He loved it when she abandoned her manners. “Wife.” He warns again. What happened to never repeating yourself twice, husband? The thought would’ve made her laugh if it weren’t for his cock.

He bucks his hips toward her throat—on purpose, obviously—and the force of it surprises her entirely, gagging in the slightest as she loses her grip on him. His hands are snatched from under her ruthless nails, and although out of view as he clutched her cheeks together, she didn’t fail to catch the pinkish skin around the moon-shaped indentations. They would certainly leave a mark tomorrow. Cregan pushes her back from his cock, seething, and his dark eyes never leave her face. His fingers dig into her cheeks unconsciously before letting go—and as quick as they go, a warning smack makes her face turn to the side. It didn’t hurt, by any means, but it sent a thrill right down between her thighs. “If you ever hold my hands back again, I’ll fuck you so full of my seed that all of Winterfell will hear your pathetic little mewls for me to stop. Do you understand me, pup? Answer me.”

“I understand.” She relents, eyes darting from his face to his red cock, the beat of her heart following every throb of the pretty veins. His eyes narrowed at her, not entirely trusting but he’d gotten his point across. “Make me come, wife.” She didn’t need him to say another word, her lips instantly wrapping around his tip to pick up where she left off. This time, she kept her hands planted on his thighs, breathing harshly through her nose as she took more and more of his cock. Her fists clenched around his breeches tightly, her gaze flicking up at him. He was watching, panting, the last of his restraint hanging by a thread. Cregan never lasted very long in her mouth, not that either of them thought he needed to. “To the base.” He mutters, holding off the urge to fuck her throat. He wanted to see if she could do it herself first.

His wife does her best attempt three-fourths of the way—close enough for the tip of her nose to brush against the coarse hair. The feeling nearly brought him to the edge anyway, close to falling off entirely. His grunts were louder, less composed. He was getting desperate. He reaches out to grip her hair, his own strands drooping down into his line of sight. “I’m gonna come—hold your breath for me.” She does. He doesn’t waste a moment, cupping her face gently, thumbs soothing the skin of her cheeks as he starts to buck up into her mouth like he was rabid. The sound of his tip sliding almost into her throat was enough to do it. Cregan was snarling now, fucking her face with purpose as the come dribbled down her tongue and mouth. “Good girl! Good fucking girl! Taking me so well!”

Eventually, he slowed, spent and breathing heavily as she recuperated through long inhales and exhales through her nose. She was still sucking on him though, eager for every drop. Leaned back in his chair, limp like a rag doll, Cregan gave her one of his sweet, lazy smiles. “...Told you not to compare.”

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[kylieswift31]

Taylor Swift and the Truman show

"Well, for me, there is no difference between a private life and a public life. My life... is my life, is the Truman show."

Tied together with a smile

Taylor is currently at the peak of her career as she's now breaking her own records and reaching a level of fame only seen by the greatest such as the Beatles and Michael Jackson. Yet underneath all that success is a layer of conflict due to the discrepancies between her private and public life. With closer inspection it is clear to see that Taylor has left a trail of breadcrumbs that reveal that she has been queer since the beginning of her career. The ‘love struck and boy crazy’ version we first saw of Taylor was supposed to be a temporary step in her career during the fearless era, but through a series of unfortunate events she has spent the entirety of her career in the closet.

Now with the ending of the rerecords and eras tour in sight, Taylor has begun to reveal the cracks in the facade of her public persona so that we can see who she really is underneath. Her performance of 'delicate' on the eras tour is a visual representation of this process. Throughout the song we slowly see cracks forming in the glass, one at a time until at last there are so many cracks the entire stage shatters into a million tiny little pieces.

But what causes the cracks?

Taylor.

And it’s all inspired by the Truman show…

Daily life

In the mirror

The first time you watch the Truman show, the focus is on Truman and his journey. He lives a normal life in Seahaven with his wife Meryl, has a successful career in finance and spends his free time with his best friend Marlon. There are small cracks in the facade of his picture perfect life from the beginning, but halfway through we reach a turning point as it becomes clear that Truman is also the star of a 24 hour reality TV show that broadcasts his life to the public without his knowledge. Every move he makes is being observed by the outside. And then when you get to the end of the movie you start to realise that not everything you saw was as it seems.

Taylor has several well known Easter eggs that reference the Truman show, but with further investigation we can discover that she also relates to his story on a personal level. In the song 'mirrorball' Taylor explores the theme of wearing a mask that reflects back what the viewer wants or chooses to see. Just like an iceberg, if we stop at the surface level of what we see of Taylor’s personal life, we’ll miss the depth of what lies underneath. Many of her music videos echo Truman's story in a way that leaves her truth hiding in plain sight.

Good neighbours

Truman’s day starts with a moment of quiet reflection as he gazes at himself in the mirror before greeting his neighbours on his way to work. “Good morning! And incase I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening and good night!” His iconic catchphrase is repeated each day. Even though Truman’s the only person in Seahaven who isn’t a paid actor, he’s having the same scripted interactions day after day. His life is centred around acting the part, just like everyone else. The only difference is that he’s wearing a mask to hide how he really feels underneath. Truman's day is very reminiscent of the groundhog day trope to highlight how scripted and repetitive his life has become.

Taylor's life in the public is very similar to Truman's now that she can't go anywhere without being recognised. The once unfiltered teen that was vocal on myspace has become selective and restrained with what she shares online after years of having her life picked apart for all to see. The chasm between Taylor's public and private life has grown to the point where removing the pop star mask will impact her career.

Product placement

The Truman show is sustained through the revenue generated from the products advertised on the show. The first time we meet Truman's wife Meryl is when she's showing him the latest gadget she's picked up from the store on her way home from work. This feels subtle at first, but as more products are mentioned throughout the show it becomes more obvious and the advertising feels more akin to a late night shopping channel. We start to see that everything from the decor, wardrobe and food they eat is for sale. Every aspect of Truman's life has become commodified to generate revenue and to keep the show running.

All the little Easter eggs throughout Taylor's 'lover' music video seem like personalised advertisements now that we’ve seen that they advertise memorabilia on the Truman show in a similar way. However, within her career marketing is an integral facet of Taylor's career. "When you realise the rules of the game you're playing and how it will affect you, you got to look at the board and make your strategy. But at the same time, writing songs has never been a strategic element of my career. But I'm not scared to say that other things in my career, like how to market an album, are strictly strategic."

Hidden in plain sight

It's not obvious at first that Truman and Marlon have found a way to communicate with each other honestly whilst remaining undetected. Truman is often sharing his plans of going to Fiji to get away for a while. However, when he's really planning to leave Truman says "Just between you and me Marlon, I'm going away for a while." This allows the viewer to believe that it's just another wishful thought about going to Fiji, but said in a way that lets Marlon know that he is serious this time. Beer seems to be both another advertisement and a signal to indicate that he's been sent by the director. "It's all true. It's all real. Nothing here is fake. Nothing you see on the show is fake. It's merely controlled." Later on when we're shown that the director is feeding Marlon his lines, it's clear that he has always tried to be as honest as possible with Truman.

Taylor mentions wine frequently through her discography. Perhaps this is to show us that her truth has become so watered down within her lyrics that she lost sight of who she was before. Taylor has changed up pronouns and added hidden meaning to words and phrases mentioned frequently throughout her discography. Through this process she has become incredibly skilled at seamlessly adding connections to multiple muses within a song.

The first crack in the glass

Everything changed

From what we can see, Truman has known from the beginning that he's been the central character within his town to some degree. Truman appears to be fairly content with the life he had created for himself, despite the confinement he felt (he hasn't known any different). This all came to an end when Truman realises that his father is still alive. This changes everything as the first cracks in the facade of his seemingly perfect life become visible.

Intercepted

A very similar experience happens with Taylor in the 'delicate' music video. We can see that this interaction leaves Taylor more aware of those around her. "People often greatly underestimate me on how much I'll inconvenience myself to prove a point…" In her real life there are several events we could attribute to being her motive for change including the sale of her masters (ownership of her first six albums) to investors, a relationship changing or something that affected her reasons for remaining closeted.

Chance of rain

We see Truman sitting at the beach reflecting on how his father drowned when he was a child. As it starts raining he gets up to leave, only to reveal that there's just enough rain to encourage him to get up and go home. We slowly start to see how manufactured these scenarios are. Throughout Truman's week there are planned situations that are designed to test for any changes in his behaviour, like if he's still petrified of the water. These actions reveal just how much pressure they've placed on Truman to prevent him from leaving. It leaves us asking how much free will does he truly have with his choice to stay or go? At this point it feels like the choice has been made for him.

Taylor recreates this rain scene in the 'lavender haze' music video. We see her sitting at the end of the bed with a rain cloud over her head while her lover is asleep. We can infer that Taylor is showing us that she identifies with how isolated Truman was feeling in this moment. Taylor has given up a lot in her personal life for the success of her career, but how much of that was her choice to do so?

Reflecting on the past

Truman goes back home and opens up a trunk full of childhood memories. He's looking at photos of his family while trying to make sense of what he saw with his father still being alive, and the implications of that. This is the beginning of Truman questioning how far those in his life have gone to keep up this lie. If his father is still alive then what else have they lied about?

In the 'cardigan' music video we can see that Taylor is reflecting on her past in a similar way, but this time through playing her piano. Both 'the tortured poets department' album and summation reveal a similar theme of reflection, but with an honest exploration of the agony that comes along with it. "Nostalgia is a mind's trick." This album is a reflection of her career, highlighting the toll it's taken on her personal life along the way.

The one that got away

Love triangles

As Truman pulls out a red cardigan from a plastic bag, we get flashbacks of his high school years. His attention is torn between Sylvia and his current wife, Meryl. During a moment alone with Sylvia they sneak away together, but she appears anxious knowing they don't have much time alone. They share a chaste kiss before Lauren gets dragged away by a man claiming to be her father. She hastily reveals that everything Truman knows about his life is a lie, that it's all done for him and that everyone is watching him. Her father claims that she is just having an episode and reassures Truman by saying that he's taking her to Fiji to receive more help. Sylvia's interaction with Truman is the catalyst for her character being removed from the show. This reveals that even in high school Truman's love interest was planned out for him, despite his attraction to Sylvia.

Taylor wistfully talks about the fictional teenage love triangle during the 'folkmore' set. She describes how James is longing for the one that got away, which seems to contain an element of truth from her past. In 'imgonnagetyouback' she talks about how she won't stop fighting until they're back together again. I tend to lean more museless, with the queer side of Taylor being the one she's fighting for most of all (and with any other muses being secondary to that). If we consider the love triangle from that perspective we can see that the muse she lost was a cherished piece of her history, but the part of herself she lost along the way is the one worth risking everything for to be able to feel whole again.

It's all in the details

Through the development of Sylvia's character we start to see the significance of the colour red. To the viewers at home it is a symbol of heartbreak and loss, and that Truman's attachment to the cardigan is based on his feelings for her. But for Truman we can assume that it is more like a symbol of hope that he might finally be free one day. Other symbols we see her wear include a red seahorse pin (their school mascot) a green bauble bracelet and the 'how's it going to end?' badge. When he reads the badge in the library he quietly admits that he's been wondering that too. This is the earliest insight we witness of Truman not being fulfilled by the life that has been scripted for him.

Many of Taylor's Easter eggs are a reference to the Truman show. These include Sylvia's rose shirt, the eras tour poster, 'karma' door, the song 'how did it end?' and many of her music videos. In the 'lover' music video there's also the bauble earrings, her lover has a seahorse patch on his jacket and the board games are Taylor Swift themed. These all seem like amusing connections until you pick up on the deeper correlations to Truman's story.

Cardigan

After Sylvia left, all Truman is left with is her red cardigan. Sylvia begs Truman to come and find her, but as the flashback ends we find out that Truman didn't follow her to Fiji at the time because his mother got really sick. Instead he settled down and married Meryl, while living with the loss of what could've been with Sylvia. After Truman finishes reminiscing about the past, he slyly reveals that the badge is still pinned onto the cardigan. This reveals that his attachment is not so much to Sylvia now, but to the idea of leaving one day so that he can be free to live his life authentically.

Taylor's song 'cardigan' is one of her most significant references to Truman's story. In the 'cardigan' and 'willow' music video we can see that it is a symbol of the memories she carries from her past and a reminder of what she's left behind along the way. The stars on the cardigan hold a similar sense of hope, just like Truman's pin. "You drew stars around my scars, but now I'm bleedin' 'cause I knew you." This imagery evokes the pain of carving into skin to emphasise the heaviness that comes with sitting with the memory of what could have been.

The bar

After Truman's flashback scene we get a glimpse of commentary from a bar as they're watching the show. This juxtaposition reveals how watching the Truman show is an ordinary occurrence during their daily lives, just like many of us tune in to watch the eras tour on a grainy live stream. The 'delicate' music video ends with Taylor walking into a very similar bar to meet up with a secret admirer, but it remains unclear which one is sitting there waiting for her.

Cracks in the facade

The one worth fighting for

Once the nostalgic moment is over we see Truman holding a photo frame of his wife Meryl. It seems like a loving gesture at first, until he turns it around and opens it up to reveal that he's been collecting a collage of facial features in an attempt to recreate a portrait of Sylvia from memory. This contrast between the memory and Truman's reality exposes how much he has sacrificed along the way by staying in Seahaven. Holding onto the cardigan, pin and picture of Sylvia is an act of defiance when everything else in his life has been decided for him.

Taylor left everything behind when she left her old label, including the ownership of her first six albums. She was not given the option of buying them back without having to commit to producing another album for each one she earned back. Unfortunately this is something many in the industry have had to endure. With hindsight we now know that Taylor was able to rerecord her past albums with added vault tracks, but at the cost of reliving her past. Taylor's back tattoo in the 'you need to calm down' music video conveys that the memory of her life's work was the only memento from her past that she was able to take with her.

Glitches

As Truman is driving to work again, his car radio starts glitching and he ends up on a channel that contains the directions everyone else is hearing in preparation for his arrival before work. From our point of view all of these mishaps are new, but there would have been flaws like this in the system a lot longer than that. But if Truman has known he was the star of the show from the beginning, what was the point of the movie? To reveal the truth to us, and the viewers at home, slowly over time. And to give us a chance to understand his point of view as we prepare for his departure.

We have seen plenty of glitches like this occurring in Taylor's performances on the eras tour, and many of these have been intentional (such as the screens glitching and swallowing bugs). This draws our attention to the cracks in her pop star facade, revealing glimpses of the person she is underneath. And just like Truman, she's giving us the opportunity to slowly adjust to the changes she plans to make in the lead up of what's to come.

Breaking down

Truman appears to be overwhelmed as he starts to reveal just how much of the town he lives in is choreographed around him. This is the start of Truman escalating his reactions to create more cracks in the facade, in the hopes that more viewers begin to see the challenges he faces living in the spotlight.

This purposeful increase in revealing more of the inner versions of themselves is exactly what Taylor is portraying during the 'delicate'' performance on the eras tour. Slowly allowing us to see them as normal people behind the larger than life character they had become in the spotlight. The way Taylor begins creating the cracks on purpose allows us to understand that what's to come is purposely being exposed.

Life's a stage

Truman attempts to enter an elevator, only to discover that it's fake. This is a big step towards seeing what's behind the magician's curtain the first time you watch the movie. When you watch it again this is the point where you start to discover how complex the set of Seahaven has become over time to keep the show running. Many elements of the town act as rest stops and exit points for the actors away from Truman's view.

Taylor pushes down the walls of the bedroom during the 'lavender haze' music video, revealing that the relationship had always been a facade to begin with. Interestingly, this is the only music video that we see begin after the clock ticks over to midnight. Just like Cinderella returns to her original state at midnight, so too does Taylor. This correlation to Cinderella's story implies that the lavender haze we see hidden beyond the walls of the bedroom is the most honest version of Taylor underneath everything else. Lavender is heavily used as a subtle reference by queer people, especially lesbians. Koi fish can be seen in all of the 'midnights' music videos except for 'karma'. They are well known for swimming against the stream, something many neurodivergent people experience feeling. Koi fish are often associated with the yin and yang symbol and together they symbolise balance, courage and perseverance, much like the song 'you're on your own kid'.

Turn up the heat

Invisible

As he seeks out his best friend Marlon for help, we learn that Truman feels concerned that he is being followed or set up for something. Marlon appears calm until Truman mentions that his father is still alive. It appears that this detail may not have been disclosed to the public. Truman demonstrates that everyone in the store is so preoccupied with fulfilling their roles that they will ignore him at all costs. This is a very unnatural reaction and wouldn't be a new discovery for Truman.

The bodyguards in the 'delicate' music video react in a similar way, just like the guards at Buckingham palace are trained to stay focused and ignore distractions. On an emotional level, this behaviour feels like no one is interested in you unless you're wearing the mask of who they expect you to be. "The actors were hitting their marks." Many neurodivergent people experience this disparity between who they are on the inside and the curated version they present for others to see. This act of reflecting back what the viewer wants to see is often done out of necessity to remain safe, but leaves the inner and truest version of oneself feeling invisible. "I want you to know I'm a mirrorball. I'll show you every version of yourself tonight." Unfortunately, you have to participate in their performance if you want to be seen, but the version you they see isn't who you truly are on the inside.

Just for you

After an evening together, Truman is left alone when Meryl offers to take his mother home. As the TV is playing in the background we hear how the presenter is incredibly specific when describing the next episode of 'show me the way to go home'. "Where we learn that you don't have to leave home to discover what the world's all about. And that no one is poor, who has friends." This is a form of subliminal messaging telling Truman that he's better off staying home, implying that there's no point trying to leave because they will prevent him every step of the way.

In the 'lavender have' music video Taylor is watching a similar weather station, but when she gets closer she pulls the screen apart to reveal that there's nothing but space and koi fish behind it. This likeness to Truman's story presents an intriguing insight into the obstacles and road blocks Taylor has faced as a queer woman throughout her career. The koi fish behind the screen also highlight Taylor's determination to challenge the status quo and how she has been working towards much needed change within the music industry.

I do not

Truman is flipping through a photo album full of photos of his family and life with Meryl. His mother stresses her desire for grandkids while she's still alive. Truman continues to look through the album after they leave. The final straw for their relationship comes when he reveals that Meryl had her fingers crossed when they got married, implying she was never fully committed from the beginning. Looking through the photo albums seems to be a weekly routine when his mother visits, so we can assume this wasn't the first time Truman's noticed this detail, the only difference is that he's pointing it out now because it's the next step in his plan to leave Seahaven.

Many of Taylor's music videos emphasise the facade she has played into of the life society expects her to maintain. This has become more evident than ever with her current relationship with Travis Kelce. They want her to fulfil the 1950's lifestyle as a happily married wife with two children, a house with a white picket fence, to stay home each day as a housewife and to serve her husband when he gets home from a long day at the office. 'The man' music video highlights the disparity between these expectations and the lifestyle men are usually celebrated for, so that we can understand that this isn't the life she wants for herself.

Undressed

After Truman attempts to confront his wife about the photo, he follows her to work in his pyjamas. She works at the hospital and claimed to be doing a leg amputation from the elevator incident, a story they made up to explain what he saw the day before. When he locates her within the hospital the actors are forced to begin the procedure to keep up appearances.

Taylor was wearing a corset with a pattern very similar to Truman's pyjamas underneath her blue dress recently while out with Travis Kelce and his friends. Everyone in the group was wearing matching pant and shirt sets, with Brittany Mahomes in actual pyjamas. This may have been a hint that Taylor's beginning to escalate the cracks in the facade of her pop star persona.

The failed escape

Predictable

Truman is sitting in his car when Meryl gets home from working at the hospital. When she gets in, he locks her in the car and attempts to leave town. "Blocked at every turn. Beautifully synchronised, don't you agree?" This is the point where he's revealing that he knows how predictable everyone around him has been, pointing out that the same three people keep going past on schedule.

Logically if Taylor knew what the roadblocks were before she left her old record label, she would have known how her opponents would retaliate after she left. "Blood's thick but nothing like a payroll." It seems likely that they were planning to sabotage her once she left, with her first album in particular. If they were predictable enough, Taylor could've had time to plan ahead to mitigate the damage done to her career. This could include holding back on releasing certain songs, which has now lead to the rumours of 'lover' vault tracks.

Just like clockwork

Truman begins to drive around the round about over and over again to highlight that he has figured out that the townspeople move around him like clockwork, but again this isn't new information to Truman. The director's attempts to prevent him from leaving are incredibly predictable and they always have been. Truman would have been able to pick up on this pattern when he was still in high school, if not earlier. "When you're young they assume you know nothing." The benefit of them being this predictable is that Truman could foresee their reactions and blindside them when they least expected it.

Taylor uses many clocks throughout her music videos as easter eggs and to draw our attention to time and dates that might be relevant in the future. One element of interest is the concept of routine and the predictability that comes with that. The arena in 'the hunger games catching fire' seems to be inspired by the Truman show as well. Katniss figured out that there are new threats in each segment that changed on the hour, ending with a lightning strike at noon and midnight. This kind of predictability allows one to plan in advance. Three years perhaps?

Planned to fail

After driving around in circles Truman claims that they're headed to Atlantic City, only to find out that the end of their street is blocked up with traffic. He concedes to going back home after all, just to announce suddenly that he has changed his mind. As Truman doubles back and attempts to leave for the second time, he discovers that the traffic jam had magically cleared up after they left. He was accurate in predicting that his plan to leave would be counteracted by some form of intervention. Truman's actions are forcing the director to reveal his hand, only to call his bluff and get further than the director expected him to. And despite her fear, Meryl is still putting on a performance for the camera here too.

It's a possibility that Taylor set up a similar scenario to unfold with the release of her 'lover' album. The contrast between the aesthetic and themes of the 'reputation' and 'lover' albums could have been done on purpose to blur the lines between the two in an attempt to mitigate the damage done from being sabotaged. Underneath the vindictive theme of 'reputation' was the romantic songs her opponents had been anticipating from the 'lover' album.

The bridge

Truman stalls at the bridge due to his fear of water but forces Meryl to drive across while his eyes are closed, willing to do whatever it takes to leave. "We're over the bridge!" he exclaims when they make it across. As Truman continues to escape, they are still faced with roadblock after roadblock. The escape plan eventually fails when the road is blocked because of a leak at the nuclear plant. They thank the officer for his help but when the officer says "you're welcome, Truman" he runs away from the car in a panic, but is quickly captured and returned home again.

Taylor draws attention to the bridges of her songs at the very beginning of the eras tour because they are the most authentic lyrics in all of her discography. She often begins a song with a very optimistic perspective, only to end with the most brutally honest observations of her experiences in hindsight. Taylor has told us that she tells lies. In 'love story' the lie is that she's singing about being in love with Romeo. When the perspective changes during the bridge, she's being honest when she describes being in love with Juliet and wanting to marry her. In 'lavender haze' we hear how stifling it's become to continue hiding her truth. "The only girl they see is a one night or a wife. I find it dizzying, they're bringin' up my history. But you aren't even listening." If we don't listen to what Taylor is saying during the bridges, we are avoiding her truth.

The turning point

What was once lost

When they return home Truman confronts Meryl, but she calls out for help and Marlon arrives with beer. Meryl leaps into his arms crying as he comforts her, but he's looking at Truman when he says "everything's going to be okay, it's all going to be fine." The next scene cuts to Truman and Marlon sitting at the end of an unfinished bridge together as Truman begins to tell Marlon what he's been through. "Maybe I'm losing my mind, but it feels like the whole world revolves around me somehow." Marlon replies by saying "The last thing that I would ever do is lie to you. I mean, think about it Truman. If everybody is in on it... I'd have to be in on it, too." The screen cuts to the director feeding him the lines but we can also see that Marlon has been as honest as he could be within his role on the show. To placate Truman and encourage him to stay, he is reunited with his father who he hasn’t seen for 22 years. Truman seems apprehensive about the reunion, but Marlon encourages him to go along with it.

In the 'willow' music video Taylor enters a glass display case and starts performing for the crowd of an old fashioned circus. As her lover approaches for the first time they reunite through the glass pane but it feels like the glass was intentional to keep them apart, despite their intentions to be together again. This imagery is echoed over and over again throughout Taylor's music videos and the eras tour. We can interpret this as a visual representation of being closeted in plain sight or as a form of protecting something that's delicate. Judging by the way they all end up shattered in the end, they seem to be foretelling what's still to come.

Test run

Truman was never really planning on leaving the first time because he had planned to fail. There are a few benefits of acting in this way. Firstly, we know that Truman had never crossed the bridge before and his attempt forced the director to play his hand by revealing what obstacles were ahead if this was his exit route. Enacting his bigger plan before seeing what was ahead would mean that he's more likely to fail if he crosses the bridge while under prepared for what is on the other side. Secondly, if everyone has assumed that he has failed, they won't see his bigger plan coming if they believe he's feeling defeated. They placated Truman by reuniting him with his father, but that backfired on them when he escaped when they least expected it.

Taylor mentions that "Every bait and switch was a work of art" in 'mastermind'. I wasn't sure if I was using this term correctly when search results were full of business examples and psychologists were linking it with the act of gaslighting, but the type of bait and switch I was intrigued by is akin to a chess move. This type of move is often referred to as the 'queen sacrifice'. By purposely leaving the queen unguarded, your opponent is lured into the trap, only to be met with a devastating counter attack. This, and the element of a trial run before the big reveal, is what lead me to consider that the 'lover' album may have been used as bait for the sale of her masters. If she alluded to coming out straight away to entice the sale that was going to happen anyway, that obstacle wouldn't get in the way of her bigger plan. (It is not my intention to imply that this theory is true, so this is just a hypothetical option in favour of the bigger picture.) If this was a prelude for a bigger plan, it still would have been extremely devastating when it did happen.

The show must go on

This is the turning point in the movie when we begin to see Truman's life from the directors point of view. "An entire human life recorded on an intricate network of hidden cameras, and broadcast live and unedited 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to an audience around the globe." We start to find out how they had to manufacture ways to keep Truman on the island. His father dying played a big part of that, but to the viewers it's just another plot twist in the show they've been watching for entertainment. They have 5,000 cameras around Seahaven now, but started off with just one before he was born and they've been watching Truman's life unfold ever since. "We accept the reality of the world with which we are presented." This is the director's response as to why Truman has never left Seahaven or found out about the show. This contradicts everything we've seen from Truman's point of view. Just because he could leave doesn't mean he could leave freely. How much harder does he have to try before the director will let him go? He goes on to explain that with Meryl's decision to leave the show, a new love interest will be introduced and he has hopes for the first on air conception to occur. It's evident that Truman leaving would derail the directors plans for the show going forward.

Taylor has described how writing a song is like sucking the snake venom out of a bite. Expressing herself creates distance between the heaviness of what she's experienced and I believe this is why she sees herself as the narrator (or director) of her discography at times. During the 'folkmore' set on the eras tour she describes herself as the narrator of the teenage love triangle. It's also common for Taylor to be more than one character at once. At the end of 'the man' music video we discover Taylor is the director, and then it's revealed that Taylor was also the male actor that had been wearing a disguise. This implies that Taylor is James in the love triangle and based on the evolution of her speech, we can infer that as the director she chose Betty in the end. This feels like a clue that we should consider that she has been showing us her version of events from different perspectives all along.

The doll house

Everything on the show is for sale, including their wardrobe, food products and dollhouse style versions of the homes they live in. These elements are jarring after seeing the level of animosity Truman was experiencing with each road block he faced. It feels like they've overstepped a boundary by consuming every detail of Truman's life.

In the 'lover' music video, we first see the lover house is within a snow globe and our first shot of Taylor is through the peephole. The couple dancing throughout the house seem to be sharing a romantic moment, but the entire experience feels voyeuristic. No rooms are off limits as we see them in the bathroom swimming inside of a fish bowl. "Can I go where you go? Can we always be this close, forever and ever?" plays at the same time. It feels like we're asking that of her. It becomes uncomfortable to realise how much we want to have access to every detail of her life.

Back to normal

Headquarters

Not only is Seahaven contained within a dome, the director and his control centre is housed within the moon structure. From the interview with the director we can ascertain that he doesn't usually reveal this much behind the scenes, but the return of Truman's father required some damage control.

The vault in the 'I can see you' music video is reminiscent of the moon shaped structure the director worked out of. The connection between these and the overall theme of the music video reminds me of the scene in 'the hunger games mockingjay' where they rescue Peeta from the capitol, only to find out he was trained to attack Katniss. This scene has an eerily similar asylum vibe like the 'fortnight' music video as well.

The mask

The next morning we go back to Truman in the bathroom again, as if he's just started another regular day. He seems cheerful as he's using a bar of soap to draw an alien outline on the mirror, while at the same time implying that he feels alienated in real life. This facade of normalcy he is presenting after his plan had failed is on purpose to lull the director into a false sense of security. If everyone thinks he has given up and believes he is resigned to staying after all, nobody would see his final escape plan coming.

Just like Taylor showed us with the visuals of the delicate performance on the eras tour, the mask is breakable. Now that we know that Taylor is the one breaking down the facade herself, it becomes harmful to refuse to see Taylor for who she really is underneath the pop star persona. And just like with Truman leaving in the end, Taylor has shown us that she's choosing herself now, regardless of the consequences. So we can either choose to join her, or sit back in defiance until she walks away.

Back to work

As Truman returns to the office it becomes more obvious where all of the cameras have been hidden in plain sight. They're everywhere, including inside his pencil sharpener. But the least obvious camera is the one Truman is wearing, his wedding ring. This came from his father, something he purposely gave to Truman as he was supposedly drowning. He never took it off because it was a reminder of what he had lost at such a young age. Truman was able to escape in the end because he took the ring off and left it behind. They had no way of tracking him if he wasn't wearing it. In hindsight we can see that Meryl's necklace also contained a camera that was used frequently.

If all of the moon and black holes references are a codeword for cameras or surveillance in the Truman show, we can consider that Taylor has used them in her music videos in a similar way. 'The man' music video begins with a similar office scene with a man who is charming and magnetic, but the wink at the camera implies that he's also putting on a performance. At the end of a work call Truman mentions that "life is fragile" after he's introduced to his new love interest. Just like Truman's comment, Taylor has used the word delicate to to describe the fine line between the brittle nature of the facade and how easily it could all fall apart, like what occurs during the 'delicate' performance.

This place is mine

After Meryl left, Truman moved down to the basement. This is the only room in the house that contained anything that was truly personal to Truman with his padlocked chest of mementos and remnants of old hobbies. But on top of all this it was also the room with the least amount of cameras, making it the perfect place to hide.

In the 'lover' music video the only space that is personal to Taylor is the attic, and it’s just like Truman's basement as both rooms are typically used for storage. If you look closely you can see a familiar trunk to the side as she's reminiscing over old pictures on a projector. On the eras tour the only real piece of the lover house is the attic seen throughout the 'folkmore' set, the rest was burnt away on screen and ever since the setlist changed it has been falling over instead. This change reveals that it was a facade all along, similar to how we begin to see behind the scenes half way through the Truman show.

The escape route

The map

Truman's desire to travel to Fiji is heavily featured as Truman's motivation for leaving Seahaven. There's evidence of this throughout the basement, including a large map of the island. Was this really his dream destination? No. Talking about going to Fiji encouraged the director to reveal his endeavours to prevent him from leaving. If Truman was constantly being challenged with his fear of the water, he was also being exposed to potential exit routes and obstacles. Truman's desires to go to Fiji was a facade to masquerade his true intentions of plotting his escape without raising suspicions.

One of Taylor's latest songs explores wanting to escape to 'Florida!' and reflects Truman's dreams of moving to Fiji. Another map Taylor has shown us in her music videos is the man wall. It's seen as a road map for her future rerecords with the end goal of coming out as queer, similar to what Elton John did at the peak of his career. Now that we can see that Truman revealed his dreams to travel as a means of testing his opponent, we can begin to understand that Taylor may have used her attempts to come out as queer in a similar way. If Taylor had expressed her intentions to come out of the closet behind the scenes, she would have been reminded of the challenges she would face if she did so. We see a small portion of this scenario play out with political discussions during the 'Miss Americana' documentary.

Behind the curtain

The director is concerned about Truman being asleep in the basement so Marlon is sent to investigate. When he arrives he finds a decoy in the bed and a tape recorder of Truman snoring. As he searches the rest of the basement, he pulls back the map to reveal what's inside the closet. This is the moment everyone discovers that Truman has escaped and that the map of Fiji was a disguise for his master plan all along.

The man wall is the most fundamental Easter egg for many Swifties, with endless theories on how to decode it. But what if the biggest Easter egg of all is actually set up as a trap to draw our attention in, so that we become so focused on it's significance that we don't notice the bigger picture? The subway wall is made up of small square tiles, with Taylor Swift themed posters and the rerecords written with spray paint over the top to mimic graffiti. But if you look even closer still, you will see that there's also a crack down the middle of the man wall map. This suggests that there's something hidden behind it, just like with Truman's map.

The tunnel

When Marlon opens the closet in the basement, we discover that Truman had dug a hole through the ceiling and this is how he escaped. Marlon climbs up the stepladder and we see his head pop out of the hole in the garden. We could assume Truman began digging this hole after Meryl left because we can see he left behind the same multi tool that she advertised in the beginning, but he was in the middle of digging in the same spot when she came home that day. All we had seen was an awkward shot of Truman from behind as he was working in the garden bed. Truman also purposely left patches of grass unmowed so he had an excuse to be frequently working on the old lawn mower in the basement, something that was quickly replaced once Meryl left.

The ending of the 'delicate' music video is what sparked this deep dive into the Truman show. I discovered that the bar Taylor enters is called the gopher, an animal famous for digging holes underground. This unexpected connection to Truman's method of escape was unbelievable after picking up on many of Taylor's hints towards a departure.

The trap door

If Truman had been digging a tunnel in the garden from the beginning, how did he get away with it? He disguised the hole by filling it with balls and rocks in just the right size that were painted to look like garden ornaments. This is echoed in the scene where Truman is telling Marlon about how he wants to go to Fiji. Marlon asks if Fiji is near Florida, so Truman demonstrates with a golf ball to show that it's practically on the other side of the world. The way Truman is describing it implies that the tunnel is hidden on both sides in a place where the cameras can't find it, and all that's left now is to plan his escape route.

Taylor’s version of Truman’s golf ball is the painted nails aligned with the 2 and 8 on the karma coffee cup, pointing to where her journey through the tunnel starts and finishes. Other ball shaped references include the pearl coloured balls floating around Ice Spice in the 'karma' music video, the golden orbs in the 'willow' music video and the tennis balls in 'the man' music video. When Taylor attempts to leave the glass case in the 'willow' music video, she finds it has been boarded up. She tries to find a way out through the glass, only to reveal that she knew that there was a trap door underneath her feet the entire time. We hear the lyrics "I come back stronger than a 90's trend" at the exact same time Taylor goes down the tunnel. And which trend is she referencing? The Truman show, of course.

Leave everything behind

Cut transmission

Once the director had realised that Truman had really escaped, he was left with no choice but to cut transmission on the live broadcast for the first time since the show began. Panic ensues for the viewers who didn't see this coming, meanwhile we see Sylvia watching from home in anticipation. Ratings for the show are at an all time high as everyone at home waits to find out what happened to Truman.

It's interesting that Taylor drew inspiration from this loading screen for the eras tour poster considering it's a reference to the moment Truman escaped. It draws a very clear parallel to his story, implying that what we're watching on the eras tour is the Taylor version of the Truman show.

Lost at sea

It's unclear how long Truman had after he escaped before the search party started. At first it seemed possible that Marlon left the car door open when he arrived for Truman to escape, but it's more likely he was just in too much of a hurry. It' seems 's likely Truman had some time to escape on his bike undetected. His fear of water meant checking the ocean would be the last place they would think to look for him, which is exactly what happened.

This moment after Taylor entered the bar in the 'delicate' music video reveals a sense of clarity just before she opens up her eyes. The ending of Taylor's story is yet to happen, but from what she's said throughout the tour, she's not planning on slowing down anytime soon.

The note

As Truman sails off we see him pull a note out of his pocket. All he took with him was the collage picture of Sylvia. This symbol of hope for his future was the only thing he took with him. "The only thing that's left is the manuscript, one last souvenir from my trip to your shores."

When Taylor left behind her life's work and started over by herself, she carried a picture of the one that mattered most with her when she left as well. If you look close enough at the man wall, you can see a polaroid shaped outline underneath the black karma letters, as if something that was once there had been taken away. Just like Truman's collage picture, this missing piece represents the secret note from the 'delicate' music video. The one piece of evidence that meant something to them, when so much of their lives were full of half truths and lies. And what's on the polaroid picture? Proof that Taylor is queer... "Like a rainbow with all of it's colours."

It's time to go

Almost drowned

Once they locate Truman as he's escaping on the boat, the director utilises his power to create a storm to derail Truman's attempt to escape. When his first attempts to force Truman to turn back fail, he orders the workers in the control room to hit the boat with the largest wave with to intentionally capsize the boat. They object to risking Truman's life, but the director goes ahead anyway. The wave overturns the boat and Truman almost drowns. As the director escalated his attempts to make Truman stay, it became clear that he would rather let Truman die than watch him leave if he refuses to stay. This highlights how unethical the director's attachment to Truman and the show had become over the years.

In the 'cardigan' music video we see Taylor clinging to her piano in the ocean, just like Truman did with his boat. This shows her determination to fight for her future despite the cost. The trap door Taylor escaped out of in the 'willow' music video is just like the exit points under the stage of the eras tour. Taylor's most iconic exit is after the surprise songs when she dives into the stage. Her character then swims against the current just like Truman did and when she reemerges again it's for the beginning of the 'lavender haze' set.

The getaway boat

Despite the director's attempts, Truman recovers from the storm and sails far enough that his boat crashes into the side of the dome wall. Truman managed to escape Seahaven after a lot of planning, but I think he had some help along the way. If Marlon was aiding Truman's escape plans, he would have been a crucial liaison behind the scenes. Throughout the interview with the director we get a glimpse of Sylvia and find out that her home is full of anti the Truman show propaganda. These include pictures of cast members that could be open to joining their side, with Marlon listed as being their best bet. It's possible the protestors worked together to smuggle Truman's father into Seahaven to encourage Truman to leave. One of the posters shows a young Truman in what appears to be a pizza themed clown costume. Pizza is mentioned a few times by the control centre workers and by the security guards of a car garage. This could be the common factor connecting the protestors helping Truman escape, as well as providing an inconspicuous meet up place to swap information that wouldn't draw attention.

Just like Truman had help, Taylor had a team working together in the 'I can see you' music video. This depicts an alternate view of Truman's escape, with a team breaking in from the outside to rescue Taylor from the vault. Many of the guest appearances in Taylor's music videos are representing the other side of Taylor, more so than any particular muse. Many of the scenes featuring Ice Spice in the 'karma' music video also mimic the ending of the Truman show.

The stairs

Truman found the stairs that lead to the door and is so close to leaving behind the only place he's known. All of this is unfolding because Truman reached a point where his own wellbeing was more important than the character he had been portraying for the audience. Sylvia warned him in the beginning that everyone was watching him. This would have confirmed any suspicions Truman already had and lead to a life of being on high alert knowing he was being monitored at all times.

Both the public and private sides of Taylor have experienced the same restrictions over time, forced to keep a large part of her life hidden from others at all times. The scene with the moon and Saturn implies that an alternative ending to Truman's story is in store for Taylor. The moon was the home of the control centre watching over Truman day and night. Capturing the moon and Saturn in the 'karma' music video suggests that both sides of Taylor have worked together to reclaim the role of director, and are now working together to rewrite their story so that they can reunite and move forward together.

Captive

Finally in a last ditch effort to persuade Truman to stay, the director talks to Truman for the first time. It's clear the director has grown attached to Truman to the point that he doesn't see Truman beyond the character he's crafted over the years, but he only sees the public persona of Truman. The director is pleading for Truman to stay, to let the show continue as it is and claims that he knows Truman better than he knows himself. "You've never had a camera in my head!" is the only thing Truman says in defence. This sentence epitomises everything Truman has experienced living in Seahaven. After all, he was wondering when it was going to end when he was still in school. If the director truly knew what was best for Truman, he would have ended the show years ago.

When Truman told the director that you can't see inside my head, we can assume Taylor is trying to say that we can't see inside her heart. During the 'Me!' music video Brendon Urie opens a heart shaped door that reveals what's inside his heart. This implies that the music video revealed what was in Taylor's heart from the beginning. "When it's like, "me-ee-ee," it's like dancers, cats, gay pride, people in country western boots. I start riding a unicorn, like just everything that makes me me." This is how she describes the music video during the 'Miss Americana' documentary. "And for a fortnight there, we were forever." I believe this is a reference to the fourteen songs on her 'debut' album. Her first and potentially most authentic album is full of songs she wrote before she became famous. And then beginning with 'fearless', Taylor actively added in male muses to her songs to camouflage her queer identity. Unfortunately this was also the beginning of the gap between her public and private life growing apart. Looking back we can see that despite the pain this caused, she never lost hope of reuniting them again.

How did it end?

The final bow

The Truman show challenges our perception of how ethical it is to have such unobstructed access to Truman’s life. We’re left questioning if our entertainment was worth the price he was paying by spending his whole life living in the spotlight. He bows for the audience watching at home and ends with one final “Good morning! And incase I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening and good night!” before he turns and walks through the door. The director was left with a look of disgust as he realised Truman had been preforming for the audience all along. Those who had seen the signs watched on with anticipation and those that didn’t were left feeling shocked and confused.

At the end of a theatre performance, the cast will come back on stage one last time to give their final bow of the night as the audience applauds the performance they've just witnessed. We then have to consider that Truman and Taylor's final bow was an acknowledgement of the fact that they had been putting on a performance the entire time. Just like in 'the manuscript', "looking backwards might be the only way to move forward." Going back through Taylor's history and finding the bread crumbs she left along the way will help us understand that the queer version of Taylor had always been there, we just had to know what we were looking for to be able to see it.

The door

As he steps through the door we wait in fervent anticipation to see how Truman's story ends, only to watch as the credits start rolling without an epilogue. This feels frustrating when we had been hoping to see Truman and Sylvia reunite after many years. Instead, this kind of ending is encouraging us to go back to the beginning and reconsider the story through a new lens after learning about how it ended. Each time you rewatch it you can pick up on the deeper layers of the story, seeing more evidence of Truman's discomfort from living an inauthentic life, and how much determination it required to overcome the challenges he faced along the way. Any further explanation would have diluted the magnitude of the moment Truman felt free for the first time in his life. Just being able to walk through the door in the end was the ultimate accomplishment.

The story Taylor has been showing us was never a revelation of her muses, but a slow unravelling of her experience as a famous person who has had very little privacy throughout her life. She's giving us a peak behind the curtain and allowing us to see who she really is beyond the larger than life character we've all built her up to be. And whether we like it or not, she choosing herself now above all else.

The only difference between Taylor and Truman’s story is that Taylor’s not leaving, she’s simply just stepping out of the closet.

Meet me at midnight?

After turning a pumpkin into a carriage and creating a fancy dress to wear, the fairy godmother forewarns Cinderella before she leaves for the ball.

“You must understand, my dear. On the stroke of 12, the spell will be broken, and everything will be as it was before.” 

The same is true for Taylor.

No matter how much she accomplishes in the spotlight, she is always going to be the truest version of herself underneath the layers of her pop star persona.

"Dear reader, will you still want me when I'm nothing new?"

When the clock strikes midnight, are you still going to want Taylor when you can finally see who she really is underneath?

Who she has been all along?

"A pathological people pleaser who only wanted you to see her."

A tortured poet,

Kylie x

🧡

[oleworm]

One interesting thing about The Passenger (2023) that I haven’t seen mentioned here yet is how it begins not unlike a typical action-thriller involving a violent man and a hostage situation—and indeed the trailers market it as such—but then as the story progresses it unexpectedly turns into a rape and revenge film.

Benson’s violence and aimlessness, the cluttered house, the dirty car full of trash, the chronic dissatisfaction that permeates his existence, which he projects on Randy and the waitress, Marsha—all of these are sequelae to the traumatic event suffered at the hands of his teacher, implied to be of a sexual nature, but we do not discover this until two thirds into the film. Then it all falls into place. The mere fact contextualises the character. On second watch, his bizarre rants, the timing of his tics, his decoration of the giraffe plushie take on a new and sickening meaning. Or rather, we can access a meaning that is closer to the truth, when before we had been kept in the half-light in much the same way that Randy was, trying to make shapes of the shadows that make up Benson’s fractured personality. The “toughness” is a façade. We find that the tells were there from the beginning.

In this subvariant of the revenge genre the wronged person is usually a woman, who often goes on the revenge journey herself. Other times she serves as the device for a man to go on a rampage to take revenge on her behalf. When men are protagonists to these stories, it is almost always on behalf of the woman wronged, but they are rarely the ones directly affected. Acts of sexual violence are not supposed or expected to happen to men, in the imagination of the dominant culture.

The scene where Benson walks up to his teacher and beats him to death is filmed as if the man were an evil thing, a monster-memory, a representation of Benson’s trauma rather than a person. The man is not emphasised in a way that we are invited to sympathise with him. He barely speaks. His face is seen but briefly. Later it becomes a hole of gore. The focus is on Benson and his struggle, his dissociated state, his raging and his fear. It makes sense that the actors later spoke of this as the moment where Benson comes the closest to killing Randy, when he begins to ask questions about the man he has just turned into a bloody ruin.

Though it is the teacher that chokes on his own blood, at the closing of the scene it looks as if Randy has to go out to Benson and rescue him.

[stagefoureddiediaz]

So its 2am and I’m still on my ‘911 is using The Wizard of Oz theming to tell Eddie’s story’ soapbox and thought I’d talk about something I didn’t go into in my other 911/Wizard of oz post - the fact that Oz, the Emerald City, the wicked witch of the west and the Wizard are all an allegory for the Catholic Church and Christian faith more widely!

I’ve made quite a few posts about 911 playing into religious iconography and so I thought I’d add to that post count by talking about the (anti) religious theming in The Wizard of Oz more generally and how it relates to Eddie’s arc!

The Emerald city is designed to look like a Cathedral

The way the wizard of oz - both the books and the film, plays on religious imagery is similar to the way that C.S Lewis played on it in his Chronicles of Narnia series - but where C.S Lewis created a positive allegory that upheld religion and religious beliefs, Frank Baum was creating a more negative allegory- where religion does't provide the answers, but the individual person

Dorothy starts her journey in Kansas - in the real world, but finds herself in the technicolour world of Oz after a tornado transports her over the rainbow. The film, especially, plays on the idea of her having a head injury - causing her to have this vivid dream of this fantastical land - which is why we see the people of Kansas appear as characters in Oz.

Oz is clearly playing on the idea of heaven and hell and limbo. The wicked witch of the west represents the devil (lucifer) and her castle Hell. While the Emerald city represents the house of God (the church). Glinda is supposed to be an arch angel. Remember that lucifer is a fallen arch angel.

The wizard is a man from the same world as Dorothy and is meant to be viewed as a priest (most likely the pope) - priests being Gods representatives on earth

While the silver (book) or ruby (film) slippers are a representation of enlightenment.

Dorothy is searching for a way out of her ‘coma’ dream and so goes on a journey through Limbo to the house of god to try and get home- along the way the devil tries to stop her getting to the church and subsequently into heaven using the tricks at its disposal. The devil doesn’t succeed and Dorothy and her friends navigate their way to the emerald city and complete the tasks they think god has set for them so they may gain what they seek - to go home, brains, a heart, courage.

It is here that they discover the lies of the priest and once he is gone they all figure out they had what they sought all along - they are enlightened and didn’t actually need the priest or the house of god at all. From there Dorothy chooses to go home and awakes from her coma back in the real world - but retains the knowledge of what she dreamt in her coma.

The wizard of oz as a piece of media (in either book form or film form) is showing the audience that they hold their own power within them and it cannot be granted by outside forces.

The film chooses to show Oz the great and powerful in much the same way as the crucifix is displayed in a catholic church - praying to a false idol in search of what you seek

The wizard hiding behind his curtain is akin to the priest behind the confessional screen - offering absolution and healing etc, when he doesn’t actually possess the power to do so because he is just a man pedalling falsehoods and lies.

The residents of the emerald city in their monochromatic green colouring are an allegory for the members of the churches congregation - blindly following the edits and rules set out by the church in the hope of a happy and fulfilled life - but they are shown to be almost drone like - subjugated and controlled into mindless devotion in the same way people follow the churches teachings without questioning.

Dorothy and here friends never change though - they don’t start wearing green and blending in to the emerald city and they find out that they actually have the power to achieve their desires within them the entire time - as represented by the silver/ruby slippers.

the moral of the Wzard of Oz is ultimately that what we desire or want is within and it cannot be found externally by putting our faith in something outside of us like the church. - Dorothy and her friends always had the things they sought - they just had to figure that out for themselves.

This ties into Eddies entire journey perfectly.

Just because I couldn't write a post about Eddie and not have a picture of him!

Eddies Kansas pre the tornado is his childhood - before he was parentified/husbandified by Helena Diaz.

The tornado is Shannon - she provides him with the escape from his old life and sets him down in California (Oz).

There is a reason the Wizard of Oz theming is heavily coded toward him and his arrival on the show - it is the idea that he has landed in California (Oz) and on top of the wicked witch of the East (hence why we never see Eddie at the same level as the red shoes in the rubble) and has been following the yellow brick road the entire time.

Chris is waiting for Eddie on a yellow strip of flooring at the end of 203

Bobby (Glinda) who shares the catholic faith with Eddie, brings him to the 118 and helps guide him forward on his journey - providing advice and support as and when Eddie needs it, but always watching over him. (one could view Eddie leaving the 118 as the equivalent of the poppy field in the film - leaving his path briefly before returning to it when he wakes up in mayday 'god has spoken')

He has now reached the crux of matters - he has arrived at the Emerald city. It seems likely here that in 804 we will see him have his encounter with the Priest who like the wizard in Oz, will guide him towards a reckoning with his mother (the wicked witch of the west) in order to find his way to inner peace and who he is supposed to be. Once he has dealt with Helena he will discover that he won't find what he seeks in the church - but it will have provided him with something important that plays into the idea that he is a combination of all four characters who journey along the yellow brick road, as their individual traits all represent a part of himself Eddie needs to embrace in order to break free of the chains that have held him back his whole life.

The knowledge (scarecrow) of who he truly is that will also make him realise he already has what his heart (tin man) truly wants if he has the courage (lion) to go for it and that it will get him home (Dorothy) where he truly belongs - accepting himself as a queer man who is in love with his best friend and Chris's forgiveness and return to him in LA.

[let-us-cultivate-our-garden]

Do you think The Owl House would have lasted longer if it had no LGBT themes?

No, the opposite actually.

Toh is popular because of the LGBT themes, because of Lumity, because of the queer representation. A lot of people felt seen by this show and it is important to point out how groundbreaking Lumity is. Like She-Ra, Steven Universe, and The Legend of Korra before it, The Owl House is a step forward in queer rep in children's media. Without it, it loses a lot of what makes it unique.

Moreover, without any queer themes then its message of overthrowing oppression (how little that actually ended up playing out in the show) suddenly lack weight. If the main villain is a stand in for bigotry and all of your characters are het, then what is the struggle against? I suppose racism but Luz spends more time with Eda, Hunter, and Amity than Gus and Willow and the show hardly spends any time on Luz's heritage and what that means to her.

I also think that making Lumity het might make it more apparent how little development the characters actually get. If Luz were a boy then we would follow the journey of a teenager who gets into trouble at school, runs away from home, gets to go to magic school, learn arcane magic without even trying hard, and hooks up with the popular witch girl who used to hate him. All without maturing as a person.

If you gender flip Amity, then you get a rich boy who falls for the cute new girl in town after the prerequisite "I Like You But I'm Going to Pretend I Hate You Because I Don't Know How to Handle My Feelings" arc. Said rich boy then shifts his entire motivation to keeping his beloved lady happy. Both stories are ones we've seen a thousand times before but toh adds a rainbow coating over it to make it seem more fresh.

Despite these shortcomings, I mean it when I say Lumity is groundbreaking. Now kids can see themselves in major characters instead of side ones. Queerness is depicted explicitly, in a matter of fact manner, and in a variety of ways. This in turn will inspire future generations to continue making queer art and to continue to push the boundaries in media.

Basically, without queer themes, there is no toh.

[le-fruit-de-la-passion]

Your comment and tags on my little blurb made my whole week I adore you so much thank you!! As a fellow disabled girly he just means a lot to me and I’m so glad the community is loving on this. Also your fics are scrumptious ok bye💖💖

Asfdfff OMG I just saw your ask hi 💕💕💕!! I was literally SO happy when I saw your post, because I legit didn't know if a lot of other people felt the way I did. A good chunk of what happened with season 2 really stung ("you shouldn't have tried to cure your deadly degenerative decease Viktor, it made you who you were as a person"🤡), especially because of just how much I've looked up to Viktor in my personal health journey.

Like, if Viktor, sexiest and smartest man on goddamn planet earth, could still study and dedicate himself to his passion, even at his worst... I could do it. If he could keep going, not knowing whether or not he would make it a couple more weeks or a couple more months, with his perfect head held high, I could do it. And, really importantly, if he could still be so insanely sexy with a disability and visible signs of illness... then so could I!

THAT'S why representation matters so much. We need characters like Viktor, who are affected by their disability and illness in a realistic way, but without it taking away from their ability to be attractive, charming, seductive, and, everyone repeat after me, SEXUALLY ACTIVE 📢📢📢 !!!

There are literally SO few disabled/chronically ill characters who are presented as sexual beings in media because it makes a very vocal crowd """uncomfortable""" and its much less easily marketable. That's why only a single of his LoL skins features his leg brace, despite there being no reason for it to be absent from AUs like High Noon or Death Sworn. That's why he's suddenly fit, muscular and able bodied. Oh and his back brace ? Just fully gone. The one skin that's supposed to be linked directly to Arcane even erases all the scars we've canonically seen on his skin.

WHO EVEN IS THIS??????

THIS is Viktor's body. It has scars, medical braces, pedical screws, a bony frame and visible signs of illness. If you don't like that, get off my blog and never look at me or my fucking husband ever again.

The truth is just that for a video game company like Riot, sex sells, but visible disability and signs of chronic illness don't. So...✨️poof✨️, Viktor now has a conventionally attractive body and a six pack so we can be sure the majority of people will be attracted to him! I actually CANNOT believe there isn't a single person at the company who sees the hypocrisy of that, after they tried to sell the whole "your imperfections made you you" ending. I'm just... mad, dissapointed, and tired of all of that.

So, I've made the executive decision to throw all that shit in the garbage, because fuck you, Viktor is disabled, and chronically-ill, and he FUCKS. I literally do not care. You SEEN the way this man walks around in Act 1 ?? The passion in his eyes, the smirk on his lips, the sensuality of his hands??? Only a man who's sucked dick and eaten pussy around the Academy would have that kind of swag, bro has comfortably been around.

A N Y W A Y I'm sorry about the long rant I had to let that all out,,,

TLDR Viktor belongs to the disabled/chronically ill community and his cock is huge.

((Also omg thank you so much for reading my work💞💞💞!!!))

[orionsangel86]

Hob Gadling - A Queer Romantic?

I have been listening to The World's End chapters of The Sandman on Audible lately and just finished Hob's Leviathan. I didn't pay this story much attention when I first read the comic, as I tended to read through the stories quickly and put more focus into the stories where Dream had a larger role. But one of the reasons I like listening to the Audible book is because it allows me to absorb each story more thoroughly and take my time thinking about each one and the (usually multiple) meanings behind them.

Hob Gadling is a character that fandom has fallen in love with. I think this is clear to anyone that takes even a partial glance at Sandman fandom. This isn't a criticism - Ferdie's performance as Hob in the Netflix show has done wonders for Hob's character. He has made his version of Hob very easy to fall in love with!

But the truth is that in The Sandman comics, Hob is a minor character who we only get to know very little about. The story Hob's Leviathan appears in The Worlds End Sandman book. We only meet him twice before this, once in The Doll's House, where we are introduced to him in Men of Good Fortune, and again in Season of Mists when Dream comes to let him know that he may miss their next meeting. In both these issues, Hob is introduced via the narrator, and therefore I like to think that we are given a fairly honest representation of the kind of person he is. We watch him grow and learn throughout the centuries in MoGF, but one of the major takeaways from this I believe is that he tends to always be on the wrong side of history. He makes bad choices and can be a bit narrow minded. He is rude and selfish and also rather self-absorbed. I actually think that the performance of the voice actor who plays Hob in the Audible book emphasises these character flaws making him even more unlikeable in many ways, though I am aware that this could just be my own experience and opinion.

But Hob's Leviathan takes a different view of Hob. Literally. The narrator of this story is a young boy of 16 called Jim. Jim met Hob on a ship travelling from Bombay to Liverpool in 1914. Jim was working on the ship as a cabin boy and Hob had bought his passage back to England - though it is revealled at the end of the story that Hob actually owned the ship they were travelling on. It is clear that at this point in time, Hob is extremely wealthy.

Jim attends to Hob throughout the journey, and grows very fond of him. In Jim's tale, Hob is a good man, who is kind and thoughtful and cares about others. He saves the life of a stowaway (who turns out to be another immortal). He is shown to be patient, and funny, and very intelligent. Jim waxes poetic about how smart Hob is, and how much he impressed him. It is particularly clear in the Audible book that Jim is taken with Hob, to the point that it could arguably be a crush.

It is fascinating how much more likeable Hob is when narrated from the viewpoint of someone with a crush on him, whether this story is exaggerated through rose tinted glasses is of course something to consider. All the tales in World's End are just that, tales. There is a constant undercurrent of exaggeration and make believe to them where even the other patrons of the inn question elements to each of the stories. We are not supposed to take these stories as absolute fact, rather they are supposed to reveal to us more about the narrators as well as their own experiences existing in this magical and strange world.

When it is revealled that Jim is actually a girl called Peggy in disguise so they can get work on the ships, the quite obvious crush makes more sense to a heteronormative audience, but what I particularly like about this story is its queer potential. See in the comic, it isn't really clarified if Jim goes by Jim because they feel more themselves as a boy, rather than a girl, or if they are disguising themself as a boy just to get work as a means to an end. I would argue that the latter is the more obvious interpretation. Jim tells the other World's End patrons that they are getting too old to keep up the disguise and will eventually have to stop working in shipping, and that when that happens, they will take on a new name, a new identity and do something else, but that for now, the patrons can keep calling them Jim.

*for a lack of clarity around the point in the comic, I am going to use gender neutral pronouns for Jim going forward*

Now from Hob's POV, he figured out that Jim was a girl, and they talk about it briefly along with the sea serpent they saw. I think that at this point, Hob is impressively progressive compared to the previous times we have met him. Now whether or not this is biased storytelling from someone who has a crush on him remains to be seen, but if we take Jim's word as truth, not only is 1914 Hob a fair and honest man who is willing to pay the way of a stowaway and fully respect the secrets of a young girl disguised as a boy so they can work on ships, but he's also totally comfortable flirting with them.

I like that he calls Jim the "handsome cabin boy". I like that this version of Hob, whether real or an exaggeration skewed by Jim's feelings for him, respects Jim's identity. Jim may be a girl in disguise, but Hob doesnt call her pretty, he calls him handsome.

It's all just a bit subtly queer and I like that for Hob (But then I would do, I'm a Dreamling shipper HA)

When Jim finishes their story, they state that they didn't see Hob again after that, but the comics later do give us a possible outcome to Jim's story...

We next see Hob in The Kindly Ones where he is mourning the death of his girlfriend Audrey. He briefly reveals that Audrey was the first person he had loved since Peggy, who was his lover until her death during the Blitz. Whilst it isn't made clear that Hob's lover Peggy is the same Jim that we meet in World's End, it is a bit too much of a coincidence. The timing adds up. If Jim was 16 in 1914, they'd be in their early 40s during the Blitz. Hob remains forever in his early 30s so I'd say its a safe bet that Jim eventually found Hob again and they were together. Hob loved them enough that he wasn't with anyone again until Audrey in the 80s. That's 50 years worth of mourning. A long time not to be with anyone, even for an immortal.

It's funny because we know so little about Hob, but one thing that I have seen commented on here a lot is that comic Hob is deemed to be as Straight as an arrow. Now I admit that the voice actor in the Audible book plays him very straight, but that is still only one interpretation.

All this is to say that I am fascinated with how the Netflix show will adapt this, since Hob in the show already comes across much kinder and more selfless than his comic counterpart. He already has an entire fandom viewing him as queer, and the comics certainly don't outright shut down such interpretations. There are moments in the comics that you have to wonder on. He does call Jim handsome rather than pretty, and when he talks to Audrey's grave he mentions his wives and loves as separate groups. He talks about finding it easy to get sex if you want it, and he talks about it in generally gender neutral terms. In Sunday Mourning Gwen reveals that she thought he was gay when she first met him, though her reasonings were that he knew so many dead people (a dark reminder that these comics were published at the height of the Aids epidemic). He reacts very badly to the news of Morpheus' death. He states on several occassions just how much he liked Morpheus, and he is one of the few people to wake up from the Wake with tears running down his cheeks. I would arguably state that its between Hob and Matthew as to who had the worst reaction to Morpheus' death, showing just how much both Hob and Matthew cared about him, and placing Hob on par with Matthew in the comics is a big deal. He seriously considers accepting Death's gift when she offers it, simply because Morpheus is dead. He doesn't, because at the end of the day, its just not in his nature to do so, and given he then dreams of Morpheus, I like to think that it was a test, that he passed.

When it comes to how the show will adapt all this, I genuinely think it will take a new approach with Jim/Peggy. I think they will be either a trans man, or at least non binary. But I think having Jim be a trans man is the better option. In the comics, Jim's tale is only very subtly queer, Jim clearly likes being Jim, but it seems like its a means to an end, a convenience in order to get work on the ships, rather than being something that is core to Jim's feelings on their gender. Besides, if we assume that Jim is indeed the Peggy Hob talks about in The Kindly Ones, then we know that Jim goes back to being Peggy when they get older and apparently continues living as a woman whilst they are with Hob, otherwise I doubt Hob would have referred to one of his greatest loves by a name they themselves rejected and only used she/her pronouns when talking about them. Nevertheless there is no reason for the show to take this approach, and if they DO decide that Jim should be a trans man, then their relationship with Hob is canonically a queer one. Trans men are men and if one of Hob's greatest loves is a trans man, then Hob is a queer man himself. I genuinely believe the show will take this route and I can't wait to see it.

Going back to my point about narrators bias, if MoGF, SoM, tKO, and TW are all narrated by a neutral third party, then this must be the true Hob. A not overly likeable rather selfish man. He has his good points, and he has certainly grown and changed over the centuries, and carries a lot of guilt for his past mistakes, but he is still quite self absorbed. Jim paints a picture of a rose tinted Hob that is far more the dreamy romantic older gentleman that took a young person under his wing. Which is fair enough.

The show is of course its own adaptation, with changes from the comics as it sees fit, but I do feel it's my duty to remind you that the show also has a narrator guiding the audience through its many stories. Dream of the Endless, Lord Morpheus, King of Nightmares and Prince of Stories himself. Take from that whatever you will.

;-)

[xylianasblog]

Pxayopin

Pairings: Aged up Aonung x FemHuman Reader

Synopsis: Pxayopin meaning colorful. In which a human makes Aonung feel colors, the different shades and variations to what love might or may feel like. A journey of acceptance and self growth

Warnings: None

Next

Aonung couldn’t understand what it was about you that called to him so deeply, desperately, with every fiber of his being.

You were small, a human, a demon, your strange features should have been off putting, or maybe even disgusting. Yet… yet he found none of that when it came to you. A small beautiful human in his eyes and if anyone knew, he’d been in deep shit.

It wasn’t something he could control, it was out of his control truthfully. The first day you arrived all those years ago with the Sullys he couldn’t help but be drawn to you. Everything in that moment connected him to you and even though he bullied you and picked on you he made sure he watched over and took care of you from the shadows.

You were it for him, all for him and he would do anything to have you, to hold you, to love and cherish you. You had his heart and the feelings he felt were more than anything he could put into words, fuck they’d be the colors of his love.

Different shades that swirled around inside his heart, ranging from blue and ending at green. The colors so vibrant and pretty if he told you he was sure you’d think him to be strange, or maybe you wouldn’t. Maybe.. just maybe.. you’d feel the same.

The colors so serene so wild and free, the colors of his love made him question his sanity. Who can feel colors? Colors of one’s love? That’s such a strange thing to even think of.

His colors, those colors, your colors. The colors that represented his love, represented your love. The colors that.. colors that mixed so well you couldn’t even tell they weren’t meant to be blended. And maybe they were, maybe they were so suppose to be mixed, blended together in such a way they fit.

Soft colors that held him tight in a blanket of warmth, soft clouds of light. These soft colors made him feel bold colors, colors that stood out ready to fight. Your colors are soft, they are his light. His colors are bold, they scream at you, cover you.

These are the wild representation of colors, the colors of his love. These are the colors that you’ve made him feel. The feelings he has to question himself about, because who can feel colors as deep as these. The ones that settle into his bones, colors that make him kick his feet.

He questions himself and the world around him, despite the colors he has come to know. Why you of all things?

Taglist: @pandoraslxna @neteyamsoare @hiddensnow1 @criticallybella @sunfyresrider @neteyamsyawntu @tiredmamaissy @headsincloud9 @etherialblackrose @strongheartneteyam @blue-slxt @justcaptiannoodles @neteyamyawne @erenjaegerwifee @oakbuggy @hotdsworld @plooto @itchaboi-itchyboy @eywaite

[violentdelightshavevioletends]

Processing through Fourth Wing's Ending thoughts with me Part 4 with SPOILERS!!! (& other 3 post summaries + some Iron Flame theories)

So:

I think Xaden is gonna have a long journey in winning Violet back (as he should, she deserves to be fought for & respected in boundaries). Though it’s also a little hard to watch knowing where this all comes from & it’s a little mixed up/misdirected.

Speaking of misdirection Dain Aetos has some explaining to do, unless I read that wrong; if he intentionally sent Violet & Liam off to their deaths thanks to his betrayal… nope. No.

I am utterly destroyed over Liam & dreading the aftershocks of it… meeting his sister is going to make me cry & I will protect that baby with my life.

Brennan also has some explaining to do, backstory to give, etc.

So mostly I’m ruined and this book is gonna ruin me even more and then it’ll be time to cry with Onyx Storm… so… yeahhh

I am dying to know what the deal is with Lilith Sorrengail… she can’t truly have meant to get her children killed can she? Is she a part of the rebellion somehow? And what was the deal with Violet’s dad? Plus a lesser but still prominent question: what does Mira know? I get the feeling it’s not much… but I am curious all things considered how many more secrets that family holds.

Violet included in the latter as I wonder if the poison affected her memory, powers, etc. it seemed to be a different situation (to the level I was worried she’d turn Venin or something). Have her powers changed with Andarna growing? — WHY DID ANDARNA GROW? How long was she asleep for? What does that make the powers now? … also morbid question I don’t want the answer to but have a fear of learning: if Tairn dies could Andarna keep Violet alive?.. I just have a bad feeling about one of her dragons all things considered. — I’m just scared of who’s going to die next book since clearly they are not afraid to kill the ones I love.

Not important, probably fine, but how’s Rhi? I miss my bestie girl… where is she? What’s up babe? Will I get my crew back? Please tell me she and Riddoc did no betraying.😅😅

And of course between characters and secrets and the final chapter being Xaden’s perspective: what are the many stories he has yet to tell? What’s the deal with his mom? What’s all those one line mentions of things to catch Violet up on?.. please tell me we resume in time so it’s not 5 chapter of brief references & 0 explanations?

I have a bad feeling the robed Venin are someone we know or a bigger deal… also probably Dain’s dad being evil… and some big horrible betrayal upcoming and hurting my babies so not looking forward to that.

Mostly it’ll be fun to see what another year looks like… especially when Xaden graduates… and is tethered to Violet who is going to probably hate him & fill the book with angst… so I’m gonna have to strap in for a bump ride I suppose. We shall see! And no spoilers please these questions are rhetorical/hypothetical😂 though if anything happens to Liam’s little sister give me a heads up please🙃

Finally, in review of the first book:

I love Violet. Her heart is her first power, I love the brave fierce way she loves, and has a true compass for goodness… the way she didn’t blink at rebellion if it was right; she processed that extraordinarily fast & it says a lot as to her as a character. I love her wit, which is honestly awe striking and a superpower in itself and we just LOVE a smart heroine. She is also an awesome representation for the EDS/Chronic Illness community and FMC’s in general, which I greatly appreciated (especially for how relatable she managed to be not only for the disability community, but young identifying women who get called “crazy” or “not believed”, kids who are bullied (though this book is not for kids😅😂) and just generally speaking esp. for being fantasy fiction… she’s funny, she’s a mood, and her POV was great).

On the note of representation: I also loved the way they did adaptations (such as the saddle for example: because she did the work, and it’s just not accessible, so why not make it functional? The debate she has of using it or not resembles conversations I’ve had with many people when it comes to mobility aids, they worry about people seeing, about people thinking them less capable, about the mentality of “power through it” when really it makes more sense just to use the help you have when you need it… it’s not an act of weakness or lesser). The way Rhi even tries to compliment it, to encourage her, and the agency it still gives Tairn & even Andarna, who’s a friggin time-stopping dragon (she’s certainly not weak even if she is not as “strong”—not the word I’m looking for as the other dragons, she’s still a dragon) and she too uses the help!

And the dynamics they have within chronic illness relationships… from the over-protective: I CAN DO IT ON MY OWN many people end up with in siblings & previous caregivers. To the truth that there are some things you cannot do on your own and that’s okay even if your never okay with it. To the way Xaden not once thinks less of Violet for it or gives her special treatment; he is fair to each of them (well as fair as Xaden can be amid murder school). Or the way Dain’s comfort quickly turns into a stinging degradation even if it’s well-meaning & frankly valid (she may very well get herself killed there, he’s not wrong; but he also could, and she could die just as easily getting sent back) it’s her choice, and she does a damn good job honestly. And they try to give agency to Violet in that where they can and I appreciated that.

I love Tairn a lot, especially in character dynamics like his humor & protective affection for Violet in reminding her she is worthy & also please don’t die. He loves a lot, especially for such a “scary, tough” dragon. There’s a strength to that sort of love. And of course Andarna who is a fierce, brave, loving, joyous, other half to Violet’s soul… how could you not love her?

Xaden managed to avoid some very frequent and infuriating YA love interest tropes that I appreciated and while I won’t claim him to be “perfect” (because I know all YA novels have a problem if we’re gonna make it real world) but for the sake of character I actually found him to be not only attractive, intriguing, and entertaining as the classic “rebellious, bad boy, enemies to lovers, angsty brooding burdened softy” but also empowering, fiercely loving, protective but not stifling, and some strong standing points that are needed such as consent, or the why as to how he cares for people. He’s got good reasoning. He’s not needlessly cruel. He also has a cause he is a rebel with a cause, and not some nonsensical brooding, no he has reason. Generally I found him interesting & entertaining without being infuriating. And while he has his issues he’s a very young guy kinda issues? Idk the right way to put it. But I do think him and Violet with trust, and no “forced bodyguard” situations have the potential to be a really awesome couple. I mean he’s pretty much a shadow boi… like it’s fairly simple😂 and she’s the sunny & stormy trope. So, of course I’m an absolute idiot for him and find them sweet.

Also thanks for making the best friend bi! And if I’m correct some non-binary characters too! This book did a good job at trying to give some more representation. And managed to go beyond the basics of YA novels.

Overall it made me laugh it made me cry, I’m not calling it the perfect book but minus killing off one of my favorite characters it was a lot of fun and I look forward to the next one and think this will definitely be a favorite series of all time. And while I’ll process for fuller reviews (not that this isn’t already obnoxiously long). I really enjoyed this one a LOT!

So, off to Iron Flame with our theories, feels, and thoughts we go! Wish me luck! And we’re almost to Onyx Storm so yay for all you long-term fans!

(Should I read slow to avoid waiting a few days inbetween? I’m worried for a cliff-hanger😂)

Oh, and because he deserves to be in here: Yes, Liam was a favorite from day one. He always will be. He was just genuinely good, easy to like, funny, entertaining in his conversations to everyone, depth to the feelings it brought he added layers to many stories, he was kind and loyal… so loyal… somehow even to Violet, even with the lies, he was a good friend and he loved them all a lot. And more than just brawn (though also he was described to be a total heartthrob) he was also smart! And he learned sign language which I always love as someone who grew up speaking ASL for my sisters… he was the best of his class, and frankly just deserved a lot more. Watch Deigh & then him die broke me and I really thought they’d find a way out of it because he just loved his friends so much.😭 And I hate that this is gonna be the pain of the next book… it’s a little too personal for me right now in my own real life with holiday grief & stuff so I totally bawled like a baby… and the fact he said he just wanted to be alive, and see his sister… yeah-not-okay-enough to write this. I shall miss our sweet bb blonde wood carver boi.

Okay, time to go be basic: fall for the shadow guy, root for the FMC & project my life onto her, feel all the ship angst, cry for the fictional sweetheart, & totally fall for whatever the writes me to like/hate & guiltily forgive/hold onto…

[the-magiarcheologist]

Of Magic Goblets and Blood Rituals

Some curious and hard-working souls have already poured over the writings left by Isidora on the Undercroft walls in order to tease out their meaning and find something out about Ancient Magic (here is a link to a pretty in-depth analysis of some of these markings). But one thing I have not seen discussed yet is this drawing of a cup, right next to the Portkey (better seen in the second image).

For this drawing of the cup to be placed right there, in the middle of this diagram that is drawn in the centre of the marked wall, I have to assume that it is a pretty significant artefact. After all, the Portkey, represented next to it, was also a pretty central artefact on the journey to discovering the secrets of Ancient Magic.

It just so happens that a cup also appears on the pages of the Ancient Magic Book that we find in the restricted section!

In this image, it looks like this cup is required for a ritual of some sort and I assume that the red drop we see is supposed to be blood. If you zoom in closely, the cup also has what looks like an eye drawn on it. The rest of the image is harder to interpret. Is the skeletal man giving or receiving the cup? Is he coming back to life or dying? Also, what is up with skeleton-man’s face? Why is it like that? Is it meant to represent that he has no face? Many of the Hooded Statues also have no faces… is it related? So many questions!

If he is receiving the cup, I would then assume that he is coming back to life and the cup is used in a resurrection ritual, using someone else’s blood to bring some else back to life. If, however, he is giving the cup, he might be dying and the image might represent a human sacrifice necessary for the ritual, with a man giving his blood/life.

Or it could be both! In the top left of the image, the drawing has a vague resemblance to a Celtic knot pattern that is woven with the body of a serpent/dragon. The symbolism of Celtic knotwork is rather abstract, from what I can find out from a little research, and the particular knot pattern we see here is not one of the recognisable ones. There are also no historical records from the Celts about the meaning of the knots so all of this is a matter of interpretation. However, Celtic knots are often associated with eternity and are thought to represent that all our lives are interwoven and we are part of a never ending cycle. The serpent is also thought to represent creation or rebirth. To me, all of this evokes a representation of a cycle of life and death and the skeletal man could be intentionally represented in an ambiguous position of receiving/giving the cup and coming back to life/dying in a ritual where a life is taken from someone to give it to someone else.

The runic writing within the red smoke tendrils curling around the skeleton-man could probably shed some light on the overall meaning of the image… if only someone could figure out what they mean! From @superconductivebean's best interpretation of Old Norse they could maybe mean something like «a [adj.] man» although we can’t read what this adjective could be so...

I think the ritual represented on this page will have to remain a mystery for a little bit longer but, for now, let’s focus on the golden cup/goblet.

Did you know there is actually a ‘Magic Goblet’ that exists in the game? Within the game files, I found an asset called ‘SM_MagicGoblet_01’ (sorry for the very bad lighting on these images, the tool I use to open game assets has very strange lighting but exporting and opening those assets in another program is a hassle!)

Of course, this could just be a random Magic Goblet, not the one represented in the Ancient Magic Book. For one, it is not gold and it does not have an eye on it. But I still think this goblet is associated with Ancient Magic. Despite the bad lighting, we can see the symbols of the sun and moon on it. The same symbols can be seen during the Keeper trials (for instance in Rookwood’s trial) and other dungeons where the mysterious Hooded Statues are present (Korrow Ruins, Henrietta’s Hideaway, the place where the snidgets are kept, etc.) which are most likely associated with Ancient Magic too.

I have only seen this Magic Goblet in-game once, and it was while exploring the Collector’s Cave, the tomb located just West of Hogsmeade, belonging to the Witch who stole Urtkot’s Helmet.

I found two Magic Goblets, both placed on some sort of woven mat with candles, parchment rolls, a mortar with it’s pestle and a shallow dish next to it.

The placement of the objects in both images does not look random and looks to me like an altar prepared for a ritual. In any of the other cairn dungeons we explore, I have never seen the same objects placed like this. Specifically, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fringed mat/rug like this, it’s always just bare stone.

From this finding, we know that this Sun/Moon Magic Goblet is not a one-of-a-kind object since at least two copies exist, but what ritual was it used for? During my exploration of this tomb, I couldn’t find any other clue about the type of ritual this could be for. There we no skeleton or traces of blood next to it, nothing that could indicate that this goblet could be used for some sort of resurrection ritual, like the image in the Ancient Magic Book indicates. There are Inferi in this tomb but there are Inferi in pretty much any ancient tomb we explore so I don’t think they are linked to this particular goblet and ritual.

It is possible that the witch buried in this tomb stole those goblets from somewhere else since the description for this cairn dungeon is:

"A cave containing the tomb of a witch known for collecting things that don't belong to her."

Could she have stolen the goblets from the Keepers? From other AM users? It’s a possibility. Although, seeing the precise arrangement of objects around the goblets I would say that, even if she stole them, she probably had an idea of how to use them.

So, to recapitulate, so far we have:

A goblet drawn by Isidora on the wall of the Undercroft, right in the center of writings describing Ancient Magic

A golden goblet drawn on the pages of an old manuscript about Ancient Magic. This illustration seems to indicate the goblet is meant to receive blood.

Two metal goblets with sun and moon decorations placed on an altar with other carefully arranged objects within an ancient tomb, apparently ready for a ritual.

And we’re not done! There is yet another piece of HL content where a goblet appears and this one might actually give us more clues about how this goblet is used! If we go back to the Ancient Magic Book and look at the cover, there is this golden object with a red gem in the middle, just below the face of the hooded figure.

I have always thought this was a pendant that the hooded figure was wearing but I recently found some concept art for the Ancient Magic Book that I had not seen before (thanks to the links provided in this post) and they show a more detailed version of the Ancient Magic Book cover.

Now, there is a lot to talk about here! First of all, on this concept art, the golden object is clearly not a necklace but a goblet that the hooded figure is holding in their hands! And just like the goblet drawn on the pages inside the book, this goblet has an eye engraved on it and this eye is glowing red! Second, there are several versions of the book cover and each version seems to show a different stage of the ritual involving this mysterious golden eye-goblet!

So let’s go one by one. In the first stage, the eye on the goblet is glowing red.

My assumption is that this happens right after some blood is poured into the goblet. On the illustration found inside the book, we see the blood about to be dropped into the goblet and, at that stage, the eye engraved on the cup is not glowing yet.

While we’re looking at this first version of the cover, I also want to point out the differences between this concept art and the book cover we get in-game.

The concept art shows skeletons surrounding the central hooded figure and the hooded figure clearly has a skull as a face and some sort of thestral wings as hands. Overall, the central figure on this version of the cover looks like a representation of Death itself. On the in-game version of the cover they’ve toned that way down! They’ve replaced the skeletons by people wearing hoods. Most of the people in hoods look male to me (I see beards) but it’s kind of hard to see so I’m not 100% sure. Also, the central figure in a hood is less detailed so it’s impossible to see it’s face or to tell if this is a flowing cape or wings. I’m unclear why they would make these changes for the final version of the book cover but it’s still worth noticing.

Now, let’s consider the concept art again and the second version of the book cover.

In this second stage, some red smoke-like tendrils are starting to emanate from the goblet and the eye is starting to loose it’s red glow. The red smoke looks like it’s engulfing everything and the entire image takes on a red hue. Interestingly, the same red smoke-like tendrils can be seen on the illustration found inside the book; they appear behind the skeleton-man. And obviously, these red tendrils look just like the emotions whispers that we see Isidora inhaling in the Keeper’s memories and that are freed from the Hogwarts repository after Ranrok destroys it.

And now onto the third and final version of the book cover.

On this one, the eye on the goblet has lost it’s glow completely, although the red smoke is still here and seems thicker (the red hue on the whole image is stronger than during the second stage). And we now have some strange shimmering light (?? Or some sort of powder? or shards of something?) rising from the ground.

I have to admit, I’m a bit stumped on my interpretation of that last image. I don’t know what this shimmering light could be. To me, it looks like stars in the sky (and we have seen plenty of sun, moon and stars symbols in places related to Ancient Magic) but the fact that it is rising from the ground and not coming down from above makes me doubt that this is actually supposed to represent the stars. Maybe it represents Magic? Or some sort of force? I do think it is something that the person holding the cup gains from the ritual.

One possibility is that this shimmering light represents enlightenment, or some knowledge gained. I’m saying this because of the eye engraved on the goblet. The eye is obviously an important part of the whole ritual and it looks like it’s involved in the transformation of the blood into the red smoke (since the eye starts glowing when the blood is poured into the goblet and stops glowing once the red smoke comes out). An eye usually represents wisdom, knowledge, or the ability to see the unseen. This could be a Divination ritual, or, if we take this more literately, maybe some ritual to give someone the ability to see Ancient Magic? To achieve the same ability the MC has?

But I’m still not entirely satisfied with this interpretation because it does not match with what we see Isidora doing when she inhales the red smoke that comes with the emotion-magic she extracts. I don’t think the similarity of the red smoke tendrils is a coincidence at all and the blood ritual we see represented in the Ancient Magic Book must be related to whatever magic Isidora uses. But Isidora gains power from inhaling that smoke, not wisdom or visions.

So, overall, my (partial) interpretation of the ritual represented on this concept art of the changing Ancient Magic Book cover is: The goblet operates some transformation on the blood that is poured into it (likely mediated by the eye engraved on it). Something is extracted from the blood that manifests as red smoke that, when inhaled, brings the one inhaling it some special power, represented on the image by the sparkling dust rising from the ground.

Well, we have come at the end of this post and I feel like I am leaving everyone with more questions than answers.

Are the moon/sun goblets we find in the Collector’s Cave the same goblet represented in the Ancient Magic Book? My answer to this is probably no, since they don’t have an eye on them. But then this leaves open an entirely new question of: what are these goblets used for then?

Is the blood ritual represented in the Ancient Magic Book an ancient version of the emotion-inhaling thing that Isidora does? Did she know about this book and studied it to come up with her own emotion-removing spell? Or is it some other magic entirely?

What kind of blood is necessary for the ritual to work? Also, why is the blood seemingly offered by a skeleton-man in the illustration within the book? Does that mean that a single drop of blood is not enough but one life has to be sacrificed and in this case the blood might be more of a symbolic representation of a life given?

And I’m throwing in that last one for free, as a real wildcard: is there any chance at all that the golden eye-goblet could be related to the Holy Grail of Arthurian legend? After all we’re already suspecting that the hooded women drawn on the book pages could be Morgan Le Fay so… maybe?? I’ve tried to do some research on the Holy Grail but it’s history is very complex and I don’t have time right now to dig deep into this so I’m throwing this out there (like a bottle into the sea!) in the hope that someone will see this and have some ideas to share!

Also a disclaimer that I have to make is that a big part of this (partial) theory/exploration comes from a piece of concept art. As the name indicates, it’s only a concept, subject to be changed in the final version of the game. The changing book cover describing stages of a blood ritual might have been an idea that they pursued at one time and then abandoned. However, there are enough similarities between this piece of concept art and art that made it into the game (golden goblet with an eye engraved on it, red smoke, hooded figure) that I think this particular piece of concept art is still very informative!

(Hum. I have to say, I’m not very happy with this post! I feel like this analysis goes a bit all over the place, tells no clear story and is not enough well-researched! But I’ve been struggling with writing this for weeks now and I do really want to share what I found about the eye-goblet so I’m posting this anyway! Maybe this can be a bit of a group project, where you guys can help me make sense of all this by adding your own ideas! So let me know what you think! What is your interpretation of the use of the goblet? Do you think it’s an important clue or just a useless detail?)

[miss0atae]

The figure of the Fool from Meet You At the Blossom (Ep 1 & 2):

It’s no secret but I really fell in love with Xiao Bao from Meet You At the Blossom. At first, I wanted to write my random thoughts about the two first episodes of the series, but nothing I wrote really inspired me. I felt like I was just reciting what happened and I didn’t have fun doing it. I believe I should only write about things that inspire me or interested me. I really appreciate the plot of the series and we have promising and compelling characters, but none of them inspires me more than Xiao Bao. That’s why I’m writing this post specifically on him. I also have to say that I haven’t read that much Danmei, so I don’t know how it can affect all I’m going to write about Xiao Bao. Sorry in advance for any person keen on the genre.

I believe Xiao Bao is the archetype of the Idiot Hero or the Fool. The Fool in a story, is usually a character who has no real idea about what they are doing, doesn’t really know his enemies and who is protected by cheerful disposition. The Fool is freer and happier than those who have the wisdom of what is going in the world. They speak the truth because they don’t craft lies or seek to manipulate others. It works well with Xiao Bao because he is a cheerful person who is only trying to find the person who could be his wife. He is rich so he doesn’t have to worry about anything else than his goal. Even if he faced challenges, his determination remains solid because he stays very optimistic and he knows he will find it. When he met Huai En and mistook him for a woman, he gave his all to seduce him. He never stopped even when he was rejected several times. Xiao Bao is true to himself. He doesn’t need to hide behind a mask. He is not the most clever (doesn’t seem to be able to read properly) and he has never learned how to fight (why would he?! He is blessed with incredible chance so far). His lack of duplicity means that he does not let himself be dictated by fear (he goes after Huai En to save him or he stepped in when the prince was questioning his “future wife”).

The Fool is sometimes considered as a the representation of a new beginning or transformation. Without him, there is no story. It's the quest for finding a wife that leads Xiao Bao to Huai En and their meeting will change both of their life. If Xiao Bao had stayed at home and did nothing, Huai En could go more easily after his goals, but it may not work the way he wanted. He would be stuck on the same loop. Xiao Bao is going to disrupt it and thus will bring changes in his life. It has already started. Huai En would have not experienced the first signs of love and jealousy without Xiao Bao. He would just be hyper focus on his journey. As the Fool, Xaio Bao makes Huai En deviates from the linear path he was supposed to take. Huai En wants to be careful and wants to avoid failures to be sure to accomplish his goals. It can be a trial for him to always be on the lookout . Xiao Bao is not burden by these because of the fact he is the embodiment of the Fool. He lives in the moment and see realities as it fits his view of the world. He doesn't stubble even when he encounters obstacles: Huai En isn't a woman… that's not a problem. He doesn't discriminate. After all he was just trying to be a husband and it doesn't mean his significant other has to be a woman for him to do it. The societal convention doesn't accept it? It doesn't matter to Xiao Bao, there is a solution to any problems.

Poeple may considered Xiao Bao as an airhead but what he lacks in, he makes it up with his good nature and affability. Xiao Bao may be considered a fool by others but he isn’t really one. He is merely perceived this way. That’s why he is my favorite character.

[emblemxeno]

Pretty much everyone has had the "aha!" moment when looking back on Shulk saying "it's like there's two versions of me in my head" line just after losing Fiora, and how it's Zanza screaming to get revenge and destroy all mechon.

But what I find more interesting is how Shulk's-i.e. Zanza's-narrow-minded and destructive desire for revenge latches on to most of the other party members.

Reyn is an open and shut case, he was never like how Shulk usually is, preferring to smack things and let his emotions run wild and drive his words and actions. Oh sure he isn't stupid by any means, but he's justifiably angry and bitter towards the mechon, so of course he'd go along; he was only surprised that Shulk said it first.

Sharla, on the other hand, is cautious and anxious, stemming from how she leans into taking care of others. She's led on the path to revenge for her colony by Shulk reassuring her of being a Homs, saying they "won't stand here waiting to be eaten", which is a nice foreshadowing of how the party acts at the end of the game.

Dunban's supposed to be the wise mentor, unflinching and unwilling to let his anger get the best of him... but for as wise as he is, he makes the choice to ignore his condition and set off to join Shulk for vengeance. He can teach and guide as much as possible-which he does well-but later it's Shulk-the one who started the revenge quest in the first place-that has to take him down a peg and get him to start acting right. (I do wonder if maybe part of Zanza was talking when Shulk was begging Dunban not to be alright with killing a fellow Homs, they are his food supply after all...)

Melia's initial course of action when facing the Telethia for a second time is to cut her losses and run, but Shulk's empathizing with her situation leads her to adopting the same anger and bitterness for mechon later on for what they do to her father and her kingdom. It took a while, yes (she separates herself from the party multiple times for a reason, as she believes her heart must not interfere with her duty), but two strangers-turned-friends sharing a similar trauma? It's little wonder that they cope the same way, by going full destruction mode.

Riki and Seven are the only ones not subtly tainted by this destructive, vengeance seeking journey. Riki because he's a stealth second mentor to the party and is near bursting with joy and kindness, so he never wants to get revenge, he just wants to help his friends and pay off his debt. Seven because... well it's her experiences during the story so far and her deep compassion for others that end up turning Shulk-and therefore everyone else in the party-around, showing that their end goal doesn't have to be total destruction; you can fight not out of revenge or seeking power, but to protect people's hopes, dreams, and futures.

Hell, if you wanna get crazier, Shulk succumbing to the apocrypha when he finally gets to the Mechonis could be read as a visual representation of him rejecting Zanza's influence. The host fighting back against the parasite, flipping around what Zanza sees the Bionis inhabitants as on his body.

And the earliest you can see these things is during Shulk and Reyn's conversation after losing Fiora-pretty much at the start of the game-and once you notice the pattern with Dunban and Sharla, you can't stop seeing it for the rest of the game. Very good writing here.