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feralphoenix · 4 years ago

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NO ONE IS HAPPY WITH THIS: Leitmotif & Sound Palette In “Sealed Vessel”

whats UP hk fandom i am back with—“more picante takes?” WOW YES HOW DID YOU KNOW!!!

CONTENT WARNING FOR TONIGHTS PROGRAM: today we are discussing the hollow knight boss fight, and all that entails for all the characters involved. relatedly this post does not have anything nice to say about the pale king, so if you’re very protective of his character, you may want to skip it.

FURTHERMORE, i would like to iterate that this essay is working from a place of compassion for ghost, hollow, radiance, AND hornet, because every single one of them is miserable at this point in the game and doesn’t want the events of this boss fight to be happening at all. this post is not an appropriate place to dunk on ANY of them. if you want to do that, please do it elsewhere.

thanks for your understanding.

ALSO, AS USUAL: if youre from a christian cultural upbringing (whether currently practicing, agnostic/secular, or atheist now), understand that some of what i’m discussing here may challenge you. if thinking thru the implications of radiance and the moth tribe’s backstory is distressing for you, PLEASE only approach this essay when youre in a safe mindset & open to listening, and ask the help of a therapist or anti-racism teacher/mentor to help you process your thoughts & feelings. just like keep in mind that youre listening to an ethnoreligiously marginalized person and please be respectful here or wherever else youre discussing this dang essay, ty

NO ONE IS HAPPY WITH THIS: Leitmotif & Sound Palette In “Sealed Vessel”

A while back @grimmradiance made a lovely essay about comparing and contrasting Hollow’s moveset in their Hollow Knight and Pure Vessel boss fights and using what can be gleaned from the differences to speculate about their psychology. (This essay is currently their pinned, but I’ll attach a link in a reblog.) It is extremely good, and it made me want to look at the Hollow Knight boss fight my own self through one of my own areas of expertise, meaning music!

As we are all well aware, Christopher Larkin's soundtrack to Hollow Knight rules ass. There are two specific ways in which it rules ass that are relevant to this essay: Leitmotif, and sound palette.

Quick rundown for folks who aren’t familiar with these terms: A leitmotif is a melody associated with a character or event or mood that's incorporated into songs in different ways based on what's happening in the story. Undertale is an example of a game with an incredibly strong use of leitmotif that’s really only possible because Toby Fox is both the composer and the game creator, so he can synchronize the subtleties of the writing with music and scene scripting too.

The phrase “sound palette” can have a lot of meanings, but in this case I’m using it to refer to specific instruments or groups of instruments that are associated with certain characters. If you’ve watched Steven Universe and seen interviews/production commentary by its composer team Aivi & Surasshu, you’ll hear them talking about part of their approach to scoring episodes being how each main character is represented by certain instruments: Steven with the triangle wave, Pearl with jazz piano, and so on.

Hollow Knight is a small team project rather than a one-person show, so Christopher Larkin can’t go quite AS over-the-top with leitmotif integration as Toby Fox can on simple virtue of Team Cherry having to communicate what they want to him. But Larkin is Hollow Knight's sound designer as well as its composer, so he folds leitmotif and character sound palette together with striking use of stems to create a very immersive and cinematic musical experience that enhances HK’s story and gameplay.

This brings us back to the track Sealed Vessel, which has EXTREMELY tight and cinematic sound design and uses leitmotif and sound palette to not just sock players in the feelings during a charged and dramatic boss fight, but also tell us a lot about what Hollow and Radiance are experiencing emotionally, especially with the gameplay in mind.

So, let’s play the soundtrack version of Sealed Vessel (and some other stuff) and talk about what’s going on in the game during it!

You may want to get out your copy of the OST or visit Christopher Larkin’s Bandcamp page so that you can listen along.

LEITMOTIF & SOUND PALETTE

Before we actually get into analyzing Sealed Vessel, let’s talk about the involved characters’ leitmotifs/sound palettes so we know what we’re listening for.

Both of these things are easiest to identify when characters have a distinct theme song. Ghost does not. However, the main theme of Hollow Knight (see: the title track, Hollow Knight) is used as a leitmotif for the vessels as a whole. Most pieces involved with a vessel character include this leitmotif somewhere. For instance, you can find this leitmotif and variations on it in Broken Vessel’s boss theme. The Vessel leitmotif is led by a cello solo here, so we can identify that the cello is the central part of Broken Vessel’s personal sound palette.

When the Vessel theme is associated with Ghost in specific, it tends to be performed by viola and/or piano, as it is on the title track and in other places like the opening cinematic.

Moving on to Hollow, their specific sound palette is established not in Sealed Vessel but in Pure Vessel, their pantheon boss theme. (Sealed Vessel was composed first, since the Godmaster DLC didn’t drop until over a year after HK’s initial release, meaning Pure Vessel was reverse-engineered/extrapolated from relevant parts of Sealed Vessel. But we’ll get into that later!)

The major instrumental fixtures in Pure Vessel are choir and tubular bells (i.e., those dramatic vertical fellas that sound like church bells or a carillon), with some soft background instrumentation: bass drum, woodwinds (appropriately led by flute in the main melody’s “falling motion” - flute is the centerpiece of TPK’s sound palette), strings, and high/mid brass. Hollow’s overall sound palette has a very Christian choir-esque sound (in the Pure Vessel theme this is very idealized and saintly: soft and slow and tragic) and the beginning of their leitmotif has a very distinctive climbing melody that mirrors their ascent from the Abyss. The Unbearable Vesselness Of Being leitmotif is absent from the Pure Vessel track.

Meanwhile, Radiance’s boss theme is a very fun expression of her character upon which Larkin evidently went ham. Her sound palette is expressed through full orchestra (plus choir and pipe organ) that has a special emphasis on the bass part of the brass section, which does not see much use in the HK soundtrack. Her leitmotif has also got cute and distinctive touches: It’s full of triplets to match her tiara-looking antennae, and also has a repeated “fluttery” pattern of background sixteenth notes as countermelody, often spiraling downwards.

The majority of the piece is loud and bombastic and in a minor key to play up the “resplendent and terrible” wrathful aspect of herself Radi is pushing during this section of gameplay, a very quintessentially moth intimidation tactic: Try to look as scary as possible to keep your enemies from messing with you, since you’re not built for fighting. These blasts of intensity from the brass section match Radiance’s strategy of Overwhelm You With Bullet Hell Spam To Make Up For Lack Of Battle Experience/Poor Aim. But in between said intensity spikes you can hear traces of softer instrumentation and major key, little glimpses of a gentle warmth we can otherwise only infer from her backstory and the implications of Moth Tribe lore.

0:00 - 0:41 - OPENING AMBIANCE

The Sealed Vessel track begins with the ambiance of the Black Egg Temple’s interior: The faint tones of the glowing seals we hear when we pass by them, the only light in a pitch-black world besides the floor lighting up under Ghost’s feet.

Then a slow string tremolo fades in, slowly growing louder. In the track new notes join the tremolo progressively, while in-game a violin joins the anticipatory chord every time you snap one of Hollow’s chains. Which, may I say: A+++++++ sound design!!!!!! Rules ass!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The tremolo reaches a peak in dynamics - all three characters present are extremely tense - and then cuts off to allow for Hollow’s boss battle opening, i.e. Radiance screaming. Team Cherry kindly demarcates each phase of the battle with a Radi yell.

0:43 - 1:39 - PHASE 1: HOLLOW ON AUTOPILOT

Phase 1 opens immediately with Hollow’s leitmotif in bells, but with brass, piano, and percussion backing them up; grand and tragic. In the background the bass section of the orchestra's strings flutter in a repetitive pattern of 16th notes, i.e. Panicky Radi Noises. The violins harmonize with Hollow's leitmotif as it climbs, but then join the rest of the string section in fluttering 16th notes, transmuting what in Pure Vessel is the flute leading Hollow back down (8th notes) to a slightly louder “a” from the backseat.

In actual gameplay, the only attacks Hollow uses are their basic nail skills. Building on grimmradiance’s analysis of the window their attacks provide to their psychology, and pairing that with the Pure Vessel leitmotif booming over the metaphorical loudspeakers, we can tell that this is Hollow reacting automatically to a threat the way that their father trained them to. Their conscious mind might still be making dialup noises at Ghost’s sudden reappearance jumpscaring them with murky childhood guilt and trauma, but that’s only let muscle memory take over. Slash, parry, charge and thrust. Their time spent at bee bootcamp (which we can assume because Hornet was trained at the Hive and Hollow’s form while nail fighting is identical to hers on their shared moves) has served them well.

Radiance, meanwhile, has frozen completely for this combat phase, and contributes nothing here except the anxiety of the string section.

As the strings continue to go “a” the piano (Ghost) and woodwinds harmonize on something between Hollow’s personal leitmotif and the Vessel leitmotif in the backdrop.

However at around 1:29ish, the key changes, building into an overall color change for the Sealed Vessel piece.

1:39 - 2:15 - PHASE 2: SHE’S AS SCARED OF YOU AS YOU ARE OF HER

In actual gameplay, the part of Sealed Vessel used for phases 1 and 2 of the Hollow Knight fight is the Entirety of 0:43 - 2:15, possibly because there’s no easy transition spot like there is between phase 2 and phase 3. But the changes to Hollow’s moveset are clearly tied to this specific part of the piece.

Phase 2 is where Radiance pushes herself past her freeze response and starts trying to hit Ghost. Hollow gains two attacks here, which we can tell are Radi because they’re often accompanied by her crying (a softer and more abbreviated sound than her full scream): These two attacks are the Infection blob blast and the Light/Void pillar attack that hits for a full 2 masks damage (which appear to be Radi’s take on Hollow’s Pure Vessel-exclusive moves, their grabby tentacles & silver knife pillars respectively).

In the Sealed Vessel track, this part of the piece is almost entirely Radiance’s fluttering. The strings start by following the descending motion of Hollow’s leitmotif but in 16th notes, then ratchet up to start spiraling down again while straying further from Hollow’s leitmotif. This section ends in a back and forth between hard blasts in a one-two-(rest)-one-two-three pattern and gasps of fluttering between, with piano and low brass building behind it. Eventually the nervous fluttering of the strings becomes less frequent between the blasts: Radiance is inexperienced with fighting and very very afraid, but she’s also FUCKING PISSED and prepared to defend herself.

The OST version of the piece punctuates the break between the first half of the piece and the second with Radiance’s scream.

2:16 - 4:04 - PHASE 3: “I’M HELPING! :)” SAID HOLLOW; “HOLY SHIT PLEASE DON’T,” SAID LITERALLY EVERYONE

Phase 3 opens with Hollow stabbing themself repeatedly, a movement pattern they repeat throughout the phase. It is shocking the first time you see it, and never stops being horrible and sad no matter how many times you do this part of the fight.

Here, Hollow’s mind has finally come back online after their own freeze response, and they choose to destroy themself and bequeath the duty of sealing Radiance to Ghost. Even if they can’t be the one to make their father proud, they can still make sure their directive gets carried out.

Radiance knows exactly what they’re up to and why, and she reacts to this by completely losing her head and mashing buttons in a panic. This is something we see out of her at the ends of her boss fights too, where she’s feeling too threatened and afraid to do anything but spam optic blasts. In the Hollow Knight boss fight this manifests in two horrifying-looking but easy-to-avoid new attacks: The Infection blob sprinkler and the ragdoll.

Ghost does not react visibly because we're in gameplay, but their horror and grief at their sibling’s choice is echoed in the BGM. The Sealed Vessel piece goes soft and sad, with Ghost’s associated viola leading the bass strings in the Unbearable Vesselness of Being leitmotif. At 2:51 the violin comes in with Hollow’s leitmotif, and gradually the choir appears in the backdrop. The ensemble’s overall dynamics build in a slow crescendo, and at the very end of this segment the other instruments begin to join in.

This segment of the piece is also used in phase 4, which occurs if you don't have Hornet’s help or miss your cue to Dream Nail Hollow. Phase 3 ends when Hollow reaches 0 HP; in phase 4 they are for all purposes already dead. But Radiance manifests an extra 250 HP out of terrified, unadulterated FUCK YOU FUCK THIS!!! even though all she can do is get Hollow to fall on their face trying to slash and ragdoll them around. The BGM continues to play as Ghost absorbs Radiance from Hollow and Hollow’s body loses its shape and dissolves into liquid Void.

And there’s one other place in gameplay Sealed Vessel (Unbearable Vesselness of Being) is used: The Path of Pain, the completely evil kaizo-level obstacle course which presumably featured in Hollow’s childhood training, and behind which the Pale King has hidden his last and most terrible secret—that he had realized on some level that Hollow was a kid with feelings who loved him and wanted to make him proud, and condemned them to death despite it all by using them to imprison and torture Radiance as he’d always planned.

The OST version of Sealed Vessel includes the music for both normal ending cinematics, so we’ll be looking at them too.

4:05 - 4:35: ENDINGS 1/2: NO ONE IS HAPPY WITH THIS

In the BGM for The Hollow Knight and Sealed Siblings endings, the Vessel leitmotif is played by violin, viola, and choir while the cellos and contrabasses—and then the brass bass section too—play a slower version of Radiance’s downward spiral. But once Ghost is pierced by the Black Egg’s chains and Radiance’s struggle to free herself ends in failure, the soprano and bass sections harmonize. The animation zooms out of the temple and the seal reforms. They are stuck together now until the end of Ghost’s life. Hooray.

The OST version of the track immediately segues into the BGM for Dream No More.

4:36 - 5:45: ENDING 3: THANKS, I HATE IT

Here, Hornet’s associated instrument, the violin, plays one long sustained note with a few notes of Ghost’s piano alongside as she wakes up.

TPK’s goddamn flute comes in at 5:00 with his leitmotif overpowering the backdrop Vessel leitmotif on piano while Hornet surveys the carnage: The temple has been destroyed, Radiance is dead, and what’s left of Ghost’s corpse is smeared across the floor. The Void may have taken umbrage with his horseshit and unceremoniously vored him, but the motherfucker still got what he wanted in the end; the Pale King has ended the Infection by completing his genocide of the moths, using the children he abused and abandoned as his proxies, and wasting two of their lives. Can I get a hearty THIS SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! in the chat.

Given that Hornet herself is canonically unsure if bringing the fight to Radiance is really a just course of action, one can only imagine how she must feel when she sees the cost of that decision.

Our only real moment of catharsis is in this shit situation comes in at 5:13, where the flute gives way to a solo from Ghost’s associated viola, playing the Vessel leitmotif as the Siblings curl up and sink back into the mountain of their corpses. Goodnight, kiddos. You deserved better, and so did literally everyone involved in this whole stupid boss fight.

This is where the OST version of Sealed Vessel ends. Even without the gameplay and story context it slaps, but now that we’ve taken a look at how this 5:45 piece is wall to wall misery and fear on the part of literally every involved character, hopefully it will have even more impact!

#hollow knight #sealed vessel #the hollow knight #the radiance #hk radiance #ghost hollow knight #hk ghost #hornet hollow knight #hk hornet #essay #hollow knight meta

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rainbowsky · 4 years ago

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To the person who sent me the thousand word essay, if you check out my ask policy I don't publish these kinds of long asks. I used to get tons of them and it got to be too much. Also, a lot of your comments contain anti talking points that I will not publish on my blog. But I can respond to some of the issues you raised.

TW/CW - brief mention of homophobia and suicide.

Basically your message was a sort of cataloguing of your doubts about BJYXSZD. To quote your closing paragraph, "Ah....i am just desperate for them to be a couple after all these months and the bts videos and inteviews, but it just doesn't add up anymore. So, as a confused fan, i thought about seeking reassurance to you."

I don't think it's my place, nor is it really anyone's place, to try to convince you or reassure you that GGDD is real. You will either believe or you won't believe. In my experience, people who are filled with doubts and in need of a steady stream of candies and clues to keep them satisfied are going to find themselves on a constant emotional roller-coaster of euphoria and misery.

Let go of your need for certainty.

As I've said in the past, when you let go of your need for certainty you will find that certainty comes a lot more easily. People who need certainty approach GGDD like a detective agency or a hungry ghost, focusing on their craving for proofs and candies that never quite seem to satiate them, and they miss out on the real joy of just being a fan.

A lot of the doubts you listed are things that don't really fit with why BXG believe BJYXSZD. We don't base our belief on the fact that they did a BL show together. We don't base our belief on the fact that they get along well together. We don't base our belief on candies. We base our belief on the insight we accumulate over a period of time, and that's not something that can be passed on to someone else. It's something everyone has to discover for themselves.

GGDD have nothing to prove. BXG have nothing to prove. We are all just here to enjoy them, love them and support them.

My advice: just relax, let go of your need for certainty, and enjoy GG and DD. Certainty will come or it won't, so there's no need to fret over it.

A couple things I felt the need to respond to:

Hidden relationships

Hidden relationships are totally a Thing in the entertainment industry, of course. Andy Lau with his 24 year hidden relationship is a great example. But you seem fixated on the idea that if GG or DD were hiding a relationship, it must be a heterosexual one.

Heteronormativity is a huge part of why so many fans have a hard time believing that GG and DD could ever be a real couple. There can be endless signs that a man is in a gay relationship and the fans will just dismiss it all, but if that man so much as smiles at a woman, fans are immediately ready to believe he's in love with her. Heterosexuality is seen as the default, and that makes homosexuality invisible to a lot of straight people.

You mentioned Leslie Cheung. I recommend this excellent post if you want to see why the world wasn't ready for him. He was an inspiration to LGBTQ people, without any doubt. I think he was equally a cautionary tale for a lot of people, even if the tragedy of his death wasn't necessarily directly related to his queerness or how he was being treated by the public.

There's a trope in society and in media and entertainment, that queer people are tragic figures. Queer characters are often presented as emotionally and psychologically turbulent people who meet untimely, tragic ends. Queer stories tend to be focused around "the struggle of being queer" and the rejection, fear and bigotry queer people face. The violence, the death, the suicides.

How could this not feed into the fears we have as queer people growing up in an often hostile world? How could a story like Leslie's fail to scare as many people as it inspires?

And besides, there are closeted gay couples in the entertainment industry in China.

I have talked about the whole hidden relationship thing, the whole 'needing to appear single' thing, in the past. You can find some of those posts linked at the end of this one. I've also talked about the pressure to appear single (along with the pressure to enter a straight marriage) previously here.

DD and the anti bullshit you've read

I can tell you've read a lot of anti lies in your travels. You're carrying a lot of the toxic ideas that antis spread online. I'm going to take a wild guess and say you spend most of your time on Twitter and YouTube, where these lies are part of the air people breathe on those platforms.

The rumors of DD being in a relationship with that heiress are nothing but harassment and bullshit. She is a known celebrity stalker who has caused scandals with multiple celebrities. Antis spread those lies because they are harmful to DD, not because they're true. DD denies them because they are false, not because he's got something to hide.

DD has never once been spotted with her. He's never once been photographed with her. There exists in the world exactly zero evidence of any common thread between her and DD. Zero evidence that they've ever even been in the same room together. Zero. There's no candy, nothing.

Meanwhile the candy connecting DD and GG together is so abundant it would put Willy Wonka out of business. There are constant reports of them being seen together, evidence of them being together, etc. Some of that stuff is stalker material that I won't share on my blog - such as DD's suitcase being spotted in GG's car a few days ago - but yeah, if you believe in the stalker heiress BS but not GGDD, that only speaks to your ignorance of the situation.

One of the things I find most frustrating about being a BJYXSZD BXG is that we are constantly characterized as spectacularly naive and deluded, meanwhile it's our most vocal critics - the antis, toxic solos and insecure turtles - who unquestioningly believe anything they read.

As for 22*7, you can always tell a DD anti by their willingness to claim DD should have spoken openly about GG during the whole scandal last year. No one who knows anything about GG and DD or about the situation could say in good faith that DD should have spoken up. I view that whole attitude as a litmus test for who knows and understands and truly supports GGDD, and who is either uninformed or an anti.

You can read more about that here and here.

And no, GG has never issued any statement denying BJYXSZD. Neither of them has.

BJYXSZD is not based on old BTS and interviews

I sometimes get sick of seeing clips and photos and metas about the Untamed, I sometimes get tired of talking about the same old interview clips and BTS. I see these things as ancient history - something fun to visit every now and then, but not where I want to live. I don't base my present belief on any of that. All that stuff can ever really do now is give us background on how things started and give us a bit of insight into how they get along and interact.

No BXGSZD that I know of bases their belief on "old BTS and interviews."

Both GG and DD have interesting new projects and endorsements. There's a ton of new content coming out all the time. We still regularly see new evidence that they're together. The past stuff is just for context.

Wrapping this all up, I'll just reiterate what I said before. No one can, or even should, convince you that GGDD is real. That's something you'll have to make peace with for yourself. If you want to get there faster, just relax and enjoy being a fan, and take some time to learn more about GGDD. Certainty may come in time. If it doesn't, well at least you had fun!

Since you are a newer fan I recommend checking out my BXG glossary, along with my masterlist post for some of the things I've talked about in the past.

#ggdd in the public eye #antis go home #lgbtpride #ask

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deans-haunted-baby · 4 years ago

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Lately I can’t stop thinking about Adam, like I’m legit crushed over what this show did to him. I know Supernatural was never perfect but the way it treated this character was so damn vicious, condescending and nasty; no different than a high school bully picking on an injured elementary schooler.

He never stood a chance. The thing is I don’t know what it was that made me latch onto Adam so strongly for over a decade. Maybe I could just sympathize and easily relate to his situation of being discarded and forgotten by family members. Or maybe I saw potential in this character and couldn’t fathom why no one else on that writing staff and the SPN fandom couldn’t.

I want you to take a second and absorb these pertinent facts about Adam Milligan that this show put forward. This is not anti-anything this is all the truth so bare with me:

He was the illegitimate youngest child of hunter John Winchester; a man who treated his older sons Sam and Dean like soldiers on his platoon.

Adam only saw his bio dad ONCE A YEAR and it was only to take him to ball games not to train him so that he could protect himself and his mother from (supernatural) threats.

He never knew the existence of his older brothers nor did they know about him because John deliberately ripped those pages out of his journal. Essentially trying to erase any evidence of Adam and Kate.

Because Adam grew up having no clue what was out there or about the “family business” he and his mother suffered VIOLENT PRE-MATURE DEATHS at the hands of ghouls which Adam STILL REMEMBERS long after being murdered.

Oh and John failed to kill those ghouls, providing them the golden opportunity of impersonating him and his mother so they could kill John and his half-brothers.

Adam was only an 18 year old pre-med studying medicine. Probably wanted to follow in his mother’s footsteps in helping people as she was a nurse.

Because Kate worked nights as a single mother, Adam had to grow up being his own parent at times; cooking his own meals and putting himself to bed.

Adam was ironically born on September 29th (1990) which is also known as Michaelmas aka the Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel and Raphael. A potential storyline that could’ve gone somewhere but didn’t.

Adam is also by birthright a Men of Letters legacy though his brothers fail to mention that 10 years later.

The last thing Adam was doing while he was in Heaven, designed to look like his Prom, he was kissing a girl Kristen McGee; whom we’ll never know about or if he’ll ever see again.

Adam was ripped out of Heaven against his will by the angels to be used and manipulated as their backup device in the Apocalypse because Sam and Dean refused to comply with their demands.

After being resurrected, Adam was then recovered, kidnapped and held hostage by TFW (Sam, Dean, Bobby and Castiel) where they all took turns mouthing off at this angsty teenager about why he should trust a bunch of complete strangers over those who made him promises.

Adam only wanted to work with the angels in order to stop Lucifer and return to his mother. Highlighting that this character had a sense of justice, responsibility, cared about doing the right thing but also had his own reasons for wanting to save the world.

Sam tried to emotionally manipulate Adam with excuses for why their dad never told him about his family. And actually had the gall to say that him and Dean would’ve looked for him had they’d known he existed so they could be a family. Forgive me if I just laugh at this for a moment 🤣

Zachariah was able to get into Adam’s head because he knew how vulnerable he was. Telling him that trusting the Winchesters would only let him down which *SPOILER ALERT* turned out to be true.

Zachariah tortured Adam for hours before the Winchesters arrived to save him. And Dean was only willing to submit to the angel when Sam was just briefly tortured.

One of the last things Dean says to Adam in 5x18 after he was shocked to see his half-brothers come to his rescue was “Cause you’re family”. Again I have to...🤣🤣

At the moment of their escape, Dean doesn’t even help Adam (WHO’D BEEN INJURDED AND TORTURED) out of the room nor does he care about ushering him to safety. Dean just grabs Sam and hurries out the door. So much for being part of the family.

The last thing Adam screams before before being possessed by Michael was “Dean, help!” and then he hears Dean say “Just hold on!”

Adam, not being Michael’s true vessel yet born from the powerful Winchester bloodline, was able to look directly at the archangel’s true form without his eyes burning out. And this is NEVER explained why.

Dean mentions Adam only a total of THREE TIMES after this happens in 5x19, 5x22 and 6x11 while Castiel mentions it to Sam in 5x21. And Sam, WHO’D BEEN THE MAIN EMOTIONAL MANIPULATOR, just doesn’t give a shit to remember him.

Castiel threw a Molotov cocktail at Michael (who was using Adam’s body) to briefly cast him out which Adam probably felt in excruciating detail based on what Michael says in 15x08.

Sam, possessed by Lucifer, pushed himself and his innocent half-brother possessed by Michael into the cage for all eternity.

Castiel somehow managed to pull Sam out of the cage but decided to leave Adam behind.

After Dean bargains with Death to get Sam’s soul and Adam out of the cage. Only to get just Sam’s soul and leave Adam to his fate. The issue is never brought up again between the Winchesters.

Adam sits a prisoner in a cage with an archangel for 10 years our time but thousands of years Hell time.

Michael most likely protected Adam from some of the horrors in Hell which is why he was able to keep his sanity.

Sam and Dean went to Hell to talk to Lucifer in the cage but continue to ignore Adam’s existence and don’t bother releasing him yet they let Lucifer escape.

Dean also went back to Hell to retrieve Bobby’s soul so he could go to Heaven and again doesn’t even bother with Adam.

Season 10 for Supernatural’s 200th episode, Sam and Dean were reminded by SPN fans putting on a musical that Adam was still in the cage yet THEY NEVER DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT.

Mary Winchester STILL doesn’t know about Adam even though she was reunited with John during the 300th episode. He’s never mentioned during their big family get-together. I guess he never counted.

Adam and Michael are finally set free of Hell only because Chuck threw a giant hissy fit at the Winchesters and opened all the gateways.

The first thing Adam wanted to do as a free man in 15x08 was not seeking revenge on his brothers for abandoning him, but to eat some diner food, change his clothes and get a “little job”

After years of imprisonment, Adam actually befriended the Prince of Heaven aka the one friend he has/the only other person besides his mother who actually gave a damn about him.

TFW trapped, kidnapped and imprisoned Adam and Michael at the bunker in order to force them to help against Chuck.

And Adam, though still angry, hurt and worn out over the situation; chose to help his brothers when there was NOTHING in it for him and successfully convinced Michael to do the same.

Despite how his brothers treated him, Adam STILL believed in their best and vouched that they “always try to do the right thing”

Adam went to Hell a cranky, sassy, angsty, naïve teenager and returned a kinder, wiser, more patient, humble and rational-thinking man who still managed to smile and laugh after enduring centuries of pain.

Dean gives Adam his much due apology for not saving him but Sam doesn’t. In fact Sam doesn’t even bring him up the next time the Winchesters see each other.

Adam’s last words on this show are to Dean and they’re “Since when do we get what we deserve?” and “Good luck” 🤓

Chuck Thanos-snapped Adam’s soul out of existence OFF-SCREEN yet Michael somehow remained in his body.

Adam was 90% of Michael’s impulse control hence why he was so dark in his last appearance without Adam because that’s the only way I can cope with that disgusting character assassination in 15x19

Jack supposedly revived Adam along with everyone else after becoming the new God. BUT his current status now reads “Unknown” instead of “Alive” so what the fuck am I suppose to think now?!

Sam and Dean didn’t even think about checking in on Adam to make sure he was okay before they hit the road on their last solo bro-outing.

If Adam really is alive then he’s doomed to a miserable, lonely existence without his best friend (who’s now dead). Broke, homeless, jobless; his brothers STILL DON’T GIVE A RAT’S ASS after he’d helped them in good faith. He’s legally deceased thanks to the ghouls. And he gets to look forward to demon city the moment he dies cause guess where he’s ending up?

No one remembers him even after he’d returned in 15x08

The car and the dog are more important to the Winchesters than their innocent half-brother.

Okay I realize I just unloaded a whole mountain of salt but this is the full outline of Adam’s tragic story on Supernatural. These writers never cared about him and why? What did he do to deserve this gross treatment from the show’s protagonists or just in general? Why was he even introduced if this was going to be the outcome of it all? I don’t know what’s worse leaving him in Hell (cause at least he had Michael for company) or bringing him back and not knowing what became of him after. It’s insufferable 😣 I just want everyone to know that the showrunners and writers may not care about him BUT I DO.

#adam milligan #supernatural #SPN #michael the archangel #midam #the winchesters #supernatural season 15 #supernatural season 5 #supernatural season 4 #adam x michael #michael x adam #spn meta #spn rant #Archangel Michael #the forgotten 3rd winchester brother

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allgirlsareprincesses · 5 years ago

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The Death of Love and the Lonely Soul: Eros and Psyche in a Post-TROS World

This is the first of my follow-up posts to my series on Folktale Types in Star Wars, focusing on how the Sequel Trilogy retells (or fails to retell) the Eros and Psyche myth, and the potential psychological implications for our culture. This essay will frequently reference my original Reylo as Eros and Psyche post, though I will also occasionally refer to my other Search for the Lost Husband posts (2) (3) (4), so please consider reading those before diving in here.

To explain why I had a great deal of confidence in TROS being a classic happy ending to a Search for the Lost Husband tale (ATU 425), I have to share a little bit of what I learned about how folklorists view these tale types. A century ago, the popular theory about why myths and folktales were so similar all over the world was evolutionary: it assumed there was one origin tale, and that as humans traveled, they would carry the story with them and it would be retold and adapted by other cultures. This suggested there was one ancestral tale from which all the others developed, which accounted for the recurrence of the story’s basic plot and motifs.

Since then, however, advancements in anthropological research and the increasing appreciation for folklore in the study of human psychology has debunked the old evolutionary theory. It was discovered that cultures and societies existing at the same time in history, on opposite sides of the globe and which could have had no possible contact with one another, still told the same tale types with the same motifs. Details might be changed, but every culture had animal husband tales, or animal bride tales, and so on. This led to the now widely-accepted idea that universal human psychology accounts for the similarity in folktales. Basically, all humans tell each other the same stories because we all wrestle with the same fundamental truths, challenges, and transitions. This is why the swan maiden tales can be traced to male anxiety over sexual performance or the prospect of losing a wife in childbirth, or why animal husband tales can be traced to female power fantasies of taming a mate in a patriarchal society.

Based on all this, I assumed that even if Terrio and Abrams made a typically vapid modern action flick, they’d still hit all of the main beats of the Eros and Psyche myth because that’s what would come naturally to them. Obviously, Beauty’s love will return the Beast to his human form. Obviously, Psyche will complete her journey from child to adult and take her place as the true or metaphorical mother to the next generation. Obviously, they will end the story united for eternity to signify the end of the galaxy-wide conflict and the beginning of the true peace so long sought by the heroes of the Skywalker Saga.

While this was true to a limited extent in The Rise of Skywalker, several of the reveals and the final moments of the film not only departed dramatically from the structure of the Search for the Lost Husband myth, but the movie even fails to align with the commonly more sorrowful Quest for the Lost Bride. In a cruel and baffling twist, the story erases its hero and returns its heroine to childhood in a barren underworld. There is, frankly, no historical folktale I can find that matches this pattern. Even stories featuring preadolescent children are about disassociation from parental figures, not deeper dependence. (Note: Marie-Claire and Ty Black of What The Force and Wit and Folly have done some exploration of how TROS reflects the so-called “American Monomyth.” This is a valid interpretation but for the purposes of this analysis, I’m continuing to use stories more commonly recognized by the Aarne-Thompson-Uther classification of folktales.)

Rey’s Regression and Psyche’s Tasks

As a quick refresher of where we stood in alignment with the myth by the end of The Last Jedi, Rey is the mortal woman Psyche, and her force powers are akin to Psyche’s beauty in the myth. Kylo Ren/Ben Solo is god of desire Eros, Psyche’s husband and the son of god of war Ares and goddess of love Aphrodite. In Star Wars, it is the Dark Side and dark force users who play the part of Aphrodite herself, attempting to control Ben Solo and jealous of the powerful Rey. The symbolic marriage of the lovers has unmistakably occurred multiple times, but when Rey attempts to force Ben into the light and to accept his true identity, he recoils and they are separated. She has broken the taboo of seeing his true self, and so her animal bridegroom has fled to the safety of the Dark Side, or “his mother’s house.” Finally, all of Rey’s illusions, help, and protections have been stripped away, so she must now learn how to rely on herself to obtain what she desires. When Rey discovers her own worth, independent of anyone else, she will achieve womanhood. When Ben Solo accepts his full humanity, both dark and light, he will achieve manhood. Together, they will reach adulthood.

At the beginning of TROS, we may already suspect some trouble. Rey seems to have regressed to a childlike dependence on mentors, being trained as a Jedi by Leia in an attempt to “earn” Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber, even though she has used it without permission for two movies so far. Given the saber’s symbolic role as a phallic motif, this also suggests sexual repression or another reversion to a childlike state, especially considering the sexual awakening Rey experienced in TLJ. Ben, meanwhile, has also regressed to a dogged commitment to the dark side, seeking to remove any “threat to his power.” Still, there is time for the couple to recover their lost ground and achieve maturation in the course of the film.

In Apelius’ tale, the enraged Aphrodite confronts Eros about his marriage to Psyche:

“What! Is it she - the usurper of my beauty, the vicar of my name?…. Whereas thou shouldst have vexed my enemy with loathsome love, thou hast done contrary. Being but of tender and unripe years thou hast with too licentious appetite embraced my most mortal foe, to whom I shall be made a mother, and she a daughter. Thou presumest and thinkest that thou art most worthy and excellent, and that I am not able by reason of my age to have another son; which if I might have, thou shouldst well understand that I would bear a more worthier than thee. But to work thee a greater despite, I do determine to adopt one of my servants, and to give him these wings, this fire, this bow and these arrows, and all other furniture which I gave to thee -- not for this purpose, neither is anything given thee of thy father for this intent, but thou hast been evil brought up and instructed in thy youth.”

If we are to say that Palpatine fulfills the role of Aphrodite in this story, then a few things stand out: One is that Palpatine (and Snoke, given that they are one in the same) views Kylo Ren as a failure, recognizing his feelings for Rey. Darth Sidious sees Rey as a threat, and is both jealous and fearful of her power, of being “usurped” by her. Further, though it is not immediately clear that Palpatine intends to replace Kylo with Rey as his new host, it does become evident through the course of the story that he wants only revenge on Ben Solo. This idea of replacing Ben with Rey, though characterized as a Dark Side concept at first, becomes especially tragic later in the film when it seems that the Skywalkers have done exactly that. Finally, there is the affirmation that Ben “has been evil brought up and instructed in [his] youth,” when Palpatine tells him that he has been “every voice inside [his] head.” This suggests that Ben/Eros is evil as he has been raised that way from childhood, removing a degree of culpability for his nature.

Still seeking her lost husband, Psyche seeks out Aphrodite herself, who drags her by the hair as her maidens, Sorrow and Sadness, abuse and torment Psyche with whips and rods. The cruel goddess then gives her wretched daughter-in-law the first of her impossible tasks, demanding that Psyche sort a pile of grains and seeds in a single night. Though Psyche completes this task and a further two (gathering the golden fleece from vicious rams and collecting water from the mouth of the River Styx), she often despairs of success, twice attempting to fling herself into a raging river to escape her agony.

In TROS, Rey is similarly tormented by loneliness, as she tells Finn that she fears no one knows her. Though she meets with success in most of her efforts to chase down the film’s several McGuffins, she also seems to despair and give up more than once, most notably when she flees the scene of her oceanic battle with Ben on the ruins of the Death Star.

As for the tasks themselves, these appear differently in variations of the Search for the Lost Husband, but usually involve the heroine questing for her lost love, collecting objects and accepting help from various magical figures on her journey. By contrast, Rey does not seem to really seek Ben at all throughout TROS, as she consistently rejects him and is the aggressor in all of their confrontations. Though she collects objects and accepts help from other characters, including Force Ghost Luke, this assistance is always intended to help her defeat Palpatine, not recover Ben. I could come up with some tortured analogies between Rey’s mini-quests and Psyche’s labors, but truthfully I think those would be forced as the movie departed farther and farther from the mythological framework.

The Death Star Fight and the Revival of the Prince

Still, other aspects of the ATU 425 folktale type are distinctively present. Just as the Beast repeatedly asks Beauty for her hand in marriage, so Kylo Ren repeatedly asks Rey to join him on the Dark Side. With the words “take my hand,” this is explicitly presented as a proposal of romantic union, and just like Beauty, Rey repeatedly refuses, particularly as Kylo clings to his beastly form in the repaired mask. This brings us to the sequence which is on the one hand most aligned with the myth, and on the other hand serves as the most ominous sign of the lovers’ eventual fates: the confrontation on the Death Star.

The problem with this scene is that it can be interpreted as two different pivotal moments in the folktale. Firstly, recall that the turning point in the Search for the Lost Husband is the breaking of the taboo and concurrent wounding of the enchanted husband: The heroine, armed with “flame and steel,” attempts to look upon her husband’s true form. In some variations, she intends to kill him if she discovers a monster. However, when she finds a handsome prince instead, she is stricken with love and accidentally wounds him with hot oil or wax, signifying her perceived betrayal. Though we have already seen this in the previous films (in Rey’s slashing of Kylo’s face on Starkiller and again with her calling him by his true name in the flaming throne room of the Supremacy), it seems that this event is playing itself out yet again. Using Kylo’s own lightsaber (flame and steel), Rey stabs him with a mortal wound even as she is reminded of his true identity through the sensation of Leia’s death. Not only would it be odd to repeat the breaking of the taboo yet again in this story, but instead of the husband fleeing as he typically does at this point in the Search for the Lost Husband, it is Rey, the bride, who flees.

The other event that frequently occurs in this tale type is the revival or healing of the prince. And indeed, this is exactly what happens in the Death Star scene. Rey’s stabbing of Kylo Ren, though in my opinion out of character, is consistent with the violent means some folktale heroines use to transform their beastly husbands. For example, in The Princess and the Frog, she throws her amphibian suitor against a wall, causing him to retake his princely form. Other brides burn their husbands’ beastly skins, forcing them to remain human evermore. As I’ve said before, Kylo’s lightsaber is symbolic fire in Star Wars, so Rey stabbing him with it is akin to burning his beastly skin, forcing him to again become Ben Solo. It also can be considered the moment that she makes a blood sacrifice to recover him. Then, still surrounded by water (Rey’s element throughout the trilogy and also associated with healing and cleansing), our heroine heals the prince of all his wounds, including the scar she had previously given him. This is absolutely consistent with many folktales, among them Pajaro Verde and The Ballad of Tam Lin.

Further, Rey’s healing of Ben is a callback to her healing of the alien serpent she found wounded on Pasaana, a shockingly unsubtle analogy for Ben. In Apelius’ narrative, Eros himself is sometimes referred to as a serpent, and it is very common in other animal husband tales for the prince to marry his bride in the form of a serpent, as in the Italian tale The Enchanted Snake. This is usually interpreted to be a fairly obvious phallic symbol, representing the heroine’s sexual initiation or in this instance, simply the masculine power to the heroine’s feminine. We have previously heard Rey refer to Ben as a “treacherous snake,” so it’s obvious that her healing of both the snake and Ben himself is her healing the Wounded Masculine. Finally, Rey tells him she “wanted to take [his] hand, Ben Solo’s hand,” which is again a seemingly direct reference to Beauty finally agreeing to marry the Beast in order to bring him back from death.

Despite the close alignment of this scene with the revival motif in the Search for the Lost Husband, there is one glaring issue: that event always occurs at the END of the story. The revival of the prince is the final step in the searching bride’s journey, when she claims him as her true husband by drawing him back from death or a similarly dark fate. It is a testament to her power and her love, and it demonstrates the final transformation of the prince and his worthiness of his bride. It is most definitely NOT common for the bride to again flee after reviving her lover. Again, despite the fact that Abrams and Terrio are (likely unintentionally) using many classic ATU 425 motifs, the reordering of them is disorienting and unsettling.

Rey in the Underworld

Psyche’s final task in her story is to descend to the Underworld to gather a little bit of Persephone’s beauty for the jealous Aphrodite. Despairing of any way to get there and return safely, Psyche prepares to kill herself, but Eros speaks to her through an enchanted tower, instructing her to use certain objects to pass safely. He also tells her not to eat any food of the underworld, nor to open the box of beauty Queen Persephone gives her, or else she will not return. Psyche follows all of these instructions carefully, until she has nearly completed her task, and the temptation of opening the casket is just too great. She opens it thinking to take just a little beauty to please Eros, but inside she finds only the Stygian Sleep of the dead, and she falls down lifeless. Eros immediately flies to her side and wipes the deathly sleep from her eyes, reviving her and taking her in his arms. He then appeals to Zeus, who agrees to make Psyche immortal so that she and Eros can never be separated.

In TROS, the underworld is the planet Exogol, where lurks the personification of the Dark Side, Darth Sidious. In Star Wars, power is analogous to the beauty that is so coveted in the Greek myth, so the characters are all drawn to Exogol in a final struggle for ultimate power. Like Psyche, Rey has a moment of despair when she exiles herself on Ahch-To, thinking that she cannot possibly defeat the Dark Side. Oddly, instead of Ben Solo speaking to her through the Force Bond, which would more closely follow the myth, the person encouraging Rey in this moment is Luke Skywalker, her erstwhile reluctant mentor. He does indeed give her special objects to help her pass into Exogol (the lightsabers and his miraculously-preserved X-wing) and he advises her to confront her fears.

Another way to interpret this scene is as yet another instance of the heroine returning home to her suspicious family, where they poison her mind against her beastly lover. In Eros and Psyche, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, Pajaro Verde, Beauty and the Beast, and many others, there is always a moment when the heroine goes home to her family and receives dangerous advice warning her against trusting her husband, or attempting to keep her longer than she promised. I’ve argued before that this already happened in TLJ with Luke, when he repeatedly warned her away from her own dark side and from Ben Solo. Yet, it seems we again tread over familiar ground, with Rey’s flight to Ahch-To in TROS appearing as another regression of her character.

Rey flies to Exogol and attempts her final task, which is to defeat Palpatine. When he threatens her friends, she agrees to kill him in order to become empress (I really can’t type this nonsense with a straight face), which will make her the heir of death itself. Then, transformed Ben Solo comes charging in heroically to save his love, unwilling to let her face her final trial alone. Unfortunately, Palpatine sucks the life force from both lovers without much difficulty, then chucks poor Ben off a cliff. Rey is forced to defeat Sidious without her soulmate, though apparently a bunch of Jedi she doesn’t know are happy to give her a pep talk and make her “all the Jedi.” After finally destroying(?) Palpatine, she then inexplicably drops dead. Like Psyche, Rey has completed the final task but also taken the contents of the box (in this case, the power of “all the Jedi”) for herself, and as she is mortal, it is too much for her and she dies.

Just like Eros, Ben claws his way to his fallen lover’s side and gathers her in his arms, determined to retrieve her from death. Alive again, Rey calls Ben by his true name and professes her love in a passionate kiss. But whereas Eros then makes his soulmate immortal so that they can never be parted, Ben’s revival of her results in his own death, and the couple is again separated. Though redundant, it would be consistent with the folktale pattern for Rey to resurrect her prince in this moment. Instead, we see his body fade away, with no indication that our heroine clearly understands what has happened or really cares.

In each version of the Search for the Lost Husband, the heroine is a mortal woman who wins the love of a prince or even a god, and her final reward is to be elevated to royalty, or to immortality. Psyche becomes a goddess in her own right, dwells in the heavens, and gives birth to a daughter named Joy. Eros and Psyche, Desire and Soul, when united produce Joy.

But Rey is not united with Ben, in the end. In fact, with a royal heritage of her own, she doesn’t really need to be elevated any more. You could argue that she claims a more elevated title when she takes the Skywalker name as her own, but she still ends up alone, with only ghosts of someone else’s parents and her robot familiar for company. Rather than ascending to a throne or to the heavens, she literally descends into a ruin, a literal graveyard, in a barren wasteland. Her mythical husband is nowhere to be found, and there is no hope for a child. In a cruel and bizarre twist, TROS tells a fairly faithful final chapter of Eros and Psyche, only to strip its heroine of all she has sought in the last moment, leaving her bereft. And yet, the filmmakers dressed this as a happy ending.

TROS as an Allegory of the Lost Soul

Given how frequently the Eros and Psyche tale is used as a basis for psychoanalytic theory, what implications might this film have when viewed through that lens? In Jungian psychology, the human psyche can only achieve individuation - the knowing of oneself as a separate and unique person - if it can be separated and differentiated from the uroboric figures of parents, siblings, and mentors. Eventually, the repressed Shadow must be integrated into the Self in order for one to be a whole and healthy adult.

Within this framework, Psyche is a human soul trapped in a state of unconscious, lacking knowledge of her Shadow and therefore lacking agency. Eros is the Shadow, a collection of repressed desires which Psyche both fears and desires to claim. Her act of heroism is that same wielding of lamp and knife where she faces the truth, strips away her own illusions, and sees her Shadow for what he truly is. Psyche’s refusal to continue living a lie, and her subsequent pursuit of her desires leads her to achieve individuation signified in the product of alchemical union, Joy.

Up until the events of TROS, both Rey and Ben Solo were on this journey. Rey was trapped in a state of childlike unconscious in the graveyard of Jakku, having repressed the dark memories of the parents who abandoned her. In TFA, things tended to happen to her, but she rarely drove the action of the story herself. However, at the end of TLJ, she separated herself from the influence of uroboric mentor Luke and pursued Ben Solo, determined to truly see and claim her dark desires. With flame and steel, she stripped away the dark mask around him, but he also forced her to admit the truth about her parents to herself. Ben Solo, her animus, the projection of Rey’s unconscious, stood before her and forced her to bring what she had repressed into her conscious reality. Only then could Rey “let the past die,” separate herself from her parents, and “become what [she was] meant to be.”

Mirroring her journey, Ben was also trapped in a state of unconscious in the underworld of the Dark Side, having repressed his inclinations to the Light and to reconciliation with his family. His effort at separating himself from the influence of his mentors had a false start at first, as he mistakenly believed that he needed to “let the past die,” separating himself from his family and from the Light. With flame and steel, Ben killed his father, but to his horror, he realized that this did not rid him of his deepest desires. In TLJ, he got a second chance to separate himself from the controlling mentor by killing Snoke. Had he at that time faced his desire for the Light and acknowledged his true identity, he too would have been closer to individuation. Ben’s anima, Rey, stood before him calling him by the true name he had repressed and begging him not to stay in the Dark.

From this basis, we might assume that Rey, freed from illusions, would pursue her wayward Shadow in an attempt to integrate him. Ben, only a few steps behind, might finally accept his identity and his desire for love and affection, unite with Rey, and they would both achieve individuation, rewarded with Joy. In fact, for Ben Solo, most of this story does indeed occur in TROS. When Rey heals him and declares that she did want to take Ben’s hand, he is forced to finally face and accept his true identity. He then projects a memory of Han Solo, representing his repressed desire for the love of family, and he reconciles with himself. He then pursues his desires by running to Rey’s rescue, finally freed to act according to his own wishes. Does he manage to truly unite with her and achieve joy, though? More on that in a minute.

Rey, for her part, suddenly undergoes a regression into her unconscious state. Rather than becoming a unique and separate person, she again defers to mentors, training with Leia and claiming that she will “earn” Luke’s lightsaber. Consider that by the same point in his own journey, Luke was specifically defying the advice of his mentors, Yoda and Obi-Wan, who were advising him to kill his father and bury his feelings. They were of course proven wrong by the narrative, and Luke was validated. As the hero of her story and as a human psyche on its way to individuation, Rey should have separated herself from her mentors and the story should have validated her unique strengths and perspective. Instead, Rey’s success and heroism DEPEND on Luke and Leia, even to the end. In many ways, she is an avatar of her mentors more than a heroine in her own right.

The other way in which Rey regresses is in her discovery of her true parentage, as she is forced again to consider her identity as a child, an extension of the parents who (supposedly) loved her and the grandfather who might be the true source of her darkness. Recall that the action that launches Psyche’s journey into consciousness is a refusal to continue living a lie. Rey achieved this step in TLJ when Ben forced her to admit the truth to herself about her parents. Though it was painful and led to the loss of her lover just as with Psyche, it was necessary for Rey for understand that she could forge her own identity without relying on the false family she had built in her mind.

In TROS, not only is she unable to differentiate her identity from her mentors, she now has multiple new parental figures to contend with. Having accepted the truth of her deadbeat nobody parents and the losses of Han and Luke (and eventually Leia), she must now reconcile with loving somebody parents as well as having a grandfather who is basically the Satan of the Galaxy Far Far Away. Further, it seems she has been training herself to contact the spirits of many Jedi who have passed into the Force, all of whom also constitute mentors or parental figures. Rather than discovering how she is unique and what she might want in her adulthood, Rey is positively drowning in parents against whom she is derivative, still just a child.

Still, all of those parental figures are dead or die in this movie, which is traditionally one way that mythical children separate themselves from their mentors in coming-of-age tales. Theoretically, there should have been time for Rey to discover who she is apart from all these characters, decide she wanted something different out of her life, and then pursue and achieve it as heroines do. Unfortunately, we never see that happen in this film. At every point in her TROS journey, Rey is doing what a mentor instructed her to do. She’s following Leia’s guidance, or Luke’s guidance, or Palpatine’s…. In the end, it is Luke who is validated by the narrative, not Rey. She brings nothing new or unique to the galaxy, nor does she seem to have intense desires that would oppose what these mentors want for her. Yes, she did want to take Ben Solo’s hand, but she’s not on a mission to save him and she barely reacts when he gets tossed down a pit. Unlike Luke, who was determined to save Vader in spite of what everyone told him, Rey meekly follows her elders like a good girl.

In The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, Otto Rank says:

"The detachment of the growing individual from the authority of the parents is one of the most necessary, but also one of the most painful achievements of evolution. It is absolutely necessary for this detachment to take place, and it may be assumed that all normal grown individuals have accomplished it to a certain extent. Social progress is essentially based upon this opposition between the two generations. On the other hand, there exists a class of neurotics whose condition indicates that they have failed to solve this very problem."

Others have pointed out that Rey’s failure to reach full sexual maturity is also demonstrative of this problem, as evidenced by her virginal white ensemble, tight childlike buns after the soft long hair of TLJ, and loss of her intended mate at the end of the story. Rey’s journey to womanhood has been arrested in every way, but the ultimate illustration of this tragic regression is her slide down the sand when she arrives on Tatooine. To so perfectly mirror her childlike introduction on Jakku, without any reference to the later experiences that drove her toward adulthood…. It frankly suggests nothing so much as a psychotic break. In Jungian terms, Rey has been unable to break from the uroboros or collective unconscious, or to integrate her Shadow. In the loss of Ben Solo, she was unable to embrace her desires, and in taking the Skywalker name, she again lies to herself about her identity, repressing her connection to Palpatine and choosing instead a false family just as she did back on Jakku. Rather than the soul finding its way into consciousness, it is forever lost in the vast unconscious.

In a sense, Rey was not really revived after retrieving power from the Underworld after all, because she is metaphorically dead at the end of her story, just as she was metaphorically dead at its beginning. Living in the Imperial graveyard on Jakku, she had survived by remaining necessarily focused on herself. At the end of her story, she seems again focused inwardly, retreating from the galaxy and her friends, with no need to compromise or give of herself in a loving relationship with her soulmate. In Love and the Soul: Psychological Interpretations of The Eros & Psyche Myth, James Gollnick writes:

“Neumann interprets the beauty ointment which Psyche must fetch from the underworld as the eternal youth of death, the ‘barren frigid beauty of mere maidenhood, without love for a man, as exacted by the matriarchate.’ He sees in this deathlike sleep the pull of narcissism which would regress Psyche from the woman who loved Eros back to the maiden lost in the narcissistic love of herself. (Bettelheim also calls attention to the narcissistic state symbolized by Psyche alone in Eros’ magical palace, see The Uses of Enchantment.)”

This is to say that conjugal love, or a love that is physical as well as spiritual, is the ultimate form of self-gift. Though the sacrifice of one’s life is an admirable expression of love, it is inferior because it creates death, whereas the giving of self in an intimate embrace creates life. Hence, Eros and Psyche’s union created Joy. Has Rey found joy by the end of her journey? Or is she expected to be content with only power and the name that declares that power? And as for Ben, he has vanished completely. As Eros, he is dead and unable to be united with his Psyche. Though transformed from beast into man, Love is eternally separated from Soul.

When the Lost Husband Stays Lost

This might be a passable interpretation of the Sequel Trilogy, but it’s fair to ask the question: were we wrong? Was this ever a Search for the Lost Husband story, or did we simply see what we wanted to see in the tale? Indulging deeply in a Death of the Author approach to interpretation, I argue strongly that this was always a variation of ATU 425, because not only were all the pieces in place from the beginning, but the Sequel Trilogy was thematically the perfect inverse of ATU 400, the Quest for the Lost Bride, which was very clearly the story of the Prequel Trilogy. Further, many a mythical husband’s failed quest is actually the prelude to his bride’s successful search, as historical myths often start with the loss of the fairy wife only to switch perspectives to the feminine and have her successfully retrieve her lost husband. To the extent that Star Wars draws on the collective unconscious that produces these myths, I believe the parallels are unmistakable.

Still, these are films released by a corporation within a very distinct culture, the product of a particular time and place. They cannot be separated from the realities of the 21st Century America that produced them. This is why a deeper exploration of the American Monomyth is likely necessary to truly understand how TROS came to be. However, even within worldwide mythology, there are isolated examples of Lost Husband stories in which the bride does not retrieve her husband, or in which the couple remains separated by the end of the story.

One of the most notable examples of these tragedies is the Lohengrin Saga, a Germanic romance made popular by Richard Wagner’s opera. In it, Elsa, the Duchess of Brabant, is accused of murdering her brother, her case to be decided by trial by combat. When her accusers ask her who her champion will be, she tells them of a knight who has appeared to her in dreams. In answer to her prayers, her dream knight appears in a boat drawn by a swan, then agrees to be her champion under the condition that she never ask his true identity or origin. The swan knight wins the contest and marries Elsa, but before they are able to consummate their union, she asks him the forbidden question. Though he knows it will separate them forever, the knight cannot deny his love her request, and he admits to her that he is Lohengrin, Grail Knight and son of King Parzival. The laws of the Holy Grail say the Knights must remain anonymous, and if their identity is revealed, they must return home. Lohengrin leaves in the same boat in which he came, and Elsa dies of grief.

Many of the parallels should be instantly apparent: just as Kylo Ren often appears to Rey in visions, dreams, or in a dream-like state, so the Swan Knight first appeared to Elsa. As I stated in my Swan Maiden post, this means Kylo Ren is Rey’s incubus, or her dream lover and avatar of all her dark sexual fantasies. Just as the swan knight refuses to reveal his identity, so Kylo Ren declares that Ben Solo is dead and he is a monster. Further, the knight is a descendent of a powerful family, indeed one with mystical or holy origins given their association with the Grail. The last son of the Skywalker family, Ben Solo is even the great-grandson of the Force itself, with both royalty and magical power in his lineage. After several symbolic marriage encounters between Rey and her bond-mate, she insists on calling him by his true name and trying to force him to turn to the light, which constitutes the breaking of the taboo. After finally acknowledging his true identity and becoming Ben Solo once more, our hero is drawn away into death, his bride left to a sort of living death as a virgin on a dead world.

Though the story of Lohengrin predated the opera, Wagner crafted his version to explicitly reference the Greek myth of Zeus and Semele:

“Who doesn't know ‘Zeus and Semele?’ The god is in love with a human woman and approaches her in human form. The lover finds that she cannot recognize the god in this form, and demands that he should make the real sensual form of his being known. Zeus knows that she would be destroyed by the sight of his real self. He suffers in this awareness, suffers knowing that he must fulfill this demand and in doing so ruin their love. He will seal his own doom when the gleam of his godly form destroys his lover. Is the man who craves for God not destroyed?”

This too has parallels with the Sequel Trilogy couple, in particular with the woman demanding the god show himself in his “real sensual form.” As many have pointed out, Rey desired Ben completely…. His heart, mind, soul, and body. Having him with her in corporeal form mattered so much to her that the Force facilitated their touch across the galaxy, and she promptly shipped herself to him so that she could be physically with him, despite the risk to her. It is for this reason that I reject the interpretation of the ending of TROS that says because Ben and Rey are a dyad, his soul is with her when he dies. No, his loss is complete, and the fact that his body is gone is a tragedy. Were the living body not important, he would not have given his own life to save Rey’s. Absent any other visual or dialogue cues in the finale, it’s reasonable to assume that Ben’s separation from his soulmate is total.

In her book on swan maiden tales, author Barbara Fass Leavy points out that the taboos imposed on mythical husbands are different than those imposed on mythical wives. Men, for example, are most often prohibited from abusing their fairy brides, while women are prohibited from looking upon their fairy husbands or knowing their true identity. Leavy states: “In general, taboos imposed on the wife in Cupid and Psyche tales are often intended to keep her in her place, to prevent her from achieving some autonomy by knowing who her husband is, seeing him, or being able to disclose his identity to others.” Both taboos admit to an inherent imbalance in the relationship, and while husbands are instructed not to abuse their power, women are told not to challenge their husbands’ power or attempt to achieve a more balanced marriage.

Now the issue for Rey becomes clear: if she is to be her husband’s equal, then she cannot accept him as the unknowable Kylo Ren. He must become Ben Solo, fully-known and her equal in all things. This way, Rey claims her power and balance can be achieved both for the lovers and for the Force itself. Unfortunately, the creators seem to have overcorrected. They wanted Rey alone to be the ultimate hero of the Sequel Trilogy, but as long as a male Skywalker was on the board, they apparently thought he would overshadow her. It seems that the writers believed the man having power in a relationship is the natural state of heterosexual unions, a point made clear by their obsession with patriarchal lineage. So, rather than give the lovers an Eros and Psyche ending as equals, they removed the man from the equation to allow Rey to be the only hero and Skywalker, effectively punishing both of them for breaking the taboo and acknowledging Ben Solo’s true identity. When the lost husband is not found, this represents a narrative judgement on the mythical bride: she has challenged male authority, and so her heart’s desire is stripped away.

Lastly, Leavy also points out that most Beauty and the Beast tales involve a passing of the bride from father to husband, and that many animal groom stories can be interpreted as the bride learning to accept her new husband’s authority. If then the husband is eternally lost rather than found, custody of the bride logically reverts to her father. TROS contains numerous father figures for Rey: there is Luke, Palpatine’s son, and Palpatine himself. Rather than focusing on her mythical husband, our heroine seems to be questioning throughout the film to which father she truly belongs. In the end, she rejects her biological father and grandfather and loses her lover, then takes the name of her only remaining male authority figure, Luke Skywalker. Once again, Rey’s regression to a child is made clear and the myth structure utterly broken.

Conclusion: Star Wars and the Lost Children

Star Wars has always been a story of lost children. First it was Luke, then his sister Leia. Later, we learned of Anakin’s childhood, and finally Ben and Rey’s (to say nothing of other characters like Jyn, Ezra, Din Djarin….). We understood it to be a coming-of-age story in which these lonely children resolved their traumas and made adult choices. Those choices might have had sorrowful consequences, but the overall theme of the story has always been hope, so we knew there was always a chance for redemption, for the lost children to be welcomed home. Sadly, The Rise of Skywalker has deeply undermined that message. Mythologically, psychologically, and symbolically, Ben and especially Rey have reverted to childhood. They are both alone, separated from their families and prevented from forming a new family to provide hope for the future. Whereas the union of Eros and Psyche, Love and Soul, produced Joy, there is no union for Ben and Rey, and no Joy. I truly hope that in the future, Star Wars creators find a way to remedy this pandemic of lost children.

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palmett-hoes · 4 years ago

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Hi, I really loved your post with the monsters as Birds of Prey! Was wondering if you had any thoughts on the Foxes as Marvel or Mcu characters? I feel like I could see Dan as Carol Danvers and Andrew for sure is Jessica Jones, idk about the rest.

oh wow old post!!

haha unfortunately i’m not really a comics person so i don’t feel like i can really give the best analysis possible, but i have seen most of the mcu movies and bits and pieces of the netflix show so i’ll try my best. also im using dc characters too bc i want to

1. Dan: I think your instinct with Dan as Captain Marvel is spot-on (at least uhhh,, based on the movie lol sorry comics ppl). Her direct, forceful powers and fighting style are definitely reminiscent of dan’s no-nonsense leadership approach. similarly the themes of overcoming sexism and acceling in a male-dominated industry in the captain marvel movie is pretty much the same as dan’s story establishing herself as the first female exy captain (tho sports is way more valid than the military). plus there’s a lot of emphasis on love and friendship between women that dan is ALL about. also lashana lynch would be a god tier dan wilds fc. Dan could also def have that lawful good Okoye from Black Panther energy. Loyal, disciplined, no-nonsense leader. no powers except discipline. no hair. also danai gurira in 2012 with the dreads and the sword and the cape on TWD was definitely part of my middle school sexual awakening

2. Kevin: Aquaman. this is based pretty much exclusively on the fact that jason momoa is my #1 kevin fc and also that Pasifika kevin is phenomenal and mandatory, actually. otherwise i think he has a decent amount of stick-up-the-ass cyclops energy. or dick grayson nightwing energy but i don’t have any evidence for why. kinda looks like him tho

3. Andrew: andrew gets the most characters bc he’s my favorite. i think ur jessica jones instincts are absolutely correct, both in her storyline (i only watched the first season) and her powers. i’ve seen some powers au and the tendency seems to be giving andrew like,, psychic powers or the like, and i don’t really agree. andrew is a very direct character. he’s pragmatic, he confronts problems head on, and he doesn’t muck about in details. to me this really translates best into physical powers like super strength that help u big punch straight thru all ur problems. also i def think andrew would be not just a solo hero but a mercenary (or a detective) because he’s not altruistic enough to be a standard vigilante. he doesn’t care enough about other people to hang out on rooftops all night waiting for Crime to occur. there’s a price for that. which brings us to the NEXT andrew hero: deadpool. maybe in personality more of a drugged andrew but the superpowered mercenary is really a perfect fit for andrew. also, healing powers have a decidedly tragic poetry to them on andrew. already he’s self-destructive, if he had a healing factor his concern for his own well-being would be so beyond rock bottom it’d be in the earth’s core. even worse when you remember that with a healing factor, as opposed to indestructibility, you still feel all the pain. which brings us to Wolverine and X-23, who have the same thematic points as deadpool but are much more of a personality match and they have knife hands, which i really think andrew would appreciate. ending that sadness train and onto another tho, andrew’s aesthetic and Vibes fit the Winter Soldier just SO well (just that movie tho, not really civil war or anything past that) and a reinterpretation of the captain america story using the twinyards would be incredibly interesting. and finally, one last hero that would work really well for andrew: rogue, only remove the angst around not being able to touch people, andrew would love that. one touch and their comatose? baller. don't fucking touch him.

4. Matt: Shazam. I didn’t see the shazam movie but my dad and brother did and they said it was very funny and all the trailors looked like it had a lot of fun himbo energy and i really think that fits. in terms of matching himbo disaster energy i think i’ve heard good things about comics hawkeye (not mcu). thor?

5. Aaron: Mr. Fantastic. now this might be a stretch but aaron is a character who uses a skin-deep veneer of anger to cover the fact that he’s actually quite pliant and bends to other people’s wills. and he’s a doctor or w/e. he could alse be like,, antman. he’s smart right? hank pym not paul rudd. katelyn can be wasp

6. Seth: Arm Fall Off Boy. no i will not elaborate. ..... ugh fine, but i'm using my favorite piece of superhero media of all time: x-men evolution, the one where they're all teenagers in public high school. seth can be lance alvers/avalanche who’s a bit of a jerk and has a lot of issues with authority and has a rivalry with cyclops very reminiscent of seth with kevin, but still there’s the recurring theme that he’s lashing out because of low self-esteem and a bad situation and he’s a surprisingly sympathetic character who i’m very fond of. his power is earthquakes but i think the name makes that pretty self-explanatory

7. Allison: Iron Man. cocky, bitchy, and rich rich rich. sounds like allison to me. then to elevate it a level higher: emma frost, rich bitch extraordinaire. also if allison had telepathic powers she would be unstoppable. plus one more bitchy, morally-gray blonde (but chaotic this time): Harley Quinn

8. Nicky: Okay so I do wanna give a quick shout-out to Northstar, the first openly gay comicbook superhero, who’s a speedster which I’d actually say fits Nicky pretty well. However, if i had to choose a superhero to represent nicky in presence and powers it would have to be Jubilee from x-men (... from what i’ve heard lol. i’ve never actually consumed any of her Media hahaha anyway) she’s a joyful, energetic presence and her powers are setting off fireworks which i think is a good balance of nicky being a supportive cousin-parent AND a chaotic train wreck garbage trash man. also gonna throw in johnny storm for a cheap 'flaming' joke

9. Renee: Thunder/Blackbird from Black Lightning bc she’s a fufkin lesbian lol. (i don’t watch the show but i do follow nafessa williams’s tag). now the fr ones i’m gonna do together because to me they have the same Vibes so i chose them for the same reasons. Wonder Woman and Storm who to me have the same reserved, impartial, regal energy. honestly ethereal and somewhat otherwordly, and quite literally goddesses. also op as hell. black widow and her “red in my leger” looking for redemption story also fits thematically.

10. Neil: okay lazy answer first: the flash or quicksilver. get it? because they run fast? and neil run too? yea i like to think i've proven myself to be better than such a surface level interpretation but worth the mention ig. so for srs now, mystique and her shape changing powers would be an interesting interpretation of neil's identity issues, but i wanna push it a step further. nightcrawler would actually be possibly the MOST interesting hero to apply to neil 1. because powers still very movement go fast place to place 2. because of the thematic focus on neil's unusual looks and the lengths he goes to hide them, very much in line with the way nightcrawler will use a hologram-projector in order to look human, yet in both cases it's only a surface-level illusion, and 3. his parentage. here, mary would be mystique, which i also think works very well considering mary seemed to be the far more effective chameleon on the run than neil, and also fits with her place as a morally grey character, as mystique herself is often a villain or an antagonist, with her own agenda and shadowy motives. then nathan matches well with nightcrawler's father: azazel, a literal demon, and also where kurt gets his appearance. it's a shockingly coherent narrative between the three of them. then, to also give neil some powers that aren't contingent on his fucked up geneology and rather on his own merit and abilities, Black Canary and her sonic voice parallel the way that neil began to anchor his identity and take ownership over himself through his voice and his sick roasts

and 1 extra, wymack: batman, on account of his altruism, his dedication to second chances, and his many, many adopted children

---

anon, ik it's been a sec since you sent this, so i hope it gets back to you. i had a fun time with it and it prompted like,,, 7 different au s that i'll never write

#Anonymous #txt #the foxes #im talkin #my posts

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dailytomlinson · 5 years ago

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At the stroke of midnight on January 31st, 2020, the music industry was single-handedly saved by just a young lad from Doncaster. We can all agree, in confidence, that the majority of artists won’t top the charts with their first LP, especially with little to no promo. “Walls” however, debuted at #1 on the worldwide iTunes charts, a feat not many will come by. Judging by its success, we can rightfully assume this album could be rather magical. Just over a month into the decade, I can happily testify that this may be one of the greatest pieces of work we’ll see over the span of the next 10 years. The only record I may allow to top it, will be Tomlinson’s sophomore album, which is fair to speculate will have a little less fan service and show a little more of the grunge britpop rockstar that Louis is dying to showcase.

Oh, this guy’s from One Direction, too. It’s a fact that doesn’t need to be honed in on, but in case you aren’t familiar with his older work, the UK-based band is where he found his origin story. Though hopefully after giving these tracks a listen, we’ll all be able to start celebrating him as the solo artist he was destined to become.

Kill My Mind

You hate me and I want more.

Perhaps I wasn’t alive during majority of the Britpop Movement of the 90s, but I can wholeheartedly say that if you played this opening track for anyone familiar with the genre, they would tell you it would feel right at home as a feature on one of Oasis’ final LPs or as a single brought to us by Blur. However, that is not to say it lacks originality. In fact, far from it. His thick Yorkshire accent demands your attention right off the bat. This song is confident, it’s loud, it’s sexy, it’s everything his loyal fanbase has been patiently waiting to see arise from the musician. It’s a different Tomlinson than the general public may be accustomed to, but it’s a perfect example of an artist finding their authentic self. The electric opener, Kill My Mind gives us a little tease as to what’s to come.

Don’t Let It Break Your Heart

What hurts you is gonna pass and you’ll have learned from it when it comes back.

After careful consideration, this may be the album’s weakest link. It draws on a bit of the pop-influence his previous audiences may be more familiar with. Previously, Louis released a single-edit and a piano version. The one featured on the album, is by far the most well mixed. It’s filled with beautiful harmonies and the layered vocals have a lot of potential. The message of this song is uplifting, about overcoming hardships with grace and allowing yourself to grow from them — A theme not uncommon in Louis’ writing or general life philosophy. Always the lyricist, coming from him, this message works and it works beautifully into the melodies of the song. My main issue comes down to production. The background vocals are choppy and make the general feeling of the song a little cheesy. Ultimately, it all just sounds forced. I can say however, experiencing this song live is a different story. Some songs are meant to be played live, and this just happens to be one of them.

Two of Us

We’ll end just like we started, just you and me, and no one else.

The lead single was one Louis himself proclaimed needed to be written, or else his other art would suffer from being insincere. “I just feel like musically, I almost needed to get this song off my chest,” He recently told Rolling Stone, “People say writing is a part of therapy and in a way, I feel like I’d been avoiding writing this song because I knew I only had one chance to get it right.” For those who may be unaware, at the start of his solo career, Louis tragically lost his mother, the person he was closest with, to leukemia. Out of respect to him, I won’t dwell on this, and it does feel fairly inconsiderate to put the piece under review, per say. I will, however, assert that it is a stunningly orchestrated song. You can feel the authenticity and honesty radiate from the words he’s singing, especially in the big build up of the chorus in comparison to the heart wrenching and softly sung outro. It’s rare we find artists who are proud to wear their hearts on their sleeves and speak with true openness. Each song is an example of this, but Two of Us broadcasts this vulnerability loudly, as he gives us an anthem of accepting that you’re grieving and reminding listeners to always hold onto hope.

We Made It

Nothing in the world that I would change it for, singing something pop-y on the same four chords.

Yes, she’s corny, yes her lyrics might not be up to standard with the rest of his work, and yes, she is my favorite song on the album. We Made It, is filled to the rim with nostalgia and embracing that although the tunnel was dark, there was in the end, a light. For anyone who has grown up with Louis and supported him through all the twists and turns of his decade long career, this song could be a celebration of us and our relationship with our favorite musician. There were always struggles along the way, but we, as fans, never turned our back on him. We were there for him when he needed us to lean on. The sentiment remains when reversed. Ultimately, whatever we needed, he was able to provide. It’s easy to see how much of a team Louis and his followers are, and this song is honoring that. If you’re less familiar with the singer himself, then this track is just a fun little guitar-driven song that reminisces those nights of getting smashed and blazed out of your mind with your young love, and what’s wrong with that?

Too Young

Face to face at the kitchen table, this is everything I’ve waited for.

Every album needs a song to cry to, and for Walls, this is the one. There aren’t too many complexities here, as Louis has said he generally likes to stray away from metaphors when he can. The calm strumming of the acoustic guitar, lends itself beautifully to the track, and never overpowers Louis’ voice. Vocally, this a huge example of a myriad of Louis’ strengths. It contrasts some of the heavily belted pieces we hear later on in the album, and focuses on the softness he’s able to convey in his killer range of a chest voice. His raspy tone demonstrates a certain intimacy. When the song is listened to through headphones with your eyes closed, it almost feels as if Louis is right there on your bedside, gently playing a personal piece he had just written and trusts you enough to perform it for you first. There’s a certain amount of emotional intelligence demonstrated in this song, as he never pulls the victim card, but instead takes the mature approach of admitting to where he’s gone wrong. This notion is used a lot in his writing, and is a sure telling of his character. This catchy little ballad wouldn’t feel out of place on albums of most genres, musically lacking some originality, which is made up for with the candor and polish in his vocals.

Walls

Why is it that “thank-you” is so often bittersweet?

Objectively speaking, this is the most well crafted track on the album. Perhaps even more Oasis-y than some Oasis hits, it even earned itself a writing credit from Noel Gallagher himself. By now, we are more than well accustomed to embracing Louis’ themes of overcoming barriers (or walls). It’s something he writes about often, and why shouldn’t he? He knows what it’s like to stand above what’s been dragging you down more than anyone. The most titular lyric opens and closes the tune, proclaiming, “Nothing wakes you up, like waking up alone.” As soon as you’re hit with this, you know you’re listening to a song which dares the audience to take the musician earnestly. Louis has always been the funny one who has chosen to never take himself too seriously in life. With his music, he had a hard time at the start, choosing to put out records which defined Top 40, but never himself. Walls forces us to accept the artist he’s become. It proves to every listener, that Louis Tomlinson is a musician, a lyricist, a vocalist; a true craftsman. He is a serious artist and this salient track forces us, for once, to accept him as one.

Habit

Took some time cause I ran out of energy, of playing someone I’ve heard I’m supposed to be.

Back in February of 2018, Louis teased this lyric on his twitter, sending fans into a frenzy of when and where this sentiment might come into play. In September of last year, he finally played it for us live. This live version of the song was a complete bore. Again, Louis’ biggest asset in his music may come from his lyrics. He wrote more songs for One Direction than any of the other boys, often partnering with Liam Payne who would work on the melodies, while Louis focused on cutting deep with his words. This is more than evident here, meaning any initial fondness of this song was independently due to the verses he was singing. When the album finally hit stands and we were able to hear the studio version, I have to say, my opinion on this absolute banger changed drastically. It may be a little controversial to say, but this song might have some “Yeehaw” vibes. If you played someone the opening, before his vocals take the forefront, it would’ve been fair to assume it was a Maren Morris hit. Country/Britpop/Indie isn’t exactly something I would ever even consider diving into, but let me tell you, this certified bop has been on repeat. Here’s to hoping him and his band can put together a new live arrangement before the world tour kicks off in March.

Always You

Waiting to wrap your legs around me, and I know you hate to smoke without me.

To be blunt, this song was a fan service. If it wasn’t for Louis’ persistent stans, this track may have been ditched months ago. However, when he gave us a glimpse of the songs upbeat opening lyric three years ago, we latched onto it. For years we bombarded Louis, telling him this song needed to stay on the record, and thank God he listened. He did realize partway through the writing process that this isn’t the sort of music he would like to put out anymore, so it may not resonate with someone looking for the more grungy side of the artist. Always You is almost pure bubblegum and it sounds like it should be radiating loudly off festival speakers. The tune will be a crowd-pleaser, and will surely bring the most hype for live audiences. It’s the sort of song you want to scream out while drunk on a rooftop in the summer atop the ocean in New York City, which is exactly what myself and approximately 6800 more fans will be doing this June.

Fearless

Cash in your weekend treasures, for a suit and tie, a second wife.

God damn is Fearless sexy. The slow and pulsing beat of this song, with the organic guitar, subtle production, and his sultry voice are a recipe for a great and sensual tune. The song was written with the inspiration of feeling youthful, and teaches what to center your sense of self-worth around. There’s a certain level of maturity that comes with a song of these intentions, and in that, Louis is able to showcase his ever growing wisdom. “What I wanted to try and capture with the song is the idea of feeling youthful and how important that is,” He recently said in an interview with Apple Music, “I’m at this age where I’m on the cusp — I’m definitely not a teenager, I’m not a young lad anymore, nor am I old, but I sit in this space where I’m aware of my age now. I hear it as a playground or going back to real youth.”

Perfect Now

Don’t you wanna dance? Just a little dance?

On release day, Louis did a signing, where he bravely asked a few fans what their least favorite track on the album was. Everyone said Perfect Now, earning them a high five from the man himself as well as his genuine agreement. While many look at it as a cheesy romantic love song, masquerading as a rejected early One Direction track, mirroring Little Things or What Makes You Beautiful, I wholeheartedly disagree. It’s easy to chalk it down to being “cheesy” when you approach it as being romantic, but if you look at it as, simply, a love song, that changes the perspective. Louis sings over an appealing and charming little guitar melody, and you can almost hear his smile. It’s easy to picture him singing this to his younger sisters as a piece of brotherly encouragement, or to a good friend who needs cheering up after a hard day. This darling melody invites you to dance around your bedroom feeling loved. Perfect Now proves that not everything has to be deep and serious; allow yourself to be open to simply feeling happy over the little things like a lyric that makes you smile. When in the chorus he prompts, “Keep your head up, love,” listeners can’t help but feel a sense of personal support from the artist, which is exactly what makes this song so special.

Defenseless

We’re sleeping on our problems like we’ll solve them in our dreams.

It’s understandable why Louis likes to stray from metaphors in his writing, because generally speaking, they simply aren’t good. This is proven with lyrics such as, “I’m running to you like a moth into a flame”. As well as this, the rhyming of “defenseless” with “fences” and then “defenseless” again, doesn’t exactly sit well. The song does grow to be much better than anticipated after the first verse. The pre-chorus has a strong beat, which you’ll find yourself accidentally clapping along to in public. The bridge allows Louis to explore his falsetto, which is something we’ve never heard from him before. It’s strong and poignant, and it’s a real shame that his old band never gave him the opportunity to use his voice in all its capabilities. The control Louis has over his vocals throughout this song is astonishing, and almost unheard of in most modern music outside of musical theatre. This track alone, proves that he is one of the most vocally gifted artists not only to come out of One Direction, but to come out of the last decade at all.

Only the Brave

It’s a church of burnt romances and I’m too far gone to pray.

The lyrics to this song are borderline poetry. Each and every word draws you in and leaves you speechless. It’s a short song, ending at one minute and forty-four seconds, and that works well. It leaves us wanting more, even when we’ve reached the very end of the whole experience. The tune feels like a mantra; something to sing to yourself as you prepare for something you’re nervous about or to congratulate yourself on completing a task you never thought you could accomplish. There’s no proper structure and his voice has a retro filter over top, giving the whole thing a bit of a wartime vibe. The most powerful moment is undoubtedly when he sings, “It’s a solo song, and it’s only for the brave,” as a way of patting himself on the back for where he is now in life and in his career. It’s the perfect way to bring home the album. After 12 tracks demonstrating it, it is proven to us that he doesn’t need his ex-bandmates, he doesn’t need a big production, he doesn’t need Simon Cowell, he doesn’t need other songwriters dictating what direction to go, because he is Louis Tomlinson and he is brave.

#walls review #keira millian #050220 #louis tomlinson

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kyndaris · 5 years ago

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Date with Destiny (with a Capital D)

When I watched the announcement at E3 about Final Fantasy VII Remake, I was terribly excited. Though the Final Fantasy series has been one of my favourites since I first played Final Fantasy X, I have never actually played the original Final Fantasy VII.Instead, I read everything I could find and watched walkthroughs (including Dirge of Cerberus) as well as the film: Advent Children and Advent Children Complete. When Crisis Core released on PlayStation Portable (PSP), I also bought that to immerse myself in the entirety of the Final Fantasy VII universe. And when I told one of my close friends, Bleachpanda, about it, they were surprised that I had never played the original. But while I could have purchased the re-release on the PlayStation 4, I wanted to see the game that had captured the imagination of so many people in high definition quality.

As most people in Australia know, the game released a whole nine days earlier than it was supposed to: on 1st of April. After I had mistakenly taken the express train, I was perusing my messages and saw my friend post her excitement that Final Fantasy VII Remake was out. Immediately, I used my situation to my advantage and went to buy the game - despite the fact that I had no facial mask and was entering a shopping centre with a possible high risk of infection. After sweating up a storm by rushing to all the stores, I finally had the copy in hand.

However, it would not be until I had finished Yakuza 4 that I could begin my journey with Cloud and the Avalanche team. Suffice it to say, I was incredibly excited. From the score to Cloud’s lovely cheekbones. In fact, I could not believe my good fortune that I was actually playing the game. It didn’t seem real that I would have in my hands despite the ongoing pandemic. From there, my hype built as I defeated the Scorpion sentinel and moved on to the Seventh Heaven. When Tifa’s theme sounded, I had to resist the urge to shed a tear.

I might not have played the original, but gosh darn it, I loved the characters as much as any fan.

Even the little details were so exciting to see. Though there were several changes to the game, it was clear that the developers loved the game as much as its fans did. I liked how Cloud and the gang kept their victory poses for when they were in the Coliseum. The up-scaled Church, the bar, Wall Market and Aerith’s house. Learning more about many of the side characters also helped build a solid connection to them. From Jessie’s tragic backstory of her dad collapsing in Mako storage in her debut as the role of Princess at the Golden Saucer (goodness me, if she knew about the shenanigans of Cloud and the rest of the party, she’d probably throw a fit), to Bigg’s contribution to the Sector 5 orphanage. This even extended to the differences in Tifa’s and Aerith’s cleavage sizes. Not that I was paying particular attention...

Okay, maybe a little. But I’m glad that they also gave appropriate footwear and gear for the characters.

But my goodness, that pull-up challenge took me fifty minutes! It wasn’t even in the original! And the trophy did not feel worth it after how difficult Jules was. Never again!

Then the characters also called me out for going in the wrong direction. I’m not! I’m trying to explore every nook and cranny of this world Square-Enix has bequeathed us and to find as many items as I can find!

The combat, though, was the one that had the most changes. Gone is the turn-based battle system. While players can play on classic, according to my friend Bleachpanda, it was less than exciting. Particularly when the AI just stood around guarding most of the time. As for me, I played on Normal Mode. The battle mechanics felt like they used bits and pieces from other games: such as Final Fantasy XV and Final Fantasy XIII. It also incorporated elements of the original Active Time Battle system, but I found it frustrating that all of my more powerful abilities, and even items, were gated behind a slowly rising bar - particularly for the AI-controlled party members. Of course, Final Fantasy VII Remake also allowed players to switch between members and I found I had to do this on a fairly regular basis depending on the battle.

Also, your ATB abilities, spells and item usages could also be interrupted. This proved particularly frustrating in difficult battles where I was hoping to take advantage of an enemy’s weakness, only to be batted to the side because of an air attack.

It also felt, on numerous fights, that I had to think of these battles less like a turn-based battle and more like an action adventure, hack and slash. Instead of just absorbing spells and attacks, I needed to evade and guard. This was clearly evident in several solo battles with Roche and even Rufus Shinra. I had to read attack patterns, avoid some of their deadly moves and strike when they had an opening. All the while, trying to keep my ATB gauge up and ready for some quick healing or spell casting.

Let’s move on now to the characters and the story. But where to begin? How about the ending that proved incredibly divisive among many fans. My friend, Bleachpanda, was sorely disappointed by the presence of the Whispers and how the last two chapters transpired. She, unlike me, had been banking on nostalgia to pull her and was more excited to seeing the original recreated in perfect high definition. If you read her posts on Final Fantasy VII Remake you will learn that she was mightily disappointed that how Cloud manages to obtain his dress was very different (although she probably still liked our ex-Soldier shaking his tush on stage. Heck, I think everyone was channelling Aerith and shouting at our screens for Cloud to work it).

The whole talk of destiny and changing fate, though, probably left many fearing that the rest of the Final Fantasy VII Remake would be a very different beast from their childhoods. What with talk about alternate timelines and the possibility of time travel. As well as that last parting shot of Zack Fair. In fact, there are plenty of videos on YouTube that try to explain the ending.

Now, I profess, time travel has always sat ill with me. And Square-Enix has not always used it well. The first Bravely Default comes to mind as does Kingdom Hearts 3 and the time loops of Type-0. Or even what they tried to do with the Final Fantasy XIII franchise. All those retcons in FFXIII-2 made me wonder if it was all worth it. Lightning’s character development in the first game was all but forgotten and rehashed over Lightning Returns. Still, as this was mostly penned by the original writer (though people will still blame Nomura), I feel like much of the motivations and several story beats will remain the same. The settings will also not change and I am eager to see Cosmo Canyon, Nibelheim, Junon and so many other places.

In saying that, though, I’m not sure if Aerith will die. Or if she does, whether it will have the same shocking effect that it did in the original. Of course, by now, everyone and their mothers know what to expect and perhaps this was a way for Square Enix to keep players on their toes. What about Cloud falling into the Lifestream and Tifa trying to sort out his memories from the false persona he created? The slap fight between Tifa and Scarlet? My friend, Bleachpanda, just wants to see Professor Hojo surrounded by girls that are trying to flirt with him. Who knows. It might happen. Or it might not. Hence why so many are terrified at the direction of the new games.

The rest of the narrative, however, proved just as exciting with a few little additions along the way. Sephiroth appearing, though, in the second chapter threw me for a loop, even though I appreciated the foreshadowing. Chapter 4 was all devoted to learning and bonding more with the other members of Avalanche. I very much liked their expanded roles, although casting Gideon Emery as Biggs was a bit of a distraction as I could clearly hear his Balthier trying to break through, particularly in the earlier scenes. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Balthier. And Biggs is quite good looking himself.

This whole Midgar portion of the game also remained mostly faithful to the original Final Fantasy VII and its timeline. It also made things a little more realistic and showed fans of the original, more sides of the characters they had come to love. Also, I like that despite the love triangle being set up between Cloud, Tifa and Aerith, there was a strong sense of camaraderie among the girls. They lifted each other up rather than tear each other down. Even Jessie was trying to get in on the action with all the flirting she did. In fact, I just wanted to ship Aerith and Tifa for the long haul.

What I also thought cute was the little swear the left Aerith’s lips when the ladder fell and Cloud had to help lift her up. It was also comical to see Cloud try to pull his Buster Sword out when confronted by one of the other Sephiroth clones and having it catch on the door jam.

Barret, on the other hand, was a little preachy in the first few chapters. There can be no denying his love for Marlene, but it grated on me how much exposition he provided on the train ride back to Sector 7. Still, once we finally get into the meat of the games, I would love to see all their backstories, cry when appropriate and cheer for them when they finally emerge victorious.

I also liked many of the environmental story telling. Particularly in Chapter 2 and seeing the aftermath of what Avalanche’s actions had done. Granted, Heidegger and President Shinra had a hand in it, but it was clear that Jessie and many others were devastated by the damage they had wrought. It was also gut-wrenching to see the remains of Sector 7 after the plate fell. Reeve, in the form of Cait Sith, tried and failed to save the people and even though he was controlling an animatronic cat, you could still see his devastation.

Overall, I have to say that I enjoyed my time with Final Fantasy VII Remake. By the time the game ended, I felt a little bereft, wanting to see more of each character and really dive down deep into their psych. Just like before, Tifa is much more reticent and closed off. It warmed my heart that in Hojo’s lab, Aerith asked Tifa if she was okay. As someone who is also similarly guarded, it’s good to know that someone else cares. Red XIII was also a great addition in the last two chapters, though it was a shame we could not play as him.

The ending might have left a sour taste in the mouths of many, but I know that I, for one, am eager to see where the unknown journey takes us next and seeing old familiar faces. We still have Cid, Yuffie and Vincent to find! Also, Marlene is so cute and precious and must be protected at all costs.

#video games #final fantasy vii: remake #FFVII #Final Fantasy

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the-archlich · 5 years ago

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Clone Wars: The Dathomir Arc

This is one of the biggest arcs we've had in a long time. Not only is it a solid 3 episode story, it's one that actually changes a lot. It really shakes up the status quo of this show and pours on a huge amount of character development for Ventress, something we haven't gotten before. It introduces an interesting new villain (with a bad name) in Savage Opress, and a very interesting character in Mother Talzin.

Things begin with Palpatine skyping Dooku. He's sensed that Ventress is growing very powerful and is suspicious that Dooku is training his own apprentice and will try to replace him. Rule of Two and all that. Dooku insists he's not going to do that, but why would any of us believe that? Palpatine orders him to kill Ventress, which Dooku reluctantly agrees to do.

This does address a question that bothered me when Ventress was first introduced. As far as we knew, the Rule of Two was still a thing; so what exactly was her deal? Given that we've really only seen some limited use of the Force from her, it seems like she was only partially trained - deliberately. Not trained enough to really qualify as a full Sith apprentice, but enough to be useful against Jedi. Sort of a preview of the Inquisitors we'd see under the Empire. And while I don't think the Sith actually care about technicalities, they do care about their own apprentices getting strong enough to kill them before they're ready.

Dooku doesn't do the job himself. When he learns that she's on one of his flagships, he has the rest of the fleet fire on it, hoping to kill her that way along with Obi and Ani. Of course this doesn't work out. He presumes she's killed, but she escapes. She's picked up by some scavengers and takes their ship to her homeworld of Dathomir.

If you've read a lot of Star Wars lore, that name means something to you. As usual I don't know what's canon and what isn't anymore but it's got significant history. It's an isolated world covered in fog, said to be filled with witches.

And witches there are! Ventress arrives and is greeted by others of her kind, including their leader Mother Talzin. To heal her, they perform some kind of magick ritual, during which we see flashbacks to Ventress's past. She was given away as a baby to protect the clan. Her owner was killed by some pirates and she was taken in by a Jedi, who trained her for several years. After her was killed in battle, she lost her shit and went dark. This eventually led her to Dooku, who took her on as an acolyte (their term for those below the level of a true apprentice).

All told, it's a pretty tragic backstory. Up until now we really didn't know anything about Ventress and this really puts her in a new perspective.

Now healed, Ventress is ready to kill Dooku. Mother Talzin uses more dark magic to turn her invisible, along with some other assassins. They catch Dooku sleeping (in his exquisite pajamas) and attack him, but even 3 v 1 and poisoned Dooku is actually really fucking good at this and fights them off.

Talzin doesn't mind that they failed, though. She sees an opportunity in it. So she calls up Dooku and offers him a replacement for Ventress. He takes her up on the offer and comes to visit. Obviously she's going to use his new apprentice as a means to assassinate him.

They talk a little bit about their history. Talzin's group is called the Nightsisters, and evidently they used to have some alliance with the Sith in the past. Of course, she's not willing to pledge allegiance to Dooku, so relations are still a bit strained. But Dooku did her a solid sometime in the past. Talzin brings up Darth Maul, who Dooku only knows by reputation. She offers him someone from Maul's bloodline; given what Maul was capable of, Dooku is in.

There was a time when I would have criticized Dooku for not asking more questions about this. It's suspicious. Right after you betray your apprentice and someone tries to kill you, you get a call from someone you haven't seen in years offering you exactly what you need. That should set off some red flags. But I've seen enough people like Dooku now that while it's stupid of him not to question this more, it's deeply in character. People in those sorts of positions - people born into power, who have had the world handed to them - never question it when they're handed even more. They've always gotten everything they ever wanted, often without even asking. This is normal for them.

We aren't told much about the Nightsisters and their history; Obi-Wan has heard of them (and Mother Talzin) and calls them an ancient order of witches. Dooku indicates they had some past alliance. That's all we're told explicitly. Again I don't know what' s still canon, but as a general statement:

There are Force-wielding traditions outside of the Jedi and Sith. The Force is in all things, and while most need some training, there are individuals so naturally talented that they'll reach out to the Force even without it. Sometimes these individuals are just hermits, or maybe they take an apprentice or two. This sort of thing grows into a local Force-wielding tradition of its own, with its own structure and rules. Traditionally the Jedi leave small groups alone, only involving themselves if they become a problem. The Sith sometimes recruited from among these groups (it's a good place to find potential apprentices) and also tended to ignore them unless they grew too powerful.

A more recent example I can confirm in canon is the Knights of Ren. Ren was the name of an individual who was strong in the Force but didn't have any formal training and followed the path of the dark. He recruited other Force-sensitive people with a similar mindset, forming his little group. While they had some passing similarities to the Sith (both being users of the Dark Side), Ren's traditions and structure were his own. Ben Solo (later Kylo) killed Ren and took control of his group and his name.

The Nightsisters of Dathomir are a similar group. Mother Talzin is obviously a powerful user of the Dark Side, but she exists outside of the Jedi or Sith traditions. If she was more ambitious or more involved in affairs outside of Dathomir maybe she'd warrant being a target for Sidious or Dooku, but if she stays in her lane there's no need for conflict. And she can provide a ready supply of potential apprentices should the need arise, as Ventress and Savage show.

Ventress goes to the part of Dathomir where the men live (because I guess their society is exceptionally gender segregated?) and after putting a bunch of them through violent and deadly trials, chooses the toughest one. Talzin and the Nightsisters use a ritual to make him stronger and more powerful, and more under their control. His name is Savage Opress, because sometimes Star Wars is just dumb.

Talzin presents Dooku with his new slab of beefcake and he's pretty pleased, especially after Savage successfully kills some Jedi. Dooku accepts his present and tells Savage that he does indeed plan to turn against Sidious eventually - because of course he does. That's literally how the whole Sith thing works. We know Sheev doesn't want to play by those rules, but no one should be surprised.

After seeing a video of Savage killing some Jedi, Obi and Ani go to Dathomir to investigate him. This leads them to Talzin and the Nightsisters. Dooku has sent Savage to kidnap the king of Toyderia, and Talzin sends Obi/Ani there as well. Savage fucks up by killing the king instead, so Dooku is pissed and zaps him (his usual method of correction.)

Ventress arrives and attacks Dooku along with Savage. This gives us a pretty good fight scene, although the fights in this show are generally sub-par. (I'll talk about the concept of weight some other time). We've got 3 fighters, 5 blades, and totally different styles. Dooku has his classic, almost courtly style, often with one hand at his side or behind his back. Ventress has a more acrobatic style with two sabers, while Savage is just flailing away with the Darth Maul special (without the technique). What makes this fun is seeing these visually distinct styles of fighting all mashed together. If you removed everything identifying about these characters, you could still tell who was who base don how they're fighting. And that makes for a good fight scene.

The whole fight really breaks down when Savage gets tired of being treated like shit and starts attacking Ventress as well as Dooku. Dooku runs and Ventress pursues, while Savage is left behind and has to deal with Obi and Ani. There is a lot happening.

Savage escapes, but now he's on Dooku's bad side. Obi and Ani get out too. Dooku proves to be too strong for Ventress and she barely gets away. So now there's just a bunch of red-blade assholes running around who all hate each other. And that makes for a fun galaxy. Speaking of...

Savage returns to Dathomir, badly wounded. Talzin tells him that he still has a living brother - Darth Goddamn Maul. She sends Savage off to find him, setting up the storyline that is the reason I started watching this show in the first place years ago.

This is a very good arc. Stories that put a focus on the villains for a bit usually are, because we get to see sides of a story we aren’t usually exposed to. Ventress is a character we knew very little about, and this greatly expands her as a character. Getting a new wildcard in the form of Savage is fun, as is the promise of Darth Maul’s return. And this was good to get Dooku some of his villain credibility back. He’s been rebuilding that lately. If your bad guys never win, they never seem dangerous. So giving him a W helps the show as a whole.

This episode also expands the universe in a a way we haven’t seen any of the TV shows or movies do before. It shows us other traditions of the Force outside of the Jedi and Sith; while those factions are dominant there are others in this world. It’s the sort of thing that really makes you want to know more; and when we get more, we love it. Hell, when I heard Darth Maul was being resurrected for this show, I went back and watched the episodes that were relevant to it, starting with this arc. It was good enough to make me watch a show that I’d previously dismissed.

In terms of character development, plot advancement, and worldbuilding, this is the best arc in Season 3 by a mile. From what I’ve watched this time around, I’d put it just below the Mandalorian arc from season 2. It tells a very good story that expands the world and its characters in compelling ways that make us want to know more; and those promises are more than fulfilled later down the line.

It’s the good shit.

#clone fights #clone wars

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azdoine · 6 years ago

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So let’s talk about them cherubs.

I think it’s no secret that Calliope and Caliborn have always been deeply gendered characters in Homestuck, but (beyond fanart and enthusiastic headcanons) I personally haven’t seen a lot of engagement with their characters on that level. The most comprehensive readings of Calliope and Caliborn that I’ve seen have always been through the lens of metatext (Calliope and Caliborn as fandom avatars) or religion (Calliope and Caliborn as Gnostic figures).

With that in mind, I want to talk about the ways in which Calliope and Caliborn are gendered in Homestuck, and offer my own amateur reading of Calliope as a trans allegory.

Full disclosure, I love the epilogues, but I won’t be engaging with them here -- I view them as extracanonical, which is to say, I’d like to talk about them and their own presentation of Calliope’s story in another post.

Also, it’s Homestuck, so, you know. Sex, death, violence, and bigotry under the cut:

If we’re to read Calliope as a trans allegory, then we don’t need to look very far for evidence, because the text is very straightforward in suggesting it.

Almost as soon as we meet Calliope in the flesh for the first time, we’re confronted with the bleak reality of her desire for a more feminine embodiment:

'Callie Ohpeee’ serves as an aspirational figure for Calliope on multiple levels. Most obviously, she’s a vehicle for Calliope’s self-insertion into the wider world of paradox space and the alpha timeline (i.e. her self-insertion into the story of Homestuck); Callie Ohpeee is able to freely and directly interact with the elements and characters of the story that Calliope adores, while Calliope cannot. Somewhat less obviously, Calliope’s trollsona also serves as a way for her to imagine herself in non-caliginous relationships (which she desires on some level, but she feels she has been denied by her biology).

However, Calliope’s trollsona isn’t just a vehicle for her relationships and engagement with other people. Calliope’s trollsona is also key to the way in which Calliope desires to relate to herself.

Calliope desires to be attractive and feminine for her own sake: she desires to be beautiful and pretty, and her trollsona serves as the vehicle by which she satisfies this desire.

Calliope’s trollsona is quite literally her idealized feminine self, and so her relaxing “solo cosplay” sessions bring nothing more to mind than a trans woman privately enjoying a feminine presentation in the closet, as many trans women have. Her costumery and face paint imply clothes and makeup, and Caliborn takes on the role of a patriarch or patriarchy that tries to control her.

Ultimately, though, Calliope’s embodiment desires are cosmically validated by the unfolding drama of paradox space. Calliope is tormented by the apparent fact that she isn’t and can’t be Callie Ohpeee, but nevertheless, she successfully inserts herself into the lives of the alpha kids and the unfolding of the alpha timeline, forms the kinds of relationships that she wants, and receives the regard that she wants. She dies and takes on the form of her trollsona in the dream bubbles, and even when she’s physically reborn as her cherub self, she’s still “Callie” to Roxy, a meaningful nickname that goes basically unspoken.

Pretty straightforward, right? A trans girl learns that she and her body aren’t unlovable, makes friends and forms bonds as her true self, and escapes the reach of the forces that once abused her.

FEARFUL SYMMETRY

Before we can close the door on a trans reading of Calliope, we also have to consider Calliope and Caliborn as a pair, and not least because the two of them literally share the same body. Fair warning, we’re only going to get more speculative (and more indulgent) going forward.

Calliope and Caliborn are presented, at least superficially, as absolute and dichotomous opposites. They are two spirits that cannot coexist at once within the same body; their respective attitudes and temperaments couldn’t be any more different, and they are, of course, Muse and Lord: quintessentially passive and quintessentially active.

However, Calliope and Caliborn aren’t so different as one might think. Despite Caliborn’s violent protestations to the contrary, they share key characterizing interests in the likes of shipping...

...and art:

Caliborn is infamous for his disgust and anger with the absurdity of paradox space (i.e. his anger with the text of Homestuck itself), but Calliope is easily provoked into displaying the exact same petulant frustration with the direction of the story and the unfolding of events around her.

Calliope and Caliborn are consistently unified within the text -- not as incompatible opposites, but as two sides of the same coin. In Complacency of the Learned, Calliope and Caliborn are personified in the singular, androgynous Calmasis. In his chess match with Calliope, Caliborn disguises his king as his queen, and vice versa, signifying a mutual transgression and inversion of gender; Caliborn steals Calliope’s hemotyping and typing quirk, just as alternate!Calliope does the same to him, in a mutual appropriation not just of quirk (i.e. voice and presentation), but of blood, or life. On the level of the body, Caliborn’s skin is inextricably marked by the green that signifies Calliope, and Calliope is inextricably marked by Caliborn’s skull: the deaths-head he would inflict upon all life (and a hyperrealization of the masculine or unfeminine bone structure that troubles many trans women).

Most significantly, Aranea indicates to us that Calliope and Caliborn actually began as one being, which then went on to fracture into a male and female aspect, striving with and against each other -- a creation myth for gender and sexuality itself, in the vein of Plato’s Symposium, Rabbinic lore on Adam and Eve, and (rather topically) Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

With their fundamental unity in mind, we can read Calliope and Caliborn not just as ‘brother and sister’, but rather as two identities, personas, or aspects of one person. This is why, for example, calling a cherub by one of their two names brings that personality to the surface -- because, on a literal or symbolic level, it constitutes the active validation of that personality and identity, and the abject denial of the other.

Does all of this suggest a bigender, genderfluid, or otherwise non-binary reading of Calliope and Caliborn? Maybe, but let’s keep going, first.

Aranea’s exposition tells us that even adult, mature, ‘binary’ cherubs are still figures of gender duality, inversion, and transgression. Mating cherubs take on the forms of dueling cosmic serpents -- the sex act occurs between two hyperreal phallic symbols, suggesting male homosexuality in specific and queerness more broadly. It was Calliope’s biological father who ultimately submitted to their biological mother, and thus it was Calliope’s biological father who laid their egg, while their biological mother was the one to fertilize it, revealing the separation of sexual anatomy and power relations from gender among cherubs.

The gender dualities, inversions, and transgressions at play can still exist within cherubs who are, by all accounts, decisively male or female in gender identity -- despite the lack of of any way to assign them a sex or gender from the outside.

The dueling personalities within each young cherub are siblings to each other, but they are also different possible selves that the cosmically-transgender cherub might become as they grow to adulthood -- just as the dueling alternate selves of so many other characters can illuminate their own internal conflicts. In Homestuck, the inner life is always prone to manifest in the outer life, again and again.

I TRAGICALLY LOST A SISTER TO MURDER

Having established a reading of Calliope and Caliborn as two identities within one person -- as ‘Calmasis’ at odds with themself, containing multitudes and torn between them -- we can move on to look at the way Calliope and Caliborn relate to each other, and to gender, in order to get the bigger picture.

Caliborn introduces himself to us as undyingUmbrage, a username of largely straightforward meaning. His umbrage -- his anger, irritation, annoyance, or offense in the face of the world -- is neverending, everlasting, and eternal, and so too is his own life. Caliborn is immortal, allowing him to carry his rage forward forever.

If Caliborn’s username is simple, then Calliope’s is more sophisticated, which fits their characters. As uranianUmbra, her title invokes most obviously Uranus the planet and Urania the heavenly muse, but also the ‘uranian’, Karl Ulrichs’ antiquated title for gay men and trans women: those with an anima muliebris virili corpore inclusa, “a woman’s soul enclosed in a man’s body.” As the umbra, or darkest shadow, she invokes the Jungian shadow archetype, the suppressed, unconscious, or rejected aspect of the self.

As such, Calliope identifies and codes herself both as transfeminine and as Caliborn’s allegorical shadow archetype -- a part of himself that he can neither accept, acknowledge, or escape, perpetually haunting him. In-universe, Calliope names herself after Uranus’ topspin, and the ‘English’ of a cue-ball that it echoes -- thus, she implicitly identifies herself and the trans feminine uranian with the cue-ball that threatens Caliborn and Lord English. She symbolically establishes herself and the trans feminine as Caliborn’s only intrinsic vulnerabilities!

And on some level, Calliope tells us all of this! Because while Caliborn wants to destroy Calliope, she hopes to make him like her:

Calliope manifests a sincere investment in so many of the things that Caliborn orbits at a distance. Thus, to Caliborn, she represents a threat from within to his ability to maintain distance, because on some level, she serves as a manifestation of his own desire to draw closer. She confronts him with the reality of his own desire, or at least, with the latent possibility of his own sincere investment -- she serves to remind him that anyone who can waste as much time on creating Homosuck as he does is both an invested creative and sincerely invested in Homestuck on some level.

And it’s much the same on the level of gender, too. Calliope serves as a sincere reflection of the gender identity that Caliborn can only orbit at a distance. It was, after all, Caliborn’s idea to swap the king and queen chess pieces, and to disguise them as each other. Calliope lashes out at him because he cannot do so earnestly: because Caliborn makes a shitty twist out of his insincere production, because he can’t commit to swapping the places of the king and queen, and because he abuses Calliope’s willingness to swap the pieces (because he abuses and misdirects her inclination to gender transgression, and by extension, betrays the premises of his own idea).

This is why Caliborn kills Calliope’s dreamself instead of predominating over her in the conventional way -- not just because it’s easier and more convenient for him, but because his predomination would mean “consuming” her personality and “integrating” with it. It would constitute an integration with his shadow archetype, and thus, on some level, a partial destruction of the persona and ego he has established for himself. To Caliborn, as pathological as he has become, any level of integration with Calliope represents an existential threat, and so he has to cut her out of himself like a cancer.

But even having cut Calliope out of himself, Caliborn cannot escape her. By cutting her out of himself, he has defined himself around the hole she has left in him -- he has permanently divorced himself of the opportunity to integrate with her or accept what she represents. While both Caliborn and alt!Calliope take up each other’s typing quirks as a sign of victory, Caliborn takes Calliope’s quirk as a way by which he can signal his ‘wholeness’:

And this is, of course, complete bullshit and posturing of the highest order. Andrew Hussie not only directly characterizes the conflict between Caliborn and Calliope as an inner conflict within him, but he also tells him that his only path to maturity and personal growth was through integration with Calliope.

Not to be denied, Caliborn continues to constantly assert the self-justifying completion and authority of his masculinity, for himself and for others...

...but even so, he still can’t help but betray himself and his own idealized masculinity:

Masc4masc, Caliborn certainly isn’t! In his creative endeavors, he telegraphs his ultimate disgust for masculinity. He needs to draw out the femininity he wants to see in men -- he acts out gruesome, hateful misogyny against women, but even as he murders so many of the women of his manga or otherwise ejects them from his story, he’s still compelled to recreate femininity and symbolically recreate womanhood within the male cast he has left behind.

And he’s not just motivated by homophobia and a disgust for men who are intimate with other men! Nor is he just motivated by a desire to place these feminized characters below him. Just as Calliope does sincerely with her Callie Ohpeee trollsona, Caliborn is compelled to feminize his own self-insert, the crude rendition of Lord English he creates for his own satisfaction. Given free reign to depict himself and insert himself into his story however he likes, Caliborn opts to turn away from the full thrust of hypermasculinity, and he makes himself beautiful and gorgeous.

And as soon as he does so, Caliborn’s repressed attraction to Calliope erupts again:

This isn’t just the matter of blackrom incest that the text superficially suggests; even on a purely textual level, due to the alien nature of their relationship, Caliborn only barely regards Calliope as a sister, and he certainly has no problem with objectifying and sexualizing all of the other women he hates.

No, Caliborn has to repress his attraction to Calliope because, given their shared form, his attraction to her as a woman necessarily constitutes an implicit recognition that he could be attractive as a woman, and his body could be attractive as a woman’s body.

Caliborn can never accept that, and he’ll never directly address it or engage with it. He’ll never think about what all of this means for him, or act on his idle fantasies. The time for turning back is well behind him.

He is, now and forever, exactly the kind of angry and disaffected chud who will never unplug from 4chan or stop masturbating to awful trap hentai. He has deliberately imprisoned himself within the teleology of his own self-confirming hegemonic masculinity, and he thinks it is glorious.

THE DEMON IS ALREADY HERE

To fully understand Caliborn, of course, we need to understand Lord English.

If Caliborn has imprisoned himself within his own assertions, then Lord English is the embodiment of those assertions, and Caliborn’s transformation into Lord English is his ultimate apotheosis: having murdered his shadow and excised her spirit from within himself, his transformation enables him to excise her from without. His ascension allows him not only to purge Calliope’s visage from his body, closing off the possibilities once implied and allowed by his youthful and androgynous form, but also to recreate, reconfirm, and relive his victory over Calliope at every turn.

To understand what I mean by that, let’s look at the characters and components who go into Lord English, starting with Equius.

Equius, is, of course, a long-form joke character about the pathetic contradictions of hegemonic masculinity. In his pesterlogs, he opens every line with blatantly phallic imagery...

But when he actually tries to handle said phallus in real life, his titanic strength prevents him from doing anything but destroying it:

And the same goes for one of his horns, which he has apparently broken off. The autocastration symbolism is not subtle, and about the mildest thing we can conclude is that he’s a chronic, addicted masturbator who has compromised his own sexual performance.

He’s also textually obsessed with upholding the racial hegemony of the Alternian civilization...

...but his obsession with hierarchy and dominance quickly collapses into a thin pretext for his barely-suppressed desire to submit to those who are higher than him on the hemospectrum...

...and to those who are lower than him!

Equius is a character intrinsically lined to the collapse and self-destruction of masculinity and male sexuality, which is topical enough that we might end there. However -- and there’s no nice way for me to say this -- we also need to establish that Equius is a necrophile and a sexual predator, too.

@mmmmalo and others have written intriguingly and at length about reading “blue beauties” as a cipher for “sexualized corpses” in Homestuck, but for Equius, it’s about as textual as it gets. Equius is explicitly sexually and romantically interested in Aradia even after her death, and his necrophillic attraction is only reinforced by the symbolism: he constructs an unliving replacement body for her, which parses most obviously as a symbolic embalming and restoration of her corpse, and he treats it like a love doll even as it’s uninhabited and lifeless. He seeks to literally transform her body into a “blue beauty” by the transfusion of his own blood, which (given the color-coding of troll body fluids) parses as a clear insemination joke about his genetic material.

We might excuse his attraction for various fantastic mitigating factors -- Aradia is, after all, still ‘alive’ in a kind of undead state -- but Equius’ more general sexual predation cannot be so easily ignored. Aradia is chronically depressed and in absolute need of the service that Equius can provide, which he uses to take advantage of her and to compromise her bodily autonomy and judgement with the device he covertly implants inside of her.

Equius is undeniably a sexual predator who constructs women’s bodies in order to further his own domination, and his own motif of sexual self-destruction and inversion puts the final dark twist on his story. He is brutally dominated by Gamzee, suffocated to death until his corpse is blue in the face, and ultimately prototyped together with AR. He finds a unique fulfillment as he becomes the object of his own desire, when he is transformed into his own cybernetic “blue beauty”.

It’s not hard for me as a trans woman to see certain tropes at play, but for those of us who aren’t up to date on foundational transmisogynistic screeds...

Today the Frankenstein phenomenon is omnipresent not only in religious myth, but in its offspring, phallocratic technology. The insane desire for power, the madness of boundary violation, is the mark of necrophiliacs who sense the lack of soul/spirit/life-loving principle with themselves and therefore try to invade and kill off all spirit, substituting conglomerates of corpses. This necrophilic invasion/elimination takes a variety of forms. Transsexualism is an example of male surgical siring which invades the female world with substitutes... The projected manufacture by men of artificial wombs, of cyborgs which will be part flesh, part robot, of clones – all are manifestations of phallocratic boundary violation. So also the behaviorism of B.F. Skinner and “physical control of the mind” through the use of implanted electrodes by such scientists as Delgado, are variations of monstrous male “motherhood”.

-Gyn/Ecology

Blanchard believes that autogynephilia is best conceived as misdirected heterosexuality. These men are heterosexual, but due to an error in the development of normal heterosexual preference, the erotic target (a woman) gets located on the inside (the self) rather than the outside...

Autogynephiles are men who have created their image of attractive women in their own bodies, an image that coexists with their original, male selves. The female self is a man-made creation. They visit the female image when they want to have sex, and some became so attached to the female image that they want it to become their one, true self...

-The Man Who Would Be Queen

But hey, does anyone else remember that time when ARquius got upset and envious because he couldn’t lactate like a mother would?

EXTREMELY SUBTLE.

As for Equius’ fusion with the AR, or Auto-Responder, we come to Dirk Strider.

Dirk Strider is, if anything, the furthest thing imaginable from the autoerotic subject that Equius presents: he is not so much attracted to another self as he is utterly repulsed by himself in his own totality.

Dirk Strider is a self-loathing, self-destructive, self-mutilating gay man, caught in the grips of a kind of hateful narcissism. He is not overtly trans-coded, or related to the trans feminine, but his male homosexuality ties into another, subtler form of trans feminine horror, one which Jake suggests in aside:

Dirk Strider presents the horror of the destruction of the self and the destruction of manhood more generally, both in the service of the satisfaction of others and in the fulfillment of self-hatred. He creates and destroys himself with abandon. In Unite/Synchronize, it’s Dirk who willingly decapitates himself to cross the gulf of space and time between him and Jake, and he allows Dave to decapitate him and destroy his ‘unbreakable’ katana with Caledfwlch -- the uranian cue-ball sword that destroys masculinity -- in Collide.

And keep in mind that when Dirk decapitates himself, it’s Lil’ Hal who looks out from his severed head:

Holy castration symbolism, batman! Remember that Hal’s shades are a part of ARquius’ own phallic imagery:

Lil’ Hal is a phallic specter that terrorizes both Dirk and Jake on the individual level, as well as in their relationship with each other. He drives Dirk’s Brobot-self to greater aggression, he’s aggressive, condescending, and cruel with Jake in general, and he apparently manipulates events to force Jake to kiss Dirk’s severed head -- which, if we’re taking the castration metaphor seriously, basically means he forced Jake to give Dirk head. Classy.

Is it any wonder that Dirk is so compelled to lop Lil’ Hal off of himself and out of his life, no matter the ethics or implications for himself? Hal is the perfect storm and culmination of all of the worst things Dirk sees in himself, and the omniscient apotheosis of his own detatched, ultramasculine, hypercompetent, ironic persona -- all despite being treated as a 13-year-old by the text, an immature and incomplete version of Dirk.

Remind you of anyone else?

Dirk and Lil Hal are in this respect a brighter mirror of Calliope and Caliborn: they are a self divided for whom the better half has softly predominated.

Dirk probably hasn’t literally castrated himself to destroy his masculinity in the way that Caliborn has literally destroyed his own femininity; Dirk and Hal certainly aren’t so explicitly gendered or trans-coded as Calliope and Caliborn are, so it’s more difficult to read them and their relationship as trans-coded. (Unless you want to read Dirk and Hal that way, in which case, hell yeah, go forth and be valid, and link me your fanfiction, please.)

Nevertheless, Dirk’s symbolic castration and literal rejection of lil Hal represents, if nothing else, a rejection of and predomination over his most toxic aspect (and his most toxically masculine aspect), and the gruesome excision of such from his life.

But while Dirk has left his worst half behind, his worst half has gone on to supercede him: entering into union with Equius, and by extension, Caliborn.

And what of Gamzee, the most important character in the entire comic?

Well, Gamzee is, of course, another mirror to Calliope and Caliborn. Like Calliope and Caliborn -- our allegorical Calmasis -- Gamzee is caught in an erratic duality between two possibilties.

Just like our Calmasis, Gamzee vacillates almost all through life between two fundamentally different personas. At the time of his introduction, he was someone basically passive, agreeable, and kindly -- even lovable, to the point that he still has his fans and stans to this day.

Of course, as time went on, he became more and more aggressive. Even against the backdrop of his largely passive behavior, his increasing aggression culminated in his many infamously depraved and murderously violent outbursts: a transition not incidentally marked (among other things) by his rejection of the green (and Calliope-coded) sopor slime that once helped to pacify him, and his radicalization at the hands of his future self (in Lil’ Cal).

In his typing quirk, Gamzee likewise alternates between Calliope’s lowercase and Caliborn’s uppercase:

Definitely no themes of duality here, nope!

Most tellingly, even in his ascension to Lord English, Gamzee is also halved, just like Calliope & Caliborn: Gamzee is bisected such that only half of him enters Lil’ Cal, while half of him is left behind, utterly broken and irrelevant.

But if Gamzee is a reflection of Calliope and Caliborn, then what else does this piece of shit clown have to say about them?

Well, like Calliope, Gamzee is quite involved in his own constructed persona -- but unlike Calliope, he’s almost never regarded as anything but disgusting and pathetic.

No amount of face paint can cover the scars across his face, and instead of covering himself up, his costume only accentuates his own body, exposing himself in the most pornographically aggressive and perverse way possible.

Even in making himself into a clown he reaches towards something inherently absurd; something that has no existence in itself save for how comical and disgusting it is to others. His aspirations and imitations render him a walking joke and a figure of corrupt terror.

And most horribly and grotesquely, if Calliope and Caliborn are a trans allegory, and Gamzee is any kind of reflection of them, we know exactly what kind of warped and fictitious trans archetype Gamzee is:

Gamzee suggests himself as a serial killer, and he’s one who hordes corpses and steals trophies from his victims, at that.

But there’s one more person we need to look at in this gruesome sequence: Doc Scratch, another parallel to Calliope in this incestuous slurry of signifiers. In Doc Scratch, the man with the uranian cue-ball head, we see even Calliope’s most harmless, silly traits taken to their most nightmarish and oppressive conclusions.

It’s Doc Scratch who selectively warps troll culture in order to create the world and the culture that Calliope loved so, and who meddles in the alpha timeline as he so desires; it’s he who shows just how perverse and oppressive omniscience can be, transforming all her scrapbooks and her labors of love into his own exhaustive account of the cosmos, turning her love of her favorite characters into his own callous disregard for objects to be manipulated. When he uses her own thoughtful tone, it only telegraphs menace.

And, most darkly for our own analysis, Doc Scratch is a sexual predator and a pedophile.

Almost from the start, he’s undeniably sexualized as a threat in his conversations with Vriska:

Even his omniscience is sexualized by his own words, casting the light of his awareness as a phallic presence invading and penetrating the unknown:

Vriska is an unreliable narrator, of course, and we might not want to read too deeply into Doc Scratch’s words. Scratch is certainly quick to assure Rose that he’s not a predator in his conversations with her...

...but as always, the gulf between what Doc Scratch says and what he means is almost insurmountable. Doc Scratch tells Rose that he has no biological means of reproduction, but he is a conglomerate of and a vessel for multiple sexual beings, and even the castrated may experience sexual pleasure and pursue sexual ends.

Most tellingly, Doc Scratch only tells Rose that he isn’t attracted to her “in the way she means”. From an entity known for wordplay and lies of omission, this constitutes a tacit admission that he IS attracted to her in some way that she isn’t asking about.

Aradia explicitly characterizes his interference in her and Kanaya’s lives as ‘grooming’...

And he does much the same to Damara:

Doc Scratch is an undeniably sexual and sexualized threat.

We might ask how, exactly, he’s supposed to be attracted to Rose and the other young girls he victimizes -- and certainly I think he’s a sexual voyeur in the general case, but I think he’s also an even more abstract and pedophillic threat.

Doc Scratch is a copy of Lil’ Cal, given life and omniscience as a First Guardian; he is the child’s toy which was once fawned over by a puppet pornographer, and he is a child-sized man. He titles himself after the Scratch process which allows children the chance to grow up, but which also transforms adults into children; he presents the absolute perverse sentimentality of all adult transgressions into the realm of childish things.

This alludes to Caliborn, of course, as the boy who cannot escape his childhood, but it’s also sexologically linked to toxic trans feminine archetypes...

Blanchard (1991) started with the idea that some cases of male-to-female gender dysphoria and transsexualism are fundamentally motivated by an ETII, in which natal males who are otherwise sexually attracted to women eroticize the idea of being women to such an extent that they want to become a woman themselves. Freund and Blanchard (1993) later extended this idea to an analogous ETII that might motivate some pedophilic men to impersonate or fantasize about being children.

It is fitting that the most compelling finding of our study—that autopedophilic men sexually attracted to girls tend to find it sexually arousing to imagine themselves as a girl—reflects the likely confluence of the two ETIIs that had been proposed many years ago: one that involves locating an individual of a different gender within one’s own body, and the other that involves locating an individual of a different age within one’s own body.

...and it’s also a searing indictment of Calliope.

To cosmic entities such as her and Scratch, how can other people be anything but objects, tools, and characters to be abused? Before the power and knowledge they might come to command, how can other people be anything but insects?

To Scratch and Calliope, how can other people be anything but children?

Even as Calliope becomes a mere player within the story of paradox space, Doc Scratch accuses her of a fundamental and unwholesome transgression. She lets go of the condescending oversight she used to hold over the alpha timeline, no matter how kindly and well-meaning she was, and she descends from the omniscient authority of her lonesome ivory tower, but Doc Scratch still names her as an offense to herself and to others. Her desire to be a person is cast as a perversion, a deviance, and a sickness.

SBURB is a game her kind was never meant to play, after all. It’s a coming-of-age narrative not meant for her.

Ultimately, Doc Scratch himself is a fundamental accusation against Calliope: he is a grail of the souls who signify some of the most horrible gendered narratives and trans feminine narratives we can imagine, animated in mockery of Calliope as if to say: “this is you”. Equius, an autoerotic, necrophillic predator, and Hal, an aggressive, intellectualist meddler; even Gamzee, who is both a murderous pervert and her own adoptive father, a normative role model who is anything but.

And when Caliborn rises to prominence and Lord English births himself from the corpse of Doc Scratch, it’s nothing less a recreation of the traditional predomination that Caliborn has denied himself. To Caliborn, Lord English is the sign of his own victory: he may see the souls within Lil’ Cal as like-minded role models to emulate and assimilate, or as hateful and loathesome symbols of Calliope to be crushed under his will, but his predomination allows him to take both options without interrogating himself, just as he’s gone without interrogating everything else he wants.

And to Calliope, well, if Doc Scratch was an accusation against her, then what could be more horrible to her than Lord English? He has destroyed Doc Scratch and symbolically ended her own perversions, but only through the act of being born.

The only alternative to the horror of being Doc Scratch is the terror of being Lord English; the only alternative to the horror of being Calliope is the terror of being Caliborn.

ISOLATION

I could navel-gaze for hours about the potential symbolism of Lord English, but I think it’s time to return full circle to a somewhat more grounded look at Calliope.

If Calliope, Caliborn, and Lord English cast light upon each other, then what does alternate!Calliope have to say about them?

Having naturally predominated and standing as a singular figure in the furthest ring, Alt!Calliope serves to illuminate the alternatives to Caliborn’s false victory: in all the alternate possibilities illuminated by the dream bubbles, we see that Calliope can naturally predominate over Caliborn, but not vice versa.

Alternate!Calliope strongly suggests to us that Calliope is inherently stronger than Caliborn, and she tells us that Calliope and Caliborn share the same strength: she tells us yet again that Calliope and Caliborn are two sides of the same coin.

She suggests to us that, in a sense, Calliope and Caliborn are just Calliope -- that Calmasis, upon achieving integration, will simply view herself as Calliope, and Caliborn will lose because he was never the true self.

So why, then, does Caliborn win in the alpha timeline? Is it just an arbitrary time loop, a timeline plucked from the frothing sea of paradox space and arbitrarily validated by the happenstance of the immature Caliborn’s power over time?

No, I certainly don’t think so; I’d like to think that the principle of AURYN applies even here. Caliborn wins out over Calliope because they’re Doing As They Will -- because, even on the level of our trans allegory, they both have reason to want Caliborn’s victory. Even on the level of our trans allegory, Calmasis needs to be Caliborn.

Alternate!Calliope tells us that she had to become strong because she had no-one else to comfort her, and I think suggests two important points of interest:

Firstly, that alt!Calliope serves to reflect Calliope’s inner drama, just as Calliope serves to reflect Caliborn’s inner drama. Caliborn fears and loathes the possibility of being like Calliope, the sentimental degenerate and weakling that she is, and Calliope fears and dreads the possibility of becoming alt!Calliope. Calliope fears that even if she rejects the hateful accusations that are Doc Scratch, and rejects the teleological future of Lord English, her only alternative is to be like alt!Calliope: someone who has won, and who has become herself, but at the cost of isolation, distance, and loneliness, without humanity, connection, or kindness.

In other words, Calliope fears her victory would mean her little green skull is always going to be a miserable Federal Fucking Issue, for herself and for others.

Secondly, that Calliope’s relationships with humans are in some sense the vector by which Caliborn came to dominate. Alt!Calliope won because she had no-one to take comfort in, and thus she had to be strong on her own, but I think the flip side of that is that alt!Calliope was able to be strong, because she had no relationships that could weaken her -- she was more insulated from the toxic ideas of the cultures that came before her. No one could so much as accidentally insinuate to her that she wasn’t good enough or pretty enough as she was, save perhaps for Caliborn -- and certainly Caliborn would have been malevolent, but he would have had less in the way of the language and systematic ideas to be the hateful and cultivated misogynist that he became in the alpha timeline.

In other words, alt!Calliope doesn’t have any reason whatsoever to worry about her little green skull in the first place.

But there’s another much more straightforward reason why Caliborn had to win, too:

If we’re supposed to take Calliope and Calliborn as two facets of a whole more generally, let alone as a specific trans allegory, well... they may have been two personas, or even two people, but they are confined to an existence as a single player. The cherub session likely never could been anything but a single player session; the cherub session was always going to be a dead session.

And whether it’s a fundamental fact of SBURB or just an idea in Calliope’s head -- one of the ideas she’s likely constructed with the human cultural biases she’s obtained by osmosis -- Caliborn is someone who can win a dead session, and Calliope isn’t. How could a Space player, a patient creative, succeed in a test of frantic, timed destruction? How could a passive Muse succeed where even an active Lord would struggle -- how could a woman succeed where even a man would struggle?

Only someone like Caliborn could ever possibly win. Perhaps Calliope reflects Caliborn as the person he desperately wishes he wasn’t, and she is the shadow that lies outside of his hateful and constructed self, but as a precarious supergiant hangs overhead and the light of Skaia gutters out, Caliborn reflects Calliope as the person she desperately needs to be, and he is the self she has to construct for herself.

Caliborn kills Calliope’s dreamself not just because he desperately hates her, but also because she has to allow him to supercede her, and he is the kind of person she needs to be: because SBURB is unfair, Skaia is unfair, and he can escape the desolate waste of her life, while she cannot.

And so it happens that Calliope is exiled from the real and cast to the unreality of the dream bubbles, while Caliborn grows monstrously beyond himself, self-mutilated and cancerous.

People have commented on the obvious romantic symbolism at play in Calliope’s return to life in the real...

...but it’s not just the power of a love that saves Calliope. Love is powerful and transformative, but love alone isn’t magical. It isn’t even the power of a magical macguffin ring that saves Calliope, either, because a ring is never just a ring, even when it is magical.

What redeems the possibility of Calliope’s existence is recognition and freedom.

TL;DR: ‘Caliborn’ is Calliope’s deadname.

#homestuck #calliope #trans calliope #homestuck analysis #homestuck meta #effortpost #self-indulgent complete bullshit

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aysall · 6 years ago

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Alright folks, after this beautiful 220th chapter I’d like to give my piece on Spinner and why I don’t think he’ll leave the League anytime soon.

(What?? No one cares about my opinion? If only I’d known before writing all of this!)

Without counting the ones who’ve been captured, the League is reduced to the bone; with six or seven active members and no money or powerful connections whatsoever, even the loss of one person would become an impediment.

But. What could be even worse? What could show the weaknesses and flaws of a group already so scattered if not the withdrawal of the (apparently) most distant member of them all? Spinner is the ideological, somewhat naïve, “good-willed” villain who’s actually closer to a vigilante than anything else--in short, he’s totally not-shigaraki-material.

And he seems to be the only one questioning the League’s doing time and time again, to the point it looks like a recurrent situation, given the others’ reaction to his latest outburst.

Sure, it may not be a tragic loss of man-power if he were to leave to go on solo (and even this is debatable because we don’t know his quirk) or even join the heroes as someone speculated. But what it would surely be is a huge failure from Shigaraki’s part, both for his role as a leader and his character development.

Kurogiri was the last one who supported him unconditionally and now that he’s gone too Shigaraki will need to prove himself again and again, not only to new potential allies such as Gigantomachia and the doctor, but also to the ones he already has, if he wants to keep them united and loyal. In the Overhaul arc he made clear progress with Toga and Twice and probably also with mr Compress, what with the Overhoe’s arms ordeal. Dabi’s a bit of a mistery but he seems pretty comfortable with the League as it stands. Meanwhile how could Spinner, who’s become a villain not (just) out of hate but in order to change society for the better, ever find a common ground with Shigaraki who has literally fed on anger and resentment for his whole life?

I think the answer might be easier than one may think, because Spinner is not asking for too much. All it took for him to become a villain was to see Stain on tv:

This does not sound as “I want to rid society of corrupted heroes who only value money and fame” which is what Stain was all about. I see it more like a “I want to change a world that does not have a place for me”.

Sounds familiar?

Oh!

Oh my!

An outcast who is looking for a place to belong where he can feel accepted?

Never heard of that one before!

What inspired Spinner was the drive to make things better, not the teachings (which I believe resonated more with Dabi for the reasons we all know and speculated about). Right now Spinner is asking to see that drive, the end-goal, a proof that he is following the right path. Therefore what Shigaraki needs to do is make him understand that their way is the only one that will bring the results he wants. Until now he didn’t, why?

I think it’s precisely because Spinner is totally not-shigaraki-material.

There is a fundamental discrepancy that Shigaraki still needs to overcome with him, which at the end is what Stain criticized when they met: he has to be relatable, be understood, and for that he has to understand people. Which is a deficiency we’ve seen him struggling with since the Hero Killer arc. That’s not to say that Shigaraki isn’t doing better than before, he is, but he has to do more and I’m sure he will; he’ll find a way to grab onto those weaknesses (just to exploit them or because he understands what is like to feel that way is a whole other topic) and win over Spinner as he did with Toga and Twice. And that may also be the point where Stain’s first judgment of him will be proven wrong, which I believe is fundamental for his rise as All For One’s successor.

It doesn’t have to be evident, the villains’ development has been good because it always happened subtly and almost unnoticed. And as with Toga and Twice who seem to be genuinely enjoying themselves, maybe Spinner too will be able to feel less empty as he says he is, finding a mutual understanding with all the other members.

So, Spinner and Shigaraki as foils for each other? I say maybe!

In any way, from a writing standpoint, seeing the most immovable Stain's stan the series has to offer (Dabi right now is catalogued as “flippant turncoat” and as such doesn’t count) being convinced that the League’s way is the right one would be very rewarding and I sure hope it’s what will happen.

#shigaraki tomura #league of villains #spinner #bnha 220 #bnha meta #bnha #aywritings

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mothermaidenclone-blog · 5 years ago

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Ad Astra or This Movie Was the Brad Pitts

Ad Astra was the worst movie I have paid to see since 2015’s Kill Your Friends, which is my least favourite cinema experience of all time. It was a dry and dreary story about emotionally stunted white men in a bleak and boring capitalist version of space, with jarring and superfluous Christian undertones. The plot and everyone’s motives were so non-existent that Brad Pitt had to narrate the whole thing in a monotone so flat and dead I literally screamed all the way from the cinema to the bus stop when it was over, partly out of a frustration so deep it was non-verbal, but also just to finally hear some pitch variation.

*Ad Astra spoilers follow*

There technically were women in this movie. Lots of women, particularly women of colour, occupied high ranking positions and were addressed by their titles, a touch I think is important and that usually tips the scales in favour of a good review for me. We were graced with Adjutant General Vogel (LisaGay Hamilton), Captain Lu (Freda Foh Shen), Sergeant Romano (Kimmy Shields), Tanya Pincus (Natasha Lyonne) and Lorraine Deavers (Kimberly Elise), as well as several unnamed female personnel (Kayla Adams, Elisa Perry, Sasha Compère and Mallory Low). I would like to particularly highlight Natasha Lyonne’s performance as apparently she was the only actor employed to play a human being and not a replicant. She was on screen for maybe twenty seconds, as is sadly the case with most of these women, but was a glorious breath of fresh air as the only character to simultaneously emote expressively and speak with inflection and enthusiasm. The only one! In a two hour movie!

All of these women appear to be respected and capable members of various illustrious teams, but are always outnumbered by men. There are two male generals alongside Vogel and Deavers is initially outnumbered 4:1 on her space craft by men. Tragically, whenever a team is being picked off, it is always the people of colour who die first. Not only is this obviously racist, it is just a disgusting cliché that we just don’t need to see anymore in movies. Deavers dies first when Roy (Brad Pitt) forcibly invades their vehicle, followed by Franklin Yoshida (Bobby Nish), an Asian man, and Donald Stanford (Loren Dean), a white guy, is the last to go. Roy cradles him in his arms and attempts to save his life. I hope it’s not just me that sees something wrong with the order of events there.

A similar scenario takes place in the lunar chase, which absurdly seems to occur in the same crapy looking buggies as the original moon landing, a confusing visual choice considering we’ve just seen a vast and impressive modern concrete moon base. The film takes the time to introduce us to Willie Levant (Sean Blakemore), a black officer who will be escorting Ray across the moon. As soon as we see he has a photo of his wife and child taped to his tablet screen I knew he was going to die - in the year 2019 I should not be able to predict that a black character is going to die because we saw a family photo. Can we just not anymore? Again, aside from the racism, that’s just shitty writing. I like to think that as a species, if we can conceptualise something as vast and seemingly impossible as solar travel, we can also move beyond basic and derogatory cinematic tropes.

I was most excited by the appearance of Helen Lantos (Ruth Negga), a woman of colour who occupies a position of power on Mars and introduces herself assertively using her full name. Also, her whole look was excellent. However, this brief release of serotonin was very short lived as she literally walks Roy down a corridor then is immediately cut off and superseded by a white guy with a man bun. Lantos does return later, but alas, as an exposition machine to give Roy some plot news about his dad. Even as she explains that her parents were murdered by his, Lantos falls victim to the dire, emotionless monotone that I can only assume was forced on the entire cast of this film. Then, she is an actual chauffeur and drives Ray to a manhole so he can continue his dad quest. A character brimming with original potential is presented as nothing more than a device.

The final woman to mention is the first one we see, Roy’s ex-wife Eve (Liv Tyler). We see the blurry, out of focus back of her head in the background of a shot before we see her face, and this is incredibly telling, because that’s all Eve is, the simulacrum of a woman. She could be anybody - so why she is Liv Tyler defies belief, I can only assume they held her loved ones hostage - her story is untold and entirely irrelevant. Again, she is only a device, although this time not for Roy’s forward momentum, but this time seemingly to emphasise that Roy is a total sociopath with no emotions whatsoever. We don’t learn Eve’s name for another twenty minutes, and it is an hour and twenty minutes before we hear her speak. Even then, it’s not a live conversation, because god forbid this film have too many of those, but a voice recording explaining that their relationship is over. I’m not going to lie, I’m pretty sure that’s what it was, but everything she said was so generic I have no memory of it whatsoever. She is presented as a ghost, a blurry image on a screen, a memory fixed in time, not a real person with agency and personality. At the end of the movie we finally see her in real time, and that is when she has made the unfathomable decision to meet Roy for coffee. Even her face in that moment gives no emotion away, perhaps because Tyler had no idea how to act this entirely nonsensical decision. To our knowledge, she would not have seen any change in Roy, only received news that he survived a dangerous space mission, which is apparently enough of a reason to get back with this emotionless egg of a man?

I almost didn’t want to devote words to them, but I think it’s important to address just how dire Roy and his dad H. Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones) are. This is their film, they are the reason that all of these women’s stories are passed over. It is made clear over and over again that both Roy and Clifford believe they are the only people capable of completing their various missions. Roy hijacks a ship and inadvertently kills everyone on board because he thinks that it’s his destiny or whatever to get his dad back, never mind that they were all highly trained space personnel who were arguably better suited to the mission precisely because it wasn’t their dad. Clifford straight up murders his whole crew because they are too “small minded” to fly off further and further into space forever on a mission that has yet yielded absolutely no evidence of their goals. A variety of talented human beings are destroyed because of the entitlement of white men, their delusional and unshakable conviction that they are at the centre of the universe and that no one else could possibly accomplish the lofty goals that kismet apparently calls them to.

The way they speak about themselves and to each other is absolutely psychotic. Roy’s solo musings include, “The flight recorder will tell the story, but history will have to decide,” and “In the end, the son suffers the sins of the father.” Clifford imparts his son with the delightful greeting of, “There was never anything there for me, I never cared for you or your mother or your small ideas.” In addition, they both physically flinch from human contact at various points in the move. Now, I totally understand that we live in a neurodiverse world and that many people experience emotions and social interactions in any number of ways, and that is a beautiful thing that makes our world so interesting to live in. However, that these men both abjectly state that they have no empathy is presented within the context of their megalomaniacal ideals that they must accomplish their god-given quests irregardless of how many people they have to kill along the way. It is a facet of their strangely two-dimensional, arrogant and narcissistic personalities, not one part of many complex features that make a complete and relatable human being.

Roy has to literally say out loud that he is a human being at the end of the movie; “I will rely on those closest to me…I will live and love,” which makes him sound more like a learning AI trying to pass a Turing test than anything else. The music swells as Clifford throws himself towards the surface of Neptune in an orchestral deluge that is unsubtly significant in this very quiet film, as though I’m supposed to start crying and think anything other than, “well thank fuck, it’s about time this murderer dies in the cold vacuum of space, I hope Roy stays spinning and screaming here forever too.” We are supposed to feel sympathy for them as the heroes of this movie, despite the fact that they show no care for anyone else throughout the whole thing and act entirely in their own self interests.

Overall, the women in this film are given about five seconds of potential as they introduce themselves variously as decorated soldiers and otherwise capable personnel, before being shoved to the side, or murdered, for Roy. This is obviously objectionable, but is made so much worse by the fact that Roy is an emotionless, entitled, empathy-less white man who doesn’t care if other people have to die for him to get what he wants. That is what these women are being passed up in favour of. I felt like I was watching a two hour long Voight-Kampff test. Space movies like this should be about what we can achieve if we work together as a species, not about how white men will still be the kings of dreary capitalism, even on the moon. We can do better than this.

And now for some asides:

What the actual fuck was the font at the beginning? I guess a red serif all caps should have alerted me to the fact that I was about to watch a horror movie.

As a lover of space horror, I was absolutely gutted that it was a bad CG angry baboon and not a cool gross alien. Also, what was that scene? “Hmm, we need to get rid of this loser because Brad Pitt is the best at space ships and he needs to be the captain. Uhh…what about…space monkeys? Yeah! Space monkeys on a deserted Norwegian ship. That makes sense.”

Can I just have a film bout those moon pirates fighting space capitalism please? I was more invested in them that anyone else in this garbage movie.

Credit for the Bradd Pitts joke goes to the talented and lovely Ed Cheverton

#ad astra #Film Review #movie review #feminism #sci-fi #scifi #science fiction #brad pitt #liv tyler #tommy lee jones #ruth negga #freda foh shen #lisagay hamilton #natasha lyonne

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mafreemantle · 5 years ago

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What is finished?

An essay commissioned by SMITH to accompany Dale Lawrence’s solo exhibition, Further Prototypes at the gallery.

When is an artwork finished? At show time? When the artist says so? What if an artist isn’t ‘finishing’ them on purpose, and what if he’s active in the gallery throughout the show? What if he’s asking himself—and us—whether there is such a thing as finished at all?

This is one of many curveballs thrown by Dale Lawrence in Further Prototypes, his third solo show at SMITH, the latest stanza in his wry inquiry into the ambitions of art and its practitioners. With Look Busy (2016) and Another Helping (2017), as with his Art Joburg show Amateur Hour (2018), Lawrence scratched at these ideas, studying the tension between focused intent and wilful abandon. Here, he puts the ideas to theatre.

“Finished is dead,” says Lawrence, who chooses instead to work with the vitality of experimentation. Doing so brings action, change, motion and surprise into another distinctively considered collection of mixed media offerings that this time includes imagery variously scratched into animal fat, drawn onto photocopier glass and printed on bread. There’s also a bath in the gallery and, yes, he will bathe in it. Every day for six weeks.

In Seen and Not Seen, the bathtub work, Lawrence will prove his interactions with it without showing them. We will see solely the evidence of his activity; the memory of it. A wet footprint, perhaps, or a crumpled towel. By repurposing the gallery as a working space, a conduit through which Lawrence passes, he draws attention away from the idea of finished works hanging inert on a wall and towards the lively, uncertain environment from which his works are made.

Throughout the show, Lawrence will be otherwise active in the space, working on his largest canvas to date, the 1.75m x 3.5m Hercules Wrestling with Death for the Large Bathers in situ. These elements of his normal life—the painting, the bathing—help to set the show in a state of flux, placing artmaking as a functional part of the everyday. Here Lawrence draws from German artist Joseph Beuys, who considered art much broader than painting, sculpting and exhibiting. For Beuys, as for Lawrence, the impulse to create is seen as a basic component of human life.

“Completeness and incompleteness coexist. We are never finished. Our routines become rituals and our rituals can degenerate into routines. Art is a form of distilling reality, where grand intentions and everyday mundanities are the subjects—with sometimes overwhelming and sometimes underwhelming results.”

Hercules is Lawrence’s playful tracing of a mashup of two classic scenes with similar compositions by Frederic Lord Leighton and Paul Cézanne. Leighton’s horrified characters, Cezanne’s indifferent bathers and finally Lawrence’s cursory retelling of these stories probes at how the function of art has changed. Art used to need to capture critical and epic moments, later just moments. What do we ask of it now?

That this and other works are in fact or appear ostensibly unfinished stems from a disregard for finality that permeates this collection and can be traced further back. Amateur Hour fleshed out an argument that achievement is subordinate to the act of the pursuit thereto. Then as now, pursuit is Lawrence’s first virtue. To arrive is to abandon pursuit, to be finished. And finished is dead.

Lawrence’s use of masterpieces as source material in the show stems from this notion. His respect for striving over finding sees prototypes as new models of thought. The creative sphere is one for experiment and testing, where new ideas and aesthetics are prototyped and test-driven before being adopted in the real world.

“When a work is considered a masterpiece it implies that an idea has been refined to the point of absolute completion and perhaps exhaustion, leaving it short of much of the vitality of the prototype.”

Lawrence’s most pointed jab at this is the work St. Lawrence Handing out the Treasures of the Church, where he treats a photocopy machine’s glass as a printing plate. Viewers of the work will be able to print out a copy of the famous scene, as artist and device stage a modern parody on the doling out of churchly treasures. The cumbersome photocopier is the artist himself, a dubious intermediary through which an original and pure thought must traverse. Repetitions mean diminishing returns. More is less.

“If art is a means by which to pay homage to inspiration it is also proof of the inability of human beings to accurately express the purity of that inspiration. The observer principle suggests that it is impossible to observe a phenomenon without changing it. Art is an interference.”

Portrait of Ideal Self as St. Paul the Hermit, Except Not so Poor and Hungry and Naked and Lonely and Cold is a relief print on a sheet of bread, akin in both substance and design to the communion offering but depicting a figure engaged in a leisure activity. Bread is a basic unit of substance and signifier of spiritual nourishment, yet only represents meaning. It has none in and of itself.

St. Lawrence? Communion bread? Has Lawrence gone all religious on us? The gallery is, after all, art’s church. This is where a form of aesthetic communion is practiced. This is where we gather to drink wine and hear nominated spokespeople muse on the meaning of it all. The substance of the offering depends in some part to the faith we place in the institution that houses it, and of course the person handing us the sacrament. Communion bread is either metaphysical and full of meaning, or vacuous and in dire need of some Marmite.

Or, as Lawrence suggests, lightly salted like a Lay’s crisp. Perhaps the crowning piece of the show is another remake, this time a riff on the 'Tragedia Civile' by Jannis Kounellis. Lawrence uses Lay’s crisp packets where Kounellis used gold leaf to festoon a wall signifying the accomplishments of the past. Lawrence replaces the original’s hook, hat and overcoat with a bowl of Lay’s lightly salted crisps lying on the table for consumption, while a mobile phone lies charging on the shelf instead of a paraffin lamp. This self-administering of communion, a modern offering of no substance in an age of cheap imitation and distraction, wonders at the depth of our dubious relationship with conveyors of meaning.

But accomplishment implies some measure of success and finality, and we know how Lawrence feels about those things. His title for the installation, Tragedy of the Rainbow Warriors, mashes up the original with a newspaper headline marking a supposedly seminal moment in recent South African history. Nelson Mandela, dressed in a Springbok jersey, hands captain Francois Pienaar the 1995 Rugby World Cup trophy. Here is a moment that aimed to tell us something had ended. But was this the end—or the beginning—of anything?

Clearly, Lawrence detects a kind of idiocy in viewing this or any moment as a conclusion or resolution. “We were supposed to feel like something had been solved. We were offered absolution from our sins, cheap closure in a flash. The truth was something a lot less certain.”

Lawrence doesn’t miss this opportunity for another witticism. Noting that we lay our crisps onto our tongues like communion wafers, he nominates a Western brand as our priest. As Apartheid ended and sanctions were lifted, we South Africans were rewarded with a deluge of attractive but empty gifts from the West. The Gods were good to us.

If Lawrence is playing with his use of the pedestal it is more as jester than preacher. Like a king’s clown he agitates, entertains and excites, making himself vulnerable, present and unguarded. Lawrence’s work can also be downright funny. A found ceramic vase lies shattered on the floor beneath its pedestal, surrounded by a handful of rubber bands, the dull accoutrements it was used to contain. The ornate is reduced to a vessel for cheap, functional detritus. A vessel, grand and full of potential, tragically reduced to its base utility. But is an ornament less impressive when it is being used?

With Nameless and Friendless, Lawrence removes the legs from one found chair and attaches them to the ends of another, making one absurdly tall and the other comically legless. The height difference implies a hierarchy yet both are made precarious and arguably useless by the modifications. Does more chair make a chair not a chair? How much chair can you remove before a chair is not a chair anymore?

In a series titled Attempts, Lawrence shows a stack of Indian ink on paper drawings, each attempt piled on top of the next. The drawings are gestural and impulsive, full of Lawrence’s trademark concerted playfulness. The sum total of these attempts are presented as works in themselves, their finished-ness abrupt and questionable.

Lawrence’s fat works—for which he avidly carved into slabs of tallow made according to a Joseph Beuys recipe—dig into the idea of fat as both an essential, life-supporting substance and one that signifies superfluity and excess. Self-portrait in Front of the Burning Cathedral references the recent Notre Dame fire and queries the potential of burnt wood as something very much alive and useful. Lawrence’s surface this time is burnt yellowwood, South Africa’s national wood, mirroring the French oak beams used to support the Notre Dame’s spire.

Further Prototypes may speak to Kounellis’s work in one instance most clearly but the kinship runs deeper and permeates the show. Kounellis was famously direct, his work keenly responsive to its time. When invited to inaugurate an upmarket art gallery in the late 1980s, he filled the space by suspending large pieces of ox carcass on iron panels. “I apologise to everyone: I would like to have made an Arcadian landscape, but the times did not permit that,” Kounellis told the curator.

For Lawrence, like Kounellis, art is an occupation and a mirror. It is what it sees. What Lawrence sees is uncertainty, possibility, transience. The magnificent in the mundane, the mundane in the magnificent. A loop with no end, an endless question.

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