[abandoned blog] 🔮🐣

Yes!

I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS EGO AND I REALLY NEED TO TALK ABOUT IT!

First of all: This EGO MUCH more hopeful in comparison to Hong Lu's, it's clearly about Sinclair breaking out of his egg.

Sinclair is hopeful, Hong Lu is hopeless.

Sinclair spreads his wings and the whole animation is so cinematic and it focuses on that part, making it really clear to me that it's about Sinclair hatching out of his egg.

With the addition of his wings being similar in shape to a cain mark, it makes it even more clear.

There's also the thing with antlers I said before: someone pointed out that they're young dragon's antlers which shows Sinclair's immaturity. They have blood on them, which makes me think about how they grew out forcefully - a sign of Sinclair being forced to grow up faster when he wasn't ready yet, because ones that took care of him died.

The blades which, in my eyes, represent burden, representing Sinclair carrying that burden of his trauma, but he uses them as his wings to let himself soar and let go of his past.

It's a big contrast to Hong Lu, who's being dragged by the lance that he's impaled with. Like I said, these EGOs are opposites of each other and parallels a lot. With Sinclair soaring and letting go off his trauma, and Hong Lu sinking down and looking totally out of control in his EGO. It makes me think of how their toad EGOs parallels, with Sinclair wanting to take everyone's pain away, sacrificing himself in the process, while Hong Lu is bottling up his own pain until he explodes… I just think the contrast is VERY interesting, and the parallels are very visible, especially in this EGO.

Another thing I wanted to talk about Sinclair's eye in contrast to Hong Lu's. While the area around Hong Lu's eye looks like a wound or scar, the are around Sinclair's eye looks like it's covered in feathers/fur(?), and instead of an eye, he has a flower there. People have said he has a missing eye but to me it looks like a flower- unfortunately we won't know for sure until we get better quality of the sprites in a few weeks, but with assumption of it being a flower, I think it's a reference to Lin Daiyu, Hong Lu's love interest in The Dream Of Red Chamber, who is very heavily associated with flowers (I am theorizing that Sinclair will get her identity but that's a topic for another post). It could also be a reference to Sinclair being the Rose from Little Prince.

This might be a stretch but with the way Hong Lu and Sinclair are presented in the EGO, Sinclair's eye is visible in a lot of the sprites meanwhile Hong Lu's eye is very hidden, which in my eyes represents their trauma and how visible it is. Sinclair's eye is visible, just like his trauma - he literally started having a visible panic attack and threw up when K corp was merely mentioned in his canto. Meanwhile Hong Lu? A lot of people in the fandom assume he doesn't even have trauma, that's how good he is at hiding it. The sweepers event was probably the first time he talked about his trauma in a more serious manner - just how his eye in the whole animation is very obscured.

Lastly, I want to talk about Sinclair's line.

This line is clearly a reference to Daiyu's line in the beginning of Dream of Red Chamber, when she is still Crimson Pearl Flower:

"The only way in which I could perhaps repay him would be with the tears shed during the whole of mortal lifetime if he and I were to be reborn as humans in world below"

Now, compare this to parts of Sinclair's line, particularly this part: "Earthbound have I become" is referencing how for Daiyu to repay her debt of tears, she had to descend to the mortal realm and thus she became bound to Earth because she is reborn as a human. And then there's "To embrace you, I endure this endless descend", because Daiyu's whole purpose of descending and thus enduring all the pain and sadness that came with being reborn as a human and being earthbound, is to one day reunite and embrace her true love, Baoyu, which Hong Lu is based on. The descend felt endless because the debt of tears is not something that can be repaid in a single night. It would have taklen her the whole lifetime of a mortal, but she would endure it just like Sinclair, to embrace her love and repay the debt.

But besides that, I think the line has other meaning, connecting it to Sinclair's own story, let me break it down:

"Earthbound I have become" - reference to how Sinclair fell from the world of light, descending to the world of darkness. The wording also, "earthbound", references how he's like a bird that can't fly, because he's still in an egg.

"But to embrace you" - the "you" i think he's talking about might be Demian, I'll explain later why. What he means by the wording "to embrace", i think is "to accept (a belief, theory, or change) willingly and enthusiastically." (from dictionary)

"I endure this endless descent" - the descent into the world of darkness feeling endless, because he lost everything. His parents, his sister, even Demian. He was completely alone and it feels like it will never end, but he endures it, because he knows that it will be worth it.

So to put it all together, this whole sentence means that Sinclair had fallen into the world of darkness, which feels endless, because of everything he lost and all the pain he goes through. However, he endures it all and doesn't give up, because he knows that if he wants to embrace Demian again, he has to go through all this, and all this pain is necessary to let him break out of his egg.

Special thanks to @letranger-soleil and @silvermoon279-madam for helping with the prompts!!