Viva’s Gulag

Starting off, I have to say a lot of these thoughts have been kickstarted by my buddy @malelovemail. Conversation with others in the sense of this story has helped build up my own thoughts on the animation and of this character.

That being said,

This guy. This fucking man.

To put it shortly, he is an allegory for abuse, isolation, and resignation.

Throughout the animation, you can see him refusing help - you can see him keeping to himself, even with him inviting gildedguy into his home. He recoils from the sight of himself in reflections. That, for one, is a sign of someone who has done something horrible- and knows what he's done.

And that leads into the Dragon, which so delightfully mislead us into believing it was something he was trying to hide. No, it's something much more nuanced than that. The dragon is a defense mechanism.

Not once does Mar try to hide the dragon, he doesn't keep it away from Gildedguy or anyone else. The first thing his body goes to when he feels stressed- when he is in pain- is to turn into the dragon. It's a relapse into horrible and violent behaviors because he can't be forced to come to terms with who or what he is.

Throughout the entire story, Gildedguy tries to help mar. he tries to pull him out of the abuse cycle. He hides the stellapen when he sees it brings mar pain, he tries to help him out of the nerve throne inside of the dragon. Even when it comes time to fight the dragon in Gilded Mecha form, he is trying to HELP HIM. After the dragon is dead, he tries to help him. But every time, he gets turned away. Mar sees what he is in the eyes of the people, he refuses to attempt to overcome it. He refuses to accept what he's done. He just falls further into his violence and lets his dragon hurt more and more people.

In the end, gildedguy resigns himself to the fact that he cannot save this man, because Mar does not want to be saved. When Mar dies, he just watches it happen. He doesn't stop Sable. He doesn't help him up.

He just watches.

Something I find very interesting is that the first thing mar does when the dragon dies and the fight is over is mourn it, and pay respects. he pays no attention to anybody else. he doesn't care about them. To him the dragon, his defense mechanism and his output for violence, has been his only companion in life for as long as he can remember.

This was never going to be a story with a happy ending, because Mar refused to accept one for himself. And the people he's hurt refused to accept that too.

Sable is an interesting character in the context of both the story, and the allegory that Mar represents. She is shown worshiping the dragon at the start of the story, playing in gold while inside the dragon, and overall being disconnected from the plot. But she's a good representation of what you can ignore in someone you admire while they hurt other people, until you come face to face with what it is they've done.

And in the end, she becomes disillusioned from all that has happened, because of the sight of everything the dragon has done to everyone else.

Sable was the best choice to end Mar's life as opposed to Gildedguy. She had much more direct contact with him, she had been directly hurt by him for who knows how long.

Based on this drawing meme that I regretfully don't know the original creator of because it has been reposted on Pinterest a million times