time adventure & clow/yue
part of the reason i made this sideblog is that i recently heard the song Time Adventure and i canât stop thinking about this in a clow/yue context, as a song from yueâs point of view. not necessarily in a reciprocated romantic context; i think it can also be easily interpreted as yue pining alone.
if youâll forgive me a very long post:
this version of the song is whatâs giving me Thoughts, and the lyrics go like this:Â
Time is an illusion that helps things make sense So we are always living in the present tense It seems unforgiving when a good thing ends But you and I will always be back then You and I will always be back then
Singing will happen, happening, happened Will happen, happening, happened And will happen again and again âCause you and I will always be back then
If there was some amazing force outside of time To take us back to where we were And hang each moment up like pictures on the wall Inside a billion tiny frames so that we could see it all, all, all
It would look like: will happen, happening, happened Will happen, happening, happened And, will happen again and again 'Cause you and I will always be back then 'Cause you and I will always be back then You and I will always be back then Thatâs why you and I will always be best friends
---
time is an illusion that helps things make sense so weâre always living in the present tense i think living with someone who sees the future and is unable to stop doing so - whether that manifests in a constant, uncontrollable way or in an occasional-deep-visions way - would lend a sense of blurriness to the experience of time. clow seems incredibly future-oriented: he believes so strongly in the inevitability of things, and also plans extensively for the futures he sees. even if these visions and plans arenât something he shares with kero and yue while theyâre living together - and i think he usually didnât, really - i think his future sight affected the way he interacted with people, and also how he thought about time. in my mind, clowâs distant manner isnât just something he puts on for sakura as a mentor-facade sort of thing. for example, heâs also very calm and composed when heâs talking to kero and yue about how heâs going to die. i donât think he was always like that with them, or always like that in other areas of his lifeÂč, but it makes me think that distance is something he was good at using, something he was good at putting on. more specifically, thatâs a way that i might expect someone to act if they were deeply distracted or upset by something but still needed to interact with others. i donât think it would have been uncommon for clow to interact with yue and kero that way while being lost in thought about the future, or planning for it, or while otherwise immersed in a time that isnât happening now. i think being close to someone like that, someone whoâs at least sometimes halfway in the future, would make it especially easy to see time as an illusion that helps things make sense. this is, i think, maybe the kind of view a powerful magician who canât turn off his future sight would adopt, if he believed in inevitability. events laid out all around him, spiraling out, with consequences he can and canât foresee, everything stretching away while heâs rooted here and now. he can see that all of these things will happen, and they might as well be happening for him right now given all that heâs planning and thinking about them. but he isnât actually there. heâs here, living in the present tense only, subject to his own understanding of the passing of time while heâs also wrapped up in what-will-be. living through will happen, happening, happened.
i think yue being as close to clow as he was - whatever interpretation you make of that - would make it easy for yue to pick up on that way of thinking. i donât think yue is the kind of person who would directly oppose, or think to oppose, clowâs idea of hitsuzen; i think he would actually have a lot to process when faced with evidence that clow wasnât omniscient and couldnât plan for everything. (if yue didnât outright idolize clow, i think he came very close.) so i think yue would have thought the same way as clow about time and how it works in relation to people, even if yue isnât experiencing the things that make clow see time the way he does.ÂČ i imagine that refrain (will happen, happening, happened) as something yue tells himself to comfort himself now, after clowâs death. remembering how he thought of things before, and remembering how his master thought of things; holding onto the past through a mindset that interprets time less as an arrow moving forward and more as a blur of will happen, happening, happened.
it seems unforgiving when a good thing ends of course it does. yue grieves. even though he warms up to sakura very quickly, i have a hard time believing yue could process whatâs happened with clow in any comparable timeframe.
but you and i will always be back then you and i will always be back then i think of this as yue remembering what things were like, when clow was there and things were okay. if interpreting with a ship lens, âyou and iâ takes on a more painful meaning here for yue, but in any case the way that this is repeated softly over and over throughout the song is really emotionally effective. it makes me imagine someone thinking this to themself, wrapping themself in memories, reminding themself that whatâs now lost isnât and canât be truly gone forever, not as long as they hold onto this.
singing will happen, happening, happened will happen, happening, happened and will happen again and again 'cause you and I will always be back then iâve already talked about this refrain a little, but it really plays well into how i see clow (and yue)âs perspective on time, plus yueâs grief and reluctance to move on. as long as he holds on, it doesnât have to end. the repetition of these lines throughout the song really reinforces that for me - the singer, holding onto their memories, warding off the pain of separation as best they can.
if there was some amazing force outside of time to take us back to where we were shoutout to the return card, which doesnât exist in the manga and thereby denies manga!yue even the chance to dream of sakura sending him back in time with it.
the simplest interpretation here, i think, is that yue canât use the cards himself to go back in time anyway, or that he wouldnât want to hurt sakura by actually asking her to do this, so heâs left just dreaming about this. but i think thereâs a longer (and possibly weaker) explanation, too.
i think clowâs perspective on time and inevitability would have also included not being able to go back to exactly the way things were.Âł when the inevitable happens, itâs done. it was inevitable, and itâs happened, and thatâs how it is. after that, going back, or trying to change things from whatâs happened, will have its own set of consequences. from a doylist perspective, this could be because itâs really hard to tell a satisfying story involving time travel that ends in a perfectly resolved reset, but from a watsonian perspective i think itâs less a rule of the multiverse that time magic canât be used this way and more that clowâs perspective on inevitability limits whatâs possible for him and his magic - i think clowâs ability to use time-related magic is limited to a sort of... relatively beginner way, compared to how someone like kaito might use it, because of his perspective.⎠i like to think that the way clow thought about things affected the way that the cardsâ power manifests, especially before theyâre transformed into sakura cards.â” in the anime episode concerning the time card (which also doesnât exist in the manga, i am so sorry yue) sakura and syaoran arenât able to change the basic events of the repeating day. even then, kero comments that it takes so much power to rewind an entire day that it can only be done once a day, at midnight. whatâs happened has happened, and it takes a lot of power to go back and re-experience it, and even then the changes you could make are limited. thatâs incredibly different from how kaito constantly rewinds time in clear card, and while it might just be that the time card is weaker without someone to wield it i think itâs that clowâs potential proficiency with time magic is limited to begin with.
anyway, all that to say: wishful thinking on yueâs part, to want to go back and have more time with clow.
and hang each moment up like pictures on the wall inside a billion tiny frames so that we could see it all, all, all this isnât actually interpretation of the song, sorry, but this line reminds me of butterflydreamingâs Clow Stories. itâs such a good collection of clow/yue moments, and i think it builds the relationship beautifully and gives them both a lot of depth. the beginning of the fic frames the story in a very similar way to the lyric here - unwrapping memories one by one, remembering them like individual pictures on a wall.
fic recs aside, i think this is a lovely lyric that really captures the feeling of wanting to hold onto every moment, every second of your time with someone. the whole song has that same feeling to it, that longing to keep everything in your hands forever, and i think thatâs perfect angst material.
you and I will always be back then thatâs why you and I will always be best friends the interpretation of the ending really depends on the way youâre seeing clow and yue relate to each other - it could be completely inapplicable, the wrong term for what they had with each other; or it could be yue trying to comfort himself with the idea that he was at least a good companion and friend to clow when he wanted more; or it could be yue taking refuge in the fact that his feelings donât have to end with clowâs death. cyoa!
anyway, this song gives me a lot of feelings. this was so long if you have made it this far thank you for coming to my ted talk
---
Âč (i have no idea what heâs like in tsubasa chronicle. but since afaik yue isnât in tsubasa chronicle and never sees him in any context other than ccs, i donât think clow in tsubasa would change too much of my interpretation here.) ÂČ i headcanon that yueâs magical bond with clow also gives yue some level of emotional/mental connection with him. iâm not set on, or picky about, what that level is - it might just be a sense of where clow is and thatâs all, or it might be on a level where yue is also affected by the way clow thinks and feels. i think the latter especially lends itself to how i interpret clow and yue, here. Âł not even counting Clowâs Fun Adventure regarding Trying To Keep Things The Way They Were Forever; i just think this is a natural consequence of believing so strongly in the inevitable. ⎠i think this better explains why clow wasnât able to use the book that powers kaitoâ time magic in clear card. âclowâs mindset and understanding of the world is inherently incompatible with time magicâ makes more sense to me than just âit was just too hard for clow, who is repeatedly stated to be one of the strongest magicians in the worldâ. in chapter 57, kero says that âhe got his hands on [the book]⊠but it wasnât enough. clow couldnât achieve the impossible.â and i wonder if thatâs really all there was to it. while i do think âmomo and the book hated the idea of working with clow and refused to do soâ is really funny on its own, i think clowâs mentality being incompatible with time magic is a good explanation too. (and of course thereâs the interpretation where they just wanted to establish kaito as a really scary extremely competent magician, much moreso than clow, but i think that isnât nearly as fun to meta about.) â” the way sakura creates clear cards makes me think of this, too; the way she perceives things and understands the world manifests in her magical instruments. of course sakuraâs power is out of control, and is not creating purposefully the way i imagine clow was, but i think it does lend some credibility to the thought that the creatorâs understanding of the world affects how a card works.
