#identity 5

Sometimes I see ppl bring up how positive dynamics between Patricia with Chloe or Jose feel kinda weird cause of the lore which is completely valid, buuuuut… I hope y’all know there’s a very high chance Netease is gonna brush past that later down the line in order to make them work together, and also get ready to have even more uncomfortable conversations about how idv writes racism.

The best way I can explain how it feels to me would be author’s intent vs. author’s execution. The intent would be for the characters to grow past their prejudices & allow them to work as one by unifying under the fact that they’re all humans who make mistakes. The execution of this idea becomes a problem because the prejudice they chose (most specifically for Jose) was race. A prejudice which is layered much deeper than a little bad faith assumption like say what Chloe did to Vera & with much harsher connotations. I think the intent was to make the poison feel like Chloe killing Vera. However, like I said before racial prejudice comes with a lot more baggage than an interpersonal prejudice. This writing decision ends up undermining the actual weight of racism & makes it seem as though it’s a mentality that can be easily fixed like if it were interpersonal. Long story short, idv shows its ass yet again when it comes to discussing race when it pertains to darker skinned characters by skimming over the oppression they face to harmonize their narratives with their white counterparts even when its unreasonable to do so. And this could have been avoided: could’ve picked a different basis for prejudice not tied to her ethnic identity for one, but ofc idv does what idv does 🫠

Run. Run towards the light. For you are the brightest spark.

Twins at The Carousel AESVIC WIP - Still finishing the second part of the animation, but wanted to make a GIF

I miss Aesvic sm 🥺 Aesop

Cause he was really ready to face his demons head on, but literally couldn’t to the fullest extent cause the rest of the team needed him. If I stick to my theory that the incense is a parallel to Chloe’s perfumes, I feel like that shows the biggest difference between how he uses them compared to Chloe. Chloe is actively trying to delude herself into a false reality, Edgar uses it in order to stay stable for those relying on him. And on that note, it makes me think about Edgar sidelining his own struggles cause people need him present.

His coa hallucinations are obviously a callback to the hallucinations Edgar actually suffers which were a trauma response, so to me it kinda reads as if Edgar quite literally won’t allow himself to process his trauma as deeply as he WANTS to because he got bigger fish to fry. He wants to process it, coa makes a point to bring up that he won’t let himself get completely deluded, but he can’t confront it in full cause the coa team needed him. And I don’t use “need” lightly, that plan literally would not have had any hope of working without Edgar.