there it is. thatāsā¦thatās just them. thatās the fundamental meat of their relationship. itāsā¦yeah. god. āi know iām insane. but i see the lunatic in you for loving it and staying with me and at times encouraging it just as i do you. thereās a little monster in you kicking and screaming and waiting to thrive and iāll pull it out with the most tender love and care you deserve because you deserve to be a little batshit after everything that has been done to you- everything that has been done to separate us.ā FUCK
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"My dragon is gone" is such a sad fucking line š¢
it's freaking BRUTAL.
And I'm gonna be a bit of a nerd here because the writers actually told us exactly why they're writing all these tragedies!
Love and Depression is explicitly on purpose.
Mini essay time!
The World Underneath Fractal Library story is about the library that Zayne oversees in his different incarnations, but it's also about storytelling in the game itself. It's a really cool meta-story, so if you haven't read it, I highly recommend it! They basically end up saying that all stories, whether they're in books or video games or movies or whatever, are equally valid and important. āŗļø
Here's the most important bit, from Chapter 3, which is called Question 3:
The administrator character notes that "Happy stories are the same, but unhappy stories each have their own kind of unhappiness" which is actually a reference to this quote:
āAll happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
--Leo Tolstoy,Ā Anna Karenina (GoodReads)
They go on to say:
Once a story finds its perfect ending, it stops, and no one looks back. Imperfections, however, remain unforgettable. They echo without a response until the end of time.
It's the tragedy that makes the stories so memorable. That makes them really stick with you. But what's so clever is that we don't just get tragedy--we get tragedy juxtaposed with a current timeline where things are maybe actually going to be happy this time! But we don't have closure yet. Things are still unfolding.
That's why it hooks you so good! It's sort of the same thing behind Romeo and Juliette being such a memorable story for so long. It's been retold a thousand different ways. Including, on some level, in the Love and Deepspace stories!
after however mc dies in this next sylus myth, weāre gonna get so much context as to why sylus is like. not even letting her walk five steps to the window. she must remain in his arms at all times.
my guess is sheāll succumb to disease in this next one, following the theme of sacrificing herself for the boys/both of them sacrificing themselves together. and i donāt know the logistics of how or why but heāll have to watch, maybe helplessly as she disappeared into sickness- āiām not good at taking care of sick peopleā or a parallel of beyond cloudfall where itās her telling him to kill her before something out of their control happens instead of the other way around.
i feel like, given the themes of rafayel and xavierās myths this year, this card is gonna give us some foreshadowing so iāll definitely be pulling but strategically bc i still need my dragon
i think that people are allowed to be disappointed if they were expecting more dragon sylus! but i also think alot are forgetting that sylus is a fiend. that fiend form manifested as a dragon in BC, here itās manifesting as what seems to be a vampire. but he is first and foremost a fiend before anything else. i mean thematically this is all over his character. his own bird is named after the most famous demon in western literature (mephistopheles). pacts and deals have always been a BIG part of his relationship with mc and his character in general, going back to death & rebirth where he made the deal to bring MC to dimitri but found a loophole to manipulate it, double crossing him. and thatās just one of many, there are pacts and deals and tricks scattered across the main story, memoria & anecdotes. he was a dragon, he was a vampire, but he will always be a fiend.
i truly understand sylusās treatment of mc in LAR. not that it is to be excused, but i believe now that it is born of two things, the first being the hastiness and fear that dimitri is coming and he needs her to fucking remember before shit gets any worse, and two, he just came from a life where they were regularly brawling at the dinner table, into one where they had to fight each other for sport.
sylus only knows mc to be this powerful, magical equal, he doesnāt know her as someone who could possibly be frightened of him. i think he initiated these theatrics, the shooting of it all, the rough touches, the harsh looks as some kind of provocation. like i know exactly who you are. do you?
āitās a shame your evol has deteriorated to its current state.ā because she used to be SUMMONING AND COMMANDING DEMONS. THE ARCHFIEND OF THE UNDERWORLD AT THAT. every single thing he did to her in LAR was a provokation, to get her to remember. to unleash that power within her.
maybe if she shoots me, sheāll remember stabbing me, or the time we literally died together. maybe if she sees me heal instantly, sheāll remember the bloodletting and the fact that we are (were?) both immortal. maybe if i test her, poke the bear, maybe if i unleash this fucking wanderer on her, that power i know and love will come out. and sheāll be ready for the storm i know is coming for her. because i just got here, and much like last time, weāre already running out of time.
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i think of sylus quoting percy shelley so much. itās like on one hand itās the writers hammering home his gothic themes and telling you how he is more of a gothic/romantic hero than he is this booktok shadow daddy villain, but in the context of the world and love and deepspaceā he knows percy shelley. his poetry. by heart, in fact. it would be entirely plausible and understandable that he copes with his feelings of isolation and longing for one person and one person only with poetry, romantic poetry. literature as a whole.
does he see himself in dracula, crossing oceans of time for mina as he journeyed through deepspace to find the only person who ever took his hand? in his past life, did he find comfort reliving the memories by understanding how much sympathy is granted toward frankensteinās monster in readers everywhere? or does he liken his aching to wuthering heights where brontĆ« famously writes, āwhatever souls are made of, his and mine are the sameā ā to which he tells mc upon first introduction, āafter all, you and i are the same. true kindred spirits.ā
how many times has he sought the comfort of dusty tomes when he felt the most misunderstood? when he felt the pain of needing her again, hunched over a frayed poetry book. when he needed to be seen, cloaked in darkness at the very back of a movie theater, watching these stories adapted in black and white a century later. does he know, now, that open hearts and minds such as mcās see him at his supernatural, his monstrous, his wildā and feel no urge to tame it, but to welcome it wholly?
Spoilers below the cut. Hopefully mobile Tumblr won't troll anyone.
SPOILERS BELOW HERE
I will be doing more structured things with these thoughts but I gotta ramble now that I've finished the new main story content! Still drooling at the event tho, we're gonna get even more little reveals I'm sure...
In no particular order:
We got explicit confirmation that Philos's iterations in the myths are parallel potential versions of the same planet! In a GORGEOUS cinematic, at that. I think I might have to screen cap that so I can attach it to a post where I talk about Philos lore. We also know that every version of Philos eventually dies (as all planets do). This actually also creates the possibility that not all versions of Philos started as Earth--that's actually only referenced in Xavier's Where Shooting Stars Fall anecdote, and we see graphics of other versions of Philos that are whole planets (not with the shattered plates) covered in sad (as in Rafayel's Philos myth) or fire (as in Beyond Cloudfall). It also means that Earth can have futures in which it doesn't become Philos--like Dawnbreaker's future. It's maybe a little anticlimactic that they're all parallel? But at the same time a relief to my lore brain because it means I can stop looking for clues about how they're supposed to reconcile. Head-canon wise I still like the idea of certain overlaps between the various timelines, such as Xavier and Sylus recognizing some of the same Philosian tech.
EVER CAUSED THE CHRONORIFT CATASTROPHE BY FUCKING WITH MC, I am SO proud of myself for piecing this together before from the timing, and I even have receipts! I had my suspicions that she was "created" rather than born (since she's elsewhere described as being born from the planet's core) so getting the confirmation that she's "from Deepspace" is extremely exciting.
And on that note, SYLUS SAVED BABY MC. š I am going to be chewing on the bars of my enclosure for more details about that in the event, I hope we get more tidbits... if not you can count on me for a Sylus PoV with head canon to fill it all in š I think what I'm gonna do is add alt chapters to Cosmic Interlude so the current chapters will still be there, but there'll be alternate/additional chapters with the updated canon. My secondary goal with Cosmic Interlude was always to provide a streamlined/clarified version of what we know from canon (partly so I can keep it straight myself) so I def want it to be able to still do that. Folks can then skip the "old" chapters if they want, or read them all for ideas on different ways things could have gone (and we know this game loves branching timelines). And speaking of timelines...
We get an even more primordial origin story for Sylus x MC???? š„¹ Two cosmic beings, forced together because only they could match the other's strength, destined for one to kill the other, but they escape and reshape the destiny of the entire universe š„¹š„¹š„¹ I'm sure it's partly my bias but Sylus backstory just hits different. I wonder if we'll get a myth from that setting!!???
And that makes me wonder--how does Sylus know about this past life? Did he fall to Philos like a shooting star and wind up amongst the dragons? Did their consciousness energy disperse into the cosmos, and then manifest again on that version of Philos and he's managed to maintain one stream of consciousness since then? If so, when did those memories return to him? Perhaps in dreams, perhaps in the Deepspace Tunnel... so many yummy options... Speaking of delicious, the way he knew RIGHT AWAY that she'd "eaten" the spatium core, and how tempting it must smell... š there will be smut about it.
Switching gears to Zayne, my poor baby. He's going THROUGH IT. And we are finally getting some reveals to all these things that have been foreshadowed. I saw some people expressing confusion that "Dawnbreaker" doesn't remember MC, but I think it's important to realize that the "Dawnbreaker" that manifests isn't necessarily the same one we see in the Anecdotes--Zayne's whole thing is "yin and yang", so I think we're seeing a more "primordial" Dawnbreaker, the ur-yin of Zayne, if you will. The inevitability of death given physical form. The Still in Dark anecdote demonstrates that even this side of Zayne is capable of compassion--through accessing the "energy" of Dr Zayne's yang. Likewise, Dr Zayne is capable of cold utilitarianism through the "energy" of Dawnbreaker's yin. I'm sure we'll get lots of layers here, my gut says trust the writers.
Also, I'm pretty sure we did not successfully destroy the energy core?? I'll look extra carefully when I go through and annotate everything (the results of which will land here) but I do believe that core remains a loose thread, though the press conference was still successfully delayed.
Zayne attempting to disappear at the end is SO him (they have made this a pillar of his personality to the point that it was a key event in the Tomorrow's Catch 22 AU, even) and also so infuriating. I'm so glad we found him before they closed out the chapter, even if it ended on a tense note! I'd say odds are very high we'll get something at the start of the next main story content (whenever that happens) that's like "Zayne was kind of distant and then after his leave he returned to the hospital as if nothing had happened" since episodic universes like this one need that kind of reset. But we'll see.
The reveal that Benedict is basically a shapeshifting Wanderer is FASCINATING, and I think it's implied he was originally "created" at Mt Eternal? Is he the Wanderer that Zayne kept going back to re-freeze, maybe? (as we saw in Snowy Serenity) And now he's escaped? That could explain why Zayne didn't immediately recognize him and how he knew about William. I also think it's interesting how Benedict said, of killing William, "Even I would have hesitated" and we know that Zayne actually did hesitate. So I think we see how easily provoked Zayne's guilt is here--and/or the implication that Zayne was indeed "possessed" by Dawnbreaker in order to kill William, as some have suggested.
I'm also glad we FINALLY have clarity that Zayne was 12 during the Chronorift Catastrophe and those events happened after he met MC, because there's a few errors in his timeline that made it hard for me to pin down whether his dreams began during the catastrophe or whether they were prophetic. I think we'll get a bit more clarity in the event content, too.
I'm also really going to be chewing on the part where he ended up needing to restrain MC (other than that it's hot, okay, idk, it's the second time the Zayne writers have tied someone up and injected them and we're into it) because she was "too strong"--I'm really curious how this manifested, and whether it contributed to that flicker of murderous intent from Dawnbreaker later. The natural assumption is to assume she was just sort of mindlessly flailing to escape--but what if what she experienced as unconsciousness was something more akin to possession? Or her new powers spiraling out of control like Zayne's Evol does? Aaaaah I want answerssss
Last thoughts for now are that I find the contrast between Sylus and Zayne so interesting, especially since they're my two favorite LIs. Sylus is a creature who defies fate, whereas Zayne is bound by it. Sylus's desires influence him (as when he needs to distract himself from the smell of the spatium core from MC) but do not control him. Whereas as Zayne tries desperately to keep everything under control, those desires inevitably end up controlling him. More of the conflict in Sylus's chapters is external (things he and MC need to react to) whereas more of the conflict in Zayne's chapter is internal (decisions he has to make, concerns about his state/motives, etc).
The actual last thing I'll add her (if you read this far, ilu) is that I'll continue updating my lore project GitHub with all the new content. If you've got even a small amount of coding experience, you should find GitHub desktop and Obsidian pretty approachable if you want to explore the project with all the links intact! So so so so so much was foreshadowed and I'm going to be geeking out going through all of it. I'll probably also post some summaries to this blog as well!
