#meta things

Like it only had come to my attention VERY recently (as in...the last few weeks recently) that some people, take this snippet as jealously for Katniss. Whitch I've never even considered...and yea. Clearly don't agree with. I've read the books, that part in particular what has to be several dozen times and NEVER got a envious vibe from it. Or even a negative emotion at all.

To me it always has been Katniss letting go. Letting her relationship with Gale be where it is. Appreciating the familial love they shared but moving forward. The lips part being Katniss reminding herself Gale WILL find someone who wants his love and devotion, and make him happy. That being what she wants for him.

Spoilers ahead***

As much as I appreciate togashi’s big brain tho i’m still bitter about the use of ‘Dark Continent’ which has racial and colonialist undertones to describe a ‘omg so spooky’ world that lies beyond the limits of known civilization.

I know he himself is probably not racist and is likely making an allusion to China soft colonizing Africa with the Kakin Empire leading this exposition but when I saw the Dark Continent was literally upside down Africa, I was a little pissed and I thought about it a little more today.

Pic below for reference:

Written from the point of view of the ghost that stars in the original story. (@withanina, I know you can automatically tell who’s narrating. :>)

It had been far too long since I had seen anyone. Anything, really.

No one had to come. No one had to talk to me. Everyone talked about themselves. 

But then, I met you, Yashiro-chan. With your red eyes and long white hair tipped with green, you were such an interesting visitor. Your panic and embarrassment reminded me of how human you were.

How… how human I used to be.

I already knew that you were going to die soon. Anyone who could materialize fully in Limbo had that risk. But there was something about you, your life, your mannerisms, that made something in my chest move.

You didn’t deserve to die.

Meeting Hanako-kun soon after that confirmed my suspicions.

You two were bonded together just like how Leo and I once were. 

Sure, I don’t know the full details. Hanako-kun is dead, just like me, and you’re still alive. But you two still came together, with Kou-kun by your side, just wanting to ask about me and how to help me.

It’s amazing what a simple concept such as “help” does. And how you forget how it can feel after so much time away from people. 

You and Hanako-kun, Yashiro-chan, have something special. 

Please, please, don’t let each other go. Don’t do anything reckless. Stay together, love each other, find happiness. 

I don’t know where I’ll be going, but I still have one last thing on me. The memories may be faded, but they have weight, and maybe they can do you more good than me.

Maybe with them helping you, for a dead girl like me, I can settle with bringing another pair happiness when I couldn’t get mine. Maybe then, I can go somewhere, satisfied. 

Maybe.

So, then, Yashiro-chan. Oh, Yashiro-chan, you fickle dork. Why haven’t you used the orb yet? Why did you come back to Limbo to find me? 

In case y’all don’t know how fuckin EXTRA Chris Carter is, lemme tell you. On the X-Files: Fight the Future soundtrack (I’m old school, I still have my CD from 1998), if you let the final track from the Dust Brothers keep playing, after minutes and minutes of silence, at exactly 10:13, Chris Carter himself (yes, his droning, monotone voice, which will scare the shit out of you if you’re not expecting it) lays out what is probably the most coherent explanation of the first five seasons of the show’s mythology I’ve ever heard in my life. And yeah, it’s in the form of a stream-of-consciousness, hidden aside to the fans and is very much an info-dump. But it’s shockingly similar to Mulder’s ridiculous ass monologue for Tad and Sveta’s benefit in front of a seething Scully in the Unremarkable House in My Struggle I. And honestly, after watching Season 10, I have to believe that some of this is going to come into play again. 

He can’t completely retcon his own damn mythos, can he?

Anyway, here’s the monologue for you. It’s pretty great.

"The method, as they call it, though it was more so a germ-line procedure of singular meta-scientific complexity, had been given to them by the alien colonists as a quid pro quo. The Syndicate would help them to create a population of alien hybrids who would hide in plain sight, cloned from human ova and alien bio-material, so there would be a clone race immune to the effects of the black oil when the return to the planet began. For this, the Syndicate would be sequestered, granted a sort of immunity or asylum, given a place in the grander scheme.

"They were the Vichy government to the German "Final Solution": collaborationists whose motivation was simple, self-directed survival. These cloning operations were spread across the country, the cataloging and record-keeping done through a complex intra-institutional system that connected to every branch of government, from the Social Security Administration to the Department of Defense.

"The operation, under the working title "Purity Control," had been launched in 1948, its original conception the brainchild of German scientists given immunity themselves for war crimes, and allowed to continue the eugenic experiments that were Hitler's dark legacy.

"The Syndicate had begun as a subset of a shadow intelligence agency whose original orders were to create plausible denial and an effective cover-up of Purity Control. But through 50 years, numerous U.S. and U.N. administrations, the principals began to wrest control, accumulating power and influence across international borders, such that - by 1990 - the operation ceased to have a member accountable to any one government and whose only orders would be taken from a man named Strughold, a German industrialist who had fled his homeland to northern Africa.

"These men, whose knowledge and access provided control of a foreseeable future, had, in spite of this, everything to lose. Their secret work, the cloning preparations and the cataloging, constituted their greatest vulnerability: exposure. Their detection would ensure not just their own demise but a far-reaching dissolution of social and religious order around the globe.

"To protect against this, the Syndicate employed methods of disinformation, using covert government programs that had been regrettably discovered, as a kind of smokescreen - a dodge or blind where the transgressions of Congress-accountable agencies served to hide their own more odious undertaking.

"They had even at times used the UFO phenomenon to create a hysteria that science and the intelligentsia denounced, so completely, as to make belief in believers seem ridiculous and completely discreditable.

"They had also, in a crisis, used a tool of the colonists themselves - alien bounty hunters who policed the cloning operations and enforced rule on the countdown to colonization. A double-edged sword whose cold-blooded tactics had helped to stem a leak or threat, but who also kept a watch on the Syndicate. A threat in itself, as the Syndicate had something to hide that not even the colonists knew of: a vaccine against the black oil, an inoculant against the substance in which the alien life force was held - in fact, the very medium of the life force itself.

"To guard this secret was perhaps even more critical than the truth of the existence of alien life, and of colonization. If the Syndicate's own secret vaccine were discovered, the vaccine that would make themselves immune from the effects of the black oil, they would certainly be destroyed and the timetable for colonization stepped up. They would protect this secret with their lives. They would kill to protect it, as it symbolized the only hope they had of avoiding enslavement when the planet was overtaken.

Camilla would never really want the throne. The only way she’d ever step up to the plate would be via the death of all the rest of her siblings, and even then, that’d be a special circumstance - she’d be on the front lines to defend them and her home, because she’ll defend her family and those she loves until her last breath. If she’s alive and without them, well… 

She’s not like Hinoka. 

It would never make her happy to become Queen - leading so many people and being under constant public scrutiny would make her continually anxious, and she doesn’t enjoy paperwork either. She wants to make a home she never had, and be able to love her own children as she was never loved in her youth, and be able to raise them away from the constant infighting of Nohr. She has to be in control of things in her purview, so I think a country is too large and always out of control. 

Each of the Nohr Sibs has a role - and it may seem on the surface that she’d be good at looking after people owing to her motherly personality, but her biggest enemy is actually herself. She’d destroy herself with self-doubt when put in the public eye until she couldn’t take it any more. She constantly fears being left alone and unwanted, and has trouble trusting those outside of her very tight social circle. 

Camilla is very severe and scared of loss. The softness, the alluring way she talks is something she’s cultivated to make people love her. On the battlefield, she revels in her role as a fearsome, unrelenting opponent, an experienced warrior with accolades and a reputation as a merciless monster to her enemies. She’s proud of that, too. 

It’s also interesting if you look at Camilla’s retainers as reflections of herself: 

Selena was always striving to reach her mother’s high standards, she’s antagonistic and rather bitter, and she prides herself on her looks and her style. She’s a woman of class, despite not being a titled lady. But she’s loyal, and once you’ve got her in your confidence, she’s kind. Her attitude is a product of her environment. 

Beruka, on the other hand, is a girl made into a weapon. She grew up deprived of many things, made ready to kill from very early in her youth. She struggles to understand the emotions of others and has trouble divorcing her job from her reason to live. But even then… She’s very caring, and there’s a very sweet and devoted core to her.