Also…. Something I hate that gets lost in all these squabbles over El vs Dimitri is the genuine tragedy between the two that ends up getting glossed over. They could have been *family.* They’d both lost so much, but they could’ve had each other. But they’re destined to always be just out of reach, passing by but never having their paths cross. The line in Edge of Dawn about reaching for her hand mirrors how at the end of AM, even with everything that has happened, Dimitri tries to reach out to her. To keep some part of his past that lives in El alive. But of course, she rejects this, because she has resigned herself to never looking back. She can’t be open to anyone from her past, because part of her transformation into the Flame Emperor is to consider the version of herself from before TWSITD’s torture as dead. And in CF, even as he curses her, Dimitri’s last action towards El is to remind her of that past. To make her aware that even if she resolved to never go back, there were still people out there who remembered her as she was. And she kills him, sealing that away forever as she walks towards a new future that she has built for herself. It’s deeply, deeply tragic and it has my heart aching for a revelation-style golden route (though I would never want one to exist), and that’s what’s so good about it.
There’s so much to their relationship that gets lost when people boil it down to some weird ass incel narrative (which to be fair, the game doesn’t help in some places) when imho we should all just agree to collectively interpret them as purely platonic step siblings who are massively fucked over by fate. Imagine the 30000 IQ conversations we could be having about this if only we could stop debating the merits of forced occupation and whether genocide is actually all that bad and started talking about The Themes. What if life could be so not sucks
God I wish people would talk more about the tragedy of the story. Every side is just so fucked up in so many ways. Fate screwed them over so much, to the point that there will never truly be a golden route.
