Truthseeker’s Blog

So first, I’ll have to explain, in very broad terms, what liberalism is, otherwise this post won’t make much sense.

Liberalism is a political ideology that is typically considered center or center-right in most places, but is considered left-wing in the United States. In fact, American-style liberalism and classical liberalism differ in several aspects, but for the sake of this post I’ll simplify things and focus mostly on American liberalism as expressed through political culture (as opposed to academic liberalism), since THB was written by an American. I won’t be talking about what liberalism thinks of taxes, the market, or welfare, but instead on a few key tenets held by people who hold liberal views.

They are:

According to liberalism, the governmental system, typically a democratic one, is fundamentally sound and legitimate, even if flawed. You have to work within the system in order to enact change and the rule of law is absolute. Systems are inherently self-correcting and naturally produce justice; thus, injustice is caused by bad leaders who have been put in charge. As long as good leaders are in charge, they will fix everything. In fact, the process is so important that it matters far more than the outcome. Incrementalism is favored over radical change, which is seen as inherently chaotic and destabilizing. Symbolic or procedural freedoms are typically favored over material change (i.e. focusing on the right to vote or boardroom representation instead of affordable housing or wealth redistribution). The focus is on individual virtue and feeling, and representation is equated with justice.

Liberalism is rational and pragmatic in contrast to radicalism, which is seen as going too far or unrealistic (this is the most common liberal critique of, say, socialism). It ignores structural violence and cannot conceive of the idea that the system may be fundamentally rigged, because the state is perceived as a neutral arbiter.

Liberalism cannot conceive of class interests or collective power, so it relies on Great Man Theory. If the government is unjust, it must be because the current leader is a bad person, or is ignorant of how harmful their policies are. If change happens, it must be because a few individuals in high-ranking positions made the right choices, or because the bad guys were persuaded to see the error of their ways. After all, oppression is a communication error; if bad leaders were simply taught how hurtful their actions were, they would pivot to kinder, more rational policies.

These three ideas are prongs of a central core belief: that the system is neutral, and individuals are the only meaningful actors within it. In American society these ideas are omnipresent background radiation that permeate the news, media, and water cooler discussions. Most liberal media does not set out to construct a liberal narrative; rather, these qualities naturally emerge from what many Americans believe to be common sense, basic facts, the way the world is, and so on.

The quintessential liberal heroine is an uptight middle- to upper-class member of society who wants to enact change, but is polite about it and doesn’t disrupt things too much. She wants fairness and equality, but only in an abstract way, because talking about material suffering would be too crude. And, of course, she’s empathetic and can easily persuade people to adopt the same rational views she holds, thus solving oppression. Above all, she is not an agitator who throws bombs.

The dedication to THB shows this immediately: “For the librarians, teachers, booksellers, authors, students, and everyone else working to protect our freedom to read - thank you.”

Not for anyone who’s ever had a book taken from them; not for the people who are being hurt by the book bans. No, the book is for the liberal heroes of the world, who are protecting abstract ideas such as “the freedom to read.” The freedom to read what? A librarian from a red state could relate to that dedication.

That’s the thing about liberalism, it tends to be fangless, milquetoast. It wants to make a statement but frequently says nothing, or worse, reinforces the status quo. However, it is frequently invisible, or even seen as making a bold political statement. That is why I am writing this post.

Now let’s discuss…

The Triumvirate

The Triumvirate[1] in THB seems to refer to both the Court of Refuge’s governmental structure as well as the three individuals currently in power. We don’t know much about how the current triumvirs rule besides the scene in Quokka’s flashback, but we are assured that they are suitable leaders. The characters seem to think that they are fit to rule, simply because they are elected and popular.

In contrast to the triumvirs we have Beryl and Snakeroot. Besides being cartoonishly evil, we are assured by the book that they are bad because they took power illegally. 

The idea goes thus: The system is naturally just, and injustice is caused by breaking procedure. The triumvirs followed the rules and were fairly elected, while Beryl did not. In THB, this is what divides good and evil: did you follow the rules, or did you not? All else is secondary. The characters, least of all the revolutionary firebrand Platypus, do not seem particularly angry about Beryl hurting dragons, and much emphasis is put on how the Triumvirate loyalists are in hiding simply because they believed in fair elections. Following the law is more important than who is being hurt.

“Yes! The court used to be fair,” Platypus said furiously. “There was a system! We voted peacefully and chose who made the decisions and then they cycled out and we voted in new ones and IT WAS FAIR AND NOW IT ISN’T.” “Who are you yelling at,” said Crescent. “All of us here agree with you.” “Yeah,” said Wollemi. “Or else we wouldn’t be living in scrubby caves, eating nothing but dingoes.” (Chapter 12)

It is not suffering or starvation that these dragons are worried about, but the fairness of the election. That is what the liberal prizes above all else.

The Triumvirate and their ilk are noble sufferers, but none of them actually do anything besides Platypus. They are polite above all else, and besides, actually agitating would be far too dangerous. Better to hide and eat dingoes.

If the triumvirs and their followers are martyrs, then the usurping monarchs are the tyrants. However, liberalism is rarely, if ever, interested in the mechanics of tyranny and persecution. How do tyrants come into power? Why are they supported? How does oppression work? To acknowledge that tyrants can be brought into power, can even be popular, is a terrible thought to the liberal. It means that sometimes, the system can produce unjust results. We cannot have Beryl be elected democratically; she seized power by force. And we cannot give her an ideology of power, order, and xenophobia to appeal to voters; that would mean acknowledging that sometimes, voters choose terrible leaders based on rhetoric and emotion rather than the logic, empathy, and pragmatism prized by liberal thought. Bad rulers cannot have a driving ideology; they must be malicious, irrational. Anything else would be a threat to the liberal conception of politics.

Instead, Beryl and Snakeroot must be cartoonishly evil.

“The king takes them away, and then I don’t know,” Sora said. “I’m horribly afraid he’s burning them. Burning scrolls, Umber! Who would do that? And we have no way to replace them! Most of the scrolls in this library were written over the last centuries by dragons who were trapped here. There are no copies anywhere else in the world.” She brushed away a tear, her voice trembling. Umber read the list of scrolls, wondering why the king and queen wanted to get rid of them. He couldn’t see any immediate reason—there were scrolls for dragonets, scrolls by MudWings and SandWings and RainWings and hybrids, adventure stories, love stories, history scrolls, memoirs. He guessed the only unifying factor was that Beryl and Snakeroot didn’t like them. (Chapter 15)

Totalitarian regimes ban or burn books because books are a medium by which seditious ideas can spread, ideas that oppose the regime and its precepts. There is a sinister logic to which books are chosen for destruction. For instance, the Nazis targeted works by socialist and Jewish writers, as well as books that were anti-war, books about sexuality, and many others. This reveals what the Nazis feared: ideas opposite to their totalitarian, racist, and supremacist ideology.

But in THB, Umber cannot see the logic and concludes it must be illogical and driven by a nebulous dislike, because the monarchs are mindless creatures of evil. There is no ideology to speak of, no material reason for destroying certain books over others. The liberal believes that the reason is irrelevant; destroying books is simply bad, and there is no need to determine why specific books are targeted. If there is an underlying logic, then that means book bans make a twisted sense to certain people. There is a cowardice in this, a refusal to confront the most evil ideologies and how they rise in popularity.

Furthermore, we do not see any scroll burnings; Sora merely jumps to the conclusion that Snakeroot is burning the scrolls, and gives no evidence for this assertion. (He could be removing them because he’s curious about them or wants to restore them, for all we know.) Perhaps the book is afraid of including actual imagery of book burnings, so we are only given a character’s hunch that is squeezed into the narrative to once again assert that the book is, indeed, Political. Similarly, we are informed that dissidents are being kidnapped and disappeared.

“You should care,” Aurora said. “If she gets her talons on you, you’ll disappear like the dragons who wrote that pamphlet about her. Or the one who asked about her succession plans in front of the whole court. Remember? No one ever saw him again? Or even if she just puts you in the dungeon, I’ll be so sad.” “Wait, what do you mean?” Umber asked. “Dragons have disappeared?” “What do you think the King’s Teeth have been doing for the last two years?” Platypus asked. “That’s why everyone’s so afraid—if they say anything to make the king or queen mad, they could just vanish into the night.” (Chapter 14)

Again, this is something the book chooses to veil with brief descriptions that Umber has to be told about, rather than see for himself. The book is terrified of the notion of actually showing life under a dictatorship ruled by fear, and instead settles for half-assurances so Beryl’s regime can be draped in the aesthetics of dictatorship without engaging in questions of survival and collaboration. The audience can happily root for its downfall without facing the visceral reality of individuals choosing to serve the regime for entirely rational reasons. Its evils must remain faceless, because the moment Umber recognizes the guards, whom he has trained and gotten to know, dragging a terrified dragon from her bed at the dead of night—that is when the liberal illusion that collaborators are all either cowards or pathologically evil is banished.

In fact, the only dictatorial act we see from the monarchs is turning Platypus into a persona non grata, requiring everyone to call her a ghost and treat her like a nuisance, all while the regime has failed to capture her for two years. Hardly menacing by any metric.

Perhaps the most egregious scene is the flashback where we see the monarchs tossing dragonets at the enchanted Barrier that keeps the dragons imprisoned on the island and painfully shocks dragons upon repeated contact. Here is the relevant section:

“Father! Stop! What are you doing?” Mulberry tumbled over the Barrier and halted in front of the guards, his wings spread wide and his front talons outstretched. “Now, Mulberry, don’t cause trouble,” Beryl said. “We need to know if anyone else can do what you can,” Snakeroot said. “You found out by accident—so perhaps there are others. It would be useful for the whole community for us to know.” (Chapter 20)

What were they planning to do if they had found someone else who could cross the Barrier? Kidnap the dragonet from their parents, or coerce them into serving the monarchs? This scene is politically pointless, and primarily exists to show how evil Mulberry’s parents are and again establish their flavor of formless cruelty.

Besides the flashback, we don’t see the monarchs doing much. Yes, we are told that Snakeroot burns scrolls and the King’s Teeth are somehow managing to “disappear” dragons despite their absurd incompetence, but otherwise they seem relatively quaint and harmless compared to other villains in the series like Scarlet, Burn, or even Wasp.[2] The same ideological cowardice that wants to avoid the logic of totalitarianism also results in weaker writing. What are Beryl and Snakeroot motivated by? Beryl in particular is nowhere near as interesting as Scarlet, not just because she lacks Scarlet’s charisma but also due to her lack in any driving belief. Scarlet and Burn believed in the primacy of the strong over the weak, and Scarlet in particular also saw war as entertainment; Beryl wants power and nothing else, which is easier for the liberal to swallow than the totalitarian, ideological villain with genuine followers. 

In yet another flashback, we actually see rule under the Triumvirate, where we learn that everyone got along and were happy before Beryl came along.

The throne room was humming with dragons, including a line of about ten waiting to speak to the Triumvirate. Glowworm stood by Monarch’s side, holding a scroll open for her to study. A dragon Umber didn’t know was at the front of the line with two dragonets clinging to his legs. “Of course we can find you bigger quarters,” Tuatara said to him kindly. “Those two are growing so fast. Horizon, what do you think?” “Maybe in this wing,” Horizon agreed, leaning over to point at Glowworm’s scroll. “That’s what I was thinking,” Monarch said. “There are other families with dragonets in these rooms nearby, here and here. You can all help each other.” A WildWing, a hybrid SkyWing-SeaWing, and a SilkWing, ruling together. Seeing them up there made Umber feel hopeful, the way Jade Mountain Academy did. They felt like proof that dragons could coexist without endless war. (Chapter 17)

In the liberal utopia of the Triumvirate, the island’s population is small enough for the triumvirs to examine issues on a case-by-case basis, and everyone knows one another. Everything is solved with kindness and individual virtue, and there is no concrete policy beyond that, but it is nonetheless presented as proof of good governance. No hard decisions have to be made and there are no conflicts or competing interests between different classes or groups that need to be resolved. The leaders belong to three different groups, a symbolic diversity that in reality means nothing except that these three individuals can cooperate.

In fact, the book is fixated on the idea of peace and cooperation between tribes. One particular motif makes its appearance several times throughout the narrative:

[Sora] wasn’t wrong. That was how MudWings lived; you stayed with your sibling group your whole life. Umber realized he was already thinking like the other dragons at Jade Mountain. He was imagining families like other dragon tribes had, with falling in love, and dragonets you took care of, and work that wasn’t “fight a war until you die.” He’d been imagining it ever since he got to the school. A future with someone like Qibli, studying and maybe teaching and choosing his own path. (Chapter 1) No door? Umber thought as he swooped down behind Mulberry. Then how do they seal this off when they’re attacked? How do they keep out enemy dragons? Maybe they don’t need one because there are no enemy dragons here, he thought with a weird little jump of hope in his chest. Maybe this place would be peaceful, like Jade Mountain Academy. (Chapter 3) Gifts from the other tribes, Umber realized. He counted eight of them. Pyrrhia had seven tribes now … so this must be a time when BeetleWings and LeafWings still lived here. If the tribes are exchanging art honoring each other’s queens, there must be peace between the kingdoms. That was the dream of Jade Mountain Academy: a world where dragons coexisted and there was no war. (Chapter 11)

The dream of Jade Mountain Academy. The phrasing here is indicative of a liberal fascination with a very specific pair of ideas: a kind of pacifism and inter-tribal harmony, one that is achieved with a frictionless ease. This is an aesthetic vision of liberalism, one where meaningful cultural differences do not exist and everyone can simply get along without compromise or conflict, when in reality their interests—for instance, those of an Amazon warehouse worker and Jeff Bezos—are misaligned.

Furthermore, the scene with the Triumvirate contains no conflicts or true disagreements, because in the liberal mind, there are no systems that may put certain groups at a disadvantage; there are only good and bad actors. Checks and balances do not exist, and neither do differences in opinion over policy, because personality is a substitute for politics. These Great Dragons only know how to handle things with empathy and grace, because it is the only moral universe the book can envision.

It is kindness as governance, which cannot survive contact with the real world. And when Beryl storms into the throne room to overthrow the triumvirs, she proves this aptly.

Umber wanted so badly to wade in and help—but he knew he couldn’t. He wasn’t really here. He was just seeing Quokka’s memory of this terrible day. He wished he had been here, though. He could see why Beryl wanted her followers trained; the King’s Teeth fought haphazardly and were easily distracted. His troop of siblings could have taken down all twenty of them on their own. But in this throne room they were attacking small dragons, peaceful dragons, and dragons who’d come here to escape violence; there wasn’t anyone, really, who could fight back. (Chapter 17)

Umber wishes he could have been at the scene of the crime, heroically fighting off the usurpers. If only he and his siblings had been there to protect the triumvirs, none of this would’ve happened. This is the liberal conception of Great Man Theory in action: there are no systems, only heroes and villains, and someone in the right place and time could’ve saved the day. However, what the book actively ignores is the weakness, and neglect, of the Triumvirate. Even if Beryl had been fended off, if the system had remained the same something similar would’ve happened at a later point, and eventually succeed.

The sociologist Max Weber outlined the concept of the monopoly on the legitimate use of force. A state, within its borders, is the only entity that can use coercive threats or force to ensure compliance; under most circumstances any other person or group who does so would be doing it illegally. This is one of the most well-known definitions of a state, and this monopoly on violence is enforced and maintained through courts, police, and criminal law. The Triumvirate lacks any formal apparatus to enforce legal codes. Under the Weberian framework, if a state loses its ability to enforce its monopoly on violence, it has ceased to function as one and has failed its citizens; any violent actors, such as Beryl, may exert their own power at will.

However, the book does not see it that way. In liberal thought, defenselessness is a moral virtue, and any form of coercion, as opposed to consensus and compromise, must be illegitimate and evil. In the book, it is a tragedy that the dragons of the Court could not protect themselves, and pacifism is in fact a sign of the moral superiority of the triumvirs, not an act of profound neglect and irresponsibility on their part wherein they failed to protect their constituents and allowed the island to fall under a two-year dictatorship.

At the end of the book, Beryl is overthrown and the Triumvirate is restored. The sequence is framed as a triumphant return of the Good Rulers, much closer to the return of Aragorn or Simba than any self-respecting democratic process. Harmony is restored and all is as it should be.

Umber didn’t see who ended up taking Beryl, Snakeroot, and Taipan off to the dungeons. He heard Platypus arguing with Quokka and Quokka ignoring her to tend to Taipan’s venom wounds. He heard Monarch and Glowworm both crying as they threw their wings around Royal. It sounded as though a hundred dragons were asking the Triumvirate questions. […] “Me too,” Umber said. He looked around. Someone had already found the third council seat that had been removed and three dragons were hauling it onto the dais to put it back in place. Tuatara, Horizon, and Monarch were hugging dragons and making suggestions and trying to listen to everyone at once. Out in the halls, someone started singing a Northern Lights song and several dragons joined in. (Chapter 26)

Restoring the Triumvirate was so easy that even the throne that had been removed during Beryl’s dictatorship is easily dusted off and replaced. Evidently she did not destroy it or dispose of it, as most dictators would do, but rather put it in a storage closet in case it may be needed again. The transition is frictionless. There was evidently no need for snap elections after the triumvirs’ two-year hiatus, or any form of amnesty or restorative justice, as none of these are mentioned in the rest of the book. In the liberal fantasy, the peak of political achievement is a return to the status quo; justice has been achieved, all is right again, and safeguards to prevent another coup are not needed. This is the exact same Triumvirate that was so weak it fell to the comically incompetent King’s Teeth, but as long as noble heroes like Umber and Platypus are around, so it will remain.

Platypus

Platypus is a study in contradictions. In THB, she is meant to be a fiery revolutionary, but such an uncompromising archetype is not fully compatible with the polite, liberal vision of the book. To fit she must be sanded down and folded in order to fit into a neat little box, so much so that she less resembles her intended archetype and more an incoherent composite of traits.

For one, she is fiercely loyal to the Triumvirate. Almost fanatically loyal, in fact. She is willing to fight and die for them, and in a flashback she is shown fighting off several dragons and even seriously injures Snakeroot.

“The three you really need to meet are these over here: the elected Triumvirate, rightful leaders of the Court of Refuge.” (Chapter 12) “And this is Horizon.” Platypus gave a little bow at the dragon next to her, whose scales were dappled red and blue. (Chapter 12) “YOU WILL NEVER BE MY QUEEN!” Platypus bellowed at [Beryl] from atop the table. (Chapter 17)

Strange words for someone who is simply a believer in fairness and elections. “Rightful leaders of the Court of Refuge.” “You will never be my queen.” She bows at a member of the Triumvirate and consistently refers to the monarchs as traitors and thieves.

No one calls a president or prime minister the rightful leader of anything. In fact, Platypus’s words sound far more like the words of someone who subscribes to the divine right of kings and queens. Her loyalty to the Triumvirate is far more like that of a knight whose family has served the monarch for countless generations.[3]

Had [Platypus] really been living in the walls for two years, causing chaos and leaving notes and being treated like a ghost by everyone? All because she believed so much in the possibility of a fairer system and better leaders? (Chapter 12)

The liberal fantasy expects the reader to believe that Platypus, who severely wounded Snakeroot as a dragonet, is simply passionate in her belief in voting. However, no one turns into a revolutionary because they are upset at procedures being broken. People radicalize and turn to direct action because they and their community are suffering. However, liberalism cannot conceive of this. Because it conceives itself as the most rational, pragmatic ideology, it naturally follows that proceduralism is the most noble cause worth fighting for. As demonstrated earlier, Beryl’s failure to follow the protocol is what the Triumvirate loyalists are most upset about.

Of course, Platypus needs a way to express her anger at the usurping monarchs. However, there are only two incidents in the book in which she actually injures someone, and in both cases she was acting to defend someone whose life was in immediate danger. Naturally, it makes most sense for Platypus to distribute pamphlets and commit acts of vandalism.

Beryl threw open the doors as Umber and Sora caught up to her. The waiting room looked as though it had been trampled by extremely grumpy wild boars. The couches were both overturned, startled legs pointing toward the ceiling and cushions escaping down the stairs. All the posters had been shredded into whirls of ragged snow. And everything was covered in splatters of gory purple goop. For a moment, Umber had the horrified thought that some of these strange dragons must bleed purple blood and one of them had been murdered—until he stepped on a giant smashed fruit and realized it was only mystery-fruit guts. (Chapter 6) “Sorry,” Mulberry said, picking up the bandages. “What I meant to say is that the ghost would like us to think a little harder about ‘following orders’ and how to say no to ones that we think are wrong. She leaves me notes to this effect almost every night. And I do read them! I promise!” he called, covering his head. (Chapter 9) He realized she had dropped the note from the ghost on the floor by the bed. Carefully holding Blob in place, he leaned over and scooped it up. It said, in the ghost’s spiky handwriting: YEAH, IMAGINE! YOU COULD HELP OVERTHROW THE TRAITORS WHO STOLE THE THRONE! OH WAIT … YOU COULD DO THAT WITHOUT MAGIC! (Chapter 9)

Platypus is meant to be one of the heroes of the story. However, because this is a liberal story, she cannot do anything too disruptive, too violent for liberal sensibilities; otherwise she would be far more like the Equalists (Legend of Korra) or the Flag Smashers (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier). Both are radical groups in liberal narratives who are an antagonistic force; they have sympathetic goals, but to prevent the audience from sympathizing with them too much, they are typically shown pursuing methods that “go too far,” despite their genuine grievances.[4] This is how liberalism frames radical movements: anyone who tries to reform an unjust system from the outside without using nice, incremental methods that don’t affect the status quo, must be acting irrationally, or is evil. As a result, Platypus must be watered down. She must remain palatable for the liberal audience in order to stay a “good guy,” so she is not allowed to do anything too disruptive, too morally gray, anything that would do more than annoy Beryl, anything that poses an actual threat to the system she is trying to overthrow; otherwise she would be “going too far.” Platypus is not a true revolutionary, she is the liberal fantasy of what acceptable dissent is. No one in a liberal audience would object to distributing pamphlets and throwing fruit.

In fact, the narrative seems to have a hard time taking Platypus seriously. We are told that “[Umber] wasn’t sure [Platypus] was younger [than him]; she gave off a bristly air of being a thousand times older and tougher and grumpier than him.” (Chapter 10) Given Umber is himself a young adult, we can take it that Platypus is an adult as well. However, her actions are consistently framed in a somewhat comedic light, as though they were the antics of a misbehaving child; for instance, as shown above, her vandalism is compared to the actions of “extremely grumpy wild boars.” Platypus is petulant and shrill, frequently screaming in all caps and making her rage known to everyone around her.

“I’M NOT A GHOST!” she yelled. “AAAAAARGH!” “I’m sorry!” Umber cried, scrambling out of the bed. The not-a-ghost grabbed the nearest curtain, yanked it down, and started ripping it to pieces. “Everyone said you were a ghost!” “Why would you BELIEVE THEM instead of ME?” She kicked over a bench and then picked it up again and shook it furiously. (Chapter 10)

Perhaps the most revealing passage comes from a scene in which the characters are not discussing politics at all. The characters are in a room that facilitates magical flashbacks to past events,[5] and are idly hanging around.

“Did you hear something?” Quokka asked. She stared out at the waiting cave, her blue-dappled yellow wings flickering nervously. “I thought I heard a noise.” “Me too,” Platypus said. “Uh-oh … brace yourselves … I think it was … YOUR BUTT.” “You are such a brat,” Quokka said as Platypus fell over laughing. (Chapter 16)

This is the story’s baseline attitude towards Platypus: she throws tantrums and makes potty jokes befitting a six-year-old.[6] The book refuses to take her seriously, all while having her be the story’s representative of direct action, as neutered as it is.

There is in fact a character, Aurora, who stands in opposition to her as the story’s representative of symbolic action. Fittingly for the liberal story, while Platypus is an orphan who hides in walls, Aurora is a famous, beloved pop star and singer of the band Northern Lights.[7] Her bedroom is enormous, with an oversized bed and a jewelry stand: “a fake tree as tall as [Umber] was, carved from black wood and polished to a shine, with jewelry hanging from every branch in a glittering rainbow.” (Chapter 13) In fact, Umber initially believes it is Queen Beryl’s room. When Aurora is arrested, the populace gets angry and restless; no other character besides Mulberry[8] inspires this much energy in the common dragon. The book is enamored with Aurora and the power of her song, so much so that a traumatized war veteran, Sora, instantly feels better after going to her concerts.

“You have to,” Sora said, her eyes shining. “You’ve missed two already and Aurora is—I don’t even know how to describe her. She’s magic, but like, real, like a real dragon who can make magic with only words and music. Her music makes me feel sane, Umber.” “Oh, wow,” Umber said. He hadn’t seen Sora this excited in—maybe ever? “That sounds amazing.” “When I’m listening to her, there’s finally something else in my head. Something besides Crane and Icicle and all the terrible things I keep trying to push down. It’s as if she says all the things I’m feeling and I understand myself. I can stop worrying and I can breathe and be happy, even just for a moment. That probably doesn’t make sense.” (Chapter 12)

The songs are cathartic for Sora and according to the narrative, feeling better has political relevance within the story. According to the liberal fantasy, emotional catharsis is the solution to everything and there is no need to improve living conditions as long as everyone is happy. It doesn’t stop there; the narrative again validates Aurora for her ability to inspire feeling without changing material conditions.

“Um—I mean, I guess I think what you’re both doing is important,” he said. “Like, you’ve made a really big difference to my sister,” he said to Aurora. “She was—she was really sad, and your music helps, exactly how you said. And watching everyone tonight, singing together … I think it does change things. Even if they don’t all understand what your song was saying, some of them must have.” (Chapter 14)

Furthermore, “Fly Through the Fire” (the song mentioned at the end of Chapter 26) is sung at the end of the book when the characters win, not during the moments of defiance. It is a victory song; its function is aesthetic and emotional, not political. Real protest songs are sung during the protest to rally the people and give them strength.

Umber attends the concert with Sora and listens to Aurora’s song “Fly Through the Fire;” the song is about Aurora’s emotional experiences, specifically her conflict with her parents and the weight of others’ thoughts of her, and her longing for freedom. However, Platypus crashes the concert by dropping flyers onto the audience.

A gust of snowflakes suddenly whirled across the audience. Startled, Umber caught one in his talons—but it wasn’t snow. It was a tiny, folded piece of paper. He knew before he even unfolded it that it would be a note from Platypus. An entire snowstorm of ghostly notes blanketed the singing dragons. The one in his claws said: WAKE UP! FIGHT BACK! He caught another one, which said: IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS. They’re saying the same thing, he realized suddenly. The notes and the song. Is Aurora doing that on purpose? Does she know? (Chapter 13)

They are not saying the same thing. One is a vague song about Aurora’s emotional turmoil and the other is a call to action. However, this false equivalence illustrates the liberal idea that all methods of protest are valid—except for violent terrorism, of course—and convey the same message, even when they do not in fact come close to it. It allows liberals to claim the same degree of political relevance as frontline activists, without taking on any of the risk; consider how Platypus has been unpersoned and is actively hunted while Aurora is rich, popular, and tolerated by the monarchs. This is a willful blindness entertained by liberals because truly enacting change would require disrupting society, the very idea of which liberals abhor.

Later Platypus and Aurora have a confrontation in Aurora’s room, and very few exchanges in fiction lay bare so many of the core assumptions of liberalism.

“Aren’t you in the middle of a concert?” Umber asked. “Not anymore,” Aurora said. “The queen canceled it because somebody decided to stage one of her quirky protests all over my audience.” “It’s not QUIRKY!” Platypus yelled. “It’s RIGHTEOUS and IMPORTANT!” […] “All you’re doing is making Beryl angry!” Aurora snapped at Platypus. “Hooray! Good for me!” Platypus snapped back. “That’s GREAT news! I want her to be angry every day! I want her to wake up annoyed and never feel happy for one minute! I want her to know somebody remembers what she did and she can’t just have the throne and do whatever she wants! I want everyone to know someone is fighting her, even if it’s ONLY ME!” The little dragon buried her face in Aurora’s blankets and screamed into them. “But you have to convince everyone else, too!” Aurora picked up the pillow and threw it back at her. “You need other dragons on your side if you want anything to change!” Platypus sat up again, her eyes glittering with furious tears. “No! You don’t get to lecture me! I don’t want to hear about how I’m ‘doing it wrong’ from someone who is doing NOTHING!” Aurora let out a little gasp. “Are you serious? Weren’t you even listening?” “To your songs?” Platypus said. “Is that your idea of fighting back? You wrote a song vaguely conveying some feelings and everyone’s supposed to guess that it’s really about the king and queen?” “Yes! I think my songs can make a difference!” Aurora cried. “That’s what music is for! The whole point is for dragons to hear it and feel braver or understood or more sympathetic to someone else. That way they can be strong enough to stand up when they have to!” “They have to stand up right now!” Platypus said. “Why not now?! Tell yourself whatever you need to, but you know what would make a real difference is you landing on that stage and saying: ‘Beryl is a terrible queen who stole the throne from good dragons and now we’re all terrified of her!’” “But they know that, Platypus! Everyone knows that, but no one knows what to do about it! I don’t think it’s wrong to try and make dragons happy, or to give them all something that brings them together when everything is terrible. At least my music can make them feel less alone! I mean, that’s what I’m trying to do—I don’t know if it’s working, but I’m not doing nothing!” (Chapter 14)

The liberal narrative believes that this is a fair argument, and in fact frames Platypus as overly emotional. She is screaming and crying while Aurora remains far more composed and dismisses her actions as quirky—again we see the liberal belief that radicals must be irrational. Platypus is not fighting because she wants conditions for the dragons of the Court of Refuge to improve, but because she wants to make Beryl angry; this is presented as a petty, childish impulse rather than a serious tactic used by radicals, because liberalism cannot recognize disruption as a legitimate political strategy. Furthermore, we see the liberal preoccupation with debate and persuasion. Aurora wants to persuade the dragons of the Court to resist. In the liberal mind, because liberalism is the most rational ideology, any rational individual can be swayed to the side of good using the power of rhetoric; other methods in contrast are too forceful, too unappealing to the moderates who benefit from the status quo.

In fact, the concept of fighting back has been significantly watered down in this book. In political theory, this concept is referred to as recuperation, the process by which radical ideas are adopted, often distorted, to fit the mainstream and appeal to moderates. For instance, punk music and several types of fashion such as ripped jeans have undergone this change.

What is the best way to organize resistance? According to the book, it is by making a song not about oppression or violence or harm, but about feelings, sung by a wealthy singer insulated from systemic violence. What is the best way to use direct action? Not by way of disrupting public life or private profit so much, and by making oppression so costly, that it forces the system to respond; it is by throwing pamphlets and destroying furniture in a temper tantrum. Recuperation occurs because institutions need to neutralize revolutionary energy, redirecting it into emotional catharsis such as media. Such as a pop song, perhaps.

Platypus is in the right here. Aurora is doing nothing. She is not opposing the regime in any meaningful capacity. Neither is Platypus, for that matter, but if she did anything more than distribute flyers and cause messes she would be demonized by the liberal narrative. In fact, Aurora may be doing worse than nothing. She genuinely believes that emotional catharsis is a substitute for true political action and improving the material lives of dragons in the Court. Political art, in the liberal worldview, is not a call to action but is sufficient on its own, and while art can have political value, liberals believe it is an end rather than a means. In fact, Aurora subsumes the Court’s feelings of discontentment and redirects them towards acceptable channels in her concerts. This is recuperation; she is doing the regime’s job for them.

“I think you’re both right,” Umber said, and immediately regretted it as they swung around to look at him. “Um. Not that I know what I’m talking about.” […] “Um—I mean, I guess I think what you’re both doing is important,” he said. “Like, you’ve made a really big difference to my sister,” he said to Aurora. “She was—she was really sad, and your music helps, exactly how you said. And watching everyone tonight, singing together … I think it does change things. Even if they don’t all understand what your song was saying, some of them must have.” “It’s not enough,” Platypus said stubbornly. “Aurora is the most popular dragon in the court. Everyone adores her. She could change everything if she spoke up.” “Until I was also arrested, or turned into a ghost, or not allowed to do concerts anymore,” Aurora said, sliding her rings onto a branch of the jewelry tree. “And then I’d be useless. Some of us just fight differently. You know that.” She crossed the room and threw herself onto the bed beside Platypus. “I miss you, noisy chaos dragon.” “I miss you, too.” Platypus buried her head in Aurora’s neck and Aurora curled one wing over her. (Chapter 14)

The narrative tries to validate both forms of protest through Umber, but he only explains why he believes Aurora is right; evidently the book could not think of a justification for Platypus, or come up with a reason for why direct action is right. It is clear who liberalism prefers. However, Platypus and Aurora still make it up, showing their affection for each other (even as Aurora infantilizes Platypus again). In liberal thought, liberals and radicals fundamentally want the same things like justice and equality, even if their methods are different, and can be reconciled. While there are similarities between the two groups, such as both wanting justice, nothing could be further from the truth. Liberals uphold systems even when they are unjust while radicals want to demolish it; liberals simply want the aesthetics of radicalism without the risk.

This is evident in how Aurora speaks about her methods. She is fighting, just differently, equally valid according to the liberal narrative. She also asserts that if she did speak up, she would get in trouble, so she chooses not to. She gets the aesthetics of rebellion without the risk, all while her friend Platypus is in mortal danger.

On the surface Aurora talking about the potential dangers of direct action seems reasonable, but it reveals the individualistic nature of liberalism. Aurora is one of the Great Dragons fighting oppression, and is too valuable to risk. Because liberalism cannot conceive of collective action, individuals must make choices on a personal basis, and self-preservation becomes critical. Of course, if everyone thought like this, no collective action would be possible and nothing would change; in reality, collective power is used because people can do far more working together than on their own. It is the basis behind strikes, boycotts, and civil disobedience.

Isn’t that what happens when you try to fight the dragons with all the power? You end up alone, throwing yourself against an outstretched spear over and over again. He admired her, but he couldn’t imagine being her—waking up every day and hurling herself against a wall of spikes. Always trying to change things, but with no one to tell you how or what to do. It sounded enormously stressful. (Chapter 18)

Umber is the ideal liberal spectator: he admires radicals from a distance, but could never imagine doing what they do. This is how liberals typically perceive leftists (when they aren’t condemning their methods, that is): heroic but not threatening, stripped of the qualities that make them effective. This is how many historical activists such as MLK are perceived today; there is a collective amnesia around how much he was hated by white Americans during the fifties and sixties. Umber helps Platypus and sympathizes with her, but he never commits to what she does. He doesn’t throw pamphlets with her or put himself in danger of being unpersoned, but fancies himself an ally.

Platypus is disjointed as a character. She is simultaneously a defanged revolutionary, a misplaced knight, and an immature brat, and that’s what makes her narrative role interesting. It reveals what liberals think of radicals, and the story simultaneously asserts that she is valid and that she is not. If dragons could stand together as a group, Platypus might very well be a force to be reckoned with.

But because liberalism cannot conceive of collective action, Platypus stands alone.

The Restoration

Chapters 25 and 26 of THB are the concluding chapters of the book and deal directly with how Umber and his friends overthrow Beryl and Snakeroot.[9] It’s a bit disjointed and I’ll be leaving stuff out to focus solely on my analysis, so bear with me. This section will also be looser in structure, simply because I’ll have to present evidence in chronological order.

In chapter 25 the Triumvirate make their grand return in the climax of the story. They storm the throne room with no army; according to the logic of liberalism, they don’t need one. The characters will instead use the power of persuasion to make everyone stand down.

“Someone seize them,” Beryl said. She pointed to a WildWing near Monarch. “You! Throw that SilkWing to the floor before she runs away again.” Monarch turned to meet the WildWing’s eyes. “Hello, Pademelon,” she said affectionately. “Your little one must have mastered catching hawks by now.” “Oh, she has!” Pademelon said, beaming. “I can’t believe you remember!” “Enough!” Beryl roared. “Silence her!” Pademelon glanced nervously at the dragons around her, then squared her shoulders. “No,” she said. “I—I won’t do that.”

Because the triumvirs personally know many of the dragons, the power of empathy makes one of the guards stand down.[10] Either the King’s Teeth were never that loyal in the first place—and given none of them are given any motivations for working for the regime, that is plausible—or empathy is just that strong in the liberal fantasy.

“Fine,” Beryl said, vibrating with rage. “You’ll regret it soon enough. You do it.” She pointed at another dragon. “I won’t either,” he said. “I’ll give you first access to the Gathering every morning,” Beryl said shrewdly. “No,” he said, a little more slowly. He also kept checking the faces of the dragons around him, Umber noticed.

This is interesting, because it’s a clear example of someone acting in self-interest. He is reading the room, trying to figure out who will be victorious, and has considered Beryl’s offer (the Gathering is a dining area where food is kept, meaning he’ll get first pick of morsels). Also interestingly, he doesn’t get a name, unlike most of the guards in this scene. The dragon whose actions make the most sense from a structural angle is also the one who isn’t individualized at all in the narrative, because liberalism and structural politics are at odds.

“Kill them,” Snakeroot snarled. He hit the closest member of the Teeth with his tail. “All three of them. Right now.” The guard obediently jumped forward and so did the other King’s Teeth in the room. “Stop!” Umber cried, throwing himself between their spears and the Triumvirate. “Listen,” he said, addressing the King’s Teeth directly. “You can stop this. They need you to keep their power. If you say no, they have none.” “But if we say yes,” said one of the SkyWings, chuckling slightly as if Umber was daft, “then we have power, too.”

Umber, one of the Great Dragons of the story, jumps in to save the day. If it weren’t for him, the Triumvirate would be dead. This passage touches on the idea that people who serve regimes often do so for structural reasons, such as getting special privileges or status in exchange for service; here the King’s Teeth are shown to have a material stake in whether the Triumvirate fails or succeeds. However, notice how the story intentionally leaves the idea of “power” vague, because it doesn’t actually know what collaborators want. The liberal narrative is utterly uninterested in exploring or answering what these structural incentives are, because it doesn’t fit its framework of individuals making good or bad choices. So it ignores the question it raises, and Umber instead pivots to other means.

“Maybe for a little while,” Umber said. “But Ravine, why do you need it? You could be with your dragonets right now, playing that ball game you invented. Wouldn’t you rather be doing that? Instead of arresting Aurora and knowing everyone hates what you’re doing?” Ravine hesitated. “And Goana, what about your song?” Umber said, turning to the WildWing beside her. “You’ve been working on it for so long—didn’t you want to share it with Aurora? Weren’t you hoping she’d bring you onstage to sing it?” “I could have my own concert,” Goana said, but her talons were clenched around her spear. “I could make everyone listen to me.” “The king and queen don’t care about you,” Umber said to all of them. “They are using you, but if you die following their orders, they will forget your names by tomorrow … if they even know them now.” […] “Scorpionfish,” Umber said, stepping closer to another dragon. “I know your leg still hurts from that old accident, but you’ve always worked harder, lifted more, and flown faster than I asked. We could end this here and you could rest. You could decide for yourself what you do tomorrow, instead of waking up to another day of training and fighting and treating fellow dragons like lizards.” Scorpionfish nodded with a thoughtful expression.

In the liberal fantasy, individual appeals to conscience work like magic. Furthermore, oppression is simply a communication breakdown: the King’s Teeth don’t know what they are doing, and they need to be persuaded by the heroic Umber into standing down. All Umber needs to do is do a little talking, making personalized appeals to each guard, and once he does the communicative barrier is lifted, and each guard will make the right choice. The book frames Umber’s speech as capable leadership, like how the triumvirs know everyone and treat the Court dragons with kindness. However, this concept is a fantasy that only works in the constructed realm of fiction.

Umber knew it was easier to trust the dragons above you. He understood that so deeply. It was much easier to go along, to follow the group—easier to let someone else make the decisions. He looked around at the guards he had trained every day, all the dragons he’d worked so hard to remember and understand. They weren’t just a mass of obedient ants with sharp objects, stabbing whatever they were told to stab. They were each their own dragon. They could make a different choice.

Within the story, the King’s Teeth guards are simply dragons who have forgotten they are individuals with their own interior lives. Liberals believe that collaboration is caused by social inertia and groupthink, and all collaborators need is an empathetic speech to make them gladly switch sides. It is an astonishingly spineless stance that again resists the question of collaboration.

Scorpionfish put her spear on the floor. “I’m not killing anyone today,” she said to Umber and Snakeroot and all the dragons around her.  […] “If Scorpionfish is out, so am I,” said another WildWing. “Me too,” said Ravine. They both set their spears down.

In a final triumphant sequence, the guards drop their weapons and the deaths of the triumvirs are averted. In the story, this collective act is presented as a cascade of individual choices. Again, liberalism cannot envision collective action.

Then Taipan appears and holds a knife to Mulberry’s throat so we can have some last minute shenanigans in Chapter 26 because the book is desperately running out of ideas. (Taipan is a recurring bully character and is about as shallow as a cat’s water bowl.)

“Yeah, right.” Taipan glared around at everyone. “No one ever listens to me. I could be special, too, but no one pays attention.” […] “I can,” Taipan insisted. “I’m the one with the knife and the precious prince. I’m the only one who’s standing by our true rulers!” Umber glanced around, thinking desperately. He wished they had more dragons in the rafters. No one was close enough to get to Taipan before he hurt Mulberry. He saw a flash of black, orange, and purple scales nearby in the crowd. Was that … ? He edged closer, trying to move slowly to avoid catching Taipan’s attention. The WildWing was explaining how everyone had wronged him and disrespected him, starting with Mulberry but including everyone in the room.

Taipan is the only character who is a true loyalist to Beryl and Snakeroot, sticking with them even when they are losing, and he is presented as a whiny little #@%$ who wants attention. He is committed to the monarchs because of his ego and grievances. Again, the liberal story doesn’t want to address why people work for evil regimes. We have already covered the King’s Teeth, who work for the monarchs because of groupthink and are easily snapped out of it. In the liberal mind this is one type of collaborator and Taipan is the other, the kind who works for an evil regime simply because they are evil themselves. Because liberalism cannot conceive that regimes build genuine ideological blocs, it must resort to an individualist explanation; in this manner the regime loyalist is pathologized and made as nasty and pathetic as possible. Again the story dodges the difficult question of why people choose collaboration.

Umber spots Royal, who is the son of Monarch, one of the triumvirs. He initially tries to appeal to Royal’s conscience, but it doesnt work. So he tries a different tack.

“Imagine if [your parents] were back in charge instead of Beryl and Snakeroot,” Umber said. “Then you’d basically be the prince here, wouldn’t you? Instead of Mulberry?” Royal’s wings twitched. He stared at his parents for a long moment, then back down at Umber. “Interesting,” he said.

This is presented as the turning point in the conversation: Umber gets Royal on his side by invoking his bloodline privilege. There is a monarchist framing in this, where Monarch being one of the leaders equals status and privilege for her son Royal. No one would talk about a president or prime minister’s son in this manner; it is simply not how healthy democracies work.

“Go sit down,” Taipan sneered. “This is out of your league.” Dugong puffed up his shoulders. “No, it isn’t. I’m from the royal MudWing bloodline,” he said. “You always tell me that.” “So?” Taipan said. “So … uh …” “So maybe you should listen to us for once,” Royal said, gliding onto the stage. He nudged Dugong aside and gave Taipan a condescending face. “If ‘royalty’ is so important to you, technically Dugong and I are both princes and you’re … not.” “Shut up!” Taipan yelled. […] “You’re so boring, Taipan,” Royal said cuttingly. “You’re so petty and small and proud of your own stupid cruelty. Imagine getting onstage to whine to the entire court about how no one pays attention to you.” A few dragons in the crowd laughed. “Shut up, shut up!” Taipan shouted again. He swung Mulberry around to face Royal. “Nobody laughs at—” As soon as his back was turned, Platypus whipped around and sprayed her venom at Taipan. It splattered across his wings and he shrieked, dropping the knife and Mulberry as he flailed backward.

Platypus’s attack is more of an afterthought than anything; in the story Taipan has already lost by being humiliated by Royal in public (complete with laugh track). Bloodline privilege is invoked again, wherein Royal asserts his superiority by pointing out that he and Dugong are of royal blood while Taipan is not. Rather than arguing back, Taipan is reduced to a sputtering mess, screaming at Royal to shut up. Liberalism values the art of a cutting argument to own the opposition (think The West Wing), wherein the hero uses clever and witty rhetoric to shock their opponent into speechlessness, or in this case, reduce them to irrationality, thus showing that they are incapable of reasoned debate. Rather than a typical liberal argument, however, the story reverts to monarchist logic. Royal and Dugong are simply superior because they are royalty. This is because the story is monarchist at its core, likely without consciously realizing it.

Also, this is just bullying, but I guess it’s okay because Royal is on Team Good Guys now and Taipan deserves it or something.

The restoration of the Triumvirate I’ve already covered in previous sections, but here’s a brief recap: the extra throne is taken out of storage, everything is back to where it should be, and the dragons sing “Fly Through the Fire” as a victory song. There is no mention of reelections and no mention of the King’s Teeth; evidently the only dragons that need to be punished are Beryl, Snakeroot, and Taipan. We are only told, “Platypus had decided to stay at court, partly to keep an eye on Beryl and Snakeroot’s trial and partly to make sure no one else caused trouble for the Triumvirate.” (Chapter 27) Once again we loop back around to Great Man Theory of heroic individuals like Platypus who maintain the system and make sure no one else can overthrow it. And this is how the story ends: Great Dragons play their part, restore the rightful rulers to their thrones, and all is well again.

Conclusion

In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote an open letter from Birmingham City jail; he had been arrested earlier during the Birmingham campaign, a series of marches and sit-ins protesting racial segregation in the city. “Letter from Birmingham Jail” would go on to become one of the most important documents of the civil rights era.

In the letter, King outlines how negotiations and talks in Birmingham have consistently failed, forcing the protesters to resort to nonviolent direct action. He also explains that while some laws are just, others are not, and people have a duty to break unjust laws. Then he brings up the white moderate, what we today might call the white liberal.

[…] I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

Does all this sound familiar? It should, because what King describes as a great stumbling block on the path to freedom aligns precisely with the principles and ideas of liberalism as I have outlined in this post. The devotion to law and procedure; the dismissal of direct action; the theoretical alliance with radicals that is undercut by everything else the liberal believes in.

Much like throwing paint on something invisible, my post has endeavored to reveal the outline of a set of pervasive beliefs, embedded deep in the social fabric of America. The Hybrid Prince strives to be political art, but ask yourself: what does it truly believe, and is it as radical as it wants to be?

That will be all. Have an excellent day/night, folks.

[1] I find the name “Triumvirate” an… interesting choice. It is typically used to refer to two political alliances from the late era of the Roman Republic: the one of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus and the one of Octavian, Antony, and Lepidus. Neither were particularly interested in upholding the institutions of the Roman Republic. So why assign this name, with this baggage, to your fictional democratic leaders? Of course, “triumvirate” is also used casually to refer to a group of three leaders, but most likely the name just sounded cool.

[2] There is a cowardice in how Wasp’s beliefs are portrayed as well, but that is neither here nor there.

[3] The most likely reason for this is that the book wanted a revolutionary firebrand character. However, the story is structured like a “restore the rightful ruler to the throne” story far more than a story about a rocky transition to democracy. It is a monarchist story with a democratic skin, and as a result, the resulting logic and language of monarchism slipped into the character of Platypus without much thought.

[4] I know both LoK S1 and TFATWS had production issues, but I’m invoking my death of the author card here. I am looking at them as texts that stand alone, without outside context. This is also the reason I have chosen not to reference other WoF books.

[5] This series has heavily relied on flashbacks to convey plot information for the past three books in a row. I’m starting to think flashbacks are the writer equivalent of heroin.

[6] Children typically stop finding toilet humor funny around the age of seven.

[7] In addition to Aurora genuinely giving off Taylor Swift vibes in the book (at least for me), it’s also notable that somehow Tui/Scholastic somehow got Christina Perri to sing an expanded version of the song from the book. Which feels strange to me given the WoF show isn’t even out yet, but hey, what do I know about marketing. The added stanzas not present in the book are the first one (“Welcome to the sunlit isle”) and one near the end (“So watch us break our chains”).

[8] In Mulberry’s case he is popular because he is the only individual who can cross the enchanted Barrier that keeps the populace trapped on the island.

[9] There is also a Chapter 27, but it’s more of a pseudo-epilogue, followed by the actual epilogue.

Outlining

I initially came up with the idea of this fic while waiting for a concert to start. It was mid-November. I thought to myself, hey, several years ago (2021-2022) I wrote a joke version of Wings of Fire 15 called Flame of Hoping, so why not write a joke version of 16 as well, using the available information on 16 as a sort of writing prompt? I jotted down some ideas in my notes app, and added more as I brainstormed.

The problem was that I came up with this story very late. I only had about three and a half months to finish the project before the book's general release, and it was a fairly ambitious project to boot. At the time I clocked the story to be 20-25k words at completion, but it wound up being over twice that length. The more time I spent writing this fic, slowly realizing its total length, the more I was like, "Oh no."

I planned to start working on the fic in November, then finish it by the end of January as a soft deadline, with the entire month of February as a buffer of sorts in case I didn't meet the soft deadline for whatever reason. I would not meet the soft deadline, so thank goodness for all the buffer days I had the foresight to give myself.

I didn't want to wing this. The last time I tried to discovery write something novella length, it ended up being a mess that I abandoned. So I tried outlining, which made a huge difference, at least to me. If you're a writer, don't be afraid to experiment to find out what works for you.

I wrote a mostly-complete outline on my document over several days, going over the basic plot beats I wanted to include and color coding them so I could see what each scene was doing for the narrative. Yellow for introspective scenes involving Umber, blue for things that advanced the main plot involving the secrets of the island and the queen, orange for anything that advanced Mulberry and Umber's romantic subplot, and red for scenes that involved both the main plot and the subplot. As you can imagine, the story had interposed blue and orange scenes, but the scenes transitioned towards mostly red towards the end of the fic, representing how the subplots come together. I wanted the two plots to be connected from the very start, so it didn't feel like they were coming together for no reason (looks at Dragonslayer). So Mulberry is tied to his mother's activities from the very beginning, but it's only near the end of the fic that we learn this, when the threads come together.

This was essentially my first time writing anything with more than one plot thread, since I was accustomed to writing short stories that are mainly about one thing, and I had to learn to balance them on the fly. I felt like the color coding helped me immensely here. Certain plot points I didn't really figure out, such as how Umber and Mulberry would reconcile after their fight, until I was close to writing the actual scenes in question. There was some minor retconning, which I'm not happy about, but the fic is already out and I have a rule against editing things I've already put out unless it's to fix typos or whatever.

I was also unafraid to edit the outline or diverge from it if necessary, though it didn't happen often. I hate sounding mystical (me, the number one hater of terms like "soulfulness"), but sometimes you do discover or work out things during the writing process that give you reason to diverge from the outline. Being flexible is important.

Tonally, I knew I didn't want to make it intentionally bad like my previous Book 15 parody, so I had to include both crack and serious elements. The million dollar question is whether I incorporated both successfully, and I'm still not sure if I quite pulled it off. YMMV.

My outline also included a timeline of events describing what happened on the island and when, so I could keep track of historical events. I paid close attention to setup and payoff as well, and an outline helps with keeping track of what you've set up and how it'll pay off. After the outline was mostly completed, I was ready to get to the writing itself.

For pretty much the entire fic, I wrote to the Silksong soundtrack. I'm a big fan of classical or classical-like music and this track really fit the bill. The sense of grandeur and mystery the music conveyed really helped me with writing this story at a sustained pace. Choral Chambers in particular put me in mind of polished, reflective surfaces, which is why reflections as a motif occur so often in this fic.

I only started publishing chapters after I had finished about half the fic. It's good practice to hold a few chapters in reserve.

Chapter 1

Umber had never in his life asked to be anything, much less a hero.

The opening line sets up Umber's arc about him realizing he can indeed be a hero; it's vaguely, sort of, meant to mimic how Wings of Fire often writes its opening lines. Especially in the third arc, a lot of them are lines meant to establish some aspect of characterization, like "Luna wanted to change the world" or, for a non-low-hanging fruit example, "Sundew sometimes liked to imagine that she could fly all the way around the world without stopping, using nothing but her fury to keep her going."

It's pretty basic, but it gets the job done. I then pull back and show Umber's thoughts about his own inadequacy compared to Reed or Clay. My version of Umber is quiet and introspective and nervous, and he likes romance scrolls, the kinds that have simple plots, ideal for someone who canonically isn't that good at reading.

Throughout the story there's an inherent tension in Umber and Sora's relationship. Yes, Sora is Umber's sib and sibs are supposed to be loyal to one another, but Sora bombed a school, and she has guilty PTSD nightmares about it.

I also wanted to show Umber being observant, and for there to be a reason for the two to fly off towards an unknown territory, so he notices the birds flying south. They conclude there must be a livable landmass to the south. Sora is paranoid and brings up squids, which is foreshadowing.

Umber gets attacked by a kraken when he gets too close, and Mulberry comes flying in like a knight. Where did he come from? Had he been following them? Umber doesn't want to think about that too closely, and he's too distracted by how attractive Mulberry is.

And yes, Mulberry is Australian, and so is another character introduced later, Kingsnake. Except for Mulberry, his Aussie slang is part of a persona he wears to look charming. Kind of how Qibli acts charming to mask his insecurities. Hey, I think Umber has a type...

Umber likes romance scrolls. This is both a character quirk and an in-universe explanation for why Umber feels romantic attraction, given he's from a culture where romance isn't really a thing.

So Mulberry tells them about the Court, and given Sora has no other option, she and Umber decide to go. I'm sure there is nothing sinister whatsoever about dragon Australia.

Mulberry's skin horns are referenced again in the climax.

Chapter 2

Before Mulberry is revealed to be a prince, we see how familiar he is with everyone. He laughs easily. Or at least pretends to.

I decided to include a customs joke here because I have been to many airports in the past, and to establish a bit of worldbuilding. Countries require declaration of goods because an invasive species could wipe out a lot of crops. Large sums of money also require declaration due to worries about money laundering. The more you know.

However, this scene is also meant to establish Sora's paranoia. She still has two bombs on her and could be kicked out, but Mulberry intercedes because he doesn't want a ruckus. He probably thinks the bombs aren't that big a deal, but then, dragonflame cacti don't really exist on Australia. Well, yet.

I had to retool the customs scene a bit, I think. Originally it was just gonna have Mulberry wave them through to show he's allowed to carry weapons, but that was too weak for an entire scene, so I also introduced the bomb as a Chekhov's Gun that would return at the very end.

This chapter introduces both the automata, the queen's bronze creations, and Sparrow/the Captain. The automata are based off the ones in Silksong, since I was watching a Silksong Let's Play around the same time I worked on the fic. As of my writing this, the LP has yet to conclude. Skong is a big game, who knew? And why not introduce intricate automatons.

As for Sparrow, he's Captain America. I figured since I included Batman in my previous joke Wings of Fire book, why not include another superhero in this one? And I picked Captain America, because he fits the thematic throughline of uncovering the past, sort of.

“Looks more like a performance venue of some sort. Like an opera house, maybe?”

Haha Sydney Opera House resemblance joke, let's move on

Chapter 3

Umber loses his mind when he hears Mulberry is a prince, because of course he does. It's straight out of the plot of the in-universe equivalent of a regency romance.

I also use strange temperature gradients as a signifier of magic presence.

In the lore of my fanfic, the Court of Refuge was founded by Queen Kempelen and a faction of loyalists who split off from the Talons of Peace. This made sense when I wrote it months ago, but I think Book 16 is now gonna set the Court up as this, like, old faction that's been around for thousands of years, as opposed to a recent thing that is unknowingly sitting on a lot of history. This is also why a lot of Court dragons in my fic are scarred, and why there aren't any hybrids beyond Mulberry and his sister. I'm generally not a fan of including hybrids solely for the sake of having hybrids, or showing how everyone is getting along, or something. Sure, some hybrids make sense, and under certain circumstances we may get "mutts" with a lot of mixed ancestry, which occurs in my Wings of Fire AU to some extent. But I'm not a fan of adding hybrids just to make fans happy, if that makes sense.

Similarly, LeafWings in this fic found Australia and lived there for some years, and later on they integrated with Queen Kempelen's settlement, but over time they all "died," with Mulberry's father being the last to kick the bucket.

Queen Kempelen is a clockmaker, an artisan who enjoys her craft. Her art is considerably different from Mulberry's, as we'll see later. Clockmaking is all about order and precision, while Mulberry's work is much more freeform.

Yes, she wears a thylacine pelt. Extremely villainous, if you ask me, given thylacines were previously stated to be endangered, and are extinct on Earth. There's a bit in the story where she has a lot of overt signs of villainy, like her over-the-top name, having yellow Scarlet eyes, and wearing pelts of endangered creatures, all while Umber remains oblivious.

Queen Kempelen is named not after an Australian bird, but after Wolfgang von Kempelen, the creator of the Mechanical Turk. I love Mechanical Turk type symbolism, the idea that the automaton is a hoax and there's actually a person inside who moves it around. Which is how the automatons in my story work, just with magic instead.

The magic Australia map serves to explain how Mulberry knew about Umber and Sora coming to the island; he flew out to intercept them before a kraken could attack.

Prism and Scrollsmith are introduced in this chapter as well. While Prism is technically one of my sonas, here she moreso represents the jaded side of the WoF fandom while Scrollsmith is the more optimistic variant fixated on BeetleWings and shipping. Seriously, what is it with this fandom and BeetleWings?

The next part is just one long joke about Australian food, I don't have much else to add. Meanwhile, the weird ominous things about the queen continue to add up. It all makes sense when you realize she has a mind control crown and doesn't like it when dragons die because she needs to turn them into automatons.

Chapter 4

So, Lychee!

I find myself dissatisfied with how Wings of Fire handles baby characters. While I wrote this chapter before the publication of Winglets 5, many of the problems in that winglet are indicative of WoF's child writing in general. It tries to make kids as Cute and Precocious as possible instead of reflecting how actual kids behave, and parents are never exhausted, sad, or angry due to their kids, always delighted at their child's antics. Furthermore, children are mischievous but never do anything "bad" on purpose. They're unintentionally annoying, and not in a way that reflects how actual kids act.

I sought to remedy that in Lychee's character. She bites, she acts like a kid with her own motivations and logic, and doesn't exist solely to be Cute and Precocious, but also sets up Mulberry's family ties.

This is also a sort-of prediction that THB will include a new baby character. My version just happens to be Mulberry's sister. You see, WoF's first arc introduced one baby character (Auklet), the second arc introduced two (Cliff, Peacemaker), and the third arc introduced four (Bumblebee, Mink, Dusky, Freedom). Following this pattern, the fourth arc will introduce a staggering eight baby characters, so I figured I might as well include one in my parody.

(This shouldn't need to be said, but the statistical projection above is tongue in cheek. But it does point to a pattern of more baby characters being introduced to the series overall.)

You may notice this is where Umber starts to get into his backstory because he feels compelled to share, but is interrupted by Lychee and the moment is ruined. I did originally intend to have him talk uninterrupted here, but decided a) it was way too early for Umber to open up like this in the narrative and b) Lychee must be bored out of her mind. I have a rule that if I do a bathos and break a serious moment for a laugh in one scene, I have to actuall follow through and deliver the serious moment for real later on; this is what Into the Spider-Verse did with Miles initially being too chicken to take the leap, then actually jumping for real later. This is a writer trick known as having your cake and eating it too.

Mulberry is clearly a tired teenager trying to deal with a kid. Kids are annoying! Let them be annoying in fiction!

Anyways, the Umber and Sora scene. I wanted to show how conflicted Umber felt regarding Sora, and that they're both kids with PTSD. I wanted Umber to not really feel unconditional loyalty, and then feel bad about it because of his upbringing. It was also very important to me that Sora feel bad for killing two dragonets, to eventually build up the mini arc she has over the story, where her emotions are smoothed over by the enchantment so she doesn't have to feel bad or think about the past, then that guilt returning after the climax, culminating in her deciding to turn herself in. Lark's death is just the catalyst for Sora's worsening state here. The last thing I wanted was for Sora to come off as an unrepentant murderer, because that's probably one of the least sympathetic character traits possible; this way, the readers are sort of rooting for her when she decides to turn herself in, but in a "yes please get help" sort of way.

Umber is stuck between a rock and a hard place. He wants to support Sora, but he also doesn't want to be stuck with a wanted criminal instead of spending time with the rest of his sibs. A tweak I would make here if I could: I would put more focus on MudWing philosophy being based on oral tradition rather than the written word, which would make more sense for Umber given he's not supposed to be that good of a reader.

Chapter 5

The scene of correlating good/bad parenting with overall goodness/villainy is based off a chart made in a Discord server. It should go without saying that evil characters are, in general, also bad parents.

Umber short-circuits when he's asked about his mother, because, well, MudWings don't really do parents and that's fine.

This chapter is pretty lowkey and mostly just serves as connective tissue, though I did sneak more Umber and Sora dynamics in there and how his feelings towards her are mixed. Sora also gets frustrated at Umber due to a combination of paranoid and not wanting to be babied, but being under the influence of the magic crown fog is probably affecting her as well, removing her feelings of sadness and guilt.

This is followed by the observatory scene. I was originally gonna have an extended sequence here where Umber deducing the Court building's age through Mulberry updating the star maps, revealing that the Court is three hundred years old based on the positions of the stars in said maps, but I scrapped this because it was too long of a scene to deliver one piece of information. The final scene has Mulberry just saying the star charts are three hundred years out of date, and most of the scene is him and Umber bonding.

Chapter 6

The vents are introduced here, which allow Umber to sneak around the Court while bypassing guards in order to reach certain areas and eavesdrop on conversations. No wonder writers love vents...

At this point Mulberry is conflicted. He wants to be loyal to his mother and earn her love, but he also in a way wants Umber to realize what is going on. He has feelings for Umber, after all. He leaves quickly to maintain plausible deniability, and Umber stays behind as he watches the queen reveal her secret passageway and Junco. Junco is based off the Winter Soldier, and the reason the queen only developed full dragon automatons after coming to the island is because she found Junco and reverse-engineered his prosthetic.

“Of course she does,” Sora said. “Haven’t you noticed how kind the queen has been to me? She values my presence. She says she likes how thoughtful and quiet I am.”

This hints at how the queen prefers it when dragons are quiet 100% of the time.

The Scrollsmith bit is a joke about the prophecy and how Book 16's prophecy is apparently not gonna be at the start of the book, because spoilers or something. I guess Romeo and Juliet rules don't apply here.

Chapter 7

Weeks passed.

I wish writers allowed stories to breathe and settle. Not every plot has to occur over the course of a few days... looking at you, Arc 3.

Umber's been getting more paranoid while Sora's been relaxing, the latter due to the enchanted crown and the former due to his investigations.

In between the main plot, I needed to let Umber breathe by letting him hang out with Mulberry and just be himself. Here he guts fish while talking about MudWing cuisine, something the actual series has yet to do. You'd think that MudWings, who are stereotyped as foodies in the books, would have a thriving food culture... but no.

I wonder where the ice comes from? (Next to the ice chamber where Junco is kept.) And they're ice balls, not cubes, because they don't come from molds, so there's no reason for them to be cube-shaped.

After that moment of levity, it's time for Umber to open up. He tells Mulberry about Sora, and Mulberry promises he'll protect Sora. This will come back later.

Mulberry also mentions the rule that no one's allowed off the island for security reasons. As we will see, the queen's motivations primarily stem from wanting to protect the Court from anyone from Pyrrhia who might want to invade. I just realized Umber should've been at least a little more bothered by not being allowed to leave, since Pyrrhia is where all of his sibs are, but maybe he knows he can always sneak off the island. Idk, I could've been more graceful about this. This is why editing is useful, folks. And it's also why writing serialized fiction is a special form of hell. How do people keep everything straight? A really solid outline right from the beginning? Isn't that how Breaking Bad was written? I guess a solid outline is the key to success here.

Chapter 8

I had the initial idea for this fic while waiting for a concert to start, so why not include a concert?

I'm not entirely happy about how I handled one particular aspect of this. It took a while for me to figure out exactly what Mulberry knew and was culpable for, and it was only near the end that I decided to have Mulberry know his mother converted his father, essentially making it a retcon. If I could go back, I would've given Mulberry a much stronger reaction to seeing his father as an automaton, as according to my timeline this would've been the first time Mulberry would see him post-transformation.

The problem is, this seemingly small change vastly affects what Mulberry knows about the queen, and therefore makes it look as though he is deliberately lying to Umber about Sora. If I could go back and edit this fic, I might tweak Mulberry's actions in later sections, such as having him plead for his mother to save Sora. Or would that make him look naive? This is why I'm not happy about this retcon, especially in this case where I was publishing a chapter a week while writing later sections.

The scene the queen and Cogwork Laurel dancing is based off the Cogwork Dancers in Silksong.

“Welcome to the lovers’ balcony,” Mulberry said with a smirk. “This place is pretty out of the way, so dragons don’t come here much. The only other dragon I’ve seen here is the Captain, and he’s always by himself for some reason. I like the view from here, though.”

This is, of course, setup for the Captain appearing here in a later scene.

Mulberry explains his core conflict. He feels the weight of expectations on him as well as how he himself doesn't match said expectations. His use of the capturebox, his painting style, the fact that he's trans, him sneaking around in the vents as a dragon, etc are all meant to tie back to this. And yeah I made Mulberry trans in my fic. What can I say, it fit him and at time of writing I doubted the actual Book 16 would include a trans character.

However, the main plot crosses over with the subplot when Umber learns Mulberry knows something about the mysterious IceWing assassin, Junco. This drives Umber to continue digging up the mystery.

As a bonus note, Chapters 7 and 8 were originally gonna be one chapter, but I decided to split them up to give myself a break, and because the two combined would've been a bit unwieldy. Sometimes chapters are just naturally longer and sometimes they need to be split up for flow.

Chapter 9

Today, Umber enters an old lady's basement to find a supersoldier put in storage. He's kept on ice and thawed out whenever the queen needs him for something.

Umber also finds old notes throughout, and I tried to word them in a way that came off as natural, as something a dragon long ago might actually write as opposed to solely existing to be exposition for our protagonist. I think it does come off as exposition-y at times, but at least I'm not resorting to magic visions that just show everything, a la Books 14 and 15. The longer I exist on this earth, the more I become convinced visions are like cocaine for writers. They can't stop adding them to their stories.

The letters insinuate that the animus who enchanted the island, Princess Stingray, was just a dragonet. She was the one who filled the Court with vents so she could play hide-and-seek and reach places she wasn't supposed to go. However, she vanished one day and the SeaWings could no longer continue their wartime experiments on Junco and the SeaWing kingdom's own criminals; the crown was specifically enchanted to keep any dragon who had committed a serious crime in the past loyal to the wearer, useful for keeping prisoners from getting rowdy.

When the queen appears, she assumes a RainWing has infiltrated the island and is spying on her. She's also very paranoid--hey, maybe paranoia's a bit of a running theme in this story--and decides to lock the basement so any intruder can't escape. She can't even conceive that the dragon investigating her is Umber, and the only other escape option is accessible only to SeaWings and MudWings.

My parody fic has a nod to WoF's Book 1 with Umber exploring a cave filled with glowworms. However, unlike Clay, he comes across ruins. As far as I know ruins don't really exist in the books, except for a recently destroyed scavenger settlement and the remains of the lost city of night. I didn't want to pass up an opportunity to explore an ancient settlement, though. It's all very much based off The Forgotten City, particularly the motif of civilizations being built off one another. The modern Court inhabits the remains of the SeaWing military base, which is in turn built on top of an old BeetleWing settlement.

I really liked writing the SeaWing notes and getting to inject some personality into these long-dead characters.

Some of my thoughts and reasoning while describing the BeetleWing settlement:

The Pantalans might not have had a writing script before Clearsight, so it is possible she introduced it to them. The Pantalans might also have brought the script with them when fleeing the Distant Kingdoms. However, the Pantalans who were around circa Clearsight's time spoke a distinct language from draconic despite using the same alphabet, which is why Umber does not recognize the words.

The BeetleWing settlement used bronze tools for mining, fishing (with spears), etc. The culture produced many tapestries, which was what once hung from the wall hooks, but they didn't last.

What's with the tiny statues everywhere? See if you can figure it out yourself before I publish the bonus chapter I may or may not end up writing.

The mural is meant to be vague. Is it a group of BeetleWings who had disagreements with Clearsight and left Pantala over it, or a group of BeetleWings who had to flee Pyrrhia for whatever reason? Umber assumes it's Pyrrhia because, well, he's Pyrrhian.

Chapter 10

Umber notices Sora being weird. And yeah, she's getting a little weird. I also reminded the readers of the dragonflame cactus here, so they didn't forget about that Chekhov's gun. We also see Umber getting paranoid from sleeplessness and his investigations, which I based off 70s thrillers where the protagonist can't trust anyone.

Fortunately, the next day Cap lets Umber safely decompress. When asked, he also tells Umber about the mass arrest of criminals in Queen Titan's time. It's a hint that the crown was used to control criminals, hence the queen's control only affecting certain dragons--those who have committed crimes such as Sora--and not others, such as Umber, Mulberry, the Captain, and Kingsnake.

Speaking of Kingsnake, he's introduced here. While Mulberry uses Australian slang to disarm and deflect, Kingsnake naturally speaks like this. I also wanted to include a scene with emus in it, so here it is, emus being the scary murder birds they are.

Kingsnake alludes to a set of armor he's been working on, which will come back soon enough.

Kingsnake let out a laugh. “Then this Thorn will be queen for decades,” he said. “Unless there’s some secret SandWing heir in the wings somewhere.” Umber snorted at that.

Irony!

Something I had trouble with was making sure Umber's discovery quest didn't feel repetitive, and I'm not sure I like the execution here. This is the second time in two chapters that Umber went out and found something mysterious underground and had to take a swim. This isn't something I have to worry about in short story writing, so definitely nice to learn that's a concern here. Holefully I've balanced it out somewhat with the new character (Kingsnake).

With that seeming dead end to the main plot, this means it's time to pivot to the romantic subplot.

Chapter 11

"Dragons disappearing due to exploring the interior" is awfully convenient to explain why dragons keep disappearing and their bodies don't turn up.

Mulberry's painting style is modeled off Rothko's. Rothko was notoriously secretive about his process--he wanted people to focus on the end result, not the process, and he'd probably hate that I'm discussing it right now--but basically, he would place layers upon layers of homemade paint on a canvas like a watercolor, then use a large brush or rag to feather the edges of his large colored rectangles, producing a characteristic hazy effect.

“It’s like, Mom, can you not make this your entire personality? Can you imagine if I were obsessed with painting to a similar degree? It would make me pretty boring, don’t you think?”

Cough, Luna in Book 15, cough.

There's BeetleWing design talk and a joke about how there's probably gonna be no BeetleWing design. I don't know why the fandom is so fascinated by BeetleWings. Probably because they let your imagination run wild. But if that's the case, why ask for more BeetleWing lore? Wouldn't that ruin the whole "you can imagine whatever you want for them" aspect of things? To be honest, I think if Wings of Fire did include a Joy Ang BeetleWing design, it'll be because the fans kept asking, over and over and over again.

Also, as someone who has been in the fandom for years, I've noticed it's really popular to hypothesize that BeetleWings are secretly alive and hidden somewhere. People have been throwing this fan theory around since Book 15 and I've seen its resurgence now that Book 16 is around the corner (technically out for a bunch of people already).

I wanted to show clearly what Mulberry's deal was. He's both an outsider who wants to be his true self, but also has to be loyal to his mother and do what she wants. This is his central conflict, between who he wants to be and what others expect of him. It's why he rejects the standard method of painting as well as the shark-eyed nature of the Court painters, rather embracing a form of free culture.

This conflict is what causes strain in Umber and Mulberry's relationship. Umber isn't particularly heroic and doesn't think he can be anything like Clay, and he succumbs to peer pressure. His fear and paranoia cause him to side with the queen, which devastates Mulberry, who thinks Umber would've sided with him.

Things really start to pick up around...

Chapter 12

The photographs were relevant to the main plot the whole time! Like the selfies in Superman 2025! I love it when something that seems innocuous turns out to be extraordinarily plot relevant later.

To be honest, I'm worried I rely on the vents too much. They are useful, but there's only so much you can do to a vent-crawling scene to make it exciting. Something to note for the future, I suppose.

Anyways, here is when Umber learns the full scale of Mulberry's duplicity. He's not just complacent, he's complicit and actually helps her. This sends Umber into a tailspin; can he really trust Mulberry now that he knows what he does?

So there are two artifacts. The reason there are two is because I wanted the mind control one to essentially be a red herring--yes, it is there, helping the queen, but it diverts attention away from the automatons. Not sure how this plays out in practice, but I didn't want the narrative to feel too cookie-cutter.

We also get to see a bit more of Junco here. He's just a little confused. He has a fantasy, or dream, of someone who cares enough for him that they would do anything to find him so they can be reunited. (This someone is, of course, Cap.)

Umber wants to leave, and this is the moment Mulberry shows up. They have a fight and split apart. Originally this scene was a fair bit shorter, but I decided it didn't hit the emotional beats the way I wanted it to, so I added several extra beats to let the scene breathe. This included this bit:

“Did you—did you ever care for me?” Mulberry whispered, examining Umber’s eyes, his own—those green eyes that Umber had once admired—wide and piercing, almost incredulous. He must’ve seen something, because after a moment Mulberry lowered his head. Umber could see his jaw working, though he tried to hide it. “I… I thought someone had finally seen me for who I was. I guess I was wrong.”

I think the small detail about the eyes makes a pretty noticeable difference.

Chapter 13

What's the deal with Scrollsmith? I don't think everything in a story needs to be explained, and I like to intentionally leave some things vague. Can she actually read minds or not? No explanation, doesn't need one.

Now here's something interesting: Umber has been paranoid of the queen all this time, but here we learn that the queen has a low opinion of Umber, so much so that she thinks he's harmless. So she lets him off with a reprimand.

Later in the chapter we get to see Kingsnake in his Ned Kelly suit of armor, and yes, it is based of Ned Kelly's famous armor. Australia!

In this chapter Umber reverses course, showing his character development by charging to Mulberry's rescue. Now it's up to him to save his loved ones. That said, it doesn't mean they immediately forgive each other because... you know.

Chapter 14

I wanted the climax to be a fight sequence. Not just because it felt natural, but because the actual Wings of Fire books tend to be lacking in those, they usually end with a bunch of characters talking. Even Darkness of Dragons. I wanted an opportunity to show off Umber's fighting skills he got from growing up in wartime, not just his PTSD. I wanted to show the automatons fighting, I wanted to show Junco fighting and his confrontation with Cap, tying up that thread before getting to the final confrontation between Umber, Mulberry, Sora, and the queen.

“Let me go! I won’t be thrown into the cells!”

The implication is that the queen keeps cells somewhere, probably where she keeps reticent dragons who need to be turned into automatons. She retrieves them once they're too tired to fight back much.

Also, Cap comes in with his MIGHTY SHIEEEEELD!

Fight scenes are hard. There's always a ton going on in one, but you also need to be clear enough to convey what the POV is thinking/doing, what's going on around them, the stakes, and who's losing/winning. This particular scene has some back and forth with Umber and co beating back the regular guards, then the automatons, then Cap, then Junco.

Fortunately, there's an opening, and Umber and Mul take it. Remember the dragonflame cactus I introduced all the way back in chapter two? I've been careful to bring it up every so often so it doesn't go forgotten. And now Umber and Mul will use it to save Sora. Yay!

Skin horns joke comes back here. Unlike the Chekhov's Gun, this is just a low-stakes joke that alludes to something all the way back in chapter one. This is a form of callback humor. The audience is supposed to have forgotten about it, so when it is eventually called back, it is unexpected.

The blast took out the mind control crown the queen was using, snapping Sora back to her senses. The statuette will be a little harder, it's more akin to the One Ring than anything.

Then Mul makes his big speech renouncing his ties to his mother, which is character development for him. He was always conflicted, but it was his mother trying to arrest him as a power move/to be turned into an automaton that really turned him against her.

The queen is pure evil, but I wanted to make her somewhat memorable. I gave her a twisted mindset and ideal revolving around silence and control, so she could do what she wished. Sure, she says it's all to protect the Court, but really, it was always about her. When she loses everything, she flees, defeated. (I thought killing or arresting her wouldn't fit the story's tone.)

I decided to give the cast a week to rest and recuperate before wrapping up the story. They've had plenty of time to process their emotions, and from here I figured it was a straight line to the finish. Resolve all the threads, in the order I was taught by creative writing lectures: in the opposite order in which they were introduced. So resolve the Captain and Junco subplot, then Umber and Mulberry's relationship, and finally give a little time to Sora, since she's the reason for all of this having occurred.

Now that the queen is gone, the dragons of the Court can finally choose their own form of governance. As you can see, anarchy is winning, because why not?

Swordfish is a political theorist, because I find the idea of someone who opposed Coral's rule to be amusing. Someone has to challenge Coral, her social darwinist ideas, and the fact that she makes every SeaWing dragonet read her bad poetry.

As you can see, no one really likes Mulberry, not even Umber (sort of) (it's complicated). I mean, he did do a lot of bad things, even if he was being coerced and manipulated by his mother into doing them. However, full amnesty is the sort of concept you see tossed around in some Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, since it lets bygones be bygones and focuses on not forgetting the past, but acknowledging it happened so everyone can move on and focus on rebuilding. But Mulberry's not ready to forgive himself even with that.

Now, as for the moment. This is gonna sound weird, but some time back I got a deck of tarot cards. I've heard they can be a good writing tool, so I decided to give them a spin. I asked the cards what energy I should consider while writing my last chapter, and I got the Page of Wands. So I went back to basics and considered what kind of passionate or impulsive act to include, and on a whim I thought, What if Umber and Mulberry kissed?

Originally I was gonna have the scene end on Mulberry saying he's not ready to forgive Umber, but maybe check back in a few months, and the they part ways. After including Mulberry's hasty, impulsive kiss, I found the scene much stronger. Sometimes a "randomizer" or other tool can help jarr you out of an earlier mindset and find a different, stronger option. The kiss is hasty, imperfect resolves nothing and probably made things worse, which I prefer over the kind of "perfect kiss" nonsense you'd find in a lot of romance stories, including Umber's beloved scrolls.

The story ends with me finally wrapping up Sora's story, with her choosing to remember what she did and deciding she'll stop running from consequences.

Epilogue

So, why Peacemaker? Cuz he was mentioned by Tui to have nightmares. I'm not a fan of fixating on Peacemaker, because to me Darkstalker is dead and gone, but whatever. And I know I wrote him a bit older than he is in the books, but dragon ages are weird anyway and I wanted to write someone with a bit more presence of mind than a toddler.

In the vein of "small kid overhears something that's actually sinister and scary without realizing it" type sequences, Peacemaker overhears Prism talk to someone mention retrieving Wasp and Vulture, because, you know, why not sic the old villains onto Pyrrhia again no matter how bleh it feels.

When you boot up the game, you’re greeted with the main menu (because of course that’s where I’d start, not by immediately jumping into the game proper or anything). The menu song, “SANABI,” utilizes a distinctive melody that we’ll hear throughout the game—a leitmotif, if you will. I will make sure to point out this little motif whenever it appears given how thematically important it is. By the way, this game’s soundtrack is excellent, so expect me to ramble about it every so often. 

Anyways, let’s start the game, shall we? The game offers four difficulty modes, the hardest of which you unlock after beating the game. The easiest difficulty makes you invincible and is for the casuals who are just here for the story, and that’s perfectly fine. Of course, my sibling saw this and immediately said, “Who would play the game with invincibility?” (They’re a Celeste speedrunner, you see. They’re 100% a hardcore gamer.)

Okay, let’s start the game for real. 

The game starts with a girl telling her father, among other things, that “Getting all the way to the end is not important!” This phrase is a motif throughout this game (aka Arc Words), so remember it. 

The General wakes with a start, so apparently what we just saw was a dream/vision. When he checks on his daughter, she runs over and hugs him and it's the most adorable thing ever. 

The animation and designs do a lot to convey character in this game. The General's outfit is black and red and the brim of his hat always cover his eyes, which gives him that mysterious badass look. (By the way, that hat is called a jeonrip and was historically worn by Korean military officers, so this outfit should immediately tell its Korean audience, as well as anyone who watches enough historical K-dramas, what this guy’s job is.) He walks, and runs, using a steady, professional gait. His daughter, in contrast, is dressed in a bright yellow and red hanbok. She bounces up and down, practically radiating energy, and she has sparkles coming off her. It's all very cute. 

Strangely, the game offers dialogue choices in this prologue. We don't see this anywhere else in the game except for one scene far later, which I’ll get to when we get there. This is probably a relic of an earlier iteration of the game that had dialogue choices, but I'm glad they scrapped it. It suits this game better. 

The daughter wants to play with a box of “fun objects,” so she and dad head into their small, remote shack.(3) The interior is based off that of traditional Korean homes, or hanoks; feel free to compare to this image. The furniture has a distinctly Korean feel, down to the blankets stacked against the wall and the black lacquer closet decorated with designs of birds and mountains. I also spot lots of vases and what looks like calligraphy on the wall, as well as several medals and certificates. 

The daughter rifles through the fun objects, aka her father’s military stuff, and says she wants to play soldiers with him. “Can I be the general? Can I?? I want to be the general!!” she cries, jumping up and down like she doesn’t have a care in the world. Her father immediately obliges, even letting her borrow his general’s Steel Tiger medal. 

Our General has been tasked with rescuing Agent Raspberry from “the hill in the back,” which is filled with dinosaurs and lava; he’s the only one who can do it because he’s an “inbincible elite soldier.” Of course, there's no actual lava, and the General even points this out, but he’s a good dad, so he sets up a red visual overlay over the grassless areas. Might as well be the real thing. 

This starts a fun tutorial that teaches basic gameplay, including how to use the Chain Arm, the grappling hook mechanic. I’ll skip over this part for the sake of time, but it's very cute. (You can pet a cat named Agent Meow, and if you don’t touch the “lava” while he’s watching, he applauds you—wait I said I’d skip over this part shoot—)

The General successfully “rescues” the raspberries and brings them back to his daughter. She’s asleep, but she’s drawn something for her dad. 

To her we are the “invincible soldier.” Which is pretty sweet! 

Our kid wakes up later and pulls out a walkie-talkie, which she had gotten earlier from the box of fun objects/military gizmos, but she's only brought one, whoops! So she gives the walkie-talkie to her dad and heads to the house to grab a second one. 

The radio crackles to life, and the daughter says there’s a large clock in the house. That’s a bit strange. There's something written on it, and she reads it aloud. 

“Sa… nabi. What's a Sanabi?”

The game starts off slowly, which is probably a large turn-off for people who want to cut straight to gameplay. This intro follows in the vein of Korean revenge films, where there’s often an introductory scene showing the protagonist going about their usual life with loving family members that the plot will take away from them, starting their revenge spree. I’ll discuss Korean revenge thrillers later on.

The General abruptly stands up, radio in hand. 

“Love, listen to daddy. Get out of the house right now. RIGHT NOW.” 

But she can’t hear him over the radio. He runs towards the house, only to be thrown back by an explosion—cut to black.

When consciousness returns, the world has faded to gray, and the only thing that can be heard is a distant ringing. The General slowly gets up, and a QTE prompts you to get him to slowly move towards the house. (More on QTEs later.) Turns out the house is completely destroyed, and the General falls to his knees. 

Aaand smash cut to title! Welcome to the game. 

I love the abrupt tone shift here. I'm willing to bet a lot of you were jaded enough to expect something to happen to the daughter eventually, but still! Darn. This shift reflects the General's outlook on the whole ordeal—he had a great life, with a great daughter, until all that was snatched away from him. Yikes. 

17 days later, we’re in an extravagant office in a highrise building; most of the screen is dark, obscuring our view, and we can only see two robots standing next to a window. (This game plays with perspective in this way a lot, as you’ll see.) One of the robots, a bodyguard named Cheol(4), approaches someone we can’t see with the intent to kill him—only for a metal claw to attack from the darkness and completely wreck the guy. We all know who it is. 

The other robot, who appears to be the boss of some kind of weapons company, panics and says they have information on Sanabi, but as it turns out, the General has already tracked those leads and found nothing. When the boss makes the mistake of asking what he wants, he grabs the boss and suspends them over a broken window; the boss offers all their money as compensation for whatever the General lost, and he responds by dropping them out a window. 

When you take him to the door leading out of the office, he opens it, revealing a corridor lit by a flickering emergency light. The walls and pillars are covered in enormous rake marks, the paintings are askew, and the body parts of robots litter the ground. There’s a red haze in the air. 

I love the environmental storytelling here. It’s efficient, for lack of a better word—with one glance you can infer what happened here. It’s a powerful mood-setter, too. 

Now this right here is in line with Korea’s revenge thriller films, one of the country’s main exports besides rom-coms about shy teens and K-pop. This genre is native to our favorite peninsula, featuring brutal levels of violence, villains who are usually rich people, and an inept police force. Emotional catharsis not guaranteed! 

I did a lot of reading to trace the roots of this trend, and over and over I came across the term han, a Korean concept that’s difficult to translate to English but can be described as a sort of grief or unresolved anger at societal injustices. The feeling can be traced back to Japan’s colonization of Korea and has been refined, if you will, by the Korean people being divided by the 38th parallel and the South subsequently being ruled by a string of dictators. So basically, the Korean fixation on revenge films comes from an innate anger at the unfairness of the world and the desire to lash out. Fun! 

If you want more information about the historical context behind Korean revenge films, click here. And for more information about Korea’s long, often troubled history, click here or go to footnote #8 for the extra-long version. 

Now I know what some of you are thinking. “Truthseeker/Thunder, you spent several months writing an essay about a boring game with a fridging that’s setting up a clichéd revenge plot? I’m so disappointed in you.” And to that I say, “Listen, this is one of the best games I’ve ever seen or played and I do not say that lightly. Just trust me on this, alright?” And those of you who are reading this and know what’s up are nodding knowingly or something. I dunno.

Anyways, back to the game. The General takes the elevator, telling the operator to take him to the first floor; the understandably terrified operator obliges. As the elevator slides down, it passes by rows and rows of similarly devastated hallways. To put it in Dan Floyd’s words, “We’ve been busy.”(5)

There’s a servant on the first floor who aims a gun at the General, but loses his nerve and runs for it. When you enter the lobby, the servant appears again. A thin laser appears that goes through both your bodies, and the servant is confused, but not for long. The laser fires, vaporizing half the poor guy’s body. You survive, though, presumably because the servant took the brunt of the blast. 

An extravagantly dressed guy saunters into the lobby. This is Kang Seon(6)(7), and he has a gun for a head. This game utilizes rule of cool a lot, but never in a way that breaks immersion, at least for me. It’s one of the things I love about it. 

Kang Seon kicks the servant-bot’s corpse and complains about, if I were to guess, him not opening the entrance. The characterization in this game is excellent, by the way, even for minor characters like this. 

When the General attacks him, Kang Seon is impressed, excited to fight “someone who’s got chops.” It’s time to put your skills to the test. 

My sibling (who’s played a bit of the game as of my writing this) felt the need to say that the timing of Kang Seon’s laser attacks was “extremely generous,” by the way. Don’t have much to add to that; this guy is the first boss you encounter in the game. 

Once you defeat Kang Seon, he threatens to blow you up along with him, but a cannon blast from outside kills him. Leaving the lobby reveals a military helicopter parked outside. An officer is waiting for you—Colonel Baek. 

At first the General isn’t interested in what he has to say, but Baek tells him, “Sanabi reappeared.” This intrigues our murderous, rage-filled, inbincible elite soldier and he gets into the helicopter. The boss slowly gets up from the pavement and tells Baek to shoot his comrade, but Baek shoots them instead. 

Before I forget, I should probably mention the architectural style of the game—the classic cyberpunk look we all know and love mixed with traditional Korean architectural elements such as tiled roofs, dancheong, and a distinctive bracket structure. Those brackets painted with colorful patterns can be seen within the military HQ. 

The General gets a mission briefing. Apparently Sanabi has resurfaced in Mago City, a city owned by a company known as Mago Group. The base wants to assign him a specific mission because he’s apparently the only one who’s ever met Sanabi in person.

Mago Group is a megacorporation reminiscent of chaebols, a Korean term used to describe enormous companies run by a person or family (Samsung Group is the largest of these). In South Korea, chaebols dominate politics and the economy and have enormous influence over the country. They’re essentially monopolies with close ties to the government and are comparable to Japan’s keiretsu.(8) 

If you’re familiar with Korean media in pretty much any capacity, you’re probably aware that rich people, companies, or both often appear in an antagonistic capacity in such media. SANABI is no exception. Mago Group has some connection to Sanabi, but it’s not clear what exactly that connection is. At least not yet. 

Another nifty fact: Mago Group is named after Mago, a creator goddess from Korean folklore. Is this a thematically appropriate name? We’ll see. Heck, I’d even argue that Mago Group’s logo—a triangle overlapping with a circle, resembling a mountain silhouetted against the sun—is also thematically relevant. Everyone jump on the overthinking train! Our destination is, um, I dunno. I hadn’t thought this far ahead. Aaaugh. I’m gonna curl up in the corner now. 

The General agrees to start the mission, but only if he orders something called Operation Zero, which seems to be a big deal. He also plugs in a chip, which causes something called “S.O.S” to appear on the HUD. 

Our General also wants to do some limb maintenance, and Baek directs him to the supply area. There we meet Major Song. Compared to the soldiers who stiffly salute the General, Song is a lot more laid back, slouching off the ledge she’s on to give a casual-looking salute. She’s much more relaxed but still respectful around our inbincible soldier than the other guys. This is because, as we will soon see, Song is utterly fearless and someone who is not to be messed with. 

Song says the parts for the chain arm can’t be found on the base, since it’s pretty out of date, and she recommends her superior check the black market for parts. We also head into Training Ground #17, where we have our tutorial the second. 

This tutorial is more comprehensive than the first one where we were dodging the “lava,” introducing how to fight enemies, dash after taking damage, etc. Unfortunately it’s also more boring because there’s no fake lava we have to avoid for our daughter. This seems to be some kind of design limitation that comes from having to introduce the player to concepts like fighting enemies that realistically won’t come up when roleplaying with our daughter, but it’s still not ideal. 

We also have a training test at the end of the tutorial to evaluate how fast the player can navigate the course. If you beat it in under 26 seconds (the General’s old record), which is quite tricky, you get an achievement! The fastest I’ve seen it completed utilizes speedrunner methods. 

After that, we return to Major Song, who’s heard about the whole Operation Zero thing and is skeptical. We don’t hear what exactly Operation Zero is, only that it’s presumably something that’ll deal with Sanabi. For that matter, we don’t know what Sanabi is either, only that it blew up our kid. Whatever Operation Zero is, it’s clear the General isn’t planning on coming back alive. 

Song tells the General to leave behind what he wants to leave, and he pulls out a piece of paper. We saw him with the same paper earlier when he was issuing Operation Zero. Song picks it up and reads aloud, “Invincible.. the elite soldier…”

The General heads to his quarters and pulls out his Steel Tiger medal, which looks a bit scuffed. We flashback to a time when the Steel Tiger was pristine, where the General is explaining to his daughter that it’s a medal given to generals. The daughter hugs him and calls him the coolest in the world. We return to him in the base where he’s crying stoically, which is incredibly sad(9). Don’t pull on my heartstrings like that :(

Next up is the briefing. We’re now in a helicopter in Mago City airspace, and a hologram of Colonel Baek tells us something highly confidential: after a network blackout in the city, every citizen in the city vanished into thin air. It’s almost certainly Sanabi’s doing. We’re given the task of retrieving Mari, a member of an investigation team who’s sent a distress signal and reported she found information. 

An artillery blast hits the helicopter, and the General prepares to jump out of it, but it crashes. We see the same scene from the very beginning of the game, complete with our daughter telling us again that getting to the end isn’t important. However, the memory—if it can be called that—seems a little off. The HUD seems a bit different, for one. And at one point our daughter, instead of giving normal dialogue, starts talking in censored boxes. That’s not how language works, kid! 

Oh, and our S.O.S doesn’t work. Yippee. 

We are a short distance outside Mago City’s gates. This is where the prologue ends and the game proper starts. It was a long journey, but we’re finally here, people! There are five more chapters to go. I have to analyze all of it. Lemme just add weirdly titled headers for my personal convenience. 

Chapter 1: Program

And off we go! 

Well, you probably know how platformers work. I don’t think I need to explain how you, as the Brigadier General, have to swing around and avoid stuff that will kill you such as the volt potholes (the red bits of floor). I do want to say, though, it is satisfying as heck (evidence: every time I cheer loudly after defeating a tricky boss or navigating a difficult area). 

Once you reach the first gate, you encounter a speaker that says it’s best to evacuate the city. Huh. What is with this place, anyway? What happened to everyone? These are questions we will slowly unravel throughout the game. 

Inside the first gate, we encounter turrets and robots. Mago City is suspiciously well armed, as we will soon find out. Yes, megacorporations having private armies are a genre staple, but seriously, why is there so much security? Yet another question to throw onto the pile. 

Right after the General enters Mago City proper, we see a floating orange drone tailing him. This little guy’s name, we later learn, is Mufin. Not Muffin, Mufin with one F. I decided to investigate the original Korean, and its name is “머핀” (pronounced “meopin”), lit. “muffin.” So if this guy’s name is Muffin, why is its English name spelled with just one F? Who knows, it’s probably a small mistake. Trust me to get hooked up on a tiny detail like this. Moving on! 

We can see Mufin make appearances here and there as we platform. Weirdly, I never catch these appearances while watching a playthrough, but while playing the game itself I was constantly like, “I see you there!” Does playing a video game make you hyper-aware of your surroundings or something? Probably. Definitely. 

After a while the General decides to hide in an alley as Mufin passes by, then grabs it. Turns out Mufin is Mari’s drone, and it gives the General her coordinates. Off we go, then. 

Some platforming/robot-destroying later, we find Mari hiding under a sack. 

Quick note on Mari’s design: her clothes are blue and yellow. The daughter wore red and yellow clothing. Read into the color symbolism as much, or as little, as you’d like. For my part, I couldn’t tell you how much “Mari wears blue, which represents hope and the future in Korean culture” was an intentional design choice on the devs’ part; for all I know, they made her clothes blue because they liked the color. How much am I overthinking things? You be the judge! 

Mari is terrified. At first she asks who’s there (the Brigadier General), then asks if we’re human (yes). The General tells her he was sent to protect her, but Mari has serious doubts on the capability of one person. After all, what can one person possibly do?

The General informs her that he’s killed all the murder bots(10), but this makes Mari freak out even more. Turns out there’s something beneath the floor of the city. Something very large and very hungry. 

It’s a giant metal worm. 

It erupts out of the ground, leaving behind a volt pothole where it chewed through the floor. Mari immediately hops onto Mufin, flies off, then returns to the General and shouts, “Why are you just standing there?!! Run!!” You should heed her advice, because the worm is now chasing after you. 

After a narrow escape from the metal worm of death, our characters get a chance to relax. As it turns out, the network blackout we heard about earlier actually meant the city’s data has been wiped. Mari doesn’t actually know anything; she only said she had information because no one would’ve come otherwise. 

I’ll add something real quick here. Throughout the game, Mari refers to the General as “mister.” A bit odd and overly formal for an English speaker, but we’ll have to turn to the game’s native language for the full picture. In the original Korean, Mari uses the term “아저씨,” romanized as ajeossi, to address the General. This term is used to politely address a man older than the speaker. If you’re wondering why I’m bringing this up, besides for a fun piece of trivia, it’s because I’m gonna bring it up later along with a longer explanation. You’ll see why when it comes up again. 

So what’s the plan now that we have zero information to go off of? Luckily, Mari has a plan that involves… fishing? 

We’re then shown a presentation of sorts that feature Mari drawing out pictures as she explains the plan. These are absolutely fantastic, not just because of the music that plays during these scenes (appropriately called “Mari’s Theme,” which also includes the SANABI leitmotif) but also because stopping to make drawings while explaining the plan is such a Mari thing to do. 

Right, the characterization! Still love it. Mari is very talkative and energetic, especially in contrast to the quiet, no-nonsense General. In writer speak, placing contrasting characters next to each other like this is known as foiling. It’s a good technique is what I’m saying. I love my foils. 

Anyways, Mari’s plan is to pull the Writ of Execution (the crusher’s official name) out of the ground using a crane hook, although the power source has to be disabled first. Unfortuntately, the worm’s power source is located in its mouth. When the General hears this, he immediately turns around and leaves, which I find hilarious. 

Luckily, Mari has a plan for that also. How does she come up with these so quickly? Her plan is to hack(11) Mago City’s internal network and overload the crusher when it connects to the network for maintenance. 

Fun fact, each time after Mari draws out a plan you can actually see the drawings on a nearby wall where she drew them. I love small details like that, and the game is full of them. 

There’s a network hub nearby, so we have to get there to hack the worm. Oh, and Mari’s gonna follow you around by riding Mufin, which is very cute. 

Our grand cast of two characters (I am not counting Mufin, sorry folks) reach the station. Mari tries to engage in small talk, asking the General what he does and why he has a claw arm, but he isn’t gonna say anything. Mari then tells him that she did unsavory hacking work, got caught, and is now working for the government. Interestingly, when the General tells her to live a normal life after all this is over, Mari responds with, “Well.. that’s not really something I can control. But, well… Okay. I could give it a shot…” 

In response, the General gives her a card and tells her to look for Colonel Baek once they get out of the city. He says Baek will be able to give her a fresh start. Interesting move, considering the two haven’t known each other for long. 

It turns out there’s some interference preventing Mari from hacking the crusher; we have to shut down three transponders. Mari offers to split the work, but the General immediately says no; he’s gonna shut off the transponders by himself. Mari is annoyed, pointing out she’s not five, and when the General is insistent she says she can handle herself, adding, “It’s not like I’m your daughter or anything!”

Ohh. I see. Let’s see where this goes, shall we? 

While we’re off to shut down the transponders, Mari talks to the General via comm. She sends him the transponders’ coordinates and snarkily tells him he’s welcome, and he tells her to cut the chatter. You see what I mean with the characterization? I can’t stop talking about it. Help. 

Interestingly enough, there are a couple lines here where Mari mentions that the slums lack any sort of housing. This seems to be a reference to an earlier version of the game where the plot was a bit different. A lot of things about SANABI changed during development; for instance, the game was originally supposed to be a metroidvania—you could choose different chain arm upgrades through the black market and explore a non-linear map—but the devs had to scale back their ambitions because they realized a metroidvania was well beyond their scope. (Here are the sources in Korean if you want a look.)

After destroying the second transponder, Mari realizes we’re smashing them instead of, you know, just turning them off. (I mean, when all you have is a hammer, or in this case a giant robot claw…) And the General’s like, “You talk too much. Tone it down. I can’t focus.”

Shortly after this, when a large steel door shuts in front of us, Mari takes the opportunity to say, “You’re like, dry AF you know that?” and starts complaining about how he never lets her do anything, and he responds to this by blocking her on the comm. I love this game. 

After we destroy all three transponders, we return to the station, but Mari is missing. Turns out she left to investigate something, but the General didn’t hear because… you know. 

Mari takes him to a ledge overlooking the crusher’s maintenance center, because it looks less like a maintenance center and more like an enormous hole in the ground where garbage is disposed of (aka dumped). Oh, and apparently this spot is the cargo drones’ default dump point, too, so pretty much everything was being dumped here. The General wonders if this is part of the terrorist plans, and Mari responds with, “Terrorism..? What terrorism?.. Oh, never mind. This was found from within Mago Corporation.” Mari points out how strange this is, but the General doesn’t care. He’s more preoccupied with the, you know, three million missing citizens and Sanabi. 

A light appears in the distance, which turns out to be a missile, and the General pushes Mari out of harm’s way before he gets exploded off the ledge. Ouch. 

Don’t worry, he’s still alive, just falling into the giant pit that’s also the Writ of Execution’s maintenance center. Mari manages to grab him mid-fall, but Mufin’s not strong enough to pull them back up, so the General tells her to follow through with the fishing plan; he’ll figure out a way to weaken the crusher. He also tells her to stay discrete, since whoever fired the missile is targeting them. 

We land in the bottom of the pit with nothing but a giant murderous worm for company. Yup, it’s boss fight time. Luckily for you, you can defeat the crusher by attacking the power source in its mouth that it sticks out when it tries to eat you. The game doesn’t really explain why the worm exposes its weak point like this other than for gameplay purposes, unfortunately. (My headcanon is that it does this to prevent the power source from overheating, heh.)

Mari helps out by sending down explosives (or, as she calls it, a “wombo combo happy meal”), and once it’s weakened enough she sends down the crane hook. When the crusher refuses to be pulled out, Mari tells the General to grab the hook so she can pull him out. And he does so, but with the plan to whack the worm real hard using a few QTEs. People often complain about bad QTEs, but I really like how they’re implemented in SANABI—they appear during dramatic moments when the character is expected to exert a lot of effort, such as during boss fights like this one. The animation during the boss fight QTEs helps a lot, too. 

The Writ of Execution has been defeated, and its upper body is hoisted out of the ground using the crane. Mari opens it up and doesn’t find a black box, but something better: a Golden Key, which is basically the city’s equivalent of admin privileges. She calls up a lift and we get in. 

If you’re wondering what’s next, it’s a flashback with our daughter. Dad is posed heroically while wearing a paper hat, and it looks like his daughter is drawing him. Aww. She even says she’s drawing the happiest moment of her life, because every day she’s with her dad is the happiest she has—then we get an abrupt cut to Mari shouting in the General’s face. Looks like he was lost in thought for a second there. It’s a jarring moment and I love it.

The two are in a giant underground chamber close to the Mago Construction exec’s office. This chamber also houses a lot of crushers. What, you thought there was just one? Nope! Seriously, what are all these worms even for? 

As our characters ride the elevator up to the exec’s office, they have a little chat. The General wants to know why Mari’s accompanying him on this dangerous mission, especially when she already has her out. She says it’s because she’s worried about him, but the General can tell she’s not telling the truth. Mari also adds that she thinks he’s obsessing over something. 

Oh hey look, the office has a giant portrait of Mago Construction’s CEO. 

“Na E-lon,” huh? You know, this guy looks kinda similar to—oh my glod.(12)

Within the office proper, we find a magnificent view of Mago City and an interface. Mari accesses the interface using the Golden Key and opens a classified channel, but there’s no information there either. The VIP hotline is partially corrupted, but Mari manages to catch the word “Sanabi.” 

The General grabs her in response and warns her about how dangerous Sanabi is, but Mari doesn’t seem to get what the deal is. Then the interface announces the activation of something called the penultimate solution protocol: “As per the manual, all VIPs are required to delete all of their personal data.. and then terminate their own lives. Have a great day.”

Mari checks the log. Apparently the protocol is activated when the city’s security can no longer be maintained; all data is to be deleted and the city’s nuclear fission plant is to commence meltdown. We are now on a time schedule, even though the uranium fuel in reactors can’t explode like a nuclear bomb can. 

As the two are leaving the office, Mari insists on continuing the mission with the General, even throwing away the calling card that will wipe her slate clean. She tells him, “I just have a feeling. This will be my last chance. Give me this chance, please.” And when the General inevitably says no, Mari starts addressing Sanabi directly (and loudly), saying she knows they’re hiding on the topmost floor of the city. He grabs her again, but as Mari puts it, “You know, I actually managed to read everything back there. Now I’m also a dead man, or gal, aren’t I?”

Chapter 2: Manufacture

We enter the city’s evacuation tunnels. Since Sanabi is somewhere in the top floors of the city, we’re gonna find a vertical train and ride it all the way to the upper levels. Since Mari still wants to stick around with the General, he decides to give her one chance to prove herself. He also has one condition: Mari has to follow his instructions, even though she points out a little freedom might produce better results.(13)

This chapter also introduces large red zones that cover areas of the map. When we encounter one in our way, Mari insists that they’re harmless and even demonstrates by sticking her hand in, but when the General tries to run into them, this activates an interception system (read: giant laser). Apparently interception’s triggered by a high electrical output, but to quote Mari, “You would need to have a really high output to trigger it.. Like reeealy high..”

Apparently our giant mechanical arm prevents us from traveling through what I can only assume are anti-robot defenses, but luckily we can mask our electrical signal if we travel through these red zones using supply convoys, basically giant hooks on rails. Yippee for platforming! Now where was I? Right, the plot. 

After spending some time traveling through the evacuation tunnels, we find ourselves in Mago Business District. If you were wondering which part of the game exudes the strongest Blade Runner feel, it’s here. Towering skyscrapers, enormous neon signs, everything—although there are still plenty of Korean architectural influences, such as in the designs of the archways. 

There’s a black market nearby, and the General heads there to get new parts while Mari gushes over limited-edition merchandise.(14) The General notices an advertisement for memory manipulation and is thrown into another flashback, where we’re introduced to the hookshot mechanic. Oh, and our daughter gives us a birthday cake. 

When the flashback ends Mari is quoting lines from a fictional anime at us while wielding a “Neo-Data Blade,” a piece of merchandise that’s also a real hacking tool. This game is amazing. 

Oh, remember the memory manipulation that was mentioned moments ago? Turns out that’s a thing! Mari even says she messed around with it when she was younger, but adds it’s obvious whenever a memory is false. Feel free to pull out the tinfoil hats, because introducing the idea of false memories immediately shakes things up. Have fun theorizing! The people watching PlayFrame’s playthrough certainly did.(15) 

While platforming through the business district, we encounter Mago City’s worker bots, which have all been destroyed for some reason. Turns out these robots are being destroyed by the city’s security robots, who seem intent on making sure these workers are completely destroyed. Is there a reason for this extreme prejudice? Who knows. 

During our adventures through capitalism land(16), we eventually encounter a mech suit piloted by a girl. This is Justice, a famous elusive, wandering hero of the people. Mari immediately rushes in to snap a selfie with Justice, but the General is more suspicious. 

Unlike the other characters, Justice’s design evokes Japanese aesthetics. She has a hime cut (which you can see better in this image(17)), and she’s meant to invoke the image of the lone wandering samurai/the modern conception of ronin. The thing is, due to historical reasons that are beyond the scope of this essay and continue to influence culture and society up to this very day, Japan is viewed extremely negatively by Koreans. It’s more of a hatred for the country than any individual or cultural export like anime, uber-nationalistic Koreans aside. I have to wonder if Justice’s design is meant to deliberately invoke a level of distrust in the player as a clue-in that Justice may not necessarily be a good person. (You know how Cold War-era media often feature Russians or Germans in an antagonistic capacity? It’s similar to that. The Korean horror film The Wailing, for instance, features supernatural events that seem to revolve around a mysterious Japanese man.) Again, this is beyond the scope of this essay, so I won’t talk about it much. 

Well, either that or I’m overthinking all this and the devs designed Justice this way because it was cool and/or to tie the design into Mari’s love of anime.

Back to discussion of the fun video game! Justice tells us, “I’m watching,” then vanishes into thin air. Mari explains that Justice is a famous wandering hero, but the General already knows who she is. The problem is, why is Justice in a city where everyone vanished into thin air? He also adds that Justice has a class-3 camouflage unit, which is the kind used by the military; a civilian shouldn’t have that kind of thing. 

We come across another giant portrait, this time the one of Mago Products’ CEO, Choi Gyeon. She’s not a famous person reference, unfortunately. There are also some security force-owned mech suits present, and it looks like Mufin wants one, but it ain’t getting it. At least for now. 

Remember how we were looking for a vertical train? Well, we’ve reached the subway and we’ve found them. They’re not moving, and Mari heads out to reactivate them, but the shutter doors close and security bots with rocket grenades and shields appear. It was a trap all along! 

After defeating the robots along with a rocket grenade that we hack using the Neo-Data Blade from earlier, a police mech grabs the General. It looks like the end, but Mufin in the mech suit from earlier busts through the door, followed by Mari. Mecha-Mufin powers up a laser beam, but the police mech whacks it with a baton before it can finish. The rainbow shades fall off Mari’s wide-eyed face before she shouts, “Hey!!! You’re not supposed to attack during a powerup sequence!!!” (I love this game—) The General then destroys the mech, says he’s fine, and immediately falls over. 

We’re back in the formless void with our daughter (what is going on here? Is this a subconscious flashback or something?) while a haunting melody plays. Mari’s playing the harmonica. 

According to Mari, the trains aren’t functional, and the General says they were never designed to be used.(18) 

A beat passes. The General says, “Mari. You almost died back there.” Cue the emotional music (the leitmotif appears here too!), because it is deep discussion time. You even get an achievement after this scene! 

The General asks why Mari’s doing all this despite the risk. It’s clear he wants her to be honest this time. In response, she pulls out the harmonica she was playing earlier. “Can you play it for me?” she asks. She’s being serious—what’s the deal with the harmonica, anyway?—but the General doesn’t know how to play it. 

He also tells Mari he’s not planning to leave the city alive. Sanabi took everything from him, and he has no reason to live besides getting revenge. After a pause, Mari says, “Me too.” She reveals her father was killed by Mago Group and she’s here to find out why, adding that she’s already decided on this and doesn’t want to hear any “you’re too young to die” comments. 

A pause. Then she says, “Hey now! Sheesh! What a downer! I wasn’t gonna say anything because I knew it’d end up like this.” Holy mother of mood whiplash. Hey, does anyone else think Mari’s only pretending to be silly and that we just got a glimpse of what she’s really like back there? 

After getting that off our chests, it’s time for another of Mari’s plans! Our goal is still to reach the top levels, so her plan is to grab a flying car from a nearby warehouse and fly it to the top. What a flawless plan! Mari can’t drive, but that isn’t important. She has plenty of experience playing racing games, after all. 

Our merry duo reach the warehouse, but all the cars have been destroyed. Turns out this is Justice’s work, and the General tells Mari to leave the warehouse. “I’m watching,” Justice says, and it’s time for another boss fight! Great jams, too. 

During the fight, it turns out that there are multiple copies of Justice that decloak and attack you; apparently Justice can duplicate herself at will. When you destroy them, their mech suit bodies pile up on the floor, which is a very nice detail. Really solidifies how many you’re fighting. 

At the end of the fight, the General asks Justice why she’s working so hard. In response, she says, “Watching.. And watching.. And watching.. And watching…” Something’s clearly wrong. Do I even need to explain that something’s wrong? Am I being an annoying rambler right now? Moving on! 

“I hope you won’t hate me for this,” the General says, and with the help of a couple QTEs from the player he whacks the mech hard enough to send it crashing through the warehouse door. 

Once we leave the warehouse, Mari is very concerned about the Justice mech we just hit. She asks the General if he killed Justice, and he says, “Kill? Was she even alive?”

Our samurai-hunting soldier demonstrates Justice’s cloning feature, even opening their cockpits to reveal that each mech contains a Justice duplicate. (I dare you to find an essay that uses the word “justice” more than this one.)

Justice is a program, something that used to be human whose personality has been digitized and copied to be used by Mago Group. Not only is this highly illegal—who knows how the Royal Court(19) will punish this—but is also just a “congratulations, you are absolutely terrible” move on Mago Group’s part. It’s even explicitly stated that there was an original Justice who wasn’t like this, but Mago Group took this Justice, then digitized and copied her and made her a corporate lapdog. Kind of like how companies will take a people’s movement and alter it to suit their own ends without realizing why the original worked in the first place. You know, like the corporation-fabricated Saw Patrol trying to ride the coattails of Barbenheimer. 

After that unsettling revelation, Mari checks the warehouse for any operational flying cars. But since all of them have been destroyed, there’s only one way to reach the top of the city now. And that’s through the enormous Mago Electronics factory. 

Chapter 3: Installation

Good luck on this chapter. So here’s the thing: certain sections in this level require a high degree of precision timing. Trust me, you’ll need that luck—wait, you’re telling me that the devs altered some levels to be easier after there was a lot of discourse around the factory being too hard? Alrighty, then. Well, uh, keep the luck, I guess. 

The factory is in an emergency lockdown mode. Nice. Oh, and Mari says she’s heard all kinds of ghost stories about this factory. Clear nonsense, right? The plan is to undo the lockdown in the control room, then take an elevator to the top of the factory. 

Mari still looks worried, so the General says, “No matter what happens, I’ll…” and SURPRISE FLASHBACK TIME! Yes, it’s time for another one of these! This time we’re in a dinosaur costume, because yes,(20) while our kid is cosplaying as Justice. It’s all very cute until the daughter runs towards the house and it blows up. Oookay, then. The General snaps out of the memory zone and, after Mari asks him why he stopped talking, completes his sentence: “..get you to the top level.” It seems that he intended to say “I’ll protect you,” based on what the daughter says in the flashback, but then he got distracted. Whoops. 

Now after all these flashbacks, I'm sure you all have a burning question in the forefront of your mind, one of the biggest mysteries of the game: WHERE THE HECK IS THE KID’S MOM? 

Our dynamic duo (how many nicknames can I come up with on the spot, I wonder?) make our way through the factory, which is absolutely enormous. There’s also a large machine called the Overseer that manages everything, but it’s pretty far away. At least for now. Once we reach the control room, our characters start talking about Mago Group and how it seems to be trying to destroy Mago City in its entirety; every aspect of the city’s destruction is running smoothly, meaning it must’ve been planned out over a long time. Mari says that this couldn’t have been accomplished by people outside Mago Group, meaning that it’s Mago, not Sanabi, that’s destroying this city. 

It’s right around this time that the lights in the factory turn off. Mari orders the lights to turn on, but she doesn’t have sufficient authority despite having admin access. Apparently the Overseer turned the lights off for whatever reason; undoing the lockdown turned it on, it seems. Luckily, the elevator’s still working. 

While we ride the elevator up, Mari explains that hackers discovered that this factory was using way too much power than it was supposed to, even with its absurd size, and anyone who dug deep enough into things ended up disappearing. And then the elevator stops going up and starts falling instead. Isn’t that just pleasant? 

The elevator stops on the same level we started on. We step out of the elevator… and the Overseer is staring at us. 

And here begins the horror movie section of the game. 

According to the devs, it was extremely difficult to incorporate the Overseer as a 3D element in a 2D game; it required months of editing the model, lighting, colors, etc to get it to look just right for those horror points. I love how the end result looks, so good job, devs! 

Mari has a breakdown and the General tells her to get out of the city. “You can let me win just this once, can you?” he asks, and Mari leaves. 

Time for analysis, which is the whole reason I started writing this (and there’s been very little of it so far for some reason, which I need to change). There’s a constant push-pull dynamic between the General and Mari, with the General constantly prioritizing Mari’s safety and asking her to leave the city, with Mari wanting to be able to act more independently. It’s a simulacrum of parent-child dynamics, which you probably already know isn’t uniquely a Korean thing—although family drama is quite common in Korean media, all things considered. Think of all the K-dramas where the heroine has to deal with her overbearing mother. Not really a surprise when you consider the culture’s strongly Confucian values and how strongly they prioritize a good family dynamic (this is called filial piety), an aspect of East Asian collectivist values. 

It’s pretty clear the game is pushing this familial dynamic with these characters. There’s a father who’s lost his child and a girl who’s lost her father, and it seems obvious where this is going. But then there are the holes: memory manipulation, the whole deal with Justice. Things definitely aren’t as they seem. 

Back to the game: it’s on to swinging through the factory while a giant death robot watches us. The whole deal with this part of the game is that if you spend too much time under the gaze of the Overseer, you’ll die. Luckily, the game’s pretty generous with hiding spots (at least for now). The game also introduces new mechanics in this section at a manageable pace, which include: 

Stationary plasma beams

Moving plasma beams that target you if you enter their radius

Batteries that you can control like an enemy and throw at obstacles

Worker bots that you can take control of to hold down buttons or hit buttons that are otherwise inaccessible

Wait, the General can control robots? And the robots come equipped with a grappling hook? Isn’t that kind of weird? Eh, I’m sure it’s just a fun gameplay mechanic thing that totally isn’t foreshadowing. 

There’s a point where the Overseer nearly kills the General, but Mari comes in to the rescue in a flying car. “Did you miss me?” she asks. 

Once everyone’s been driven to safety, the General asks Mari why she came back. She explains that the Overseer is equipped with a Medusa processor, which is a device used to hack and permanently delete data, then says that she can’t stop what she’s doing now, not when she’s waited her whole life for this. Mari also adds that he has to keep his promise of getting her to the top level. 

Oh, and she’s stashed a bunch of guns plus a boxed totally-not-a-Nintendo Switch in the car trunk (this factory makes a ton of stuff, apparently), but unfortunately she forgot to bring bullets for anything. That is, except for a handgun, but the General tells her not to use it. Guns are dangerous, you know. 

The General also manages to say “thanks,” which is pretty neat! He’s loosening up and all that. Mari also offers him a present: a harmonica. She tells him to try it since her father used to play for her; unsurprisingly, he doesn’t know how to play it. Shrug, I guess. 

Now it’s time for another one of Mari’s plans! She says that the factory is being powered by a backup core; if they can reach that and limit its output the Overseer will lose power and they can get out of the factory safely. The General is skeptical, because literally none of Mari’s plans have worked out thus far, but we all have faith in her, don’t we?

Unfortunately the flying car is in a less than optimal state, so Mari and Mufin will take the vents. The General will just have to traverse the factory the more dangerous way—namely, platforming via grapple hook and feeling amazing. 

Once we’re done, we find a lot of worker bots all neatly lined up. Mari pops up out of the vent and, uh, starts talking to one? She’s curious about the General’s robot-possessing ability, but it’s weird that she’s addressing the robot. And later she plays it off as a joke, but I think we all know something’s up. 

Anyways, on to the next CEO portrait! This one’s of Director Sylvia, a reference to a prominent Korean Twitch streamer who backed the game. 

The characters reach the backup core, which Mari observes is an older model, ten years old at least. The General seems to think it’s the newest model, though, which is odd. Then the core’s guardian, another giant robot, shows up. Things get weirder, because the giant robot directly addresses the General as “Worker 17287,” then tries to kill him with a photoevaporation plasma when he’s designated a “malfunctioning project.”

It is now time for the plasma beam parkour boss fight. While Mari tries to hack the guardian, you have to make your way behind large training panels before the plasma beam can reach you. A neat element of game design I really like is that once you’re hiding behind a panel, the plasma beam speeds up so you don’t have to wait as long. 

The General nearly dies (again) and Mari saves his life (again) by replacing the guardian’s program with, and I am not making this up, the Morning Star Teacher. Since its original program was completely replaced(21), the whole “Worker 17287” thing will have to remain a mystery. At least for now. 

The guardian abruptly shuts down and the platform beneath the characters begins to lift up. Behind them, red lights turn on, revealing dozens, if not hundreds, of cores that are powering on. Beethoven’s Egmont Overture(22) begins to play; a drone appears and addresses the characters in the kind of dull corporate language that you’d expect, but there’s a bit of a twist here. 

“Executives and staff members remaining in the factory, how are you? We would like to sincerely thank you for your service to Mago Electronics. Please be informed that as of this moment, the central factory of Mago Electronics is completely closed. According to internal company regulations regarding to factory closures, all objects, equipment, structures.. and humans remaining in the factory will be eliminated. If you believe this process is in violation of your human rights, we will inform you of the appropriate response through our legal representatives.”

All these cores are what’s responsible for the factory’s abnormally high power usage, it turns out. The platform rises through a floor; we’re about to see something big. 

“In accordance with the factory elimination process, the Overseer has entered Obliteration Mode,” the drone continues. “The elimination process will be executed through the de-ionization plasma accelerator. If you experience any damage, aside from death, eradication, or evaporation, please submit a letter of explanation to the Damage Compensation Center with documentary evidence of the facts related to the damage. A representative will inform you of the appropriate compensation.”

The characters turn around to see the Overseer behind them, its plasma beam being affixed to it as the emergency lights flash. The classical music is utilized very well with the scene, and the devs have stated that this is a sequence they’re quite proud of. 

The music winds down. The drone says, “There is nowhere to run or hide. Please make sure to meet your demise with integrity befitting a member of Mago Corporation. Thank you. This was Mago Electronics.” It self-destructs shortly afterwards. 

You can watch (or rewatch) the scene I just described, and definitely didn’t do justice, here. It’s in Korean; you can find the English version in the playthrough I linked at the top of this post or in another playthrough video. Flashing lights warning! 

The Overseer is trying to kill you again, but this time with a giant plasma beam and with even less time to get to safety. It’s quite tricky and a lot of people struggled with this section. And the thing is, bumping down the difficulty doesn’t help since the plasma beam is basically an instakill.; this section of the game got a lot of flack from players, which I completely understand, and the devs have tweaked the level design post-release. The track that plays is titled, rather appropriately, “Meet Your Demise With Integrity, Please.” Please go listen to this game’s music, it’s fantastic. 

Mari manages to temporarily take out the Overseer by using the emergency batteries, but the General is pretty tired. So tired that Mari has to drag him to safety. 

Turns out he’s getting another flashback, but this time his daughter is telling him it’s important to make it to the end. They’re an altered version of the Arc Words. 

The elevator’s been destroyed by the Overseer and Mari says there’s only one way out of the factory, but the General’s gonna have to trust her on this one. She instructs him to jump off a ledge when she tells her to, and when he does, he lands on Mari’s flying car, which is barely holding itself together. It’s nice to see their rapport improving throughout the story like this. 

Mari’s plan is to ride the central ventilation shaft out of the factory; given the amount of energy this factory is currently producing, the ventilation is in overdrive and the wind speeds are akin to a tornado’s. Unfortunately the car’s steering wheel snaps off, so you have to steer the car and keep it from colliding with obstacles. Yes, this is a gameplay segment, meaning you can ride a flying car out of the factory. This, my friends, is pure distilled awesome. 

The car crashes through the ceiling and into the sky. Nice view from up here. 

Unfortunately, the car’s not working and we’re about to plummet to our imminent deaths, so the General grabs Mari and uses his claw arm as a brake against the side of a building. And with that we’ve reached the upper level. 

Chapter 4: Unraveling

Unfortunately, Mari’s gone comatose. It’s flashback time for her, it turns out! 

Mari, turns out, lives in an apartment by herself. The window is shuttered and the room is filled with garbage bags. She hasn’t been taking care of herself, like, at all. 

Mari puts her face in her hands. “I killed him,” she says. 

We see events that happened a few days ago from Mari’s perspective. She’s been investigating Mago Group for quite some time to the detriment of… living, as she’s dropped out of school to put all her efforts into hacking. She’s gone full hikikomori, basically. 

A colleague of hers on the computer asks if Mari’s been using the memory converter again, which reinforces her statement earlier that she’s used false memory implantation before. It probably has something to do with her statement that she killed someone (who? her father?) and is trying to forget the incident or something like that. It doesn’t seem to be working, if I’m honest. 

Mari and her colleague have been investigating personality digitization technology by hacking Mago Group’s networks. The colleague has uncovered a top secret project—the Sanabi Project. Mari recognizes the word “Sanabi,” but it’s unclear what it means or represents. 

This seems to be the digitization tech Mari’s been looking for. Strangely, the project is about controlling personality data through indirect means, but there’s nothing in the project about creating said digitizations; this personality data seems to have come out of nowhere. 

Personality digitization technology/brain uploading is a Class-1 forbidden technology; even possessing or researching it is highly treasonous and can result in the deaths of everyone involved, their family, friends, and even neighbors. How pleasant. 

Unfortunately the colleague didn’t take the right security protocols, so Mago security agents show up at her house and… take a wild guess. When the agents learn the Sanabi Project has been shared, they decide to activate something called the final resolution protocol. 

Mari wakes up in the upper floors of the city. The General asks her if she’s really after revenge or answers like she said back at the train station, because it sure doesn’t seem like it. Mari doesn’t want to answer, but eventually reveals she’s helping him because she wants to keep a promise with her father, whatever that means. 

Also, Mufin is dead. The General found a similar drone with a cloaking feature as a replacement, but Mari really isn’t happy about the fact that her drone companion died. “Are you serious right now?!” she asks. 

“Mari. Come on,” the General says. “That’s just a robot. A tin can that mimics a human. A machine can’t become a human just because it can mimic one.”

“It.. Mimics a human?” Mari asks, incredulous. 

“Yeah.”

Mari sets down her drone, pulls out her harmonica, and holds it out. “Play! You know how to play the harmonica!!! Come on and play!”

“Mari,” he says. He’s gentle but insistent(23). 

Mari raises her sleeve to her eyes. “Please.. Please play for me..” she says, her voice weak. “You know how to play… You have to know..”

“Mari. What do you want from me?” the General asks. Mari tucks away the harmonica, her head still lowered. She turns from him, starting to walk away. 

“I’m not your father.”

A pause, then Mari laughs. It’s a hollow, joyless sound. 

The General is… concerned, to say the least. “Mari?”

“Never mind. Yes, you’re right. You are not my father. It’s so simple now that I think about it.” She doubles over and laughs even harder. It takes several moments for her to regain her composure, and she clears her throat. “Sorry, Mister. I just got a bit emotional.”

Okay, so Mari, um, definitely needs a hug. 

Mari tells us that Sanabi is at Mago HQ. She herself also has to go there to do something. “So I guess we just happen to be going the same way again? Shall we go together?” she asks. She also insists she’s okay, so she’s gotta be. 

Mari also adds that since we’re here to find Sanabi, “we have to make it to the end.” She says this phrase twice, by the way. We see that twisting of the Arc Words again. First we’re told that making it to the end isn’t important, but now it is? 

I’ve heard a really good suggestion/hypothesis that “you have to make it to the end” is a trigger phase. Like a sleeper agent kind of thing. Pretty interesting, huh? 

We proceed through the upper levels, though we don’t get far before encountering the national army’s combat robots—specifically the Tomb Troops, presumably some kind of special ops or elite combat unit. They’re here now, probably because of Sanabi, and they brought giant turrets. 

Our protagonist isn’t strong enough to face the army’s turrets, so Mari gives him a plugin chip and tells him to plug it in. And now it’s flashback time again. 

We’re back at the training course, but our daughter is here with us too! Somehow she made her way into the top secret military base and wants to watch her dad train. After we finish the course with our new charge attack, Major Song drops by and plays with our daughter. She reveals that our daughter managed to get in here because the base was hacked, but only the base’s barrier was raised with no apparent motive; that was what allowed our daughter to get in. But before Song can finish her train of thought, the memory glitches out and ends. 

Turns out that the chip is an overpower chip like the kinds used in the army. How did Mari get her hands on such a chip? She says she got it from the black market, but that’s an obvious lie. When the General tells her this, Mari responds with, “Sanabi!!! Don’t you want to go after Sanabi!” before telling him that ignorance is bliss, she can’t really explain the situation, and it would be best for him to focus on the original goal. 

After encountering several hazards, including an off-screen sniper trying to blow us up and a floating cargo box that explodes, our characters finally hitch a ride on a flying train headed straight to Mago HQ. Mari plays that haunting familiar tune on the harmonica again, then our characters have another heart-to-heart. The General tells Mari to leave the city again, Mari tells him to stop since she’s not his daughter, then she asks him: “Did you.. love your daughter?”

Clearly the General answers yes, but Mari responds to this by saying, “Then you must really hate Sanabi.”

“Mari…” the General says. “Did I tell you that Sanabi killed my daughter?” (He didn’t. Mari just knows.)

Mari responds by telling him he’s… well, something, but whatever she said, it manifests as visual noise in-game. She says something else too that’s also censored. As the General puts it, “[t]here’s a noise on the voice.” He physically can’t hear some words. 

Unfortunately, their troubles aren’t over yet. A giant military helicopter, the Firebird, appears and it’s time for another boss fight. The General tells Mari to separate the flying train cars so they don’t all get destroyed at once, so you have to fight the Firebird while holding onto floating trains as platforms without falling to your death. Also, the Firebird is shooting at you, dropping bombs, and shooting missiles, destroying the train cars; and as Dan put it, “replacements [new train cars] come, but never as fast as you want.” You have to beat it by launching the exploding cargo from earlier at it, which come from destroyed train cars. Fun fact, this is also the most annoying boss according to speedrunners. 

Once you’ve defeated the Firebird, the conversation with Mari resumes. Mari’s up to something, and she keeps being all, “Haven’t you figured it out already?” Whatever’s going on, maybe it’s obvious to her, but it certainly isn’t obvious to the General. He asks if Mari’s colluding with Sanabi, and she says she isn’t, but when asked to explain, Mari says it isn’t easy. Given that the General can’t even hear certain words, she’s right. 

The train car they’re on lands in Mago headquarters, and shortly after landing Mari sees something that horrifies her and makes her throw up. Whatever it is, we can’t see it. Mari says she needs some alone time and leaves. 

By now I’m sure you all have your suspicions. I absolutely love how the game foreshadows the reveals later on, by the way. I was watching Dan’s videos as they came out and paying close attention to the speculation in both the YouTube comments and the unofficial fan Discord. I was surprised by how close the guesswork was to the truth, and I have to commend the game for laying the foreshadowing so well. The hints are never too revealing, just enough to allow you to put the pieces together before the reveals proper without it being too obvious. At least that’s how I see it. Some people like Yahtzee Croshaw didn’t like how the reveals were handled, but clearly these people are wrong and I am the only correct authority in all media.(24)

When the General finds Mari, she tells him she’s sure Sanabi is somewhere in this building. Then the S.O.S activates. Yeah, remember that from the beginning? The program opens a door in HQ, allowing us to access it. Inside is a room full of computers, but only one of them is active, and it’s talking about an abnormally activated project or the like. Apparently “Worker 17287” needs to be reactivated, so the General hits the shutdown button on himself. (Don’t ever do this to yourselves, people.) He gets knocked unconscious, the S.O.S tries to reboot but fails, and when he wakes up, there are corpses now! Wait, what? 

Yeah, there are now corpses scattered throughout Mago HQ. When the General runs back to Mari to tell her about this development, Mari says, “It looks like the filter got turned off.” She then tells him she’s located Sanabi: “It’s in the basement. Sanabi, what you’ve been looking all over for. Isn’t that all you cared about?”

The statue in the main hall activates, revealing itself to be a robot, and instructs any remaining Mago executives to commit suicide according to the final resolution protocol. Mari states that Mago Group is destroying the city because it’s committed high treason, which is punishable by the death of ten generations(25). It would much easier to just kill everyone and erase all evidence. What’s the crime, then? Mari tells the General, “Your mere existence.”

She also tells him to question himself, saying “Who are you?” Around this time the statue comes to life and is about to kill the characters for disobeying the final resolution protocol, but before anything can happen the statue’s head is promptly smashed in by a large metal sphere. It’s Major Song from the army, from the prologue. She’s here to save the day, right?

“Long time no see,” she says. She walks towards the General and passes by him, stopping in front of Mari. “Miss.”(26)

The two have a terse conversation. Song tells Mari she’s here to take her out of the city. A nuclear explosion is imminent, and that’s why the army is here. 

Our General is very confused and asks the two to stop for a moment, even putting his hand on Song’s shoulder. In response, Song grabs him by the chain arm and throws him against the ground. “How dare you put your hand on me?” she says. 

So remember when, way way earlier, I asked you to remember that Mari refers to the General using the title “아저씨?” Well, now is when it comes up again! Sorry to interrupt the scene, folks. 

You probably know that Japanese utilizes a complex system of honorifics to properly address other people; many of you are likely familiar with the -sans, -samas, -chans, and -kuns of the Japanese language thanks to the prevalence of anime. Well, Korean, being a language that is closely related to Japanese, also uses a ton of honorifics and titles (as well as different verb endings depending on level of formality, but that stuff is beyond my extremely limited Korean). I will point out a few titles that are relevant to this essay. 

“아저씨,” romanized ajeossi, is—like I mentioned earlier—used to refer to a man older than the speaker. The honorific -ssi (pronounced “shee,” despite what the romanization thinks) in particular is used when the speaker is addressing someone who is of the same or of a higher social status. It’s an honorific that’s used for acquaintances, basically people you’re not very close to, and it’s rude to use this when addressing someone you know well. 

So when Mari uses this title to address the General, what does that tell us? It’s fairly simple: Mari is respectful but distant. As she said earlier, the General is not her father, and her manner of address reflects this. Hang on to this idea of her being distant, I’ll bring it up later. 

Another title we see in the game is “선배님,” romanized seonbaenim; it’s used to address a senior or elder in a given organization. The honorific -nim is used to address people of a higher rank than the speaker as well as people whom the speaker respects. 

We see Major Song and Colonel Baek address the General this way in the prologue. This isn’t out of the ordinary given their military ranks. 

Now here’s the kicker. Here, in Mago HQ, Song does not use honorifics at all when addressing the General. While this kind of thing would be acceptable between close friends or family members, this kind of language is completely inappropriate—like shockingly rude levels of inappropriate—given that Song is talking to someone who’s supposed to be her senior officer. 

Now I know what you’re thinking: “I can already tell Major Song doesn’t like the General! She literally threw him! I didn’t need that explanation!” Well, what if I told you I’m so fixated on the game I decided to write an essay about it, and one of its main goals is to give the reader some cultural context behind the game? Korean is a high-context language, and stuff like this is innately understood by Korean players. I want people who don’t speak Korean, including myself, to experience it a bit like the Korean speakers would. That is why I went off on a whole tangent about the Korean language. 

So given all that extra linguocultural context, let’s get back to the game. Anyways, Song is about to straight-up kill the General when Mari says, “Wait! Just let the mister (ajeossi) go.”

“Mister? Did you just call him ‘mister?’” Song asks. She turns towards the General, then back towards Mari. “.. Are you role playing or something?” Here, Song cannot comprehend why Mari is using a polite term. 

Song says she had to break a lot of rules to get here, and Mari pulls out a gun. Yeah, remember that? When Song asks what Mari’s gonna do with the gun, she presses the muzzle against her own jaw. 

“Let him go. He.. needs to go. To the basement.” Mari pauses and addresses the General. “Mister? It’s confusing, right? I’m sure… nothing makes sense right now. Just remember one thing. Sanabi. Remember. You’re here to find Sanabi. Find Sanabi.. And get your revenge. What’s important is making it to the end.”

And then Major Song picks him up and throws him away.(27)

We find the General in an elevator. Once it stops, he gets up and slowly makes his way to the door, after which he tumbles down a flight of stairs illuminated by the glow of the elevator. It’s a metaphorical fall from grace: he’s been rejected by Song, and even Mari has told him to leave. There’s nothing left, and this is our lowest point. 

The tumble/flop is kinda cute, actually. I am enjoying these animations way too much. In fact, these animations are so good this game appeared in a video about the best game animation of 2023! (28)

The General tries to get the chip to work again, but to no avail. He’s slumped against the wall, defeated, and a ghostlike memory of his daughter runs past him and away from the stairs leading up. That’s when the lights leading downstairs flicker on. 

I think everyone who’s existed on this earth can tell this is symbolic of heaven and hell, with the stairs going up illuminated in white light and the stairs going down cast in red. Even the small details are telling: the stairs up look more polished and are lined with flowers, while the stairs down are more industrial, complete with a railing and pipe. The track that plays here is titled “The Final Crossroad,” and our good ol’ SANABI leitmotif returns. 

When the General approaches the stairs leading up, he sees a memory of sorts. It’s a ghostlike image of the daughter behind him, almost as if she’s compelling him to go down, to descend into hell, and find Sanabi. To take his revenge. For her. 

Here you’re given a choice: you can head back upstairs to figure out whatever the heck is going on, or head downstairs and destroy Sanabi. 

And if you approach the stairs leading down, you see another “ghost” memory, but this time of Mari, who’s been your companion throughout this game. You have to choose between the past and the present. Revenge or salvation. Heaven or hell. 

This is where the dialogue choices come back, by the way. When you reach the foot of each stairwell, you’re basically asked to confirm your choice—you can pick “…” if you haven’t decided yet and “Going Up/Down” to confirm your choice. The game is essentially telling you to choose wisely, although I have a pretty good idea of which direction most players wind up taking. 

While the upstairs ending is the true ending, let’s take a look at the downstairs ending first, since it’s fairly short. 

We open on a group of Mago personnel in a large control room, illuminated by an enormous white screen, discussing the overheating nuclear reactor. Their plan is to keep it overheated so it’ll eventually explode and wipe Mago City off the map, leaving no trace of anything behind; apparently it’s “the only way Mago Corporation will survive.” We can surmise they’re talking about destroying their city to cover Mago Group’s tracks.

The door bangs and the security personnel immediately train their guns towards it. “Who goes there?!” one of them shouts. The door opens and a person, stumbling and bleeding, runs out, managing to scream about “the project” before a mechanical claw grabs him and pulls him back through the door. 

What follows is a sequence that looks as though it’s pulled straight from a horror film. The enormous screen turns red and flickers intermittently as the General slaughters everyone in the control room. The scene is absolutely terrifying, in no small part thanks to the music that plays during the scene, the sound effects, and the excellent animation. I cannot praise the animation in this game enough, it seems. 

The last person who hasn’t yet been crushed into a pulp says, “You’ve been deceived. Sanabi doesn’t even exist.” 

The General kills him. “I don’t want to hear it,” he says. He surveys his handiwork, then pulls out the Steel Tiger medal. It’s heavily scuffed, with its eyes in particular being completely blacked out. 

We flashback to when the Steel Tiger was unmarred. It’s another memory with the daughter, but something’s wrong. The screen glitches heavily, the daughter’s words break down and repeat—then she says, “Sanabi eliminated. Mission accomplished. Terminating project.”

We return to the control room. “It’s important…… to make it to the end,” the General says, presumably his last words. And that’s it. The game takes you back to the menu after this. 

You can find the scene here. The video does contain flashing lights. 

The achievement you get for picking the downstairs ending, by the way, is “What’s important is seeing this through to the end,” with the description “Chose the lie you want to believe.” At this point in the game it’s clear that things aren’t as they seem, but if the General decides to head downstairs and continue his original mission, he’s ignoring these developments in favor of giving in to his rage. The Steel Tiger’s blacked-out eyes in particular represent the General choosing not to see the truth in favor of, as the achievement puts it, the comforting lie. (And Sanabi doesn’t exist? What is that supposed to mean? We’ll see.)

While I was surprised the downstairs ending wasn’t longer than this—maybe I was hoping for a longer wind-up and thus more suspense—perhaps this was the best way to go about it. It’s befitting of a Korean revenge story: bloody, brutal, and not quite as satisfying as one might expect. And besides, I can’t really think of anything I want to add to this ending. A level, perhaps? A boss fight? Those would’ve detracted from the ending, and it seems to me that the devs’ intent wasn’t to make revenge glamorous or appealing, as gameplay would make it, but rather… deeply unsettling, and perhaps a little sad. 

Now let’s double back and take a look at the upstairs ending, the golden ending, whatever you want to call it. Here we’ll find the answers we crave. 

We head upstairs, where Major Song is waiting for us. She doesn’t seem to understand anything we say, and she tells us she’s impressed by everything we’ve done in the city. 

And that’s when she drops the bombshell. 

“Advanced combat bots are targets of concern for their mere existence.”

There’s a pause, then she adds, “Yes, I’m talking about you. You.”

“I’m a combat bot…” our General says, lowering his head and raising his hand to his hat.(29)

Song tells him, “I know you saved that girl a couple times. And I’m grateful for that. Truly, I am. But that’s that, and this is this. I can’t just pretend I didn’t see you.”

She activates her metal sphere. It floats into the air and starts spinning. It’s also on fire. Oh, and the boss music kicks in, too. 

“What you are… Why you are with the girl… I have so many questions, but I won’t ask. Because we’re not supposed to be curious.” Song pulls out her shotgun and spins it in one hand. “I shall execute the king’s orders.”

Major Song’s boss fight is the final one in the game, and it comes with an appropriately intense soundtrack: “The Execution of The King’s Order,” which you can find here. The powerful beat is complimented by Latin chanting, which according to the composer doesn’t have any particular meaning; it’s simply using the voice as another instrument. Wish I could tell you more, but again, music theory really isn’t my strong suit. 

Song has an immediate counter if you try to grab her; you have to use your charged attack if you want to land any hits. After enough hits, she transitions to her second phase. And like all good sequential boss fights, she has a cutscene between phases. 

She staggers onto a platform. “You.. What are you? How are you fighting exactly like the general?” She removes the military goggles on her head. “Yes.. I see. So that’s what it was. I sensed that something was off from [a] long time ago. There’s no way he would’ve died so easily.”

Her fist tightens. “You… You must have something to do with the general’s death.” The goggles break in her fist. “Forget about dying an easy death. I’ll chew on your limbs into a mulch, and then tear your head off and see for myself.”

And that’s the transitional cutscene. Fun!

Once you manage to beat her, the game transitions into QTEs where our General and Song engage in a close-quarters fight. The animation conveys the physicality and brutality of the fight very well, and I love it. 

Once Song is defeated, she tells us, “Do you even know who you’re mimicking?! A tin can like you shouldn’t dare do that!” So the General was a real person, and we’re a digitized copy. Like Justice. 

It’s around this time that Colonel Baek shows up(30), along with a squad of military bots that have surrounded the area using cloaking technology. He tells us not to move, but our General stumbles towards him anyway. He’s confused and hurting from Song’s apparent betrayal, he just learned he’s a robot, and he’s looking for something, anything that’s familiar to him. 

Baek punches him, of course. Hard enough to send him flopping onto the ground. It’s a physical and metaphorical gut punch. 

Baek tells Song that the military has been ordered to withdraw from the city. An explosion is imminent and the Royal Court has arrived to use “it,” which appears to be a floating palace/airship/superweapon, although the game never clarifies what it is exactly. When Song asks where Mari is, it turns out she left military custody and has chosen to stay in the city. 

When our General tries to talk again, Baek says, “There’s an encryption filter on its voice.” So this is the reason the military couldn’t understand us, but Mari had zero problem with that, presumably because she’s a hacker. So if she knew we were a robot the whole time and not an actual person, why did she act like we were human? What’s up with her?

Song removes the filter and our General addresses the two by name. Baek asks, “How do you know our names?”

“I guess… the memories aren’t all fake,” our General responds. He then addresses the two as “Special task force of Uigeumbu No. 17. Colonel Hotae Baek. Major Isun Song.”(31)(32) He then adds, “I have a question for you instead. What are you guys doing here? The order for Operation 0… Is this fake, too?”

They decide to knock him out for interrogation later, because honestly, if you found a robot copying your dead superior officer, you’d have a lot of questions. 

Chapter 5: Reunion

Scenes from the prologue reappear, but they’re… wrong. Visual glitches occur, there’s a distinct lack of music, and the General never speaks in these replayed memories. The dialogue is different, too.

“Sir, the operation has been confirmed. The briefing will commence. This helicopter is currently flying above (SNB_target_location). Approximately 24 hours ago, (SNB_target_situation) was established. Even though the tech department has concluded that it’s a (SNB_target_possibility), no other news so far.”

Other lines of dialogue follow in this vein. We even see our daughter tell us that making it to the end isn’t important, but her words promptly glitch out. 

After this we get a little scene in the military plane; our General is still knocked out. According to Song, he has a so-called cognitive restraint preventing him from recognizing humans, meaning that from his perspective, the world is completely devoid of people, although she doesn’t quite know why. She also adds that this filter doesn’t seem to include herself or Baek. All she can do for now that won’t cause the digital personality to reset is lower the security level; only the digital mind can remove the restraint from themselves. 

“If this is really the general… then I know he can do it. He’s always done the impossible,” Baek says. 

We return to the void with our daughter for—what, the fifth time? I wasn’t keeping track, so I actually have no clue. Our General realizes something is off, though. We’re taken back to the beginning of the prologue yet again, but this time, when our daughter runs towards her dad to hug him, she glitches out instead and says “Memory replay was denied.”

“Is this… A dream?” our General asks himself. He runs past his daughter, then stops and turns around as the world abruptly turns into a computerized, blue-green landscape. 

Our General sighs, then proceeds. He’s gonna figure out what’s going on here, and so are we. 

The music of our memories, titled “Digitalized Dreams,” also includes the SANABI leitmotif—albeit in a distorted form. I only noticed because I listened to this composition about eighty thousand times. This track is great, by the way. There’s a slight sense of dread that permeates the track, and the computerized sound/glitch effects really help sell the setting. I know like next to nothing about music theory, by the way, so feel free to enlighten me about… any of this game’s tracks, honestly. 

In this part of the game, you platform through the computer system and find recordings about a certain project, which you can now access because lowered your security levels, allowing you to access files you couldn’t have otherwise. While this is sort of infodump-y, video games are a preferable medium for this kind of thing: games are interactive, meaning the player feels like they’re discovering information rather than having it be spoonfed to them. 

And if you’re thinking, “Well, still not ideal,” that’s what the devs think as well. Like I mentioned earlier, this game was intended to be a metroidvania, with different abilities unlocking different areas of the map and the player slowly uncovering the mysteries that way. When they realized they couldn’t make such a game, they had to restructure the reveals in this way. Personally, I think this still works decently, but like I said, interactivity is key. 

However, since this is a blog post (and I still have to recap the game to refresh people’s memories as well as for the folks whose first exposure to this game is through this post), this key element will be lost here.(33) So I’ll just bullet through these recordings real quick. Or, you know, as quickly as I can given I’m the kind of person who just will not shut up about things they like. The length of this post is, I believe, demonstrative enough. 

Record 1. Meeting: Some of Mago Group’s CEOs and a group of researchers discuss starting a project Mago Group has wanted for a long time. The researchers are basically forced into this high-risk, extremely illegal project with no choice. The head researcher also asks where the personality data for the project came from. 

Record 182 Regular Report: The head researcher clarifies that digital personalities work the same way as a fleshy human would, so they can’t just give an order to the project and expect it to be perfectly obedient. Attempting to control personalities directly resulted in failures such as Justice, so the researchers have decided to indirectly control the project using the desire for revenge. 

Record 478 Regular Meeting: Simulations of the project repeatedly gives up on getting revenge, so the head researcher suggests changing the target of the bombing from the project’s wife to his daughter, since his daughter provides mental support. It’s easy to tell when a memory is fake, however, so the head researcher suggests limiting and reordering the project’s memories. 

Record 1190 Regular Report: The memory alteration was successful, causing the project’s rate of giving up on revenge to drop drastically. However, there’s a concept known as “Sanabi” in the project’s psyche that serves as an allusion to not having to make it to the end that also causes him to give up revenge. Also, more Elon Musk slander! 

Record 2379 Urgent Meeting: The researchers are looking into Sanabi, trying to figure out its source, but they can’t find any information about it in the project’s memory. That’s because whatever memory it was, along with the memories regarding the wife’s death, have been purposely removed from the project since its creation.(34) Sanabi is a concept from a deleted memory. Oh, and the person who made the project was said project’s daughter, Mari. 

Record 2801 Regular Report: The head researcher tells the execs that the best way to deal with Sanabi is to make it the target of revenge, thus weakening it as a concept.(35)

Secret Wiretap Record 283,951 Research Team 1: A researcher brings up the Final Resolution Protocol, which will destroy the city if the project is ever leaked. In addition, Mago Electronics has released a new product, the Worker robot, which has a wire arm that behaves identically to the chain arm used by the project. These workers are being mass produced, and the researchers suspect Mago Group is planning a coup. 

Record 3777 Ad-hoc Meeting: The head researcher explains to Director Choi that a cognitive filter, meant to be a mental stabilizer, has been added to the project. This filter prevents the project from being able to see human beings; it’s intended to a) produce an inexplicable situation where Sanabi has caused humans to disappear, thus making the project’s incongruities seem unimportant by comparison, and b) to prevent the project from receiving information that contradicts the false narrative the researchers have made. However, the filter includes a few exceptions—presumably because those people already appeared in the project’s memories, or something along those lines.(36)

Record X. Completion Report: 10 years after it was started, the head researcher presents the completed Sanabi Project to the Mago execs and is promptly shot by the head of security. All the researchers have been killed to prevent them from leaking information, and security has been ordered to kill anyone that finds out about the project. Mago Group’s CEO, Director Kim, then makes an anime villain speech about how Mago Group deserves to rule Joseon instead of the Royal Court. 

These records also come with so-called source memories, i.e. the unmodified, original memories, i.e. what really happened. 

Basically: 

The memories of the project were reshuffled, as stated in above. Kid Mari didn’t die in the explosion. 

The General on his little revenge spree is somehow even scarier, as other characters point out he’s basically working outside the law. He also calls the enforcement bureau “[the weapons dealer’s] best friends,” which I’ll bring up later. 

The General was the one who ordered Operation Zero, an operation to wipe out multiple criminal organizations. He also seems to blame Baek for the death of his wife. 

Later on, he later decides to retire from the military to support Mari, since her mother is dead and all that. 

In one of the source memories, Song confirms that yes, it was Mari who hacked into the military base because she wanted to see her dad. She adds that Mari has seemed anxious since the death of her mother, though she’s not sure why. 

Alright, now let’s go over these points. 

First: So that’s why we never saw a mom in the flashbacks! 

Second, this explains a lot of the bizarre mysteries that have been floating around this game. Why did everyone in the city disappear without a trace? They haven’t, we just can’t see them. Why does Mari act so weird around us sometimes? We’re not really human, we’re a messed-up copy of her father. Why can’t we physically hear certain words? They’re filtered out as part of the program so we can’t figure out what we really are. Do the interception lasers target us because we’re entirely robotic as opposed to being heavily augmented?

Still doesn’t answer what Sanabi is, though it’s related to the repeated phrase about not getting to the end. Memories not fully erased and linked to the subconscious, mayhaps? Neither does it explain why Mari made a copy of her father sans her mother’s memories. 

Earlier I mentioned I’d discuss the corruption of the enforcement bureau, which was only mentioned once in a throwaway line… but I’ll still talk about it. It’s quite common in Korean media, like in the aforementioned revenge thrillers, to have the police force be incompetent or corrupt. This is rooted in—you guessed it—Korean history, where incidents such as the Gwangju Massacre in 1980 gave the populace a very dim view of the government, martial law, and enforcement of the leader’s will. 

Something I’ll note here: The researchers changed the target of revenge because otherwise, the project would give up quickly to take care of his daughter instead. This is something I absolutely love, by the way. Perhaps in a story made in the West, the General’s pursuit of vengeance would lead to his daughter turning bitter about being neglected, leading to a confrontation of sorts. But not here, not in a game from Korea, where devotion to family is so deeply entrenched in the culture. Here the General will always drop revenge to take care of his only child instead. It’s sweet. 

A quick note (I have a lot of these, holy moons) of clarification from me: The Final Resolution Protocol was activated when Mari’s colleague uncovered the Sanabi Project as part of security measures. Using and altering a digital personality like this is basically the most illegal thing anyone can do, and judging from the info we got from the bad ending, we can figure out that Mago Group decided to purge its executives and destroy the city to get rid of evidence and ensure the corporation’s survival. 

After all that, our General sees a memory of Mari and recalls the promise he made to her: that he’ll get her to the top floor. It’s an echo of the first time he said it, back at the factory, but with added weight and meaning this time now that he knows who both himself and Mari are. 

After this, our General wakes up from coma (hibernation?) land and looks into a mirror. He finds a robot staring back. 

The old members of the unit acknowledge the robot as their General when he completes the army motto—“We are owls that never cry and tigers that don’t leave footprints.” If you recall the Steel Tiger medal that appeared several times throughout this game, we get… TIGER SYMBOLISM! The tiger is a powerful guardian in Korean folklore(37), so yeah, I can see the military incorporating them as a symbol of might. 

Anyways, before I get too distracted I have to finish writing this post that’s already a gajillion words long, but, you know, we’re in the home stretch. Our General’s told he’s been dead for ten years and that the Royal Court intends to use “it” (i.e. their unspecified WMD that can make Mago City literally vanish) before the reactor explodes. Our General decides to return to the city to see Mari one last time; he made a promise to her, after all.(38) Baek gives him his own hat, and Song returns his worn, scratched Steel Tiger metal. “You.. You’ve gotten rusty,” our General says. He asks them to take care of Mari—he doesn’t expect to make it out of the city alive. And with that he’s ready. He steps out of the helicopter. 

The thing that I love about this is that it’s reminiscent of the mission briefing from the beginning of the game, but with a few key differences. Such as, for instance, the General getting angry at Baek for letting his wife die in the source memory, and later telling him in this scene that there was nothing that could’ve been done about his wife. We have the briefing, of course, but this time it’s real and our General acknowledges his true identity. And most importantly, while the General’s helicopter is shot out of the sky in the beginning, here he falls out of the helicopter of his own volition. Now that he knows who he is, he’s been freed from Mago Group’s influence. It’s the first real decision he makes. 

Here’s a neat little fact. As we plummet from the sky, we pass the different levels of the city; its different color palettes have been emphasized here. The upper levels are mostly shades of pink, the factory is yellow, the business district is blue, and the slums are purple. Pretty neat, huh? The different color palettes really help make the levels feel distinctive. I love it. 

Our General lands in the slums, removes his limiter and breaks it, and looks up at Mago City. Yes, we’re going to ascend the city again but much faster, Celeste-style. 

The SANABI leitmotif also appears in “The Rise” and “The Long Voyage,” the latter of which also brings in phrases heard in other tracks. All in all, the leitmotif appears in a total of seven tracks if we include the title song. 

Between the occasional glimpses our General gets of real humans and, you know, gameplay, we’re also treated to black-and-white child drawings accompanied by explanations. It’s Mari!(39) For the second time in this game, we’re gonna get to see things from her point of view (the first time was when we got to play as her character).

Unfortunately Tumblr has an image limit of 30 per post. Which means I have to be economical for once, so here’s my favorite of Mari’s pictures. 

Mari tells us that her mother died in a terrorist bombing aimed at her father, and Dad was never the same afterwards. Mari wanted to help him, so she studied programming and used the army’s data to construct a digital copy of her father, all at the age of eight. All she had to do, she thought, was remove the memories of Mom’s death from Dad’s memories. That would make him happy again, right?

Mari finished the digital personality and presented it to her father. And, according to her, it “was the first and last time I saw my father in a fiery rage.” The thing is, just possessing a digital personality is extremely illegal, so Mari’s passion project could literally get her entire family killed for treason. That’s when gunmen enter the house, opening fire. Mari’s dad is killed trying to protect her. 

Mari’s computer, she later learned, had a backdoor. And the only thing missing from the house after the attack is a computer hard drive, the one with the personality data she had made. She entered a downward spiral, convinced she’s responsible for her father’s death, and used her genius computer skills to find who took the personality data. She found out that Mago Group was in possession of the technology and had altered her father’s data, turning him into a weapon Mago Group could turn on their enemies. 

As Mari herself puts it, “Innocence is a sin. And ungovernable talent is a curse. When these two meet… life becomes hell.”

When Mago Group discovered the leak of their top secret project, they initiated the Final Solution Protocol (we saw this in the Mari POV scene from earlier). Mari decided to grab a copy of the Project and place it in a worker bot. 

“What’s the point… Even I don’t know why I’m doing this. The Sanabi project is no longer my father. I know that better than anyone else. […] He won’t be able to remember me no matter what happens.” She later tells us that she struggles to remember her father with each passing day. “If I try… If I can show him my old self… Maybe he’ll remember me. It would be wonderful… for him to miraculously remember me. Will he be happy to see me? Will… he forgive me?”

So. Analysis time (again). 

SANABI, you see, is about grief. Our General sees his daughter die at the start of the game and lashes out violently in response; later on in the game, when we see his source memories, we can see that his wife’s death profoundly affected him. Mari herself says as much when she tells us that her father was never the same after the bombing. Then Mari sees her father die and becomes withdrawn and isolated, madly seeking out her father’s killer while her pain and guilt threaten to crush her. 

The developers have have stated there are plenty of inspirations for SANABI, citing Ghost in the Shell and Interstellar as being the strongest sources in the theme department. Ghost in the Shell is… complicated, but has a central theme about the nature of humanity as it collides with technology, exploring what it means to be human in a mechanical body. There is also memory alteration and a sentient computer program developed under the name Project 2501, but if I listed every similarity between this film and SANABI we’d be here all day. 

The film provides no definitive answers to the questions it poses about how human Motoko Kusanagi is—though the characters frequently bring up the idea of the ghost, or the human soul/essence, that remains intact even after one’s physical flesh has been largely replaced by machinery. The sentient program tells Motoko that he has a ghost, which makes him… human? Ghost in the Shell isn’t exactly easy to parse. 

Then there’s Interstellar. Yes, Interstellar, the Christopher Nolan movie about flying into a black hole.(40) This film’s link to SANABI is hard to intuit until you remember that Cooper’s arc is about connecting with his daughter and how love is the one force that transcends time and space and all that. So yeah, there’s clearly a thematic connection. 

According to Wonder Potion’s head developer Yun Seung-Hyeon, “Ghost in the Shell in particular is kind of the father figure that brought cyberpunk so far, and there's always this point where there's this incredible humanity in a technologized future where there's no humanity, and that's what I wanted to convey. […] Similarly, in Interstellar, I think it's humanity that saves the protagonist in the end in a universe hundreds of millions of light years away. There's a paradox of being saved by humans when you're so far away from them. I guess you could say that SANABI is also a story about humanity.”

What he is talking about is the irony of humanity, specifically what makes someone human, persisting even in the absence of physical humans. That humanity is exemplified as love and compassion. Even when surrounded by a noticeable lack of humanity thanks to the cognitive filter, the General—a machine—displays more humanity than the Mago Group executives who weaponized him. This game has a very strong sense of dramatic irony, especially on a second playthrough; for instance, Mari’s breakdown at the start of chapter four is immediately thrown into clarity if the player knows the General is a robot. Feel free to scroll back up to the part where I wrote it out, even if it’s several thousand words away by my estimation. 

Because SANABI, you see, is about connection. The General ascends Mago City for the second time because he made a promise to Mari. Mari placed the Sanabi Project into a worker because she hoped against hope to see her real father again, and even after that hope is dashed and dashed again, there’s still a connection, and when they see each other at the end of the game—whoops, we’re not there yet. 

It’s time, folks, for the ending. Which there is no way I’d do justice, so I’ll just leave a link here for you to watch and write up a recap. I’ll see you at the end.  

Mari programmed her copy of the Sanabi Project to stop the nuclear reactor from exploding, but even when said project realized who he truly was and returned to her, she doesn’t see him as her real father. He’s only a tin can that mimics a human, after all. A fake. 

Remember all the void flashbacks the General kept getting? They were from his subconscious, which finally dredges up the memory that makes Sanabi so important to him. He’s trying to play the harmonica, but his daughter tells him that getting to the end isn’t important if he gets all the notes wrong. But it’s alright. It took Mari a while to learn this song from her mother. 

Mari admits she’s sad about her mother’s passing. She tells her father that after her cat Mufin died, her mother would play a song on the harmonica for her, and her sadness would fade. Her mother also told her that with every hello comes a goodbye. 

Mari tells her dad she knows playing with her must be physically taxing, especially after work. But she appreciates that he still goes out of his way to make her happy.

Mari says she wants to be a soldier like her father and recounts imagined adventures that parallel the events of the game (fighting the Writ of Execution, taking a selfie with Justice, avoiding combat with the Overseer, and riding a flying train). 

She then asks her father to make her a promise to play this song, Sanabi, whenever she feels sad. The song is, of course, the leitmotif that’s present in multiple tracks throughout the game. 

We return to the present, where the General plays Sanabi on the harmonica. Mari hugs him, finally recognizing him as her father. She tells him how scared she was of acknowledging he was really dead. She tells him how sorry she is for giving up on him. He tells her it’s alright and there’s nothing to apologize for. 

In order to save Mago City, the General decides to shut down the reactor. He, the Sanabi Project, started this mess; it’s time he puts an end to it. Mari begs him not to go, tells him she’ll try to fix him, that she can’t live without him. Why does she have to lose him again, and so soon?(41) He tells her that with every hello comes a goodbye. Getting to the end is not what matters; what does is that we spend the time we have with each other. 

The General gives Mari the Steel Tiger medal and salutes her, calling her “my commander.” In the original Korean he says “나위… 대장님 [daejangnim].” Daejang is a rank that literally translates to “grand commander” and corresponds to the rank of general; it’s the highest rank available to an officer in the South Korean army(42). The honorific -nim(43), like I said earlier, denotes respect for a higher-ranking individual. This is a callback to the scene at the beginning of the game when Mari says she wants to be the general when playing with her father(44); it’s a reminder of happier times, one last opportunity for the two to connect before the General is truly gone. 

The General leaves to shut down the reactor and Mari slumps against the wall. She pulls out the Steel Tiger medal, which glints in the light. 

I cried. 

It is now analysis time. 

Here we have two individuals who are forced to let go of the past. The General may be a robot but it is still very much him, something Mari only recognizes when he plays the harmonica for her; up until then she only sees her father as the smiling figure in her childhood, a father she first lost when her mother passed away and he became a shadow of his former self. The General only recognizes Mari as his child once he lets his daughter, and by extension his past, go by choosing the upstairs route. They have to let go of their lost loved ones in order to see them again—and yet the game refuses to give us the happy ending. The General has to tie loose ends; he can’t stay with Mari, no matter how much both of them want to. Now they have to let go of their present for the future. 

The General giving his daughter the Steel Tiger medal is a metaphorical passing of the torch. He is entrusting her with the task of carrying on his legacy, to remember him. Not only is it a reminder of Mari’s father, it’s a representation of their connection. It’s scratched and battered, because that connection has been tested, but it still holds firm. (Remember how the Steel Tiger’s eyes were scratched out in the downstairs ending? Then it represented how that connection was twisted and severed.)

A quick note on the game’s music, and this will be very quick because I know nothing about musical composition: I firmly believe the game wouldn’t have nearly as much emotional impact as it does if Invader 303 hadn’t done such a fantastic job on the game’s track. It’s that damn leitmotif, the one that represents the real Sanabi. It plays during the title screen, it’s in Mari’s theme song, it appears during emotional moments. Where it doesn’t appear is whenever something happens that the General thinks is due to Sanabi, such as right before his daughter dies in the beginning cutscene. Instead, we get “An Old Foe” (I like to refer to this song as “threat music”). No leitmotif to be heard here. It’s brilliant if you ask me. 

And here’s something I noticed: for the most part, whenever we hear the leitmotif it’s in B flat major. When we hear it played on the harmonica—in the subway, on the train, and at the end of the game—it’s in B major. This scale shift, known officially as modulation, serves to make the melody more cheerful-sounding and hopeful. 

I would also like to add that during this scene, the screen in the background cracks in a way that visually parallels the peach tree that is present during flashbacks. 

Some time later, we see Mari again, standing over a grave in the idyllic hills where she used to live. She leaves a flower there. 

The ground shakes and Mari looks up as a military helicopter flies overhead. She puts on a gauntlet of some kind, closes her eyes to collect herself, and runs off, shooting a grappling hook from her glove. She’s moved on from her father’s death and has chosen to follow in his footsteps, joining the military and even designing a grappling hook reminiscent of her father’s Chain Arm. It’s a great conclusion to her story. 

After that we see the title card and credits roll to Ending Means Starting Again. We see some scenes of events occurring after the events of the game, like Mago City being evacuated once the factory is deemed too dangerous and Mari joining the military and cleaning out her apartment. 

Overall, SANABI is a fantastic game and I was glad to talk about it with y’all. If you don’t have the game, I hope you’ll consider picking it up or watching a playthrough, because to me it’s a masterpiece. I’m really excited to see what the game’s studio Wonder Potion will do next. Speaking of which, where’s the DLCs they announced? People on the official Discord are already making Silksong jokes—[PROGRAM HAS BEEN SACRIFICED TO TEAM CHERRY TO SPEED SILKSONG DEVELOPMENT]

Footnotes

(1) “산나비” in the original Korean, lit. “mountain butterfly.” The game’s English release was originally gonna be titled “SANNABI: The Revenant,” matching the Korean title’s Revised Romanization, but the game publisher’s localization expert told them that “SANABI” was better. 

(2) Officially known as the Brigadier General. The General is never given a name in SANABI proper.(*)

(3) If you try to walk away from the house multiple times, the daughter will get fed up and just drag you to the house. This nets you an achievement, by the way, titled “There is nowhere to run.”

(4) ㅓ, written as “eo” in Revised Romanization, is designated with [ʌ] in the International Phonetic Alphabet and is known as the open-mid back unrounded vowel. It is pronounced similarly to [ɑ], the same way “o” in “got” is pronounced in Standard American English. It is not pronounced “ee-ah” or “ee-oh;” it is one vowel sound. If you know Koreans with “eo” in their name, they are probably endlessly annoyed by English speakers mispronouncing it. 

(5) Honestly, if PlayFrame hadn’t covered this game in a one-off (later expanded to a full playthrough, which is the same one I linked at the beginning of the post), I would not be familiar with it. It was Dan’s praise of SANABI that compelled me to check it out, and now here I am, writing an absurdly long, rambling essay about it. By the way, when I learned Dan decided to do a full playthrough of this game, I actually screamed. Like out loud. 

(6) Reread footnote 4. Yep. Go back and reread it. 

(7) Kang Seon was namedropped by Cheol and the boss earlier. The achievement you get after you defeat him confirms his name. 

(8) If you’ve seen this video about the prevalence of god-killing in JRPGs, Korean media’s all-consuming hatred for the rich applies a similar principle but minus the false god metaphor. Moony also made a two-parter about the Korean gacha drama and explains Korean culture and history far better than I ever could, so make sure to give those a watch. 

(9) There’s this whole system of rules about funerals and grieving in Korean culture that I don’t want to get into, which were an even bigger deal in the days of the Joseon dynasty to the point where how long a royal wore mourning clothes was a huge political deal. Really. I made this footnote just so I could bring this up. 

(10) You have no idea how tempted I am to call them murder drones. 

(11) *ahem* Intelligence acquisition, as Mari would insist. 

(12) “나일론,” romanized “Na Il-lon.” Elon Musk is known as “일론 머스크” in hangul. Cheeky. Apparently the reason why this game has a reference to the evil overlord of Twitter is because one of the game’s Tumblbug (basically Korean Kickstarter) backers thought Director Na’s original design wasn’t memorable enough. (Source if you want it. It’s pretty funny.)

(13) The General also tells her to cut the small talk, but Mari points out that’s two conditions. She’s right, you know. 

(14) There’s merch for Mach Hedgehog, the Legend of Greenhat Boy, Mega Uario, and Time Samurai. The last one’s a reference to Katana Zero, from which SANABI draws inspiration in the form of dialogue presentation and art style. 

(15) Watching people hypothesize about a story that you already know inside and out and seeing what they get right and what they get wrong is so immensely entertaining. 

(16) This includes a scene where Mari gets attacked by pigeons. Are the pigeons in Korea particularly nasty? (Yes, apparently.)

(17) This image also mentions a haetae (해태) in reference to Justice’s mask. A haetae is a mythical horned creature that represents… you guessed it… justice! 

(18) I’m pretty sure this is another early development thing like the missing houses from earlier. 

(19) Since the setting of SANABI is some kind of cyberpunk alternate history where the Great Joseon State is still a thing, we can safely assume the Royal Court refers to the government. As we will later see, the Royal Court is terrifying. 

(20) Unfortunately we won’t see him swinging around as a dinosaur. I’m still holding out hope for the DLC. 

(21) According to Mari, it was faster to replace the whole program than to stop the attack function. But that sure is convenient… 

(22) I timestamped the link to line up with what plays in the cutscene. 

(23) Well, at least that’s how I choose to interpret it. And I’m writing this dialogue in a semi-prose format because yes. 

(24) I don’t really mind Yahtzee or other people not liking this game, because everyone’s allowed to have their opinions and if they don’t like this game then fine, whatever, it’s not the end of the world. On the other hand, this is my comfort game and anyone who says it’s bad can duel me at high—[PROGRAM DELETED]

(25) Presumably like the nine familial exterminations, but worse. An unthinkably harsh punishment, even for the historical Joseon State, which is saying a lot. Joseon monarchs were up to all kinds of weird and horrific nonsense. 

(26) “아가씨,” romanized agassi, is a polite way to refer to a woman younger than the speaker. “Young lady” or “miss” would be a rough English equivalent. 

(27) This is followed by her grabbing Mari’s gun, breaking it, and giving Mari a slap upside the head. 

(28) Yes, this was made by the same person who did the LP I linked above.

(29) He strikes this pose a lot. Like to the point where my friend and Tumblr mutual Some started calling it his prissy head tilt. 

(30) While live reacting to the game, Some noticed how short the General was compared to the other military folks, so on a whim I decided to calculate the heights of some of the characters based on the height of an average Korean 8-year-old girl. The General comes out at 177 cm/5’10”, which is slightly taller than the average Korean man. Baek comes out at 225 cm, which is like, nearly 7’5”. That’s like basketball player height. Of course, that’s assuming the daughter is average for her height, and given her small stubby legs I have reason to assume she’s short for her age. We’ll never know unless we’re given a canon height for one of the characters, in which case I’ll be ready. 

(31) “의금부,” romanized Uigeumbu, was basically Joseon’s judiciary police and were responsible for arrests and interrogations of high crimes such as treason. They operated directly under the king’s control. 

(32) “Hotae Baek” and “Isun Song,” according to the original Korean, would be pronounced [ho:tʰe̞:pe̞k] and [i:sʌ̹n:soŋ] in IPA respectively—although keep in mind the surname comes first in Korean, so really it’s [pe̞k:ho:tʰe̞] and [soŋ:i:sʌ̹n].

(33) Lost in translation, if you will. Hehe, get it? Cuz this game was translated from Korean, and—[THE PROGRAM HAS BEEN DELETED FOR MAKING A LAME PUN.]

(34) The researchers always knew there was a gap in the project’s memory, of course. They had, however, assumed it was dissociative memory loss. A subsequent analysis revealed the pattern of memory loss was different from that of dissociative amnesia, as if the project’s memories had been purposefully removed. 

(35) The head researcher says that removing such an important concept could cause the personality to collapse, and making them forget the concept is nigh impossible. However, creating a sense of inconguity is fatal to the stability of the character (is this what happened to Justice on top of attempting direct control?), but the head researcher is confident that the project’s sheer hatred will cause him to ignore the incongruities. 

(36) Director Choi doesn’t like these exceptions, but the head researcher is like, “There’s, like, five exceptions in the filter out of all the human beings that exist. What are the odds of the project encountering these exceptions during operation?” Well… 

(37) The Republic of Korea’s national animal is a tiger. Tigers are everywhere in Korean art, too; feel free to browse this at your leisure if you’re interested. 

(38) Plus, you know, the fact that our robot here is super illegal, meaning that if anyone helps us it’ll constitute treason. He has to make this journey alone. 

(39) Far as I can tell, these are Mari’s thoughts and/or ventings. Feel free to interpret them however you want. I’m also just… incredibly tempted to try and mentally recreate whatever the devs’ vision for this game was near the beginning of development to try and figure out how they’d fit in these segments in the context of a metroidvania. But I won’t spend too much time on these hypotheticals, because at the end of the day, SANABI is the game we got. 

(40) There is also a giant sarcastic robot. 

(41) Arguably for the third time: first when her father changed after her mother’s death and second when her father died. 

(42) Not counting the five-star rank of 원수, or “General of the Army of the Republic of Korea,” because it has never been given. 

(43) I just realized that the honorific Szeth uses for Nightblood (“sword-nimi”) in The Stormlight Archive is probably based off the Korean -nim. This would make a lot of sense given Brandon Sanderson learned Korean when he was doing missionary work in the ROK. This comment has nothing to do with SANABI, I just wanted to say that. 

(44) I checked the Korean just to be sure, because the connection isn’t obvious in the English translation. Mari does use the term “대장님” in the intro cutscene.