Thinking about this post and can we talk about how important it is that fakir was okay with Duck not loving him back?
I think it’s fair to say it’s pretty heavily implied that he’s in love with her, and it’s explicitly confirmed in the guidebook.
While Duck’s feelings for him are more nebulous and hard to pin down, from his perspective she’s in love with Mytho. We as the audience know she doesn’t actually feel that way about Mytho but from Fakir’s perspective everything she’s done so far has been for Mytho. She admitted to him in episode 12 that she had feelings for mytho and there has been nothing to dissuade him from this line of thinking. In fact, he finds her crying because mytho chose rue.
There’s this little moment I like. When Duck tells him mytho has chosen rue as his princess his eyes narrow ever so slightly.
[ID: two screenshots of Fakir from episode 25. In the first he is looking at Duck (off camera) with a serious expression. In the second he narrows his eyes slightly. End ID]
He REACTS to this news, even if it’s subtle. And he doesnt look happy about it. Fakir is upset that Mytho rejected Duck. And this seems so antithetical from what we come to expect from a romantic subplot.
So the girl he loves loves someone else… and he’s okay with that. He never tries to pressure or guilt Duck into being with him. Hell he never even mentions his feelings. She likes someone else so what’s the point. But this never dissuades him from his devotion to her. He doesn’t give her an ultimatum or make her choose. He doesn’t even seem get upset that she loves someone else. Even when she goes back to being a duck destroying his last hope of being with her romantically, even then he never wavers. He wants to spend the rest of his life with her. Whether that’s as friends or as partners or as just a simple boy and a duck, he wants to be with her. How she feels for him doesn’t matter so much as getting to share his life with her.
And I find this such a refreshing spin on tired romance tropes. “Just friends” looms large in our media so it’s lovely to see a boy in the so called “friendzone” who’s okay with it. Beyond okay he treasures the time he spends with Duck. His affection for her doesn’t hinge on reciprocation.
It’s so common for characters in fakir’s archetype to grow angry or sad that they’re not “the one,” often lashing out at the girl who doesn’t return their feelings. But instead we have Fakir who’s perfectly content to stay Duck’s friend. After all, being her friend is a gift in itself.
I just love to see a platonic relationship not treated as a lesser stepping stone to a romantic relationship. Sure, Fakir has feelings for Duck. But that in no way undermines the friendship they already have. It’s treated with all the gravity usually reserved for romantic relationships. They’re going to spend their lives together and whether that’s as friends or as lovers—that part isn’t important.
I’m tired of media treating friendships like they’ve suddenly become worthless when one party develops feelings and the other doesn’t return them. With fakiru, the lovely part is that their relationship is built on such a strong foundation it can stand on its own. We the audience are free to interpret it as romantic, platonic, or something in between, but with any reading their close friendship forms the centerpiece.
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So Greg Bryk regularly goes live on Instagram to chat with his followers and answer a few questions, and almost every time, someone asks if he’d like to play Joseph Seed again if he had the chance, to which he used to always reply that, yes, he absolutely would. However, in early 2022, he didn’t seem so sure anymore and said it would depend on the script (the question was specifically about a potential Far Cry 5 movie) and the writer(s). Then, a few months later, he implied he didn’t feel like playing the Father ever again because he thought the character’s story was “finished” and that Ubisoft should focus on creating new things instead…
Well, on October 14, 2023, he once again went live on Instagram and, when people mentioned Far Cry 5 in the chat, he revealed that he had reached out to Dan Hay and Drew Holmes, two of the game’s three main writers he’s become friends with, and that they had visited him “on set” (I’m not sure what he was shooting) the day before. In the past, he had already explained several times that he had loved working with them and thought the story they wrote (along with “JS”, Jean-Sébastien Décant, the game’s third main writer) was fantastic. This time, he added that Far Cry 5 was really “special” to him because the writers “cared a lot” about creating something great with amazing characters, and that he thought the whole Seed family was really well-written.
A few minutes later, when he was asked which character he would like to play again if he could, he said it was hard for him to choose because he loves them all, but he eventually picked Jeremy Danvers (Bitten) and Cobbs Pond (Frontier).
Then, surprisingly, he also mentioned Joseph.
I don’t know why he changed his mind again or if the fact he contacted Dan Hay (who doesn’t work for Ubisoft anymore) and Drew Holmes (who recently became the new IP Director for Far Cry) means anything, and I’m not sure I want more Far Cry 5 content to be released anyway (for continuity reasons), but I guess the Seed family’s return, as equally exciting and truly terrifying as this eventuality sounds to me, isn’t completely out of the question anymore in Greg Bryk’s mind!
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thinking about billy’s mom leaving during the day while he’s at school
like billy waking up as usual and having breakfast with his mom, telling her what he’s gonna do at school that day, asking about what they’re gonna have for dinner together that evening, about going to the beach with her the coming weekend, his mom promising him all this stuff, telling him that yeah they can have ice cream later, strawberry? sure baby, whatever you want, billy’s mom kissing him goodbye, billy thinking she looks a little distant, a little sad but maybe it’s just because her and dad argued again
billy finishing up his day at school, getting on the bus and going home, billy putting his key in the door and realising it’s open already, him thinking that’s kinda weird since neither of his parents are usually home at that time but maybe his mom forgot to lock up that day, billy going to put his backpack in his room and noticing a note on his bedside table telling him that she’s so sorry baby and this isn’t forever, i’ll come get you as soon as i can, i love you, billy and p.s. try to be extra good for your dad, stay out of his way and do what he says, i promise this is for the best
and billy just sits down on his bed and stares at the note until it goes blurry, he goes into his parents room and sees that his mom’s things are gone, he goes to the kitchen to grab the phone before realising he has no number to call
and then he has to sit there and wait for neil to come home, wiping his tears away every two seconds because he knows crying makes his dad angry, just feeling completely and utterly helpless and alone
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can we talk about the meep’s pronouns moment in the star beast again? i want to talk about the way it’s set up. in any other show, this would have been a joke. it would have been, “oh, look at this trans person getting so up in arms about the doctor assuming this alien’s pronouns. isn’t that an insane thing to care about?” and then that would be where it ended, the entire point being that asking for pronouns is ridiculous, that a trans person pointing it out is ridiculous, and we should be laughing at Rose for bringing it up.
but. it’s not. Rose says, “You’re assuming he as a pronoun?” in a tone of voice that, to me, at least, reads as someone who has been in this situation many, many times before and been laughed at for caring. who has been the butt of that joke. who starts this dialogue off from a defensive position because every time before she’s ever asked in earnest, she’s been shut down.
and then the Doctor says, “True. Yes. Sorry. Good point. Are you he or she or they?” The Doctor acknowledges Rose’s point, apologizes for glossing over it, and makes an effort to ask. Hell, the moment is even used to set up the Doctor connecting to the Meep more like he will when the Meep mentions having two hearts; they both share “the” as a pronoun as a pronoun.
(and I’m reading through the transcript right now to check, but as far as I can tell, yeah. The Doctor does then use “The Meep” to refer to the Meep for the rest of the episode, not any other pronoun.)
It’s a very brief moment, but it feels intentionally made to invoke those jokes, to take them and say, ‘no, why would this be a joke, we’ll take it seriously.’ Expectations subverted brilliantly. The Doctor says trans rights.
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