A guy consulted me about his relative who was dying. He told me he recently had three dreams, about a cherry tree, a cliff, and falling off a pine tree, and asked me what they meant. I realized it actually meant something terrible would happen, but instead told him it meant there was still hope.
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Ethel Cain's songs remind me of Supernatural so much rn
case in point:
"it was a highway to nowhere, and we rode it // cold car with no gas and we chose it"
"our kids will grow up with half as much // trying to build something out of dust // finding out too late what they need"
- God's Country
"Jesus can always reject his father // but he cannot escape his mother's blood // he'll scream and try to wash it off of his fingers // but he'll never escape what he's made up of"
- Family Tree (Intro)
"i'm just a child, but i'm not above violence // my mama raised me better than that"
"and daddy said, shoot first, then run and don't look back"
"and baby, Hell don't scare me, i've been times before"
- Family Tree
and Thoroughfare is totally about two hunters chasing monsters through the country and slowly falling in love <3
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The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far: What Heroes Tells us About Validar
I blame @the-priestess-of-dawn for this one. <3
One of Awakening’s worst dads has finally weaseled his way into the mobile game, and so, here we are. If I can make a serious analysis post about Groom!Robin of all units, then I suppose Validar deserves a post as well.
For the most part, Validar’s dialogue in Heroes is unsurprising. There’s a lot of gloating about his plans, a lot of mocking everyone else for being feeble. But there’s one very key place where that pattern falters, and when you really dig into that crack... what at first looks like a shallow villain turns instead into a hollow one.
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I’ve talked before about how the sprites in Heroes can affect your read of a character’s tone and ultimately change the meaning of their words. Such is the case for Validar’s 5* level 40 conversation. It’s easy to read it in a snarkier tone with his sprite sneering at you, but I invite you to read it without the visuals and really take it for what it is:
Askr's future is none of my concern.
I aid you only to gain power for myself.
I care not for the people of Askr.
The evils of this world are nothing to me. I am an agent of fate.
Whatever pitiful bonds you share cannot stop the inevitable! But do go on... I will enjoy your struggling.
Notice anything?
What I immediately notice is that for 4/5 text boxes, a solid 80% of the conversation, all the condescension and insufferable confidence is gone. There’s not one linguistic flourish, not one jab at Kiran or anyone else, not even any punctuation beyond the humble period. The sentences are short and to the point. And you know what it sounds like to me?
Like he’s reassuring himself.
He’s calmly repeating things that he thinks ought to be fact, like mantras. Oh sure, he’s trying to convince Kiran that he’s an uncaring shithead who’s only here to further his nefarious plans, but it sure sounds like he’s trying to convince himself of it, too. He only switches back to his usual sneering and mockery with the very last text box, as though he suddenly remembered himself.
What’s also striking about that conversation is how similar it feels to dialogue from other Grima-adjacent characters, and hell, even Grima themselves.
If you told me those first four text boxes were dialogue from one of the fallen Morgans (Future Past edition OR Heroes edition), I would believe you. They’re in a very similar state of mind, with a lot of lines dedicated to calmly repeating they’re only tools of Grima’s will. That they help you only to further Grima’s plans.
And while the phrasing of it is different, the underlying feeling of those lines is eerily close to some of Risen King Chrom’s dialogue, too. “I am the king of corpses” vs “I am an agent of fate”; both of them characterizing themselves as little more than weapons for a god to wield or discard.
We only ever see Validar in a vacuum in Awakening, but we can’t forget that the cycles of abuse that are the story's core apply to him too. I’ve written a lot about how Grima’s agency is constantly stripped from him. I think that if we can acknowledge how much that fucked Grima up in his first life and again as Robin, and how much it fucks up Morgan and Chrom in the bad timelines... We would be hypocrites to deny that that fucked up Validar, too. It must have.
The Grimleal have been trying to resurrect Grima for a long, long time, and Validar is one of the last born of that fucked up lineage. Only unlike Robin, Validar didn’t have the luxury of being swept away from the cult at a young age. No, he grew up steeped in the knowledge that he was born for one singular purpose. The brand he bears is just barely too faint for him to be an empty shell to hold their god, and so like his parents before him, he becomes living weapon and breeding stock. Expected to lead the Grimleal, as the one with the purest fell blood. Expected to produce a warm body suitable for pouring their mad god into.
The course of his life was decided for him long before he was even conceived.
He doesn’t have a choice.
Everyone he cares about and everything he knows is relying on him.
He doesn’t have a choice.
The Exalt of Ylisse hacks and slashes and burns through their home in the name of his god, and the whole damned world must answer for this suffering.
He doesn’t have a choice.
He is an agent of fate.
Validar never got to be a person, not really. He has only ever been a tool of someone else’s will and I think that’s left him empty. He gloats and mocks and insults and laughs about how much he wants it all to burn, but the fact that it’s all he ever does doesn’t paint a very healthy picture. He has no sense of self outside of how he can be useful to the cult. By all accounts he doesn’t even really think of himself as a person.
Many of the parallels between Validar and Robin/Grima start to make a lot of sense this way. The way they both bluster and monologue at least half as a cover, the way they cling to the concept of unalterable destiny to soothe the injustice of having so many choices ripped from them, the way they view every relationship as a means of controlling or being controlled. “Agent of fate” vs “wings of despair”. And I would bet money that Validar’s father was similar, because he too would've been brought up similarly. Risen Kings, the lot of them.
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