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completeoveranalysis · 4 months

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NEW FAVOURITE COVER?

NEW FAVOURITE COVER!

Chapitre 201 - The Truth from within the Ruins

Oh this is just beyond gorgeous. Who can stand against the pure concentrated adorable that is Tsubasa Babies Family Photo? Now with all four of them!

I’m in love with all the tiny details that they clearly spent so long on - all the lovely folds of Sakura’s dress, the intricate detailing on Fai’s robe and staff. Lava Lamp is in his ceremonial garb, and tiny Kurogane IN HIS FANCY LITTLE OUTFIT. (AND HIS POSTURE? GET OUT. Incredible)

Kurogane doesn’t have Ginryuu yet (since this is Happy Childhood AU, so his father will still have it. Still has the moon though!) but Lava Lamp has the Syaoran Family Sword all ready to go. His outfit would be incomplete without it - they’re all wearing clothing from their home worlds, or maybe their families? I’m technically not sure which world Lava Lamp comes from, but his outfit is Family Legacy all the way down. I’m dying to know if Fai’s outfit is in the style of Seresu or Valeria - I don’t think they’re all that different, but I think I would put my money on Valeria based on the position of the fur and the curl motif. In which case it’s fun for me that his Happy Family AU is in Valeria instead of with Ashura. (sorry not sorry Ashura get fucked)

I suppose in this version he never had reason to leave Valeria in the first place, so it’s a very nice touch that the outfit doesn’t immediately resemble the clothing he wore in his backstory, since that’s all so closely linked to the death of his twin, who would be alive here. Very nice visual choices all around, especially with each of them in their own unique colour pallette. Oh, and even with the colour differences they all have bits of yellow somewhere on them, showing their connection.

The left/right split between them is really fun too - sword wielders on one side, phenomenally powerful magic users on the other, cats vs dogs, unique child/parent pairings, etc. It’s very funny to me that they found a super fancy chair for Sakura and a cushion for Kurogane, but nothing for the other two. But Fai draping himself over the chair is such an incredible piece of character flair, which I am in love with, but also, the TOUCH? The little touch of tiny hands? Sakura reaching back to put her hand on the back of Fai’s? Tiny Lava Lamp’s little grip on Kurogane’s arm? OH it’s so touching.

And behind them all? THAT WINDOW. Such a clear symbol positioned directly in the centre frame. At first I thought it might be an eye, but this is Happy Family AU so there should be no Evil Wolverine to spy on them. What I’m voting on instead is CLAMP playing with Tarot symbols again and this being the Wheel of Fortune, or a similar idea of a wheel of destiny. They use the latter idea a lot in their earlier works (RG Veda and X/1999 say hi), but I think the tarot symbol in particular really shines through with the ideas they’re playing with in Tsubasa/xxxHolic, and has a very strong parallel to the idea of hitsuzen.

After some much safer googling it looks like the “Wheel of Fortune” in Tarot can mean change or cycles or inevitable fate, but on the flipside could also be lacking control. I think the reversed meaning of the card really speaks to me the most about their situation in general, as it describes bad luck and misfortunes thrust upon you from external forces, that you are fighting to take control back from an unwinnable situation. That fighting it is impossible, that continuing to fight it can only bring more suffering, and that the only option is to let it go. To stop blaming yourself for the thing you did wrong, or the thing that you think was your fault. To forgive yourself, to accept it all, to let yourself move on, to accept that change is inevitable, and to finally be able to move forward and just let everything happen.

Because if that’s not exactly the whole situation we are in I don’t know what is. It’s a mirror for the things that Fai and Kurogane have already been through, and for what Lava Lamp Guy is still currently fighting, and CLAMP love to do drop these symbols all the time.

And this is a bit of a tangent but who’s gonna stop me? Clamp LOVE their tragic destiny pairs, especially in their early works - the couples deeply love but also cursed by fate, like Kendappa and Souma, Ashura and Yasha (flavoured differently in RG Veda, but still fitting this cycle again in Tsubasa), Subaru and Seishirou, Sorata and Arashi (unfinished), Kamui and Fuuma, etc. The characters who are so different from each other, so diametrically opposed, but in love still, and it burns so strong that they either have to kill each other or let the world burn around them - or both! They’re always fighting destiny, just like the reversed wheel of fortune, and they fight it to the point of obliteration.

AND THEN we have Tsubasa, and I think it’s so endlessly interesting that they took the same pattern and turned it around. Syaoran and Sakura definitely fit the theme (and wild that they took the Cardcaptor Sakura happy couple deliberately to make the most universe shattering tragedy out of it, but I still haven’t seen how their story ends, whether one will have to tragically die to save everything or whether they’ll get out somehow). But what I mostly want to talk about (surprise surprise) Kurogane and Fai, who fit the pattern exactly. Complete opposites, diametrically opposed, set up as antagonists and destined to kill each other but fall in love instead. That they both fight against the tragic pasts that defined them and eventually change their mind. Eventually, slowly, they accept love again and realise that they can actually live with themselves and each other if they let it all go.

And I think what really gets me is that if this was an earlier Clamp work they absolutely would have tragically died - they would have killed each other in the climax of Seresu and it would have been beautiful and terrible and no-one ever would have ever emotionally recovered from the complete and utter devastation.

BUT THEY DIDN’T.

CLAMP spend all of Tsubasa revisiting all their old works, taking us through a parade of the various tragedies they’ve sung across the years, all leading up to them ultimately breaking their own pattern and letting Fai and Kurogane save each other from the same Clamp fate that claimed every tragic pair before them. They choose each other and get out alive. They stop blaming themselves for the unchangeable parts of destiny and finally forgive themselves. And it’s just very emotional to me that it’s these two that make it, these two that get to recover and choose each other and live their lives inseparable from this point on. The two that had arguably the most tragic backstories also get to face their trauma, survive, and live.

And it’s just so beautiful to see how the CLAMP storytelling method has changed over the years, and to find out that after all these years, the big destiny story they really wanted to tell in their longest and most detailed work was about the two men who fell in love, against all odds and saved each other. Despite absolutely everything saying that it should be impossible, it’s Kurogane and Fai that finally flip the tarot card back around and live.

And I’m extremely interested in what this means for Lava Lamp and Not!Sakura.

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ninewheels · 5 years

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All right, let’s do some Wild Guessing and Drastically Over-Reading this fucking poster because I’ve had an ambien and this is just the kind of person I am.

So, the gradual build of information has led to this as our core cast for Endgame: the Original Six Avengers (this being their swan song, as a group and for most of them as individuals too probably), Rhodey, Nebula, Rocket, and Scott--all the headliners who survived the snap--plus Carol.

Toward the end of the trailer we see Steve, Tony, Nat, Clint, Nebula, Rhodey, and Scott in those white suits, presumably designed for travel in the Quantum Realm based on their similarity to Hank’s suit from Ant-Man and the Wasp, and based on the fact that their party now has a member (Scott) who knows about the Quantum Realm, previously established to be very wibbly-wobbly and timey-wimey, and therefore possibly useful for our heroes’ almost-certain plan, to save the day by going back in time to stop the snap from happening in the first place. (There’s a million little bits of evidence hinting that it’s time travel, I won’t talk about all the sources.) We don’t see Thor, Bruce/Hulk, and Rocket in those suits, but toybox art leaks reveal all three of them suited up, so we know that happens at some point. We don’t see Carol in that scene at all, and there’s no photo evidence of her putting on a Quantum Suit, so maybe she’s getting through the Quantum Realm with her cosmic space radiation powers, or maybe she’s just not going. Either way, the other 10 characters are suited up and ready to go on some mission that we don’t see any of because, as was mentioned months ago by Feige, the marketing for this film is restricting itself mostly to footage from the first 15 minutes of the film; if we accept the informed guess that the main plot of the film will be the Avengers traveling through space and time to find a way to stop Thanos before the snap happens, the more concrete cut-off point could just be the end of the first act, when the mission actually begins. However exactly it shakes out, it seems pretty certain that this is our core team. That’s our current Avengers lineup, featuring Special Guest Star Party Member Carol to some extent or another.

This is reinforced by the poster. The characters featured on this poster are those 11 heroes, Thanos himself... and one other conspicuous inclusion: Okoye. The original poster featured her on it, but did not list Danai Gurira’s name at the top, an oddity that Marvel was quick to remedy when people started protesting. But for my part, I’m still wondering what it means that she gets to be on the poster, even though only the 12 obvious leads got credited above the title at first. Could her inclusion be a nod to the fact that she is one of only two supporting characters to be shown surviving the snap at the end of Infinity War? It’s just her and M’Baku, although I would not personally think much of him in this context as he is a decidedly less important character than Okoye in the grand scheme of the MCU.

While on the first draft of this poster Danai Gurira’s name was not at the top, it was (and is) listed in the credits at the bottom of the poster. See for yourself: Danai Gurira, Benedict Wong, Jon Favreau, then it lists Bradley Cooper as Rocket, and then “with Gwyneth Paltrow” right before “with Josh Brolin”. First of all, note than Josh Brolin still has the “with” billing he had on the Infinity War poster (where Chris Pratt got the “and” for some baffling reason). Aside from brief archive footage shots from Infinity War of Sam and Wanda dusting away, the characters who have been dusted have been completely absent from marketing so far. Though it’s far from a secret that the dusted characters are going to come back and appear in some form in this film, I think the idea that the marketing is sticking to the first act of the film might be more than just “no footage from after a certain timestamp”, it might actually be an overall philosophy that guides details of what appears on the posters.

Side note: I firmly believe that this film will end with everyone dusted in Infinity War coming back to life in exchange for the sacrifice of some (maybe many) of the surviving characters, based on who Marvel is ready to put to rest for good and willing to let die as opposed to retire from superhero-ing. I subsequently firmly believe that the first portion of the end credits will not only list the actors listed on the poster, but also restore to their Infinity War billing all of the actors whose characters got dusted last time, as a symbolic thing.

Okoye is definitely alive at the end of Infinity War. I’m gonna guess that Shuri is dead because if she isn’t, then Shuri is Queen of Wakanda, and that’s a plot point Marvel doesn’t want to bring up only for it to become a glorified easter egg in a film about completely different things. Meanwhile, Shuri being dead means there is no clear heir to the throne of Wakanda, putting the country in disarray, adding to the Darkest Timeline vibe that Endgame is starting with, and also giving Okoye a pretty compelling reason to not leave Wakanda to help the gang on their mission. Not that I ever thought she was going to be a part of the team, but the question now is why is she important enough to get her face on the poster as a thirteenth-wheel? And why are Pepper, Happy, and Wong important enough to have their actors listed after the headliners in the bottom credits? Could it be that they and Okoye are the only supporting characters still alive in post-snap world? Pepper, Wong, and Okoye would be the only other surviving major characters from Infinity War, and Happy wasn’t in Infinity War but he’s been around a lot since the beginning of the MCU, so he’s still relevant enough. Maybe that’s all there is to it. Maybe these are simply the only other major characters we’re going to see before whatever story cut-off point they’ve picked to dictate the marketing strategy. I definitely don’t think all four are all going to have a lot of screen-time or much to do. That still leaves the mystery of why, out of those four, Okoye was singled out to be on the poster. The most logical theory is also the most boring and cynical, which is that they wanted to add some variety to a mostly-male, almost all-white cast ensemble, and picked the only WOC left for the optics. That said, I would like to think there is a real reason for her to be up there based on the content of her role in the film. I’d like to think Okoye’s going to do at least one plot-relevant thing, but damned if I can figure out what it is. After all, whether Shuri is alive or not, I cannot see her abandoning her post at Wakanda. Maybe she’ll have a beefed up role on the other end of the film when they (will probably) have to revisit the Battle of Wakanda to keep Thanos from snapping.

Final note: I know I’m not the first person to point this out, but this is the first time that Mark Ruffalo has gotten to have his own real face on a main poster. He got a character single for the first Avengers with his own face on it, but every appearance he’s made on the primary poster for a given film has been in Hulk form. As far as I see it, this could be either a case of “let Mark show his real face because this is his last time” OR “Mark has to show his real face because Hulk doesn’t show up until later in the movie”.

#Marvel #Avengers #Avengers Endgame #Endgame #MCU

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