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seance · 3 years

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jatp as bodies of water

a character analysis based on this gifset.

first of all, a disclaimer: this was just me and @snakebitescar having fun , we perfectly know this is still a kid show and it’s not that deep™ but i, personally, find this type of speculations really interesting. kinda all or nothing, you know? i don’t usually dwell on more superficial hcs because i’m drawn to this kind of symbolism the most. that said we just thought we share, no pressure to rb or anything. i apologize for the small text but this got long i don’t want to spam anyone’s dash too much.

luke as the ocean

I purposefully chose to use not just any view of the ocean, but a glimpse of a stormy one. What makes it so fitting in my eyes is that the ocean, by its nature, is limitless and unknowable but it’s not deceiving in any way. It’s powerful and overpowering but it appears as it is: vast and full of hidden depths.

Luke’s greatest strength is his energy, his uncompromising passion, his determination, his willingness to risk it all for what he believes in and for the people he loves. He needs to always be in motion, he needs to know he’s moving forward, towards something greater, something that will make every sacrifice and every loss worth it. Behind every gesture, every word, every action there’s something more, something deeper (like a wound that never really closed, an unfathomable regret, a simmering anger sparked by the betrayal of a friend).

He doesn’t really hide who he is or what he thinks but he will always, like the ocean, keep surprising those around him with new aspects of his exuberance, his creativity, his sociability. Just like the ocean, bound by no borders, Luke is free to be everything at once.

reggie as the lake

The lake can be peaceful and embracing or brooding and stagnant. It’s the only body of water that doesn’t flow somewhere, it appears motionless on the surface but in reality it hides dangerous underwater currents, unpredictable whirlpools and often deadly murky terrains.

Lakes represent the need for security, they are places of painful transformations, both cradle and trap. Basing some of our assumption on Luke’s words about Reggie’s less than ideal home-life, the parallel between the lake’s dual nature and how he expresses (or rather suppresses) his emotions came naturally. One of the main differences between Reggie and everyone else is that he’s never confrontational. He always works towards de-escalating the situation, he’s probably used to conceal any negative emotion to not add fuel to the fire, he tends to always follow and never lead.

This doesn’t mean he feels less than everybody else, every now and then those very emotions he tries so hard to control shine through and we see how actually scared he is, how he craves stability and security. He dreads any changes that have to do with the unknown or the possibility of his support system failing (“Do we all still get to hang out together?”) Just like the lake he’s both still and turbulent, constantly edging between relying on what is safe or taking the odd risk.

alex as the river

Alex was maybe the most complex to analyze out of the four of them. I’m a firm believer that anyone is entitled to their own headcanons and their own interpretation of a character but I must admit, I can’t really get behind some fandom takes that systematically reduce Reggie to his goofy side or Alex to his anxiety because as I see it, they both hold so much potential.

Rivers are an indomitable force. They flow for miles, from mountain to sea, sometimes dwindling but never drying up completely. They dig their way forward and they endure. Rivers are symbols of sensitivity and empathy but they can also be forceful and overflowing, almost too much to bear all at once.

Alex is highly emotional, for better or worse that’s what makes him such an interesting character. He’s not just his anxiety but he’s always straightforward about his emotions and his thoughts. Unlike Reggie we often see him question Luke’s opinion, he doesn’t shy away from commenting on the current situation, if he’s feeling anxious or happy or sad or angry he’s open about it, he wants the others to know.

Alex had to hide a big part of his identity for we don’t know how long and that surely played its part in worsening his fears but what we do know is that he had the courage to come out and live his truth, despite the negative outcome. When he decides to do something he pours all of himself into it, he’s proactive, he’s honest (sometimes too honest), he’s afraid of change but still faces it head first.

Just like a river plunges through deep ravines and spreads out over wide planes, he can act as a leading force if needed, making others see things from a different perspective (him talking to Julie about the Patterson, for example). He’s captivating and intense, Willie fell for him deep and fast and vice versa. Alex immediately offered the truest form of himself (his interest and his awkwardness and his anxiety) with no compromise. That’s part of the reason Willie’s betrayal stung so much I believe (“I thought we were having fun together” meaning Alex never thought of acting any differently from who he really is, what he was putting on the table was his raw and flawed self and Willie’s hesitation felt like a rejection).

Just like the river, Alex is committed and open about where he comes from and where he’s going.

julie as the waterfall

While every other body of water is somehow linked to the imaginary of life and death (the ocean gave us life but it can take it back just as easily, the river mythologically represents the boundaries between the two worlds, lakes are the dwelling places of monsters or other insidious creatures) waterfalls are usually seen as magical elements. They’re young, fresh, unafraid and most importantly, alive. They represent the calling for adventure, the restlessness that comes from wanting to always try new things, to explore your own potential.

Julie, above all, is her own character. All her relationships are deeply meaningful but they just add to an already strong identity. She’s energetic and she’s resourceful and she’s strong in the truest sense of the term because she isn’t afraid to hurt or to admit her limits (“I tried for mom, for you, even for me. I’m tired”). Julie is the main engine of the entire narrative because she represents, quite literally, the life force of the band. She doesn’t just go along with their wishes, she finds a balance with the boys and she isn’t afraid to call it quits when her trust is betrayed, she’s their equal in all things and she inspires respect.

Just like the waterfall rushes down perilously from any height, Julie launches herself in the new possibilities the band has to offer, she claws her way out of her grief and she gets involved without sparing herself. She’s eager, she’s passionate and she’s creative and she always has a new input to offer.

#ari.txt #text #julie and the phantoms #i really need a tag for this kind of rambling #oh well #always feeling Too Much for fictional characters in this chili's tonight

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kaleidographia · 5 years

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[Review] Tales of Vesperia: The Brightest Star in the Night Sky Doesn't Shine as Strongly as I'd Hoped

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Warning: Contains allusive/thematic spoilers.

The day is finally here! Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition, containing content previously unseen outside of Japan, has finally been released, so that us English speakers and/or non-PS3 owners can experience the new storylines, characters and features for the first time! Alas, this isn’t a post about that, firstly because this post is going up day-of-release and I haven’t had a chance to play it yet, and secondly because I am writing this from outside of the country and won’t be united with my pre-ordered copy until I return next week, RIP.

Therefore, this post is written from the point of view of someone who has only played the Xbox 360 version. I will try to keep it brief for the sake of not spoiling newcomers to the game, and also hopefully not to complain about things that are fixed (or broken??) in the Definitive Edition.

Tales of Vesperia is a game in the long-running “Tales of” franchise from Bandai Namco, the first one in HD, originally released for the Xbox 360 in 2008, later receiving an updated PS3 version in 2009, exclusive to Japan. Like many older fans, my introduction to the Tales of series was with Tales of Symphonia for the Gamecube, and I fell in love hard; I was therefore extremely excited to play the next games, but unfortunately, I never owned the platforms for them until very recently. Along with Tales of the Abyss, Vesperia and Symphonia form the “holy trinity” of games in the series almost everyone loves; find a Tales fan and ask them their favourite game, and the answer will likely be one of those three (note: I’ve heard very good things about Graces and the two Xillia games, but unfortunately haven’t had a chance to judge them firsthand myself). The three games, while not directly related in terms of plot or setting, share a lot of things in common, as they had mostly the same creative team, often referred to as “Team Symphonia” (as opposed to “Team Destiny” which made most other games since then). One notable difference is the scenario writer, Takashi Hasegawa, while Symphonia and Abyss were written by Takumi Miyajima.

The Tales series is known for its reliance on anime and JRPG tropes, often used in a way that plays off cliché expectations only to then layer plot twists and character development and produce a much deeper experience than what would be expected from the get-go. When used effectively, these methods produce a story that is both fun and emotionally challenging. Tales of Vesperia is no different, offering a cast of archetypes that should be highly recognizable to those familiar with the genre, and yet this may be best set of characters in a Tales game. The party has impressively good banter, chemistry and dynamics and several scenes had me laughing out loud or yelling, and I never had a bad time watching their relationships unfold.

Unfortunately, the game spares little time fleshing out backstories or learning more about each individual character outside of the main plot. By the end, I was left wanting, as the cast was so endearing and vibrant, yet I knew next to nothing about them aside from what had been relevant to show onscreen. I longed for more information about where they had come from and how they had gotten where they were, but it is a testament to the strength of the character writing that their storylines reached a satisfying conclusion despite this relative sparse amount of information about them. “Backstory is not story”, Craig McCracken and Frank Angones were fond of saying to fans of Wander Over Yonder, but for a game with the size and scope of a 60-hour JRPG, not providing that window of information feels like a hole in the worldbuilding.

Mechanically, Vesperia builds on the model established by Symphonia and refined in Abyss, where combat takes place in a 3D arena and the player can run around, hit enemies and rack up combos fighting game style (the franchise calls this “Linear Motion Battle System”). While Symphonia was in 3D, it restricted the player to a single side-to-side corridor of action. Abyss added the ability to run around in 3D space by holding down a button, a feature Vesperia also has. This makes combat easier and more fun, as nothing is quite as satisfying as avoiding an attack and then running around and hitting the enemy from behind. And, as the game allows up to four players controlling different party members, and I have a player 2 (shoutout to my roommate Opal), Vesperia’s system is the most well-suited to multiplayer. If nothing else, I never felt lost while on the battlefield yelling for backup. The one major flaw is that boss fights come with massive difficulty spikes and I often had to grind and formulate careful battle plans with Opal just to not get continuously massacred by bosses.

Storywise, Vesperia starts off very strongly, sort of peters out near the middle, and then the third act falls apart. At first the theme is anti-authority, with a protagonist who grew up in the slums, neglected by nobles, who became a knight and then quit out of disillusionment when it turned out all they did was squabble about politics, and the inciting incident and early driver of the plot is his quest to “fix the plumbing” as a popular Tumblr text post put it. It’s clear Yuri has all the reason in the world to not trust authority and he even goes full vigilante against unjust abuse of power, but while this thread seems like the most important theme in the story, after a while so many other elements come into play it ends up lost and doesn’t really make much of an appearance except to highlight the differences between Yuri and Flynn’s approaches to life and how they prefer to help people. On its own it’s a compelling idea, but it never gets the follow-through it deserves, and my expectations were certainly subverted—but in a bad way.

It’s hard to talk about the third act without spoilers so I will probably come back to it for a proper analysis at a later date, but its ultimate message was already kind of limp in 2008 and is even more laughable now. For a game whose initial premise was so strongly against authority, the ultimate resolution of the main conflict reads as incredibly daft in light of just about everything that is happening in politics at the moment. There’s a very strong environmental allegory and the comparisons to climate change are not subtle, but the writers probably bit off more than they could chew because realistically trying to solve this problem in the time the story allotted would have been next to impossible; I still would have hoped the implications of the given solution had been actually explored instead of settling for an “oh well, guess everything’s been fixed now”.

I’m being harsh about the plot because to me Vesperia has a lot of wasted potential. Don’t get me wrong: I do love this game. It is in fact up there with the holy trinity as far as my opinions of the series go, but it lands in third place out of the three because it just fails to live up to what its first half promises about the world it created. To put it bluntly, if the story had just ended at the conclusion of the second act, it would have been much stronger. That the game continues for another 20 hours on a completely different track with an unsatisfying, unrealistic conclusion is a huge shame because it brings down what could have been a real masterpiece of tropey anime JRPG narratives. I live for that stuff, there’s a reason I want to play every Tales game, but that’s what makes this letdown the most disappointing. At least the characters themselves get good conclusions; it is unfortunate I can’t say the same for the main plot.

Despite all this I think Vesperia is a worthwhile experience, and one of my favourite things about is its aesthetic sense. Every location is immersive, polished, and the pinnacle of what I want to see in a videogame, to the point I dream of Symphonia and Abyss remakes made in the same style (and every other game in the series, to be honest, but that seems unlikely with the direction it’s taken since then). I genuinely cared about the party and I wanted to see them succeed and I was ultimately happy that they did even if I did roll my eyes a lot. The combat was so satisfying and so fun to play with a player 2 it makes me twice as mad that Zestiria’s camera goes completely wild during multiplayer and prevents me from joining in. I should note that for someone who plays as many games as I do I am notoriously terrible at them so I heavily favour story over mechanics, but Vesperia is a game that reminds me that engaging gameplay can make a huge difference. Yeah, I suck, but at least I’m having fun while sucking. That’s more than I can say for a lot of games.

If you like JRPGs, games that let you run around and hit things, or fun and intriguing character dynamics, you’ll probably like Tales of Vesperia. If you’re looking for a coherent story from start to finish, you’ll probably disappointed, but there’s just enough there to keep you engrossed until the end. Overall, Vesperia is solid, and the parts it fumbles aren’t bad enough to ruin the whole thing, but hopefully the extra content in Definitive Edition helps to smooth it out; I’ll have to find that out for myself.

Aside from how it messes up the voice acting this time around. Oh, Bamco.

#Review #Tales of #Tales of Vesperia #videogames

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icarusandtheson · 6 years

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“Bastard, orphan, son of [redacted]”: The Hamilton-Washington Connection Through a Maternal Lens

this originated as an 800 word meta post here on tumblr. my followers were very supportive. it escalated. here we are clocking in around 4.1k. thanks everybody.

summary: an analysis of hamilton and washington’s relationship as fictionally portrayed in “hamilton: an american musical” considering hamilton’s relationship with rachel faucette, themes of loss, abandonment, and remembrance.

find it on ao3!

also, this is apparently a series now

Rachel Faucette is mentioned in precisely four songs of Hamilton: An American Musical. She is never named, references to her are brief at best and insulting at worst, and yet her life and death haunt the narrative. Anyone who has followed me in this fandom, even briefly, knows I care about her, and her relationship to Alexander, very deeply. I’ve yet to receive a question about why I care about this dynamic so much, which I think speaks to some deeper understanding we all share -- we know Rachel is important, we know her relationship with her son is important, and all that I intend to do here is dig a little more deeply into that knowledge.

If you know about my feelings on Rachel, then you also know my feelings on Alexander and Washington’s relationship. Even the casual fan would be hard-pressed to explore this dynamic and not come across the plethora of theorizing that has been done about the parallels between this dynamic and Alexander’s relationship (or lack thereof) with absentee father James Hamilton. Now, Rachel is only mentioned four times in the musical, but James is only mentioned twice. As far as I have encountered, there is precious little material exploring her role in a similar context, so for the next little while I’m going to give Rachel her due, as well as delve into some of the complexities that make Alexander and Washington’s dynamic so frustrating and so rewarding.

This is, of course, all conjecture -- there is no other description I can use, with so few textual references to either parent. Moreover, Washington and Hamilton’s canon relationship is fraught, to say the least, and open to countless interpretations. I draw connections to Hamilton’s behavior that I believe make sense, from a narrative perspective, to have stemmed from the loss of his mother. As always, I’m coming at Hamilton as a fictional text, not a piece of history, and all analysis is based within this framing, for my own entertainment, and the reader’s.

His father split, full of it -- On James, Rachel, Washington, and parallels therein

According to Genius.com, the Off-Broadway version of Alexander Hamilton says “full of shit” instead. I mention it here to frame the argument that follows.

People tend to draw connections between Washington and the absentee James Hamilton, for fairly obvious reasons. Absent father, would-be father figure. In many ways, this is what gives Alexander and Washington’s dynamic, in whatever iteration, so much struggle and difficulty and complexity. There are many different emotions at play on various levels, both past and present. Whether Washington’s relationship with Alexander parallels or contrasts James’ is not often dissected in much detail -- the extent of the argument usually rests on Meet Me Inside, and Alexander’s discomfort and anger with being called “son”. Since Washington is a man and a father figure, the explanation for this discomfort is usually boxed away as “daddy issues” and not revisited.

However, unlike James, Washington wants Alexander. In Right Hand Man he requests him specifically to work for him, and trusts him almost immediately -- enough to share his private concerns to the extent that even Alexander asks, “Why are you telling me this?” When they fight in Meet Me Inside, Washington calls him back, and does so again in Non-Stop. I do not doubt that James’ abandonment lingers behind the scenes and influences some of the strain between these two characters, but I do doubt that solely considering James’ influence yields a complete picture.

If James is “full of it”, Washington is utterly grounded -- in both his perception of himself and of his reality. We see this often throughout the musical, but we see it especially clearly in Right Hand Man: regarding the reality of the war, he’s fully aware his troops are “outgunned” and “outmanned”. Regarding his own reputation --“ men are all lining up to put me on a pedestal, writing letters to relatives embellishing my elegance and eloquence”. He is fully aware of his own limitations, and the way others seek to obscure those limitations in service of a greater narrative. Despite this, or maybe because of it, the narrative perceives him as honorable. Alexander, regardless of his tension with the man, perceives him as honorable. LMM mentions in the Right Hand Man Genius.com annotations that he wrote Washington as “an unimpeachable moral authority”, and it shows. He is as far from the man who abandoned Alexander and his mother as could possibly be.

This brings us to Rachel: a woman, referenced only briefly, and often referred to outside of Alex (and Eliza’s) recounting as “a whore” (for the record, my tally of Rachel’s mention in the play do not count the many, many times this is mentioned -- I count the time Alexander’s “mother” is referenced). At first glance, she has less in common with Washington than James does. Something worth noting: Genius.com confirms that she was not a literal prostitute -- it’s an epithet, probably alluding to the fact that she wasn’t married to James, but to someone else. She was also accused of cheating on that husband who was, by all accounts, horrid to her. On that note, let’s talk a bit more about “moral authority” and who has it.

Lee insults Washington, particularly attacking his fitness to lead. We know Lee is in the moral wrong for several reasons: Washington has already been set up as the “only … man” who can lead the revolution, and Lee’s attack is framed as a peevish response to consequences of his own cowardice. The chorus gasps, and Washington continues to exert his moral authority by ordering Alexander to not do anything, assuring him that “history will prove [Lee] wrong”. Washington even takes the high road after the ill-advised duel -- he thanks Lee for his service. Therefore, Washington retains moral authority in the narrative, and Lee has none. But even more important is how Alexander views the insult -- he disobeys Washington (through a loophole, but the fact remains) in order to see Lee pay for the insult. If the musical is told more or less through Alexander’s eyes, following significant events of his life, and if Washington is the moral authority of the musical, we can begin to lay the foundation for a more complex connection.

Rachel’s parallel to this runs throughout the entire musical via the “whore” designation, most often used by Burr in the opening lines of songs. Burr’s moral authority within the play is… difficult, to say the least. He kills the protagonist, but only because he fears he himself will be killed, thus orphaning his daughter. There are doubtlessly moments in which we as an audience sympathize with him, even side with him. I talked in my previous essay about the difficulties of considering “Burr the Narrator” versus “Burr the Character”, but within this context, I believe it’s safe to assume we are dealing with “Burr the Narrator” -- calling Alexander the “son of a whore” seems to be less Burr’s own judgement than it is a reflection of the views of their society and how it remembered him. Alexander, the “bastard orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman” -- the entire musical is taking up the task of dismantling this definition and showing who he really was, how he was so much more than these epithets. Therefore, Burr’s moral authority is less of an issue, here (though it’s interesting to note that in Ten Duel Commandments, Burr is Lee’s second). The grievance should be directed more at general tendencies of labelling women as “Madonna or whore” extremes -- this is reinforced by Alexander’s fondness towards his mother’s memory, and the fact that she was, by all accounts, a good and loving woman despite what is said about her by others. In this way, Rachel retains some measure of moral authority after her death -- significantly more so than James, who is remembered fondly by no one, not even his son. We never get Alexander’s response to hearing Rachel insulted directly -- however, I would expect a fairly explosive reaction.

I would argue that Rachel and Washington occupy the same type of place in Alexander’s life -- perhaps what Washington would call “a pedestal”. It’s worth bringing up The World Was Wide Enough to make this point -- there’s clearly a connection between the people Alexander remembers (or sees, as the case may be). Laurens and Philip, connected by their untimely deaths, Philip and Rachel by virtue of being Alexander’s family and him taking some comfort at the thought of Philip being cared for as he himself once was, and -- Rachel and Washington. Moments from death, as honest as we have ever seen him be, Alexander links them through order.

Further explanations for this order will unfold as we continue.

I grew up buckwild -- On parental legacy

When we discuss Alexander’s reluctance to let Washington close -- Meet Me Inside being the most obvious example of this tension -- I would argue that there is a substantial amount of his trauma over Rachel’s death in that, not just James’ abandonment. By all accounts in the text (again, “full of [sh]it”) James care little for his son, so the pain Alexander is protecting himself against by refusing Washington’s attempts at affection and comfort, I would argue, stems from the loss of the one person Alex ever drew affection and comfort from. James was by all accounts distant, certainly didn’t try to reach out and establish a connection like Washington does. Like Washington repeatedly does, from their first meeting to their last.

One Last Time, and the fact that Washington does eventually split, will be addressed later on.

If it was just about “daddy issues”, why do any overtures of affection incite so much anxiety and reluctance from Alexander? Wouldn’t he want that? Maybe, maybe not. It is difficult to determine what paternal abandonment did to him. However, by all accounts he was very close to his mother. They were together when she died, both having become ill around the same time. She was holding him, and he was twelve already -- still a child, but not a young child. There’s a closeness denoted there, a standard of love and care, and it is reflected by Alex’s clear grief discussing her in Hurricane and his assertion in Helpless that he’ll “never forget [her] face, that was real” (’that’, we can safely assume, indicating their love for each other), that can safely be drawn to their entire relationship. I posit that Alex runs from George’s affection because he’s already had it. He had it, he treasured it, and it was torn from him before its time. If he barely survived it the first experience of that kind of loss, it’s difficult to imagine why would he willingly put himself back there a second time -- in a war zone at that, where risk is even higher than in his previous experiences.

In my previous Hamilton essay, I talked at length about Alexander and his struggle with his work under Washington, and how that ties into Alexander’s many issues with toxic masculinity. For this paper, I want to suggest a derivative of that: Alexander equates glory, even if death, with manhood, and I would further argue, adulthood. The opening of Right Hand Man supports this: “As a kid in the Caribbean, I wished for a war, I knew that I was poor, I knew it was the only way to rise up”. He only starts to relent when Washington notes that a “head full of fantasies of dying like a martyr” is a characteristic of someone who is “younger”. Even still, in The Story of Tonight (Reprise), he tells Burr he wishes he had Burr’s command, “instead of manning George’s journal”. This indicates to me a desire for Alexander to distance himself from childish things -- one of which involves being kept back from action, kept safe, under the watchful eye of a benevolent authority figure. Part of that, I argue, stems from the fact that he’s already been that child, has already been protected (again, we return to Rachel holding him, protecting him in his illness) and knows intimately how unwise it is to put faith in that. He’s wary of repeating past mistakes -- that is, wary of making himself vulnerable to elements out of his control. He’s not afraid of being abandoned (or not only that), which would be the case if the James theory held true -- he’s afraid of being held too close.

If there’s a moment I would say we see James’ legacy, it comes right after Washington tells Alexander to go home in Meet Me Inside. The “but sir”’ is performed in the OCR in such a small, lost voice; I think here, in this moment where Washington seems to have removed all affection (even though, ironically enough, he hasn’t, he’s trying to save Alexander and return him to his family) that we maybe see an echo of the boy who watched his father walk away.

But the extra knife in the gut to that is that he knows, at some point, the affection was there. It’s reflective of both his parental losses, and it is triggered by him acting on his affection for Washington and defending his honor. Washington’s assertion that he is “not a maiden in need of defending, [he is] grown” both hits the mark and misses the point. Alexander wants to protect Washington, not because he believes him childish or incompetent, but because he is keenly aware that people do not cease being vulnerable as adults. It was a lesson he learned well as a child.

George’s “Son, I need you alive” and Alexander’s’s strong reaction to it in Meet Me Inside could be explained by this theory too. I find it hard to believe that Rachel didn’t express that same sentiment before she died, in some way or other. Washington is deeply afraid of losing Alexander, and by taking control of the situation and denying Alexander the command, he places Alexander in a renewed state of vulnerability. It is a painfully fraught moment on every level -- both men want to protect, both are so close to understanding and yet so far from it.

Interestingly, we do see a resolution -- History Has Its Eyes On You shows Washington elaborating his tragic past and offering the closest we (and Alexander) ever have to an explanation of why he is so concerned about sending Alexander to fight. Washington is worried about Alexander dying, about failing him as Washington failed the soldiers under his first command. “Or you could die!” has so much more emotional power after this confession. Washington relents, they win the day -- but not before Washington offers one last bit of advice. “You have no control: who lives, who dies, who tells your story” -- Alexander never seems to fully grasp this theme, though it will follow him for the rest of his days. Nevertheless, it echoes Washington’s earlier assertions in Right Hand Man about youth and the pointlessness of martyrdom. It also reads to me as preemptive forgiveness -- if soldiers die under Alexander’s command, Washington wants to spare him the guilt of it. But at this point in the narrative, before the battles, before any of the significant deaths, who has died in a significant way in Alexander’s life? Only Rachel. In Hurricane, Alexander notes, “we were sick and she was holding me, I couldn’t seem to die.” There is so much survivor’s guilt in that song, and the OCR performance of it sounds, to me, like the grief is still fresh. Decades later, and the wound has not yet closed.

I doubt Washington knows about Alexander’s past -- our protagonist is much too eager for advancement to admit to his roots. But we as the audience know. Intended or not, Washington’s line, caution and forgiveness all at once, offers if not a solution, then comfort, for the trauma Alex has carried and will carry until he sees both Rachel and Washington at the ends of things.

How to say goodbye -- on One Last Time

Fans of the Washington/Hamilton dynamic will, most likely, be a fan of One Last Time. This may seem counterintuitive; it is, after all, their final song together, where Washington exits the narrative and Alexander’s life permanently. In reality, the fondness for this song comes from the fondness shared between the characters. The most representative of this, in my opinion, is Washington’s gently exasperated, “Shh, talk less,” expressed when Alexander still believes the issue at hand involves Jefferson. It’s a fascinating twist of the words Burr used at the musical’s beginning to undercut Alexander’s loudmouth tendencies. We know this because Washington urges Hamilton to “pick up a pen, start writing” later in the song. Washington sees the value in Hamilton’s words, so him saying “talk less” is more endearment than insult. This line, and the closeness it gestures at, serves my purposes here because it indicates a strong bond between the two characters that Alexander simply did not have with James. He has accepted, up to a point, Washington’s affection, and seems happy enough with it until Washington informs him that he’s leaving. This is in and of itself significant -- just as I posit that Alexander’s reluctance to become close to Washington stems from Rachel’s loss, so too does his relative acquiescence indicate to me the beginnings of healing, or at least coming to terms with the loss of a much-beloved parental/authority figure.

And then Washington leaves.

There is an interesting creative choice made towards the end of the song. Alexander, finally (if reluctantly) accepting Washington’s resignation, echoes Washington’s intent: to “teach [America] how to say goodbye”. Washington finishes the thought, “You and I,” and then, “Going home.” At a glance, these are two separate thoughts that happen to be placed back to back, and as a result, when sung, sound like one thought. They don’t make narrative sense otherwise: Alexander and Washington are never in the same place again while alive. The lyrics hint at a unity, a home, that doesn’t exist. I see a connection, here, between this strange line and Alexander’s assertion in Helpless that he’s “been without a family since [he] was a child”.

That’s the crux of it. Alexander isn’t going home. He is, in a very real way, losing the one home he could reliably depend on since the war: Washington. Here is perhaps the greatest argument that James is the ghost haunting Alex, not Rachel. Washington leaves. However, we once again look to the end of Alexander’s life -- he sees his mother, and he sees his general. James’ abandonment was never forgiven, but Alexander does not equate Washington leaving office with that trauma. There is far more of Rachel’s legacy here, of love and remembrance and loss, than James’. To explain this, we have to look at the purpose One Last Time serves within the narrative: it’s Washington’s last song, in every meaning of the word. He dies, sometime after the song, and that twists his exit into an echo of Rachel’s. It is, in many ways, the goodbye Alex never got as a child, from either parent. Of course he sees Washington at the end of it all. Of course he sees him immediately after he sees Rachel. All of these threads have always been tied together.

What is a legacy? -- On the point of it all

More talk about Rachel needs to happen, or at least the idea of the maternal figure in Alex’s life, in the way that James is obliquely referenced as a void in discussion of Alexander’s “daddy issues”. Because Rachel is there. Rachel is a literal ghost in the musical, and the characters that take on her mantle are Eliza and George, from the beginning. They are the characters that sing about Alex’s childhood, they plus Angelica are the ones warning him in Hurricane. Eliza tries but she is ultimately not enough -- through no fault of her own -- to stop Alex from destroying his (their) life, or from dying. This is rather baldly demonstrated at the end of Act One -- Eliza asks, heartbroken, “Isn’t this enough to be satisfied?” as Alexander rips his arm from hers and Angelica’s grasps to climb the scaffolding to Washington. Here, “this” is her, and Philip, and the idea of family and domesticity that Alexander referenced in Helpless. It isn’t enough -- explanations for that could take up a separate paper, but for my purposes, it’s enough to say that much. But, as a brief aside: it’s telling that his contact with his son goes from the idealistic newfound joy of Dear Theodosia to the distance in Take a Break, his mind still on work on his son’s birthday: “Hey, our kid is pretty great,” Alexander says, with something that smacks of surprise. There is another, significantly less optimistic, paper in that -- Washington isn’t the one carrying on James’ legacy in any sense. There’s an argument to be made that Alexander is.

Therefore, if the end goal of this entire intellectual exercise is to seek a hypothetical solution of some sort, we have to briefly return to One Last Time and Alexander’s relative comfort with Washington’s emotional proximity. There’s a glimmer of hope, both there and in the well-established fact that Alexander will uproot his entire life to come when Washington calls. Despite his best efforts, Alex is allowing an emotional closeness that I would argue he has not seen or experienced since childhood.

We see this foreshadowed in Meet Me Inside. Hamilton wants to die, has wanted to die since Rachel did. In Hurricane, we hear him say, grief-stricken after all these years, that he “couldn’t seem to die”, a word choice that definitely indicates a desire, or at least an exhaustion that acted similarly, to die. In MMI, he says he is “more than willing to die” for the revolution, and, it could be drawn from the context of the argument, for Washington. And to die for Washington? To see him victorious, or at the least safe? Isn’t that a way to somehow staunch that lifelong ache, that sense of guilt and failure and regret from his childhood? There’s something to be said for the warmth in Alexander’s voice during Yorktown: “I see George Washington smile.” In the midst of this glory, this victory he’s been craving from the beginning of the musical, Alexander takes time to make note of this. To me, it reads a bit like shorthand for a greater theme we’ve been dealing with. They’re both alive, and Alexander is satisfied without dying a martyr’s death, because he helped lead them to victory -- and, I’d argue, because Washington made it. He’s alive, he’s victorious, and that’s enough -- enough to make Alexander go back to being his “secretary” even after the war is over. He’s reframing his definitions of success based on what Washington taught him, and we see genuine growth here. There is also an unmistakable echo between “I see George Washington smile” and “I’ll never forget my mother’s face” from Helpless. That was real. That had meaning. Alexander so rarely comments on faces, on physical appearance (unlike the Schuylers in Helpless/Satisfied, as has been mentioned extensively) that this connection seems fairly significant.

If it’s possible for Rachel to have a successor in caring for Alexander, I would make an argument that it’s Washington -- or at least that from all the characters we see in the musical, he’s the only one with the potential to take on that role successfully and have Alexander listen. We know this because he has done it, successfully, throughout the musical. Much has been said about how Alexander’s life goes to hell after Washington leaves, and that’s the point. Alexander has been without a family for years, and that means he has been without guidance. Washington fills that role, without a doubt.

If Washington were played by a woman, I doubt this would be overlooked -- indeed, I wonder if this essay would be necessary at all. To miss these connections on the basis of gender, I think, does a disservice to the many possibilities of analysis presented in this musical.

Alexander made a lot of promises in Helpless that he fails to live up to as his story unfolds. The World Was Wide Enough proves that he keeps at least one. He never forgot Rachel’s face, “that was real.”

He never forgot Washington, either. That was real, too. The fact that Washington is the only hallucination/ghost who is actively “watching” Alexander suggests some reciprocation on this theme, or at least a desire for it on Alexander’s part.

“Daddy issues” isn’t even the half of it.

#whamilton #alexander hamilton #george washington #rachel faucette #hamwash #meta

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