[Coldsaturn]

/chants
Dark! Souls! Dark! Souls!

[ChicletPrime]

okay, if i hold off on more pulling until tomorrow, i can get 10 more free tickets with the event rewards so i'm going to do that. i am going to grab a drink here, and go pull up Lavender's playthrough as well and will meet you back here in a couple of hours!

i did get a 5* pull on #61 (so not quite hard pity) aaaaand it was not either of the myth cards (boo!) but was Caleb's 5* Exclusive Aftertaste (yay!) which I'd been eyeing up in the store but had managed to hold off on for just this occasion, so i am quite pleased. It's not the second half of the Farspace Colonel admittedly but having checked my innards, we are smug about it.

i think i will flex admin power if its okay with you (not like you're actually here or anything to stop me) and just edit your post with colour commentary in between your comments. 

[ChicletPrime]

okay, i changed my mind again (i do that). i will do my own commentary post BUT i will split screen with yours so as I watch the playthrough, i can cut/paste for continuity without tramping rougshod over yours.

but going back first to the SPOILER stuff in your other message:

-- i am betting before checking anything that the "long dream.. led me out of centuries of darkness... " is from Xavier's point of view. it could be from MC's but i don't think so.
-- this really does look like an alternate timeline, but it also could be the very far-est future of Philos if Traceback fails in its mission and Philos just keeps on trucking on. i mean, technically if Xavier is immortal in the cheat sense, eventually he'll catch up with himself, yah? through the destruction of Earth to the rebirth of Philos to its eventual decay and suddenly he's the last royal struggling to keep his planet's head above the proverbial dark waters.
-- those are definitely Wanderers attacking in the trailer, the eyes are the same.
-- i bet its is dad ze King cursing him.

okay, onto the myth! ... jesus christ on a cracker, its 2 HOURS LONG?  well.  uh.  /girds up? 

Where Tears Scatter | Chapter 1: 

• okay, right off the gun, i am already wrong. this voice has to be the girlfriend, dreaming away in UnlifeNotDeath
  
• huh. regarding the "return to Philos prior to the Apocalypse" .. is he talking, like, time travel? like literally go back? or more figurative like, just reset to the world back to the state it was before The Bad Stuff Happened. I think you have the comma in the wrong place, even if the voice line deliver was a tad... uh. uneven.
  
• they seem very excited that i am possessed of a vessel of flesh and blood. what are they made of, chips and dip? 
  
• :D  yes, the voice acting is about par for the course, ain't it? 
  
• yay, black and gold rescue at hand! 
  
• oookay, you're right. they are definitely talking like Philos is some other place that is not here. if you ever watched Stranger Things, maybe they're in the Upside Down of Philos? Or maybe the "Sinders" is an analogue for the River Styx or even Lethe, flowing into the Underworld.
  
• ooookay. so we push the acolyte into the flames and he goes up in dust? fucking hell. Wanderer. in a human form? already dead, looking to be even more dead?  hah. none of them cast shadows. fantastic, no notes.
  
• (so many notes)
  
• /pauses to admire Undead King Xavier. i'll be honest, the golden metal lilies on his chest are exquisite and are my favorite part.  oh! and i can see embossed lilies twining on his leather tunic. superb! oh! and the little hanging bit that is not quite black yet has little stars trapped in it. 
  
• i appreciate that they specifically took the time to note that Xavier stared at me for a long, long time. when he asks who exactly we are, do we think he's lying? or he's forgotten? or are we truly in a different timeline where we've never met before and he was just deeply startled that we are a living being in a city full of the miserable dead?
  

well, this is a VERY good start! mysterious circumstances, terrible secondary voice acting to help us set the scene properly, and Xavier's VA stretching himself a little. i am not sure either if the familiarity is her carrying an unconscious memory of previous lives with Xavier, or if this is continuous to the other myth and she's just been asleep too long.  but again, she was swept in by what appears to be a river and if its something like Lethe... maybe her memory just got shredded on her way in.

Chapter 2

• Philos fell during a catastrophic war.  Fallen Cosmos? they were at war in that one, i know that much. mentions of a Tree of Life and I remember the Cosmos trailer had Caleb's apples on a digital tree so... lets just stretch for it, hey? 
  
• good GOD  Xavier is beautiful. i say it all the time and every time i say it, i believe it more. whoever designed that face should eat peeled grapes and be fanned by nubile people of their preferred sex for the rest of their life. 
  
• also, nice sound design. 
  
• and why are they (re)using the Starfall Forest background? and she recognizes this place as somewhere in Philos "vivid in memory" so its like some of her brain got eaten but not all of it.
  
• yeah, the Revenants are kind of neat. so Xavier is guarding the gates that would lead back to Light And Eternity.. so he's keeping the Dead from rising back into the world. He's taken the fight against the Wanderers right to the source of the problem / inside the pool ?!
  
• "Feeble Revenant" is REALLY good and "Irritable Revenant" is not far behind. that is some excellent voice work. how do they get such uneven performances in these things? 
  
• Grandis Knight: May Philos prosper under eternity's divine gaze. 
  
• yeah, this is the Philos from the other myth, that is exactly what Xavier said before he left for Traceback for the final time.  this is some sort of inversion inside Starfall Forest, on the dead side of things after they are eaten by the pool.
  
• "She carries his essence."  buddy, we haven't even kissed in at least three timelines. 
  
• oh yeah, that exchange about fate in her hands and her in his hands was excellently done.
  
• did that horse just EVAPORATE?
  
• the singing sound as he called his blade to his hand.  noice.
  

Chapter 3

• yeah, i think you're onto it. eventually too many people got sacrificed and the balance tipped towards the dead and the still living Philos was overrun. 
  
• aww, he lifted his cloak to shield me while i searched for my name among the gravestones. see, this myth is already so much better than the first one, and we KNEW each other in that one. 
  
• is Xavier.. sleeping on the boat? :D
  
• yeah, but not Styx, that has to be Lethe, river of memory and oblivion.
  
• hiiii ever so much younger Xavier! they are have using these third myths to close off the previous ones, aren't they? but i agree, its not exact either. if we assume the knight that forced the 'young king' to take his life is now the current Tyrant, that means Xavier forced someone else to die on the throne, which... could have happened, yeah, but that would be new information for some unknown time after the Queen we left.  do-able, the time frames would allow for it. Queen dies, empty throne, a youth put onto it from some branch of the royal line, there's war (fallen cosmos again?), the rebel army forces the king to abdicate through death and then the Wanderer issue takes over everything.  ORRRR what you said... this is an alternate timeline where Xavier never left for Traceback, ascended the throne.. but no, that doesn't work, because that king died and our Mad King here is definitely alive in the realm of the dead. so. where the fuck does that leave us? 
  
• i'll be honest, this backdrop of the inner city looks a LOT like most gothic architecture in Final Fantasy. maybe you weren't far off with the threesome pregnancy comment.
  
•  before the Apocalypse descends .... (/flashes to Doomsday! ... *descends*) /shivers with what we're gonna call excitement.
  
• Tree of Life... Fountain of Atei... Tower of Babel? :P
  
• why does everybody always pick me out of a crowd? then again, i am wearing a dress made of Shoot Me Now white.
  
• also why do i think that if i "go back to Philos" somehow, i'll remember who i am? 
  
• canon-compliant: Xavier can't cook in any timeline.
  
• "...white city walls transform into a clock tower... " c'mon!  "I thought you'd never see me again." wow. OUCH. there was so much hope in that delivery.
  

a blooming flower is from another boyfriend's myth? let me guess... Zayne? i know he's linked to jasmines, it was mentioned a few times in the wedding event.  and i'll also point that she's walking the many branches of the river as it flows through and around the city... which is very reminiscent of the rivers in the palace in the Abysswalker myth, which was something like seven branches each of seven.

[Coldsaturn]

Yeah, I noticed the many rivers thing as well, but since she didn't mention just how many there are (and in Abysswalker there were MANY) I let it slide as a generic "we're in the same place"

Good guess, it is Zayne!

YES on Lethe and not Styx. Or an amalgamation of both.

I swear I had written a comment on the Feeble Revenant giving it his all in the performance but I have no idea where it ended up.

I'm not sure a king was actually made to kill himself. I read it to mean they came to make him do it, but the king instead defeated them all and fused the swords on his throne GoT (the actual GoT) style.

[ChicletPrime]

huh. okay, one of us (i volunteer you because i'm just about to go to bed) needs to re-read that. i read that the rebels made the young king kill himself, but then they were in turn defeated and their swords welded to the throne and then after 100 years there was peace and "the knight" which i took for the leader of the rebels became The Tyrant. 

or... something.

[Coldsaturn]

Went back to the chapter.

Why I think we're always talking about Xav:

"A young knight ascends the long staircase. Amongst the cheers of thousands, he ascends the throne."
(he's described with the adjective "young" which will be used later for the king. He's also introduced with "a" because we've never met him before in the scene)

"The rebel army storms the capital. They force the young king to take his own life."
("young knight" who ascends the throne and becomes "young king." We've already introduced him, so "the" instead of "a")
(What they want to do is "force the young king to take his own life" but they don't succeed because the next sentence is introduced by "yet")

"Yet their swords are melted into liquid steel in the furnace and cast onto the throne itself."
(if they had succeeded in making the king die, what is with that "yet"? It wouldn't contrast anything previously stated.)

And then it continues with "peace is restored to the kingdom a century later. There are no more casualties from the war for hundreds of years, yet people have come to despise this monarch."
(whatever Xavier did to end the war made him unpopular)

Your timeline would be:
Queen MC dies - Random King ascends the throne - Xav leads the rebel army - They make the King kill himself - The rebel army is defeated anyway - 100 years later they reach peace - Xav who led the rebel army becomes king.

My timeline would be:
Queen MC dies - Xav comes back to find her dead and ascends the throne - Rebel army tries to kill him and take the power - Xav survives but the war rages on - 100 years later he finally succeeds but has lost reputation in the meantime

(other 2 reasons I believe it's Xav is that

we're introduced to him talking about assassins sent to his castle during the story, which mirrors what happened during the war

, and that until now his character has been the only one who has never died and has never reincarnated; had he died then we'd have his first reincarnation which would be a big deal plot-wise)

P.S. I added two comments on my commentary post, so in case you left the tab open or something, refresh it before continuing with your watchthrough!

[ChicletPrime]

"They force the young king to take his own life."

but that's a statement of action, a thing that happened. there's no language there for "they wanted to" or "they intended" or "they tried to". instead it's "they force the king" which seems a very clear statement of success.

they did this thing (forced the king to suicide), yet their swords are melted - whatever they intended, it didn't save them or advance their cause. this totally scans as a throughline, the "yet" isn't incongruous.

that being said, i agree with you and we should probably check the CN translation when/if there is one because the REST of it absolutely makes more sense if we're talking about the young king putting down the rebels, strengthening his throne and then eventually becoming The Tyrant later.

also just to play devil's advocate on this, who's the say that "took his own life" doesn't mean our young king didn't walk into the pool in Starfall Forest and came back out again - death back into life and then the strength to put down the rebel uprising and then you get the sword throne and the rest of it. and then the populace is frightened and in a hundred years after the war is finally ended, it all goes to heck in a handbasket on the popularity polls.

while i don't know if it's "important" or anything, i do think its worth noting whenever there's an overlap between stories .. the many rivers, this blooming flower line, etc. if the writers are looping around each of the myths, bringing elements over in a cross contamination, that could end up being very interesting, even if at the moment maybe its just a nod across alternate timelines.

i am going to do a couple of Kahli runs to tick off a few endings on the list and then i'll be back later to do more of the playthrough and hopefully finish it off for both of us.

[Coldsaturn]

Ok I went on a research tangent and checked both the Korean, Japanese, and Traditional Chinese version (my youtube algorithm is forever fucked), then used Google Lens and a number of translators to help myself. I don't consider this a definitive answer and will check a couple of youtubers who tend to comment on the differences in translations.

What I've found:

KR
the rebels who invaded the palace forced the young king to take his own life.

JP
a large army of rebels storms into the castle and threatens the young king to commit suicide

CN
the rebel army stormed the royal city and forced the young king to commit suicide

And at this point I was very confused so I went with the Chinese sentence and looked for the translation word by word, paying close attention to the verb "force"

反叛者大軍衝進王城，逼那位年輕的王自戕。

You can see the verb in a dictionary here (https://dict.concised.moe.edu.tw/dictView.jsp?ID=1187&q=1) with the meaning of "threats, coercion"

Just for the sake of talking to myself, I tried asking gpt (NOT an authority on this so I'll take it as a temporary answer) if that verb in the sentence implied the success of the action (they did make him commit suicide) or if it only indicated their pressure in making him do it.

"Breaking it down semantically and grammatically:
逼 (bī) means "to force," "to coerce," or "to pressure." It does not guarantee the action happened—it emphasizes attempt or pressure.
自戕 (zìqiāng) means "to kill oneself", but in this construction, it's the intended outcome of the coercion.
So, is it definite?
Not quite.
The structure:
逼 [subject] [to do something] can imply two different things depending on context:
They pressured the young king to kill himself (attempted coercion, but result unknown).
They successfully forced him to kill himself (coercion led to the act).
In this sentence, is the result explicit?
No.
The sentence does not state explicitly that the king actually did kill himself. It only says the rebels forced (or tried to force) him to."

[ChicletPrime]

Chapter 4

• apparently the Apocalypse is only a matter of time. how did that statement appear out of nowhere? i have to admit i like this MC, she's very down to earth with her "if its gonna flood, you should be building dams" commentary.
  
• it sounds like the uncrowned queen ruled for a time and Philos prospered under her and then... she just disappeared or died or left or something, records unknown. everything falls back into squabbling and ruin and the situation gets dire, Xavier steps in at the very last (possibly returned from his time travels or possibly he just makes himself known as the last of the royal lineage or Jeremiah outs him or something) to be the last living King of a dying planet, with all of it population dead by planetary inhalation, living only as shades of themselves in the Upside Down.
  
• "In every historical record.. the fall of Philos is almost universally blamed on that king."  shades of Lemuria, anyone? 
  
• also.. "most important person".  that was a motif in Caleb's thing in Homecoming Wings, was it not? 
  
• also Xavier jumping down from a balcony to meet me is very apropos.
  
• the first 200 years of his reign was "the Golden Epoch." and the uncrowned queen ruled for about 200 years as well during the "Morn Era".  and the time between when Xavier left for his Gladius Ceremony (and went missing) until his return was also about 200 years.  its all very regular.
  
• okay, so girlfriend DOES remember stuff from before .. the Knyghy academy, the oak trees... 
  
• so the act of being dead strips you of memory. how then does this monastery even have a library then? unless every single thing written in these books is made up wholecloth, which we know is wrong because it's got some stuff right. 
  

Chapter 5

• awright Melancholic Revenent! doing the lord's work out there, nearly alone and unsupported.
  
• so a bunch of the faithful are off on this Pilgrimage down the Sinders to try and find the Tree of Life and the gateway back to Philos.  i guess if there's nothing else to do? i suppose if they fall into the waters or something, they just .. wake in in their beds at home? stand up again at some point? 
  
• love this MC as much as i disliked the previous one. re/rumors of me rehabilitating The Tyrant: "Rest assured, he has renounced his old ways thanks to my guidance and spiritual cleansing." aaaand a new wave of gossip sweeps the city like a broom.
  
• yeah, it doesn't even go so far as to imply that she left because she discovered the secret, but that would very much make sense. and Xavier is up to his proverbial lily white neck with sacrifices that only stave off inevitability for a time, unappreciated for even that much from the ungrateful. they pulled down all her statues, after all. 
  
• okay, the Ferryman does seems to have retained a pile more memory than anybody else we've encountered which is super interesting, yes! he's recognized me and knows who I am to Xavier. i checked the portrait, he's not the Bishop in disguise.  
  
  jesus fuck, that might be Amund. I just checked the portrait in the Abysswalker myth and while you only see Amund in profile under his hood, the beard is the same. if true, wow.
  
  
• is the "Apocalypse" cyclical? the Ferryman is talking like its just something that happens and that the river might or might not grow afterwards and that it might or might not reach the Tree of Life. so that's an actual thing, not a myth even if the revenants have never found it and Xavier and the Ferryman obviously know where it is. 
  
• Is Xavier calling the Ferryman a sinner? The Ferryman clung to life until the bitter end and feels his existence here is a punishment but it sounds like Xavier is saying sinners should atone for those who died unjustly.
  
• Jeremiaaaaahh! (i'm not convinced that's Caleb's voice actor but i'm also not not convinced. its awfully rhythmic in the same way, just more.. tenor.)
  
• yeah, she either threw herself into the Forest or they bound her up and tossed her in like a sack of grain, whichever.
  
• and we're back at the beginning, all scrubbed and fresh with a crispy singed mind where memory ought to be. 
  
• if there are shadowy hands in the Sinders trying to pull us in, does the Sinders represent 'true' death?  never mind, creepy voice talking about becoming nourishment. ewww.
  
• i think we're hallucinating? we were just in the monastery, we wandered away from the acolyte (again), we kneel at the side of the river and start to fall in with encouragement and then, wow, Xavier-of-old in his university gear and we remember his name. then bam, the river has us. helllllo, Lethe! I think it was The Tyrant come to find us again but we saw him as he was, not as he is now.
  
• Charybdis was the whirlpool, Scylla was the monster. Revenants that get pulled into the whirlpool are truly dead, it seems. 
  

[ChicletPrime]

Chapter 6

• oh god, my heart. he wakes up in the field of flowers to find us lying down, just looking at him. "I had an incredibly long dream."  lets... lets just stop here for a minute before he really wakes up and remembers what's going on.
  
• yeah, this is kindheartbreaking. this VA is REALLY putting in his best work, for sure. this is so light and sweet and even a little teasing, while still retaining the essence of king in the inflection and depth. and o, the sadness that keeps flickering across his face.
  
• ah. the bloom he's trying to nurture is the wavyleaf that was all over the place at the school.
  
• yes, i agree. we were incredibly dense in that life. kind of like a collapsed banana loaf or something. potentially still edible but is it really worth the effort with that much necessary chewing? 
  
• did you notice we pricked our finger on his brooch again, as we did back then when he tried to be the fool in need of aid and asked us to pin it straight for him? 
  
• this is just the same conversation, but we've reversed roles. back then, we told him to forget her if she wouldn't stand by his side. and now he's telling us to forget 'him', if that person we had feelings for wasn't there to stand at our side.
  
• i think we just broke the spell where he was still half caught in his sleeping dream? 
  
• /squeaks
  
• I AM SUCH A SUCKER for kisses when the kiss'er thinks everything is okay because this is obviously not real. 
  
• /flutters fingers in agitation
  

Chapter 7

• some of me wants to try and tie this acknowledgement that the longer she stays in Sindersfell, the more memory she is going to lose back to Xavier in Chapter 8 who was talking to Jeremiah about how people were starting to forget them. 
  
• i do like that Xavier holds some resentment for the fact that every time she meets him again, she remembers crap all and he's always starting from square -1. 
  
• well, that's a visual all right. a "tree" made of crystallized skeletons.
  
• oh man, he gave me a protocore. again. and this time i actually took it.  i love cycles!
  
• awww, gravestone flashback and now i have a name again.
  
• that's interesting! i never thought about the opposite interpretation of "target anchor lost". that could certainly work and they do like to do that kind of stuff sometimes.  although he did make it back eventually. 
  
• what is the point of still doing the Pilgrimage, i wonder. they are dead, technically already fed to the planet, but some  still rise and fight again over and over, while some huddle in a city made of memories they don't really grasp. but they still board their boats and those that go never return. so the dead will get.. deader? until this place is entirely barren? maybe that's what Xavier is marking time for, when he has no burden because there's no one left at all. and its just him and the flowers and the sky.
  
• how do i keep losing my memory? he's sending me back to the Tree to .. pass through to Philos and he's implanted the suggestion that i go find his spaceship and the coordinates there that will take me to Uluru?  what is going on. and i have the protocore fragment that is another piece of my heart, it seems. 
  
• wow, a real Tree of Life! what is going ooooooon.
  
• i really like that "correct divergence point and new possiblities."  the king's phrase during combat.. "end the story if you can't change it." (also "death claims you twice.")
  
• okay, so this is like a Hades run or something. we have to keep going back and doing it over and over and over again until we find the correct path or path(s) and letting the false/dead ones die and collapse.
  

Chapter 8? i am losing track of the chapters since they're not labelled

• i like this horse. i'm keeping her.
  
• so we've killed this timeline, this dying and dead possibility but we gotta get back to Xavier because of course we do.
  
• aaaand back to war because why not. 
  
• that is another mention of Apocalypse.  i guess... is there an ACTUAL Doomsday? a fated Ragnarok and the turning of the Great Wheel, etc? will i find out out in Sylus' myths? 
  
• RESONANCE! MY BELOVED!
  
• fucking hell, what you said about Raf's myth. Philos doesn't need traitors!  
  
• do you get the impression that the "Elder" "Bishop" "Teacher" etc is a single entity that also spans our evolving timelines?
  
• and the big cut scene. i like that we put aside both crown and sword as unnecessary.
  
• i love Xavier's kisses. 
  
• huh huh huh
  
• and finally, the "eye" of the galaxy again - "Philos, Outer Space, East".  (my 2025 brain is giggling over space having an "east".
  
• shit. Traceback II wasn't just skipping time, it was skipping realities.
  
• a river that flows forever .. the deepspace tunnel. the sinder. the rivers of the abysswalker sands? 
  

that was kind of something. good job, myth! everybody hit the showers.