Search
1000 results for “posit_glimpse”
-
RStudio is now Posit, and posit::glimpse() is now on Mastodon!
Get the news on releases for #tidyverse #Shiny #quartopub #RMarkdown #vetiver and our other tools.
See where to get started and how to continue learning.
Excited to be here with the #rstats community!
-
Finally, *Senior Professional Officer: DevOps Engineer* (*Senior #DevOps Engineer*)
Like many data teams, we own our specialised data infrastructure. This includes @airflow, and #Minio (along with #trino for querying), as well as interactive platforms such as @ProjectJupyter and @posit_glimpse. We run a cloud native, open source stack, with @k3sio for our on-prem setup, and have a growing cloud presence.
Come help keep the magic happening!
Apply at www.capetown.gov.za/careers
6/6
-
Finally, *Senior Professional Officer: DevOps Engineer* (*Senior #DevOps Engineer*)
Like many data teams, we own our specialised data infrastructure. This includes @airflow, and #Minio (along with #trino for querying), as well as interactive platforms such as @ProjectJupyter and @posit_glimpse. We run a cloud native, open source stack, with @k3sio for our on-prem setup, and have a growing cloud presence.
Come help keep the magic happening!
Apply at www.capetown.gov.za/careers
6/6
-
So excited to be going to #JupyterCon2023! 🎉
We have a booth! @winston_chang @chrisderv & @fly_upside_down will be there, and are excited to chat about Shiny for Python, #quarto_pub, or anything @posit_pbc.
-
Want to learn about {purrr} & the updates in the 1.0.0 release?
In this video @hadleywickham introduces {purrr} & shares some of his favorite highlights of this release (hint: progress bars, better error messages, some new map & list functions, & more).
Whether you’re a “cat”-egorical beginner or a seasoned functional programming “purr”-fessional, you can pounce on this opportunity to check out what’s new in {purrr}.
-
@appsilon's #ShinyConf2023 was a big success!
✨Take part in the State of Shiny survey to help us understand the #RStats #RShiny community better: https://shinyconf.appsilon.com/state-of-shiny-2023/
✨Check out Andrew Holz's recap of the event on the Shiny blog: https://shiny.rstudio.com/blog/shiny-conf-2023-recap-andrew-holz.html
-
Some news about #knitr for #rstats #rmarkdown : Next version will have a revisited, clean progress bar!
Going to a single-line progress bar when knitting a document, which will only show the progress and the chunk label by default.
Learn more at https://yihui.org/en/2023/01/knitr-progress-bar/ and give it a spin already with dev version!
-
“The metaphors we use deliver us hope, or they foreclose possibility”*…
Ingram PinnIt feels only too clear that the global order that defined geopolitics, geoeconomics, and life in the world’s constituent parts is changing fundamentally. But what lies on the other side of this change? It’s a sucker’s bet to try to predict that outcome with any precision; there’s just too much fundamental uncertainty. As Antonio Gramsci said (of another era, though he might have been describing ours): “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
Still, it’s important that we try. It’s only by wrestling with what’s going on to determine what’s possible, then what’s desirable, that we can shape a future in which we want to live.
The models and metaphors that we use are key to that wrestling. Our natural inclinations seem to tend in one of two directions. Either we tweak the models we have to try to accomodate the change that we see… which seems to work until (given that the change just keeps on coming) it doesn’t. Or we flip to the opposite– we imaging that everything simply falls apart. In geopolitical/geoeconomic terms, we assume that we get an incrementally-revised version of the world order that we’ve known; or we imagine dissolution (into what tends to be called a “multi-polar” world)… neither of which imagines materially different world orders that, as hard as they are to describe, are entirely plausible. Part of our problem in visualizing those new orders is our lack of models and metaphors for them…
The two pieces featured here posit frameworks and metaphors that, while they may or may not prove to be “accurate” in any comprehensive way, can help us open our thinking, and model the ways in which fresh metaphors can help us see problems anew and find new solutions.
First a piece from Trine Flockhart, from the Global (Dis)Order International Policy Programme of the British Academy and The Carnegoe Endowment for International Peace, part of a recent book)…
Is global order a thing of the past? Is the liberal international order fraying and what is
happening to previously stable alliances and cooperative relationships such as the
transatlantic relationship or the relationship between the United States and Canada? Not
such a long time ago, these questions would have been regarded as alarmist, but today the
prospect of large-scale order transformation is part and parcel of daily debates. This rupture
is probably as important as the transformation that followed the end of the Second World War,
and together with the simultaneous transformations in technology and science, the impact
on people and societies may well be on par with the Industrial Revolution. As Gramsci wrote
from his prison cell, we live ‘in times of monsters’ where ‘the old world is dying and the new one
struggles to be born’(Gramsci & Buttigieg 1992). In these circumstances, we see the political
consequences in populist parties as voters seek certainty in an uncertain and turbulent world,
whilst policymakers struggle to find their feet in the emerging world and seek to manage the
fallout from the ending of the old world.
To ensure that the policy decisions of today are relevant for the geopolitical reality of tomorrow,
policymakers must have a clear sense about the likely outcome of the ongoing transformation
– in other words what kind of global order will be in place and what kind of relationships can
be expected within it? These are big and complex questions that have no easy answers, yet
many scholars and policy practitioners seem to already have their answer – the world will be
multipolar (Ashford 2023; Bekkevold 2023; Borrell 2021). At least anecdotally, it seems there
is widespread agreement that the international system is transforming from a unipolar system
anchored in American hegemony, to a multipolar system reflecting the shift of power to a larger
number of states. However, although the idea that the international system will be multipolar
is persuasive, and although the use of analytical concepts such as polarity can be useful for
gaining an overview of complex matters, we must be aware that polarity as a concept rests on
a specific form of analysis that tends to emphasize states, sameness, power and interest, and
which is only partially sighted when it comes to values, identities, lesser powers and complexity.
I worry that the focus on multipolarity, means that policymakers are trying to understand the
current order transformation through conceptual lenses that are blurred and not very relevant.
This article presents a different position. It starts from the counterintuitive position that
it is logically implausible for the global ordering architecture to return to an international
system that was in place a century ago. Those suggesting that we are currently witnessing
a return to multipolarity emphasise shifts in the global distribution of power and the rising
number of powerful states, most notably China. These are certainly important changes, but
The arrival of the multi-order world and its geopolitical implications
other important changes are overlooked, which suggest a fundamentally different global
ordering architecture is in the making. Continuing to portray the world as multipolar belies the
complexity, significance, and extent of many other important changes. This paper presents an
alternative interpretation of the ongoing global order transformation, demonstrating why it will
be neither bipolar nor multipolar but rather multi-order.
A multi-order world is a global ordering architecture consisting of several international orders.
Gramsci was right that order transformations take time, so the multi-order architecture is still
in development, but can be glimpsed through the existence of three independent international
orders already clearly visible within the global ordering architecture – the American-led liberal
international order (albeit that American leadership under Trump is currently in question),
the Russian-led Eurasian order, and the Chinese-led Belt and Road order.1 Other orders and
other forms of relationships of importance are also in the making suggesting a more complex
architecture than a multipolar one. The paper does not claim to present a full picture of the
emerging ordering architecture but seeks merely to demonstrate the importance of embracing
new thinking to contemplate the possibility of an entirely new form of international system
in which multiple international orders with very different dynamics and different behavioural
patterns make up the global ordering architecture. The perspective brings into light important
relationships and dynamics that are not readily apparent in the multipolar perspective –
especially that relationships within orders are just as important as relations between different
international orders, and it leaves room for considering other aspects than powershifts and for
acknowledging the importance of other actors than just a handful of “pole states”. I argue that
awareness of the subtle differences between the multi-order architecture and more traditional
polarity-based understandings is an essential first step towards timely strategic policymaking
fit for the multi-order world.
The paper proceeds in four moves. First, I outline three significant events over the past four
years which only partially fit the polarity-based narrative. Second, I outline the multi-order
perspective by focusing on order as a condition, a social domain, and as practices of ordering.
Thirdly, I show how changes in three characteristics of the global system indicate a multi-order
world rather than a multipolar one. Finally, I briefly consider some of the broader geopolitical
implications of a multi-order world and demonstrate the importance of ordering dynamics
within and between international orders. The picture that emerges challenges some of the
most foundational assumptions about international relations and global order including the
prospect of achieving convergence around common rules in multilateral governance to meet
shared challenges…– “The arrival of the multi-order world and its geopolitical implications”
The second, by Jessica Burbank, takes a different– and in some ways, more provocative– tack…
… A new world order is here. States (countries) are no longer the highest form of power globally. Power has shifted to wealthy individuals who work in groups and operate across borders: syndicates of capital.
Syndicates of capital cannot be categorized as legal or illegal. They exist primarily in the extralegal sphere, where either no regulations apply to their behavior or, where laws do exist, there is no entity powerful enough to enforce them in a manner that asserts control over the syndicates’ behavior.
In many occasions, capital is both the power source for syndicates, and the shared goal. Wealthy individuals form syndicates if their strategic objectives align. Those objectives typically revolve around securing new capital flows and preserving existing ones. Syndicates’ power is vast but fragile. If all members of a syndicate were cut off from accessing capital and the resources they control, they would lose their power.
Author’s Note: Sorry to disappoint the conspiracy theorists, but I am not speaking of secret societies, the illuminati, or a cabal. Syndicates of capital do not hide their power, nor do they operate in secret. Their multi-billion dollar deals and contracts are publicly disclosed. They are also not united in ethnic background, religious, or political beliefs.
It is not enough to say: ‘democracies are being replaced with oligarchies because wealthy individuals have too much power in society.’ That may be true, but is not the full picture. Oligarchies are states run by a small group of wealthy individuals. That may accurately describe the politics of one nation, but it does not suffice to describe how power is organized on a global scale.
‘Global oligarchy’ also falls short of describing how power is organized in our world, because there is not one small group of wealthy individuals, there are many, and they compete. Still, the identification of oligarchs is useful for global political analysis because many of the oligarchs within a state also operate globally as leaders or members ofsyndicates of capital.
The new world order emerged before it could be identified. Platitudes like: “our world has gone crazy,” served as an emotional crutch, and an implicit acknowledgement that we lack a sound analysis of contemporary global power. What has felt like an ineffable force, an inexplicable undercurrent of darkness, is the ambiance of global dominion by syndicates of capital.
Though abstract, examining how global power is organized is essential to understanding the world we live in. Developing a coherent framework for evaluating global affairs allows us to more effortlessly make sense of current events. You’ll be surprised how quickly things click and how easily your mind makes connections when you absorb the news with a conception of syndicates of capital…
Both are eminently worth reading in full: whether or not one buys all– or any– of either set of conclusions, the mental calisthenics are the point…
###
As we muse on metaphors, we might recall that it was on this date in 1279 that Mongol forces led by Kublai Khan were victorious at the Battle of Yamen— ending the Song dynasty in China. Kublai has already conquered parts of northern and southern China, and had declared the Yuan dynasty (with himself as the emperor “Great Yuan”). With the fall of the Song, the Mongols ruled all of continental East Asia under Han-style Yuan rule, which was a division of the Mongol Empire.
Mongol invasion of the Southern Song dynasty, 1234–1279 (source) #BattleOfYamen #culture #future #geoeconomics #geopolitics #globalOrder #history #KublaiKhan #metaphors #models #MongolEmpire #politics #SongDynasty #YuanDynasty -
“The metaphors we use deliver us hope, or they foreclose possibility”*…
Ingram PinnIt feels only too clear that the global order that defined geopolitics, geoeconomics, and life in the world’s constituent parts is changing fundamentally. But what lies on the other side of this change? It’s a sucker’s bet to try to predict that outcome with any precision; there’s just too much fundamental uncertainty. As Antonio Gramsci said (of another era, though he might have been describing ours): “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”
Still, it’s important that we try. It’s only by wrestling with what’s going on to determine what’s possible, then what’s desirable, that we can shape a future in which we want to live.
The models and metaphors that we use are key to that wrestling. Our natural inclinations seem to tend in one of two directions. Either we tweak the models we have to try to accomodate the change that we see… which seems to work until (given that the change just keeps on coming) it doesn’t. Or we flip to the opposite– we imaging that everything simply falls apart. In geopolitical/geoeconomic terms, we assume that we get an incrementally-revised version of the world order that we’ve known; or we imagine dissolution (into what tends to be called a “multi-polar” world)… neither of which imagines materially different world orders that, as hard as they are to describe, are entirely plausible. Part of our problem in visualizing those new orders is our lack of models and metaphors for them…
The two pieces featured here posit frameworks and metaphors that, while they may or may not prove to be “accurate” in any comprehensive way, can help us open our thinking, and model the ways in which fresh metaphors can help us see problems anew and find new solutions.
First a piece from Trine Flockhart, from the Global (Dis)Order International Policy Programme of the British Academy and The Carnegoe Endowment for International Peace, part of a recent book)…
Is global order a thing of the past? Is the liberal international order fraying and what is
happening to previously stable alliances and cooperative relationships such as the
transatlantic relationship or the relationship between the United States and Canada? Not
such a long time ago, these questions would have been regarded as alarmist, but today the
prospect of large-scale order transformation is part and parcel of daily debates. This rupture
is probably as important as the transformation that followed the end of the Second World War,
and together with the simultaneous transformations in technology and science, the impact
on people and societies may well be on par with the Industrial Revolution. As Gramsci wrote
from his prison cell, we live ‘in times of monsters’ where ‘the old world is dying and the new one
struggles to be born’(Gramsci & Buttigieg 1992). In these circumstances, we see the political
consequences in populist parties as voters seek certainty in an uncertain and turbulent world,
whilst policymakers struggle to find their feet in the emerging world and seek to manage the
fallout from the ending of the old world.
To ensure that the policy decisions of today are relevant for the geopolitical reality of tomorrow,
policymakers must have a clear sense about the likely outcome of the ongoing transformation
– in other words what kind of global order will be in place and what kind of relationships can
be expected within it? These are big and complex questions that have no easy answers, yet
many scholars and policy practitioners seem to already have their answer – the world will be
multipolar (Ashford 2023; Bekkevold 2023; Borrell 2021). At least anecdotally, it seems there
is widespread agreement that the international system is transforming from a unipolar system
anchored in American hegemony, to a multipolar system reflecting the shift of power to a larger
number of states. However, although the idea that the international system will be multipolar
is persuasive, and although the use of analytical concepts such as polarity can be useful for
gaining an overview of complex matters, we must be aware that polarity as a concept rests on
a specific form of analysis that tends to emphasize states, sameness, power and interest, and
which is only partially sighted when it comes to values, identities, lesser powers and complexity.
I worry that the focus on multipolarity, means that policymakers are trying to understand the
current order transformation through conceptual lenses that are blurred and not very relevant.
This article presents a different position. It starts from the counterintuitive position that
it is logically implausible for the global ordering architecture to return to an international
system that was in place a century ago. Those suggesting that we are currently witnessing
a return to multipolarity emphasise shifts in the global distribution of power and the rising
number of powerful states, most notably China. These are certainly important changes, but
The arrival of the multi-order world and its geopolitical implications
other important changes are overlooked, which suggest a fundamentally different global
ordering architecture is in the making. Continuing to portray the world as multipolar belies the
complexity, significance, and extent of many other important changes. This paper presents an
alternative interpretation of the ongoing global order transformation, demonstrating why it will
be neither bipolar nor multipolar but rather multi-order.
A multi-order world is a global ordering architecture consisting of several international orders.
Gramsci was right that order transformations take time, so the multi-order architecture is still
in development, but can be glimpsed through the existence of three independent international
orders already clearly visible within the global ordering architecture – the American-led liberal
international order (albeit that American leadership under Trump is currently in question),
the Russian-led Eurasian order, and the Chinese-led Belt and Road order.1 Other orders and
other forms of relationships of importance are also in the making suggesting a more complex
architecture than a multipolar one. The paper does not claim to present a full picture of the
emerging ordering architecture but seeks merely to demonstrate the importance of embracing
new thinking to contemplate the possibility of an entirely new form of international system
in which multiple international orders with very different dynamics and different behavioural
patterns make up the global ordering architecture. The perspective brings into light important
relationships and dynamics that are not readily apparent in the multipolar perspective –
especially that relationships within orders are just as important as relations between different
international orders, and it leaves room for considering other aspects than powershifts and for
acknowledging the importance of other actors than just a handful of “pole states”. I argue that
awareness of the subtle differences between the multi-order architecture and more traditional
polarity-based understandings is an essential first step towards timely strategic policymaking
fit for the multi-order world.
The paper proceeds in four moves. First, I outline three significant events over the past four
years which only partially fit the polarity-based narrative. Second, I outline the multi-order
perspective by focusing on order as a condition, a social domain, and as practices of ordering.
Thirdly, I show how changes in three characteristics of the global system indicate a multi-order
world rather than a multipolar one. Finally, I briefly consider some of the broader geopolitical
implications of a multi-order world and demonstrate the importance of ordering dynamics
within and between international orders. The picture that emerges challenges some of the
most foundational assumptions about international relations and global order including the
prospect of achieving convergence around common rules in multilateral governance to meet
shared challenges…– “The arrival of the multi-order world and its geopolitical implications”
The second, by Jessica Burbank, takes a different– and in some ways, more provocative– tack…
… A new world order is here. States (countries) are no longer the highest form of power globally. Power has shifted to wealthy individuals who work in groups and operate across borders: syndicates of capital.
Syndicates of capital cannot be categorized as legal or illegal. They exist primarily in the extralegal sphere, where either no regulations apply to their behavior or, where laws do exist, there is no entity powerful enough to enforce them in a manner that asserts control over the syndicates’ behavior.
In many occasions, capital is both the power source for syndicates, and the shared goal. Wealthy individuals form syndicates if their strategic objectives align. Those objectives typically revolve around securing new capital flows and preserving existing ones. Syndicates’ power is vast but fragile. If all members of a syndicate were cut off from accessing capital and the resources they control, they would lose their power.
Author’s Note: Sorry to disappoint the conspiracy theorists, but I am not speaking of secret societies, the illuminati, or a cabal. Syndicates of capital do not hide their power, nor do they operate in secret. Their multi-billion dollar deals and contracts are publicly disclosed. They are also not united in ethnic background, religious, or political beliefs.
It is not enough to say: ‘democracies are being replaced with oligarchies because wealthy individuals have too much power in society.’ That may be true, but is not the full picture. Oligarchies are states run by a small group of wealthy individuals. That may accurately describe the politics of one nation, but it does not suffice to describe how power is organized on a global scale.
‘Global oligarchy’ also falls short of describing how power is organized in our world, because there is not one small group of wealthy individuals, there are many, and they compete. Still, the identification of oligarchs is useful for global political analysis because many of the oligarchs within a state also operate globally as leaders or members ofsyndicates of capital.
The new world order emerged before it could be identified. Platitudes like: “our world has gone crazy,” served as an emotional crutch, and an implicit acknowledgement that we lack a sound analysis of contemporary global power. What has felt like an ineffable force, an inexplicable undercurrent of darkness, is the ambiance of global dominion by syndicates of capital.
Though abstract, examining how global power is organized is essential to understanding the world we live in. Developing a coherent framework for evaluating global affairs allows us to more effortlessly make sense of current events. You’ll be surprised how quickly things click and how easily your mind makes connections when you absorb the news with a conception of syndicates of capital…
Both are eminently worth reading in full: whether or not one buys all– or any– of either set of conclusions, the mental calisthenics are the point…
###
As we muse on metaphors, we might recall that it was on this date in 1279 that Mongol forces led by Kublai Khan were victorious at the Battle of Yamen— ending the Song dynasty in China. Kublai has already conquered parts of northern and southern China, and had declared the Yuan dynasty (with himself as the emperor “Great Yuan”). With the fall of the Song, the Mongols ruled all of continental East Asia under Han-style Yuan rule, which was a division of the Mongol Empire.
Mongol invasion of the Southern Song dynasty, 1234–1279 (source) #BattleOfYamen #culture #future #geoeconomics #geopolitics #globalOrder #history #KublaiKhan #metaphors #models #MongolEmpire #politics #SongDynasty #YuanDynasty -
CW: Spoilers for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Clair Obscur: That Which Seeks The Right To Exist Temporally and Spatially
THIS IS A CROSSPOST FROM COMRADERY.
In a world built upon alienation, people seek to be heard and seen. This may happen through social media, video or podcasts, essays like this one, video game guilds, or other creative avenues. There’s this innate need for our existence to be recognized. For us to not be erased. When forces beyond our control seek to dominate and coerce us into either compliance or annihilation, people will eventually rise up to demand their freedom. Many marginalized populations within Capitalist Colonialist societies, such as America, struggle with institutions that often seek to erase their identity, culture, and their personhood.
In Clair Obscur, we can see this struggle with existence and erasure play out visibly through the yearly “gommage.” After the Fracture — a cataclysmic event — Lumeire must contend with yearly erasures of all people above a specific age. That age is determined by the number painted on the monolith, which looms oppressively over the world. Each year that number decreases, and more are erased from existence. The temporal existence of their society within their present and future lays in uncertainty.
This has a parallel with how oppressors treat the oppressed within societies. Just as the number warns Lumiere who will be next, Fascist/Authoritarian societies will declare who is unfit for society. Who they focus on, and from there we can see the potential trajectory for others who lay in their destructive path.
By constructing a specific framework to paint over marginalized people, fascist/authoritarian societies seek to control the marginalized population, and effectively erase what makes them uniquely them. Thus, like the oppressors within our world, the Dessendre family render the Canvas people’s existence as less than their own; in this way, it justifies the gommage’s genocidal consequences. However, is it true that the Canvas people are not real? That their existence is less than the Dessendre’s? Is destroying them the morally good choice? Or does it only continue the injustice preyed upon the Canvas people of Lumiere?
Parallels between Our World and That of Clair Obscur
The act of erasing people often begins through dehumanization and a redefining of the attributes of reality. For example, as of June 2025, under Trump’s Administration, nonbinary genders were erased, and gender was collapsed into a binary sex structure. This was done despite biology revealing that gender is not a simple binary, that it is based on chromosomes, primary and secondary sex characteristics. If looking simply at chromosomes, six biological genders would exist, but if one adds in the primary sex characteristics — reproductive organs for example — and secondary sex characteristics — effects of hormones on the body — one can calculate over 50 possible permutations (See chapters 11 through 13 of Evolution’s Rainbow by Joan Roughgarden).
But that reality has been erased by the Trump Administrations narrow definition. This in turn places people like myself — a nonbinary disabled person — in a state of simultaneously existing in the physical realm of the planet Earth but also not existing by American law. The erasure of my personhood and identity is a way to sterilize who I am and force me into a narrow mold, and anyone who does not fit will be eradicated.
However, no matter how much control fascist governments weaponize, freedom cannot be erased. In Star Wars Andor, Nemik writes a manifesto, where he explains how Fascist control is fragile and the spontaneity of freedom:
“There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire’s authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this. Try.”
Thus, people who are being erased by fascism continue to reach for freedom. To try and break free of the restrictive definitions of reality. Part of those restrictions lay in the temporal reality that oppressors construct to place their victims in a past reality, where we no longer exist in the present.
This is the method that the United States of America used to control and erase the Native cultures that existed prior to the white settlers of the 1600s. Historians and lawmakers construct a temporal reality that places Native people as existing in the past, where the violence conducted against them was sanitized. As relics of a bygone age, and thus, any Native that still lives becomes coerced into the American society, their culture and identity stripped from them through relocation to reservations and brutal Indian schools. This is one part of the larger genocide against Native people’s.
Erasure of people, denial of their existence, and the question of whether such people even still exist creates a temporal paradox. Can people both simultaneously exist but not exist? In my case, I exist in the reference frame of the planet Earth, where people can see my body and speak with me directly if they so choose. However, in the realm of American (and some states’) law and history, my existence has been erased, and thus I no longer exist within the current Administration’s temporal reference frame. I am collapsed into a facsimile of who I am — a painted version of my self positioned to narrowly fit what others have decided I must be in order to be allowed existence.
This question of who is allowed to exist, what cultures can exist, and whether a population exists within our present not only shapes our discourse but also the world in which we live. We can see this in how the rights of trans people like myself have slowly been stripped away — loss of healthcare, loss of anti-discrimination laws, loss of the right to exist in public and use a restroom, etc., until nothing remains. A slow gommage that ripples through my community, until we are but petals on the wind.
Take the Gommage in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and stretch it slowly over months and/or years, where each part of the person slowly begans to evaporate away into rose petals. It’s a slow sort of temporal-based death, and is the reality of many marginalized people in our current society. However, we refuse to go quietly, just as the people of Lumiere also refused.
To resist the Gommage, the people of Lumiere send Expeditions in the hope they will defeat the Paintress and end the slow temporal and spatial erasure. So that they can secure a future for their people once more. This need to not be erased, to exist, becomes a revolutionary anthem.
It’s a parallel to the revolutionary anthem of Trans people resisting our erasure, of Indigenous people fighting against genocide as they simultaneously restore their culture and identity, of Black people and their demands for justice, of Disabled people and our refusal to just lay down and die. Marginalized populations face their own form of gommage, but it’s a much slower and traumatic death than what Lumeire faces.
To illustrate, let’s look at Gustave and Maelle speaking of death:
MAELLE: I, uh, I thought I was used to losing people. Life of a foster child, right? But not — not like that — on the beach… that man…
GUSTAVE: Yeah. Yeah… I know. Nevrons we were prepared for but not… (pause) And now we finally found other survivors and it’s… (pause) You know, that — that’s the insidious thing about the Gommage. It’s predictable… almost gentle. It makes Lumiere complacent and accepting but … the Gommage is equally violent and death… Death is just as final.
That truly is the insidious thing as the Gommage — whether it happens relatively quickly like in Clair Obscur, or over long period of time in our world — people are complacent and almost accepting of it because the institutions have normalized sacrificing populations as necessary to the good of society. But truthfully, the gommage is indeed “equally violent” as simply killing a person. To strip a person of their identity, culture, personhood? To render them as no longer real within society? That is a form of death.
This concept of sacrificing populations for the ‘good of society’ has its name in necrosecurity. Martha Lincoln writes:
Thus, though necrosecurity is deeply informed by anti-scientific and anti-expert sentiments, it is not simply a failed biosecurity, nor is it a form of biosecurity in which the project’s intrinsic flaws are made visible. Normatively, biosecurity does not call for human illness or deaths. By contrast, necrosecurity explicitly and centrally instrumentalizes death—imagining a sacrificial population whose exposure to harm will secure against losses to more qualified populations. It is a calculated attempt to leverage the pathogenic and epidemiological properties of disease towards social, political, and economic ends. Lying between passive “letting die” and overt murder of political enemies, necrosecurity entails the promotion of death intended to preempt other deaths; instead of seeking to prevent human deaths, as biosecurity would, it attempts to secure life by allowing death to flourish selectively.
We saw this concept of necrosecurity at work through the last five years, where America — and other countries — engaged in normalizing death for specific populations, in order to boost the economy for “more qualified populations.” America has also shifted to past tense regarding the pandemic, despite Covid-19 still existing, still mutating, and still disabling and/or killing vulnerable populations. This shift of placing the virus in the past is a form of temporal erasure.
Within the game, Gommage places those erased in the past. They fade into rose petals, lost to the present, and thus temporally erased from the world and Lumiere society. This Gommage is seen as a force perpetuated by the Paintress, but this is only because the Lumierians see her actions before the Gommage sweeps over their city. So they associate her repainting the number to be the act that unleashes the Gommage. With the truth masked and no other source of knowledge disputing this theory, the misinformation perpetuates through their culture and their expeditions.
In this manner, people can become misguided with incorrect information, and thus not understand the true culprit is not necessarily the Paintress at all. Lune says to Gustave at one point that, “this is a war of information.”
Indeed it is. Not just for the people of Lumiere, but also for our own world. This is why the current American Administration hid and erased data pertaining to infectious diseases, LGBTQIA people, and Black and Indigenous People of Color. Why sources of information are being placed under lock and key and no longer accessible to the public. The war on information puts the oppressed into a constant reactionary stance; if they don’t have the full information, then how do they know who to target to end their oppression?
Thus, the Lumierians, lacking the full information, focus on reaching the Paintress, but the truth of Gommage lies under the Monolith, not at its peak. Gommage doesn’t come from the Paintress, but from a being trapped under her monolith, who unleashes the Gommage after she issues her warning. It’s not until end of Act 2 that this truth is revealed.
Thus, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 forces the player to reckon with questions situated on who is allowed to exist, who is allowed to continue into a future, and if sacrificing populations are necessary for the ‘good’ of society.
Or to dig even deeper, what is this temporal reality in which Lumiere in its people exist? Is it situated in the past, soon to be a footnote in the history of the Dessendre family? Or is it a present, a hope to continue to exist despite the Dessendre family? Does the people of the Lumiere and of the Canvas hold the same value, worthy, and right to exist as the Dessendre family?
The game itself posits a neutral position, where the various endings and presentation of story are up to the player to interpret. At least that’s what some game analysts say, but I think the game pushes the player toward a specific conclusion to these questions of existence versus erasure.
We are placed immediately within Lumiere with Gustave and Maelle, and soon we meet other people in the city. We see its population preparing for the Gommage. We experience the heartache and pain with them, and the oppression they face under this totalizing force that governs their lives.
Throughout the first Act, we connect with these characters — their hopes, fears, dreams, joys — and through them we are able to see a temporal existence that paints their lives with meaning. So when we are thrust into the ‘real world’ of the Painters by the start of Act 3, it feels jarring. Disjointed and strange. We are no longer in the same temporal reality, and the truth unveiled about the nature of the Lumierian world unsettles. It shakes our understanding of reality and existence.
The game also shifts the timeline, where the start of Act 3 becomes the past. We then see the start of our journey existed beyond the world of the Canvas, where the story threads through the timelines of two linked worlds: Dessendre’s ‘real’ world and the world of the Canvas. Time between the two do not fully match either, as the decades spent in the Canvas do not match precisely with the time span in the ‘real world.’ Within this game, multiple temporal realities exist, and as the game shows, each are uniquely their own.
It’s only in the second and third Acts where the questions the games ask start to shift. Part of this is due to Act 2 being specifically Verso’s perspective, where he stands in a separate temporal reality than the Lumierians. Thus, the game asks: are other temporal realities as equally valid as the Dessendre’s? Or does the Dessendre’s temporal reality matter more?
Temporal Realities and the Right to Exist
Mark Riften writes in Beyond Settler Time: Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination:
“Within post-Einsteinian notions of time, there is no such thing as an absolute time that applies everywhere at once. Instead, the experience and calculation of time are contingent. Simultaneity depends on one’s inertial frame of reference, such that two observers who are moving with respect to each other will not agree on when an event occurs or on other aspects of time’s passage. If in physics a frame of reference refers to relative motion, we also can think about that concept in more socially resonant ways. Such collective frames comprise the effects on one’s perception and material experience of patterns of individual and collective memory, the legacies of historical events and dynamics, consistent or recursive forms of inhabitance, and the length and character of the timescales in which current events are situated.”
Within Special Relativity, the inertial frame of reference is crucial to understanding a particular scenario. Reference frames describe a coordinate system in which temporal, motion, and spatial measurements of an observer can be done. Without articulating the reference frame, the situation becomes incomprehensible and impossible to measure or observe. Thus, reference frames are denoted by observers in order to agree on a shared understanding of the events in question.
Let’s place it within a social context. For example, much of American history books will label Indigenous Tribes of North America as being in the past, as if they no longer exist within the present time. For some tribes this may be so, but for many this is a falsehood, as they do indeed still exist in present time. America has crafted a reference frame here, but it posits that its frame is more real than those of Native people.
Riften clarifies:
U.S. settler colonialism produces its own temporal formation, with its own particular ways of apprehending time, and the state’s policies, mappings, and imperatives generate the frame of reference (such as plotting events with respect to their place in national history and seeing change in terms of forms of American progress). More than just affecting ideologies or discourses of time, that network of institutionalized authority over “domestic” territory also powerfully shapes the possibilities for interaction, development, and regularity within it. Such imposition can be understood as the denial of Indigenous temporal sovereignty, in the sense that one vision or way of experiencing time is cast as the only temporal formation—as the baseline for the unfolding of time itself.
As Riften describes, America seeks to situate Native people in the past in an attempt to control their narrative, their legacy, and their existence. It’s a form of erasure and genocide, to rewrite history and present time in order to exclude populations. This makes it easier to justify the death of populations if the narrative already posits them as being of the past and not the present.
Riften writes:
As in the account offered by relativity, there is no inherently privileged or mutual “now” (or sense of time’s passage more broadly) shared by disparate frames of reference. Through Indian law and policy, Native peoples have been subjected to profound reorganizations of prior geographies and modes of inhabitance, forms of governance, networks of exchange, tempos of ordinary life, and dynamics of individual maturation in an attempt to reorder Indigenous temporalities, to remake them in ways that fit non-native timescapes of expansion and dispossession.
It is true that within the laws of physics “there is no inherently privileged or mutual ‘now.’ Indeed, special relativity directly states:
- The laws of physics must be the same in all inertial reference frames.
- The speed of light (in a vacuum) is constant in all inertial reference frames.
Inertial refers to a reference frame in which everything within that frame moves at a constant velocity.
The Earth would be an inertial reference frame in the sense the planet’s motion can approximate to fit the definition. (There are some caveats here that relate to gravity and orbits, but it’s unnecessary for the overall argument). Thus, within the reference frames of those on the planet Earth, there is no privileged frame that exists as more real than another. The laws of physics are the same in all frames, and each are equally valid.
Is There One Reference Frame To Rule Them All?
To dig deeper, let’s examine the differences between Canvas Time and World and Dessendre Time and World. To compare the worlds, we must establish frames of reference. Within special relativity, this is done by situating a common origin point to start our analysis.
For Clair Obscur, that origin point is the moment of Fracture.
So at time (t) equals 0, Canvas experienced Fracture that devastated the world, broke apart cultures, and scattered the peoples of Canvas across a broken world. The city of Lumiere landed in the southern ocean, and after great upheaval a dome is constructed to keep its citizens safe.
At time-prime (t’) equals 0, the equivalent origin for Dessendre’s ‘real’ world, the Fracture represents the moment Aline, in her grief, faces off with her husband Renoir, who has entered the Canvas to bring his wife back to the Dessendre world. This cataclysmic war of Painter’s chroma causes the Fracture and starts the deadly countdown toward zero.
This is where the temporal realities then diverge. The game tells us that in Canvas a century passes; however, in the Dessendre world, a century most definitely does not pass. For that to be so, the Dessendre’s would need to be immortal and unaging. However, we can safely assume the Dessendre family is not ageless nor immortal due to the ages of the children and the aging of the parents. We see glimpses of how the children do indeed grow into their current selves (current signifying the time of the Fracture, to orient each character within our established frames of reference).
So time does pass in the Dessendre’s world, but it moves slower than Canvas. While the Canvas world seems sped up. Within special relativity, this concept is explored within ‘time dilation.’
Position a person on Planet Earth, then send their twin toward a nearby star near the speed of light. For the twin on Earth, they would view their twin as moving slower and aging slower. While the twin on the rocket would view Earth as sped up, aging faster. Within each of their reference frames, they disagree on the temporal coordinates of events, but when they compare notes after the twin’s return home, the person on Earth will have aged more than the one on the rocket. Of course, I am doing a quick summary of this concept to avoid belaboring the point with excessive mathematics.
Regardless, it’s a fascinating phenomenon, and the game tips its hat toward it with how it differentiates the difference in temporal realities between Canvas Time and Dessendre Time. It’s also important to note that both reference frames within the twin example — the twin on Earth versus the twin on the rocket — are all valid frames. None is more ‘right’ than the other. Both frames will result in the same solution — the difference in aging, but their perspectives differ on how they experience it and come to that solution. Despite this, both frames are still equally valid.
In that same manner, the Dessendre Time is equally valid to Canvas Time, at least per this relativity postulate.
Within the Dessendre Time and World, the Canvas is seen as a created object, painted by Verso’s child-self. As a created world, it’s right to exist becomes called into question, and the neutrality of our reference frames also becomes conflicted.
Is the Dessendre reference frame, the one that was not painted, the one true frame? The One Frame To Rule Them All?
Or is both reference frames still equally valid?
So far, in our argument, we’ve posited that both reference frames are equally valid. Yes, there are differences in how time plays out within each frame but we see this only when we compare one to the other. Within the frame itself, one would not experience such differences. Meaning, those who live in the Canvas World and do not know of the Dessendre world would not know or experience a difference in time within their world. Their world would still feel time unwinding from their present just as their society has defined it.
It’s the same with the Dessendre world, where time within their world still unwinds within the definitions of their society.
So if the reference frames are equally valid, then is the question of what is created and what is not created what tells us whose reality is real and valid?
But that assumes the Dessendre world is ‘not created.’ It also assumes that if a culture is ‘created’ it is less real and valid than the ‘creator.’ This situates us within the realm of philosophy and religion, where-in some religions posit a creator who created the universe and all in it. If such a thing is true, and since the Dessendre world is still ‘created’ in the sense that the ‘creators’ are the game developers, then can we truly establish that the Dessendre world is ‘not created?’
If we put aside the fact that we are discussing a video game (at least for a moment), we have the issue of is there a ‘creator’ for Dessendre world that fits the lore and story? Religious or spirituality doesn’t truly come into play in the game. The most we see is references to myths and/or philosophy. For example, when the team goes to defeat the Axons, Monoco will cite the name of each axon as it’s part of the mythos of his people:
LUNE: So this is Visage’s Island.
MONOCO: He Who Guards Truth With Lies.
The name Monoco’s people — the Gestrals — gave the Visage Axon is layered with double meanings. It also falls neatly into the philosophical arguments concerning morality. In the Axons, we see their embodiment as ‘lessons’ painted by Renoir, who sought to capture his family into a philosophical being. Indeed, we see this in what the Mask Keeper, after giving the team Visage’s invitation, says:
SCIEL: What of the other paths?
MASK KEEPER: You are free to traverse them. Masks are not just to Obscure. They may also to Illuminate. Look for the masks that you need.
MAELLE: Meaning?MASK KEEPER: The invitation stands.
For Visage, the axon, masks are a tool that assist with not only hiding the truth, when the need arises, but illuminating the truth when the time comes. This is the closest the game ever comes to spirituality, and in truth, this is far more of a moralistic philosophy as debated by those within the Enlightenment period of Europe and Early America. Spiritual arguments will do little to assist us even if spirituality existed within the Canvas world (which perhaps it does but the game does not show it).
The Mask Keeper provides a definitive hint that Verso’s temporal reality differs from the Lumierians. He admits this when he says, “some of us stopped aging,” to Maelle, Lune, and Sciel after meeting and rescuing them. This establishes two temporal realities within the Canvas alone.
The only hint we have is when you examine the Painter’s studio at the Start of Act 3, one will notice that canvases float around the room. This was an attribute of the Canvas world stemming from the Fracture, so what does it tell us that it appears within the Dessendre world? Is that a signal that their world is also constructed? It’s a question that is never fully answered by the game itself.
In this way, the game plays with our sense of reality. Due to how it lays out its acts, it plays with our temporal reality as well. Prologue/Act 1 focuses on Gustave as the primary perspective. This changes in Act 2, where we shift from the Lumierian timeline to Painted Verso’s timeline. Then in Act 3, we shift out of the Canvas temporal reality entirely and go back in time to an event before the other acts, where Alicia and Clea discuss the fate of the Canvas. Here Alicia will enter the Canvas, at her sister’s suggestion. At that point, the game narrates how Alicia becomes Maelle, and eventually spits us out into the temporal reality of Lumiere after the final Gommage that erased the rest of Lumiere.
Thus, the game gives us multiple temporal realities: Gustave, Verso, Alicia/Maelle. Each have their roots in different temporal reference frames: Gustave within the Lumiere reference frame, Verso within the immortal Paintress frame, and Alicia/Maelle who stands in both the Dessendre World frame but also in the Lumiere frame. Of all the characters, Maelle is the only one that steps in all of the reference frames.
As Alicia, she was born of the Dessendre family and grew to age sixteen. However, she transitions into the Canvas and end up reborn as Maelle within the city of Lumiere. She spends sixteen years there feeling slightly out of place, but she has no memories of her former life in the Dessendre world. For all Maelle knows in Act 1 and 2, she is a Lumierian. It’s only in Act 3 that she learns the truth of who she is, and she bridges her two selves, and thus both worlds within herself. This gives her a unique view of seeing the humanity and beautiful complexity inherent in both her Dessendre world and the Canvas/Lumiere world.
In a way, one could posit that Alicia/Maelle is the twin in the Special Relativity metaphor, who leaves her world to go to another and then returns. This journey alters her, and she experiences temporal reality differently when compared to Clea’s reference frame. However, the end result gives Alicia/Maelle a perspective that Clea lacks.
Clea, for her part, asserts the Canvas is but a playground. She does not give it any special qualities, and does not believe any person within it is truly real. We see this in her dialogue.
CLEA: She’s a grown woman, and she was the head of the Painter’s Council. She has failed her responsibilities. I don’t have time to coddle her. And before Verso died, she would have said the same.
ALICIA: …?
CLEA: I already have. Aline is a more skilled than Renoir, but I tipped the scales in his favor. I have my pets in place. “She who controls the chroma, controls the Canvas.” I can’t take her chroma, but I can keep it from returning to her. As she weakens, Renoir is able to erase her oldest creations. With the except of her obscene fake family. She made them all immortal, but luckily they’re also quite useless.
Here Clea speaks of the people in the Canvas as pieces on a chessboard. She gives them no consideration as to how the ‘creations’ feel about this erasure nor the trauma and pain it inflicts on them. For Clea, they are a distraction. She wants this ‘conflict’ in the Canvas over, so she can return to her own concerns in the present of the Dessendre World.
Her bias tilts toward the Dessendre World, for that is the reality in which she resides and has spent the majority of her time. For her, creations are simply creations that can be erased or remade at a whim. Her view here represents the oppressor view. She orients her reference frame as the superior one, and the Canvas’s frame as inferior. Thus, her conclusions result in denying the reality of the Canvas people and denying the sentience and complexity of their existence.
If she were to acknowledge their sentience and complexity, she could no longer posit her reference frame as the superior one. She’d have to reckon with the question of whether ‘erasing’ these ‘creations’ is morally good or morally evil.
Her attempt here to ignore such a question doesn’t solve it. It simply places the burden of solving it on Alicia’s shoulders, especially after she sends Alicia into the painting to “assist Renoir.”
Here the game is rather nebulous. We hear Clea’s words as Alicia falls into the Canvas, then we see how Alicia is painted over to become a baby born into Lumiere.
CLEA: Calm Alicia, or it’ll paint over you… what an auspicious start. Well, you’re about to be reborn in this world as one of Aline’s creations. Have fun.
The word “it” here seems to signify ‘chroma,’ but Clea doesn’t make clear whether it is Aline who paints over Alicia or if she herself does it. She only criticizes Alicia for her panic after giving her no real lessons on how to enter the Canvas and assist in it. Once again, she has a very flippant view of the Canvas and its inhabitants due to how she dehumanizes them with the term “creation.”
This dehumanization of groups of people are very common within authoritarian and/or fascist states. We see this in how those in power throughout America’s history called Native people “savages” or “redskins.” We see this with the slurs white people have said to Black people, such as the one starting with ‘n.’ We see this in the slurs cisgender (non trans) people give to trans people like me, such as ‘tr*nny.’
Then there is the false myths of certain populations being dangerous, or dirty, or less than in some way. This painting of a mythos to justify the eradication and erasure of an entire population. For example, in my essay concerning Disability in Clair Obscur, I spoke to how various forms of media use disfigurement and other disabilities to denote evil, badness, and villainy. I spoke to how this originated in Capitalism crafting a disposable class of people who were not abled-bodied or healthy enough to be exploitable labor. Black people were folded into the disabled category as well due to harmful race theories that posited they were ‘less intelligent,’ could bear ‘more’ pain, and other falsehoods to justify enslavement and/or imprisonment.
In her book Killing Rage, Ending Racism, bell hooks shares:
In the beginning black folks were most effectively colonized via a structure of ownership. Once slavery ended, white supremacy could be effectively maintained by the institutionalization of social apartheid and by creating a philosophy of racial inferiority that would be taught to everyone. This strategy of colonialism needed no country, for the space it sought to own and conquer was the minds of whites and blacks. As long as a harsh brutal system of racial apartheid was in place, separating blacks from whites by laws, coercive structures of punishment, and economic disenfranchisement, many black people seemed to intuitively understand that our ability to resist racist domination was nurtured by a refusal of the colonizing mindset. Segregation enabled black folks to maintain oppositional worldviews and standpoints to counter the effects of racism and to nurture resistance. The effectiveness of those survival strategies was made evident by both civil rights movements and the militant resistance that followed in their wake. This resistance to colonialism was so fierce, a new strategy was required to maintain and perpetuate white supremacy.
Here hooks lays out America’s brutal regime against the black population, and how America adjusted its temporal reference frame to craft a new strategy to control and exploit. To do this, the oppression must be recast in the past, as we have seen with Native temporal realities, while also re-enforcing false stereotypes of inferiority. By doing so, oppressors once again avoid accountability, while also continuing to assert their temporal reality onto the oppressed. Often, the oppressor will attempt to adjust the narrative to posit it is the victim that is violent rather than the oppressor. bell hooks spells this out implicitly:
Currently black folks are often depicted on television in situations where they charge racist victimization and then the viewer is bombarded with evidence that shows this to be a trumped-up charge, that whites are indeed far more caring and able to be social equals than “misguided” blacks realize. The message that television sends then is that the problem of racism lies with black people-that it exists in our minds and imaginations. On a recent episode of Law and Order a white lawyer directs anger at a black woman and tells her, “If you want to see the cause of racism, look in the mirror.” Television does not hold white people responsible for white supremacy; it socializes them to believe that subjugation and subordination of black people by any means necessary is essential for the maintenance of law and order.
These painted stereotypes then enfold into the minds of the oppressor and oppressed, and acts as another vehicle for which the dominant temporal reality to assert itself.
Paulo Freire writes about this dehumanization in Pedagogy of the Oppressed:
Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as persons—not by those who are oppressed, exploited, and unrecognized. It is not the unloved who initiate disaffection, but those who cannot love because they love only themselves. It is not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate terror, but the violent, who with their power create the concrete situation which begets the “rejects of life.” It is not the tyrannized who initiate despotism, but the tyrants. It is not the despised who initiate hatred, but those who despise. It is not those whose humanity is denied them who negate humankind, but those who denied that humanity (thus negating their own as well).
Violence starts with the oppressor — in the case of the Canvas world, the Dessendre family — initiating the Fracture and gommage that erases the Lumierian population slowly over time. Clea dismisses the Canvas people as simply ‘creations’ because she fails to recognize the Canvas people as persons. Renoir sidesteps this by recognizing, mostly at the end of Act 3, the humanity of the Canvas people, but ultimately decides his actions and the consequences of his actions are for the greater good.
The Canvas people, by fighting for their right to exist, subverts the temporal reality of the Dessendre’s. Renoir and Clea cannot preceive the monopoly of their power and privilege dehumanizes those within the Canvas as well as themselves and their family. Instead, they are caught up in the idea they have an exclusive right to act as they will, consequences be damned.
Freire goes on to write:
Humanity is a “thing,” and they possess it as an exclusive right, as inherited property. To the oppressor consciousness, the humanization of the “others,” of the people, appears not as the pursuit of full humanity, but as subversion. The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves. They can not see that, in the egoistic pursuit of having as a possessing class, they suffocate in their own possessions and no longer are; they merely have. For them, having more is an inalienable right, a right they acquired through their own “effort,” with their “courage to take risks.” If others do not have more, it is because they are incompetent and lazy, and worst of all is their unjustifiable ingratitude towards the “generous gestures” of the dominant class. Precisely because they are “ungrateful” and “envious,” the oppressed are regarded as potential enemies who must be watched.
It could not be otherwise. If the humanization of the oppressed signifies subversion, so also does their freedom; hence the necessity for constant control. And the more the oppressors control the oppressed, the more they change them into apparently inanimate “things.”
Thus, in order to justify erasure of a people, their temporal, spatial, and cultural reality must be reduced to a stereotype or in other words, a creation or construct. This stereotype and/or false reality is painted over the targeted population, then shared wildly to make it seem like the oppressor’s reference frame is the One True One — the One To Rule Them All.
But these arguments pivot on falsehoods. Pull out the falsehoods, and the arguments topple. For the Canvas people, dehumanizing them into simply “Aline’s creations” as Clea asserts, this cannot fully describe the lived realities of the Canvas people themselves. They are more than just ‘Aline’s creations.’ Their lived realities are as complex as Clea’s own, and the player knows this because they have spent the majority of the game immersed in a complex and nuanced world, surrounded by intricate people with very real concerns, dreams, ethics, sorrows, and joys.
It’s not so easy to dismiss an entire population after one has lived with them. This is why the game starts us in Lumiere, why we live with the Lumierians, so we can understand their struggle to not be erased. To not be eradicated. To have a future once more.
The reference frame of the Dessendre World versus the Canvas World are equally valid as we have seen. Just because one could be said to be a construct made by a Dessendre family member doesn’t mean the Canvas is any less real for those that live within it.
(One could argue that the Dessendre World is no less constructed, as the people within it constructed their society and their relations with one another. One can also spin in circles debating whether the Dessendre world is created or not by some other being beyond Clea’s understanding or knowledge. Philosophers have debated this very question for centuries.)
Regardless of whether a world is constructed or not, those within it experience the temporal and spatial aspects of their world fully. The game shows us through our journey with Expedition 33, and through our interactions with the Dessendre family. Of these two groups, the one that dehumanizes the other is the Dessendre family. The Canvas people go to great lengths to not dehumanize others (as we shall soon see). Freire reminds us:
When people are already dehumanized, due to the oppression they suffer, the process of their liberation must not employ the methods of dehumanization.
For American society, leaders posit a reference frame that enforces a temporal, spatial, and legal reality to supersede the reality experienced by marginalized populations. This action dehumanizes them and strips them of their agency and lived reality.
Riften in the book Beyond Settler Time speaks to how America weaponized its rigid reference frame to reorganize geographies of who exists on which land and also to erase a culture’s way of living in the present (their temporal reality). Thus, Riften identifies how America attempts to claim its reference frame is the One True Frame just as Clea attempts in regards to Dessendre versus the Canvas (and Renoir as well through the act of gommage).
In essence, American leaders, Clea, and Renoir are privileging their own frame over that of any others, regardless of the harm and often brutal enforcement of such a frame. This then reframes populations as being ‘stuck in the past’ or ‘uncivilized’ if they do not conform to how the oppressor defines civilization and humanity’s temporal reality.
Through law and policy, America sought to change Natives into suitable subjects to the American empire, thus erasing their past, present, and future. The reference frame for Native people becomes revolutionary in their struggle to assert their existence and keep alive their culture and identities. Riften argues:
The representation of Native peoples as either having disappeared or being remnants on the verge of vanishing constitutes one of the principal means of effacing Indigenous sovereignties. Such a portrayal of Indigenous temporal stasis or absence erases extant forms of occupancy, governance, and opposition to settler encroachments. Moreover, it generates a prism through which any evidence of such survival will be interpreted as either vestigial (and thus on the way to imminent extinction) or hopelessly contaminated (as having lost—or quickly losing—the qualities understood as defining something, someone, or some space as properly “Indian” in the first place). These kinds of elisions and anachronizations can be understood as a profound denial of Native being…
America’s attempt to constitute Native people in the past denies the Native being entirely; it’s a form of gommage and an attempt to control and eliminate Native resistance. However, as Nemik’s Manifesto asserts, authority is brittle, and freedom is spontaneously occurring. The ways in which our temporal reality differs from our oppressors cannot be denied, as people will and do rise up to reassert their right to exist. Recognition of our diverse temporal realities affirms our humanity.
For Native people (and other marginalized groups), multiple temporal reference frames have always existed. Native cultural practices, as diverse as the tribes within North America are, keep alive this alternate understanding of time, space, geography, ways of living and governing, identity, and one’s relationships with one another and the land. Riften writes of this by use fo the term ‘temporal orientation:’
To speak of temporal orientation suggests the ways that time can be regarded less as a container that holds events than as potentially divergent processes of becoming. Being temporally oriented suggests that one’s experiences, sensations, and possibilities for action are shaped by the existing inclinations, itineraries, and networks in which one is immersed, turning toward some things and away from others. More than a question of relations in space, orientation involves reiterated and nonconscious tendencies, suggesting ways of inhabiting time that shape how the past moves toward the present and future.
Native people understood that each culture and people within that culture were oriented toward a specific temporal reality based on their “experiences, sensations, and possibilities for action.” And in turn, these aspects were influenced by one’s environment such as the land or society, one’s connections with others (deemed networks by Riften), and the journey one took (deemed itineraries). Thus, temporality is a diverse range of multiplicity — there is no one reference frame when it came to temporal reality.
Rather than approaching time as an abstract, homogeneous measure of universal movement along a singular axis, we can think of it as plural, less as a temporality than temporalities. From this perspective, there is no singular unfolding of time, but, instead, varied temporal formations that have their own rhythms—patterns of consistency and transformation that emerge immanently out of the multifaceted and shifting sets of relationships that constitute those formations and out of the interactions among those formations. As V. F. Cordova observes, “time is an abstraction derived from the fact that there is motion and change in the world.”
America attempted (and still attempts today) to orient Native reality toward a very rigid way of existing. It denies their temporal reality and insists on only America’s temporality existing. If any failed to fit within America’s defined parameters for life, they were (and still are) eliminated/erased. Riften clarifies:
Rather than marking an absolute distinction between Natives and nonnatives, suggesting that there are unbreachable barriers that generate utterly incommensurable and hermetically sealed Indian and white forms of experience, I am suggesting the presence of discrepant temporalities that can be understood as affecting each other, as all open to change, and yet as not equivalent or mergeable into a neutral, common frame—call it time, modernity, history, or the present.
As much as America attempted a brutal and long-term gommage of Native people, they still fought back and resisted the oppressors attempts at genocide and erasure. Part of that lay in holding onto one’s temporal orientation within which the roots of one’s identity and culture grow. As Riften explains, this isn’t to say Native temporal reality and America’s temporal reality are so distinct they cannot be overlapped. Instead, the interplay between the Native temporal reality and American temporal reality affects one another in often painful and/or genocidal ways. America’s temporal reality insists on merging all other realities into one “neutral, common frame,” but in doing so erases those who do not fit its narrow and biased parameters.
The Earth holds great diversity within how one may identify, may live, the customs one may have, the relationships formed with others or with the land, and so on. These are all lived realities that are just as valid as any other, and attempts to collapse them into the One Frame To Rule Them All is our world’s version of gommage. A cultural genocide often can escalate into full genocide of both culture and body until no one is left standing within that group.
That is one thing that fascism and authoritarian/colonialism hates — diversity. It’s why fascism tries to wipe out diversity and force everyone into the reference frame carefully sculpted by the oppressor — a frame often posited as the “universal.”
Franz Fanon wrote in Wretched of the Earth:
Challenging the the colonial world is not a rational confrontration of viewpoints. It is not a discourse on the universal, but the impassioned claim by the colonized that their world is fundamentally different.
The colonial world seeks to dominate and erase the colonized, to collapse all frames into their own. This simplifies their control, but in doing so, they paint specific groups as disposable and thus erase those that fail to conform.
This same threat darkens the world of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, where a continued genocide — in the form of the erasure from gommage — seeks to destroy the people of Lumiere and steals away their future. Their ability to exist in the ‘now’ and thrive is slowly carved away as more and more of their people are lost to the Gommage.
For those in Lumiere, they do not know why they are being erased. Even when the player finally learns the full truth in Act 3, the erasure of the Lumierians is shown to be at the whim of one family. Yes, the Dessendre family aren’t truly seeking to dominate or exploit the Lumierians, only are caught in spirals of grief. However, the consequences of their actions oppress the Lumierians and cause tremendous harm to all involved. One cannot simply write off those consequences by saying “they were grieving, and erasing the Canvas stops the temptation to hide from grief.”
That still puts the fate of the Canvas people as ‘less than’ and not as real as the Dessendre family. No matter the motivations or original intentions, the consequences of erasing an entire population of people invokes genocide. The question then becomes, do we accept that the Canvas people are real and their existence valid?
That brings us back to Riften’s argument concerning the temporal realities that America thrust on the Native people. America deemed Native realities not real or valid, and thus justified the erasure and elimination of the “savage” in order to “civilize” and/or clear the land for America’s harmful “manifest destiny.” (See Indigeneous People’s History of the United States for a full breakdown of this history.) Riften speaks to this:
In 1906 Congress passed the Osage Allotment Act, extending to the Osage Nation the principles at play in the allotment program generally. These include efforts to break up Native land tenure into privatized property holding, organized primarily around nuclear family units; dismantle Indigenous structures of governance, asserting greater U.S. jurisdictional authority over Native peoples and places; insert Native peoples into the cash economy and Euramerican agricultural production; and transform everyday patterns of life so that they would conform to Euramerican conventions of dress, language, religion, literacy, gender roles, and so on. This policy imaginary draws on temporal figurations in order to remap and reorder spatial relations. Presented by officials and supporters as a means by which Indians could progress from a stunted and backward savagery toward civilization, allotment offered a vision of necessary development over time that enabled the struggle between Indigenous and settler geopolitical formations to be conceptually bracketed.
We see here how America attempted to force Native people into a very rigid binaries, in order to “civilize” them. If they failed to exist within these parameters, then destruction would befall them. For the Canvas people, they have even less agency, as there is no parameters that asserts a specific mode of being into which they are allowed to exist. Similar approaches to erasure and control was instituted on other marginalized populations as well.
The Canvas people are seen as oddities and anomalies. They are “creations” and not deemed real enough for continued existence. This is how Renoir (and Clea) is able to justify his erasure of them. In a similar vein, Riften, in his book Beyond Settler Time, points out a similar concept regarding the temporal reality of Native people:
Indigenous experiences of time may appear as oddities—anachronisms, aberrations, irrationalities, anomalies—when they do not line up neatly with dominant forms of chronology, historicism, and perception. As Sara Ahmed observes,“ Things seem ‘straight’ . . . when they are ‘in line,’ which means when they are aligned with other lines…”
The metaphor of lines is used to denote the temporal relations within groups of people. A group’s timeline may seem a straight path if aligned with other lines based on how we align such trajectories. Just as it is possible to craft a timeline or trajectory by lining up sequences of events, that does not mean this is the only way to build up temporal relations and/or paths. Other trajectories and timelines can exist in parallel.
She later notes, “Queer orientations are those that put within reach bodies that have been made unreachable by the lines of conventional genealogy,” further contending that a “queer commitment” is one that does not “presume that lives have to follow certain lines in order to count as lives…”
Here Riften quotes Ahmed’s observation that we do not have to “presume that lives have to follow certain lives in order to count as lives.” This is a crucial point for the temporal reality of people who do not fit into the dominant worldviews of the colonial society. The oppressed then, through the act of asserting their existence, proves the existence of alternate temporal realities, and the ‘straight’ lines becomes a tapestry of woven realities that may overlap, intersect, and inform one another even as they stand distinct. This plurality of worldviews is seen as a threat to Capitalists and Fascists who seek to collapse everyone into only their temporal reality.
The Fate of the Canvas People
For the Canvas people, their existence does not fit the dominant worldview of the Dessendre family. Instead, their existence is seen as a threat to the health of the Dessendre family by the act of temptation. Renoir and Clea both claim the Canvas exists only as a temptation for family members to live out a fantasy. In doing so, they deem the Canvas people a fascimile of true reality. In orienting the trajectory/timeline in this manner, the Dessendre family attempt to assert that their temporal reality matters more. That their emotions and sorrows matter more.
Except, Maelle subverts such a claim when she tells her father, at the end of Act 3, that she refuses to accept that the Canvas people must die for the family to heal. After her fight with Renoir, where they defeat him, this is part of their conversation:
RENOIR: I cannot spend another day with living corpses. Since the fire, our family has crumbled. Aline in the Canvas. Clea fighting her solitary war. You, a living ghost.
MAELLE: (shakes her head)
RENOIR: Verso’s death broke us. I want it to be fixed. I need it to be fixed! I– (coughs) I cannot lose you too!
MAELLE: Don’t you see? That’s how I feel about them! I can’t lose them either.
Here Renoir sees only his family, and he holds tightly to them. He attempts to control them through his own grief. But in doing so he takes away not only the agency of his family members, but also the agency of an entire world of people.
Maelle, on the other hand, tries to reach her father by showing how his feelings for his family is similar to how she feels about the family she’s built in Lumiere. She does her best to convince him that she’s not leaving him forever, but she can’t let him erase the people of the Canvas simply because he views them as a temptation for his family’s grief. She attempts to humanize the people of the Canvas by showing they are family too, while Renoir dehumanizes them by painting them as a temptation.
As another example, let’s look at prior to the fight. Here Maelle tries to convince him to not erase the entire Canvas.
RENOIR: I know how powerful and intoxicating it is, how deeply attached we can become to the worlds we pour our hearts and soul into. I was enthralled, and it nearly killed me.
MAELLE: It doesn’t mean you have to erase Verso’s Canvas!
For For Maelle, she sees beyond the limitations of just the family. This isn’t just Verso’s soul she’s fighting for here. She’s also fighting for the souls of every person who lives in Lumiere, who had lived until Gommage erased them. She lived sixteen years as a Lumierian, and she cannot simply erase that temporal reality simply because her father decided the Canvas is a temptation to be destroyed. For her, this goes beyond her family’s contours of grief.
Lune and Sciel both step forward to offer their truth, where they place comforting hands on Maelle’s shoulders. They lay down their claim of their different temporal reality and how it is just as valid.
RENOIR: Life keeps forcing cruel choices. We do what we must.
SCIEL: Grief often blinds us. And we make choices we can never take back.
RENOIR: You grieve for two.
SCIEL: I grieve for many.
LUNE: The choices of parents leave indelible marks upon their children. But ultimately the voices in their head have to be their own. You cannot set the boundaries of their life for them.Here Lune and Sciel both attempt to argue why their right to exist matters. They use the language Renoir is most likely to understand. This is an excellent example of how the oppressed — Sciel and Lune — leverage a shared language — grief and family — in order to re-humanize themselves and their oppressor.
When Sciel says she ‘grieves for many,’ she references all the poeple Renoir gommaged.
When Lune says ‘you cannot set the boundaries of their life for them,’ she is also referencing the boundaries of the life of her people. Renoir seeks to set a final boundary by erasing them forever, yet is that not ripping away the agency of Lune and her people as well as the agency of Renoir’s own daughter? The erasure is a violence enacted upon them and a dehumanization of their personhoods.
Thus, the people of the Canvas argue with who is essentially a godlike being for their right to exist. The oppressed, as Fanon pointed out (repeated for emphasis), must lay claim to their temporal and spatial realities:
Challenging the the colonial world is not a rational confrontration of viewpoints. It is not a discourse on the universal, but the impassioned claim by the colonized that their world is fundamentally different.
Lune, Sciel, and Maelle all have impassioned claims of their world being different than what Renoir claims. He focuses only on his own needs, and his arguments are not truly rational. Sciel rightly calls him out for being ‘blinded’ by his grief, and she shifts the perspective to a different worldview. Lune does the same by calling out his inability to recognize and acknowledge his daughter’s agency. Both are attempts to reason with Renoir, but at the same time lay out an impassioned claim to their own agency.
In this manner, the Canvas people not only attempt to humanize themselves for Renoir — the one who has oppressed them through Gommage — but also to humanize Renoir. Through the Gommage he may have stolen their humanity and erased them, but in doing so, he erased his own humanity by becoming this godlike being of death.
Paulo Friere in Pedagogy of the Oppressed puts this most succinctly:
The struggle for humanization, for the emancipation of labor, for the overcoming of alienation, for the affirmation of men and women as persons would be meaningless. This struggle is possible only because dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed.
Because it is a distortion of being more fully human, sooner or later being less human leads the oppressed to struggle against those who made them so. In order for this struggle to have meaning, the
oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both.This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well.
Thus, Lune and Sciel attempt to humanize everyone involved in the conflict. Despite their attempt, it will fail at first. They must defeat Renoir, and then and only then, is he finally willing to give Maelle and the Canvas people their agency.
RENOIR: I’ll leave a light on for you.
He leaves the Canvas in Maelle’s hands. Thus, the Canvas people have not only liberated themselves but also Renoir.
Yet, despite this win, a final confrontation between Painted Verso and Maelle will determine the true fate of the Canvas. In a way, this reflects how victories by the oppressed can push forward their fight for liberation and freedom, but there can also be inside actors that sabotage their goals.
We see this in Painted Verso, who betrays them in his goal to seek complete annihilation. He’s fallen into the despair that Friere speaks about in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, where he sees his dehumanization as being only a painted version of the true Verso. He cannot reach past this distortion to become more fully himself, something beyond what he was painted to be. His rigidity and stubbornness narrows his ability to relate to Maelle, and he attempts to force his temporal reality onto not only Maelle but the faded boy and all of the Canvas. By using leading questions, Painted Verso extracts the answer he wants from the faded boy, which he uses to justify his actions.
Verso fights for annihilation and to force upon Maelle his idea of what ‘healing’ looks like. He represents a refusal to accountability and is trapped in his own despair. (I will write a separate essay on accountability to dig into Verso’s temporal reality, so for now I will simply point out his final motivations.)
Maelle fights for her agency, the agency of her Dessendre family, and the agency of all Canvas people to exist and heal in the ways they need. She holds herself accountable and refuses to give in to despair.
In Verso’s ending, his selfish desire for annihilation will doom the Canvas entirely. He achieves his annihilation, and he tells Maelle it will be okay even as he forces her back into the Dessendre world. There Maelle becomes Alicia once more, trapped and isolated with her disability. The Canvas people have no place in this ending, their existence erased to become a segment of the Dessendre family’s past.
Yet, does this act truly bring healing to all involved? If the Canvas people are indeed real, how does this ending not doom them to erasure and genocide? To sacrifice an entire people to ensure the security and healing of another group is the death-narrative of necrosecurity, where the marginalized group are seen as less than and not as real. This only continues the cycle of violence, grief, and pain. (In my prior two essays I tackle the question of healing and agency. I also show how the Dessendre world does not offer a supportive system to aid the family, and specifically Alicia/Maelle’s, healing. I won’t belabor those points as my focus in this essay is the Canvas people’s fate.)
In Maelle’s ending, Maelle will offer Painted Verso an alternate way of existing instead of the one he currently abhors:
MAELLE: If you could grow old, would you… find a reason to smile?
By framing it this way, she offers him agency to choose his own way forward, one where he is not trapped in the bindings of another. She wishes to see him happy, to not be trapped in a cycle of despair and violence. She wants healing to blossom. The final scenes of Maelle’s ending takes place in a future point, where people have aged and Lumiere has started to rebuild.
Through the use of chroma, she aids the Canvas people in finally liberating themselves from the oppressive reference frames of the Dessendre family. Those that were erased once more find life, and Maelle’s question opens up an alternate temporal reality, one where people age and find their own happiness, without the shadow of gommage to steal away their future.
In a way, this once again parallels our reality. The oppressed often must resort to violence in order to free themselves from the yoke of their oppressors. For example, the Civil Rights Era of the 1960s involved civil disobedience, fights with racist police, and America’s assassination of Civil Rights leaders. Despite that violent backdrop, Black communities fought for their right to exist and have equal rights under the law, and they won some of those demands. Yes, this fight for justice still continues today, but each win threads a temporal trajectory toward a more just, equitable, and accessible world. That path will not be ‘straight’ line. Instead, it will curve in on itself, twist around, and yet still continue forward toward that better future.
We see this in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. This isn’t just a journey on how to deal with grief, but it’s also the question of whether the temporal reality of the Lumierians is as valid and as crucial as the Dessendre’s. And whether their reality has a right to exist and thrive.
In many video games, it’s rare for the player to play in the oppressed people’s reference frame. Generally, the game will posit a ‘hero’ that often comes from the oppressor culture or an outside ‘neutral’ culture to save the day. However, Clair Obscur turns this trope on its head by placing the player firmly within the people of the Canvas. The main characters are people of Lumiere, and our team of heroes are those that seek to end the erasure of their people — to assert their existence and restore their temporality in the present time. They don’t want to become past relics folded into the history books (the Dessendre family’s books to be precise). Instead, Lumiere and the sentient beings of the Canvas seek to exist within the present where they can build toward a shared future.
By placing us, at first, on the side of Lumierians, the player experiences the tempos of Lumierian’s ordinary life and their society (what Riften identifies as “modes of inhabitance” and “networks of exchange”). We are shown the complexity of these people and experience the reality of their world. The game may, at times, deliberately mislead the character, as we see in Act 2 with Painted Verso’s character, but this never negates how real the Canvas people’s world is. As I have shown in this essay, the Canvas World and Dessendre world are both real and valid, neither more important than the other.
We have now returned to one of the most crucial questions in the game: What is the right decision in regards to the fate of the Canvas people and the fate of Alicia/Maelle? As I have hopefully shown thus far, erasing people’s temporal realities causes immense harm and is genocide; people have a right to exist, and sacrificing them for the ‘greater good of society’ (or in this case the Dessendre family) cannot ever be the morally right answer.
Necrosecurity, as I spoke of earlier, paints a bleak and death-filled reality, where healing cannot ever take place because denial and control is at its roots. Until people’s temporal realities are respected and their agency honored, healing will forever stay out of reach.
Thus, escaping pain by committing genocide is not healing. It’s a continuation of the cycle of violence. The marginalized populations facing genocide have a right to exist, and their temporal realities are as valid and important as the oppressor. Just as the temporal reality of the Canvas people are as valid and important as the Dessendre family.
Healing can only happen when the cycle of violence ends.
#BlackPeople #civilRights #existence #gameNarrative #genocide #indigenous #IndigenousRights #justice #liberation #necrosecurity #nonbinary #Race #referenceFrames #revolution #temporality #themes #transgender
-
CW: Spoilers for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Clair Obscur: That Which Seeks The Right To Exist Temporally and Spatially
THIS IS A CROSSPOST FROM COMRADERY. Part of a three part series: Disability (part 1), Right to Exist (part 2), and Accountability and Healing (part 3).
In a world built upon alienation, people seek to be heard and seen. This may happen through social media, video or podcasts, essays like this one, video game guilds, or other creative avenues. There’s this innate need for our existence to be recognized. For us to not be erased. When forces beyond our control seek to dominate and coerce us into either compliance or annihilation, people will eventually rise up to demand their freedom. Many marginalized populations within Capitalist Colonialist societies, such as America, struggle with institutions that often seek to erase their identity, culture, and their personhood.
In Clair Obscur, we can see this struggle with existence and erasure play out visibly through the yearly “gommage.” After the Fracture — a cataclysmic event — Lumeire must contend with yearly erasures of all people above a specific age. That age is determined by the number painted on the monolith, which looms oppressively over the world. Each year that number decreases, and more are erased from existence. The temporal existence of their society within their present and future lays in uncertainty.
This has a parallel with how oppressors treat the oppressed within societies. Just as the number warns Lumiere who will be next, Fascist/Authoritarian societies will declare who is unfit for society. Who they focus on, and from there we can see the potential trajectory for others who lay in their destructive path.
By constructing a specific framework to paint over marginalized people, fascist/authoritarian societies seek to control the marginalized population, and effectively erase what makes them uniquely them. Thus, like the oppressors within our world, the Dessendre family render the Canvas people’s existence as less than their own; in this way, it justifies the gommage’s genocidal consequences. However, is it true that the Canvas people are not real? That their existence is less than the Dessendre’s? Is destroying them the morally good choice? Or does it only continue the injustice preyed upon the Canvas people of Lumiere?
Parallels between Our World and That of Clair Obscur
The act of erasing people often begins through dehumanization and a redefining of the attributes of reality. For example, as of June 2025, under Trump’s Administration, nonbinary genders were erased, and gender was collapsed into a binary sex structure. This was done despite biology revealing that gender is not a simple binary, that it is based on chromosomes, primary and secondary sex characteristics. If looking simply at chromosomes, six biological genders would exist, but if one adds in the primary sex characteristics — reproductive organs for example — and secondary sex characteristics — effects of hormones on the body — one can calculate over 50 possible permutations (See chapters 11 through 13 of Evolution’s Rainbow by Joan Roughgarden).
But that reality has been erased by the Trump Administrations narrow definition. This in turn places people like myself — a nonbinary disabled person — in a state of simultaneously existing in the physical realm of the planet Earth but also not existing by American law. The erasure of my personhood and identity is a way to sterilize who I am and force me into a narrow mold, and anyone who does not fit will be eradicated.
However, no matter how much control fascist governments weaponize, freedom cannot be erased. In Star Wars Andor, Nemik writes a manifesto, where he explains how Fascist control is fragile and the spontaneity of freedom:
“There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire’s authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this. Try.”
Thus, people who are being erased by fascism continue to reach for freedom. To try and break free of the restrictive definitions of reality. Part of those restrictions lay in the temporal reality that oppressors construct to place their victims in a past reality, where we no longer exist in the present.
This is the method that the United States of America used to control and erase the Native cultures that existed prior to the white settlers of the 1600s. Historians and lawmakers construct a temporal reality that places Native people as existing in the past, where the violence conducted against them was sanitized. As relics of a bygone age, and thus, any Native that still lives becomes coerced into the American society, their culture and identity stripped from them through relocation to reservations and brutal Indian schools. This is one part of the larger genocide against Native people’s.
Erasure of people, denial of their existence, and the question of whether such people even still exist creates a temporal paradox. Can people both simultaneously exist but not exist? In my case, I exist in the reference frame of the planet Earth, where people can see my body and speak with me directly if they so choose. However, in the realm of American (and some states’) law and history, my existence has been erased, and thus I no longer exist within the current Administration’s temporal reference frame. I am collapsed into a facsimile of who I am — a painted version of my self positioned to narrowly fit what others have decided I must be in order to be allowed existence.
This question of who is allowed to exist, what cultures can exist, and whether a population exists within our present not only shapes our discourse but also the world in which we live. We can see this in how the rights of trans people like myself have slowly been stripped away — loss of healthcare, loss of anti-discrimination laws, loss of the right to exist in public and use a restroom, etc., until nothing remains. A slow gommage that ripples through my community, until we are but petals on the wind.
Take the Gommage in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and stretch it slowly over months and/or years, where each part of the person slowly begans to evaporate away into rose petals. It’s a slow sort of temporal-based death, and is the reality of many marginalized people in our current society. However, we refuse to go quietly, just as the people of Lumiere also refused.
To resist the Gommage, the people of Lumiere send Expeditions in the hope they will defeat the Paintress and end the slow temporal and spatial erasure. So that they can secure a future for their people once more. This need to not be erased, to exist, becomes a revolutionary anthem.
It’s a parallel to the revolutionary anthem of Trans people resisting our erasure, of Indigenous people fighting against genocide as they simultaneously restore their culture and identity, of Black people and their demands for justice, of Disabled people and our refusal to just lay down and die. Marginalized populations face their own form of gommage, but it’s a much slower and traumatic death than what Lumeire faces.
To illustrate, let’s look at Gustave and Maelle speaking of death:
MAELLE: I, uh, I thought I was used to losing people. Life of a foster child, right? But not — not like that — on the beach… that man…
GUSTAVE: Yeah. Yeah… I know. Nevrons we were prepared for but not… (pause) And now we finally found other survivors and it’s… (pause) You know, that — that’s the insidious thing about the Gommage. It’s predictable… almost gentle. It makes Lumiere complacent and accepting but … the Gommage is equally violent and death… Death is just as final.
That truly is the insidious thing as the Gommage — whether it happens relatively quickly like in Clair Obscur, or over long period of time in our world — people are complacent and almost accepting of it because the institutions have normalized sacrificing populations as necessary to the good of society. But truthfully, the gommage is indeed “equally violent” as simply killing a person. To strip a person of their identity, culture, personhood? To render them as no longer real within society? That is a form of death.
This concept of sacrificing populations for the ‘good of society’ has its name in necrosecurity. Martha Lincoln writes:
Thus, though necrosecurity is deeply informed by anti-scientific and anti-expert sentiments, it is not simply a failed biosecurity, nor is it a form of biosecurity in which the project’s intrinsic flaws are made visible. Normatively, biosecurity does not call for human illness or deaths. By contrast, necrosecurity explicitly and centrally instrumentalizes death—imagining a sacrificial population whose exposure to harm will secure against losses to more qualified populations. It is a calculated attempt to leverage the pathogenic and epidemiological properties of disease towards social, political, and economic ends. Lying between passive “letting die” and overt murder of political enemies, necrosecurity entails the promotion of death intended to preempt other deaths; instead of seeking to prevent human deaths, as biosecurity would, it attempts to secure life by allowing death to flourish selectively.
We saw this concept of necrosecurity at work through the last five years, where America — and other countries — engaged in normalizing death for specific populations, in order to boost the economy for “more qualified populations.” America has also shifted to past tense regarding the pandemic, despite Covid-19 still existing, still mutating, and still disabling and/or killing vulnerable populations. This shift of placing the virus in the past is a form of temporal erasure.
Within the game, Gommage places those erased in the past. They fade into rose petals, lost to the present, and thus temporally erased from the world and Lumiere society. This Gommage is seen as a force perpetuated by the Paintress, but this is only because the Lumierians see her actions before the Gommage sweeps over their city. So they associate her repainting the number to be the act that unleashes the Gommage. With the truth masked and no other source of knowledge disputing this theory, the misinformation perpetuates through their culture and their expeditions.
In this manner, people can become misguided with incorrect information, and thus not understand the true culprit is not necessarily the Paintress at all. Lune says to Gustave at one point that, “this is a war of information.”
Indeed it is. Not just for the people of Lumiere, but also for our own world. This is why the current American Administration hid and erased data pertaining to infectious diseases, LGBTQIA people, and Black and Indigenous People of Color. Why sources of information are being placed under lock and key and no longer accessible to the public. The war on information puts the oppressed into a constant reactionary stance; if they don’t have the full information, then how do they know who to target to end their oppression?
Thus, the Lumierians, lacking the full information, focus on reaching the Paintress, but the truth of Gommage lies under the Monolith, not at its peak. Gommage doesn’t come from the Paintress, but from a being trapped under her monolith, who unleashes the Gommage after she issues her warning. It’s not until end of Act 2 that this truth is revealed.
Thus, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 forces the player to reckon with questions situated on who is allowed to exist, who is allowed to continue into a future, and if sacrificing populations are necessary for the ‘good’ of society.
Or to dig even deeper, what is this temporal reality in which Lumiere in its people exist? Is it situated in the past, soon to be a footnote in the history of the Dessendre family? Or is it a present, a hope to continue to exist despite the Dessendre family? Does the people of the Lumiere and of the Canvas hold the same value, worthy, and right to exist as the Dessendre family?
The game itself posits a neutral position, where the various endings and presentation of story are up to the player to interpret. At least that’s what some game analysts say, but I think the game pushes the player toward a specific conclusion to these questions of existence versus erasure.
We are placed immediately within Lumiere with Gustave and Maelle, and soon we meet other people in the city. We see its population preparing for the Gommage. We experience the heartache and pain with them, and the oppression they face under this totalizing force that governs their lives.
Throughout the first Act, we connect with these characters — their hopes, fears, dreams, joys — and through them we are able to see a temporal existence that paints their lives with meaning. So when we are thrust into the ‘real world’ of the Painters by the start of Act 3, it feels jarring. Disjointed and strange. We are no longer in the same temporal reality, and the truth unveiled about the nature of the Lumierian world unsettles. It shakes our understanding of reality and existence.
The game also shifts the timeline, where the start of Act 3 becomes the past. We then see the start of our journey existed beyond the world of the Canvas, where the story threads through the timelines of two linked worlds: Dessendre’s ‘real’ world and the world of the Canvas. Time between the two do not fully match either, as the decades spent in the Canvas do not match precisely with the time span in the ‘real world.’ Within this game, multiple temporal realities exist, and as the game shows, each are uniquely their own.
It’s only in the second and third Acts where the questions the games ask start to shift. Part of this is due to Act 2 being specifically Verso’s perspective, where he stands in a separate temporal reality than the Lumierians. Thus, the game asks: are other temporal realities as equally valid as the Dessendre’s? Or does the Dessendre’s temporal reality matter more?
Temporal Realities and the Right to Exist
Mark Riften writes in Beyond Settler Time: Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination:
“Within post-Einsteinian notions of time, there is no such thing as an absolute time that applies everywhere at once. Instead, the experience and calculation of time are contingent. Simultaneity depends on one’s inertial frame of reference, such that two observers who are moving with respect to each other will not agree on when an event occurs or on other aspects of time’s passage. If in physics a frame of reference refers to relative motion, we also can think about that concept in more socially resonant ways. Such collective frames comprise the effects on one’s perception and material experience of patterns of individual and collective memory, the legacies of historical events and dynamics, consistent or recursive forms of inhabitance, and the length and character of the timescales in which current events are situated.”
Within Special Relativity, the inertial frame of reference is crucial to understanding a particular scenario. Reference frames describe a coordinate system in which temporal, motion, and spatial measurements of an observer can be done. Without articulating the reference frame, the situation becomes incomprehensible and impossible to measure or observe. Thus, reference frames are denoted by observers in order to agree on a shared understanding of the events in question.
Let’s place it within a social context. For example, much of American history books will label Indigenous Tribes of North America as being in the past, as if they no longer exist within the present time. For some tribes this may be so, but for many this is a falsehood, as they do indeed still exist in present time. America has crafted a reference frame here, but it posits that its frame is more real than those of Native people.
Riften clarifies:
U.S. settler colonialism produces its own temporal formation, with its own particular ways of apprehending time, and the state’s policies, mappings, and imperatives generate the frame of reference (such as plotting events with respect to their place in national history and seeing change in terms of forms of American progress). More than just affecting ideologies or discourses of time, that network of institutionalized authority over “domestic” territory also powerfully shapes the possibilities for interaction, development, and regularity within it. Such imposition can be understood as the denial of Indigenous temporal sovereignty, in the sense that one vision or way of experiencing time is cast as the only temporal formation—as the baseline for the unfolding of time itself.
As Riften describes, America seeks to situate Native people in the past in an attempt to control their narrative, their legacy, and their existence. It’s a form of erasure and genocide, to rewrite history and present time in order to exclude populations. This makes it easier to justify the death of populations if the narrative already posits them as being of the past and not the present.
Riften writes:
As in the account offered by relativity, there is no inherently privileged or mutual “now” (or sense of time’s passage more broadly) shared by disparate frames of reference. Through Indian law and policy, Native peoples have been subjected to profound reorganizations of prior geographies and modes of inhabitance, forms of governance, networks of exchange, tempos of ordinary life, and dynamics of individual maturation in an attempt to reorder Indigenous temporalities, to remake them in ways that fit non-native timescapes of expansion and dispossession.
It is true that within the laws of physics “there is no inherently privileged or mutual ‘now.’ Indeed, special relativity directly states:
- The laws of physics must be the same in all inertial reference frames.
- The speed of light (in a vacuum) is constant in all inertial reference frames.
Inertial refers to a reference frame in which everything within that frame moves at a constant velocity.
The Earth would be an inertial reference frame in the sense the planet’s motion can approximate to fit the definition. (There are some caveats here that relate to gravity and orbits, but it’s unnecessary for the overall argument). Thus, within the reference frames of those on the planet Earth, there is no privileged frame that exists as more real than another. The laws of physics are the same in all frames, and each are equally valid.
Is There One Reference Frame To Rule Them All?
To dig deeper, let’s examine the differences between Canvas Time and World and Dessendre Time and World. To compare the worlds, we must establish frames of reference. Within special relativity, this is done by situating a common origin point to start our analysis.
For Clair Obscur, that origin point is the moment of Fracture.
So at time (t) equals 0, Canvas experienced Fracture that devastated the world, broke apart cultures, and scattered the peoples of Canvas across a broken world. The city of Lumiere landed in the southern ocean, and after great upheaval a dome is constructed to keep its citizens safe.
At time-prime (t’) equals 0, the equivalent origin for Dessendre’s ‘real’ world, the Fracture represents the moment Aline, in her grief, faces off with her husband Renoir, who has entered the Canvas to bring his wife back to the Dessendre world. This cataclysmic war of Painter’s chroma causes the Fracture and starts the deadly countdown toward zero.
This is where the temporal realities then diverge, as in we’d have to brush off our mathematics and calculate with Lorentz Transforms to translate the coordinates of an event between frames. This isn’t to say one is more ‘right’ than the other, only that the temporal coordinates are not a one-to-one ratio.
The game tells us that in Canvas a century passes; however, in the Dessendre world, a century most definitely does not pass. For that to be so, the Dessendres would need to be immortal and unaging. However, we can safely assume the Dessendre family is not ageless nor immortal due to the ages of the children and the aging of the parents. We see glimpses of how the children do indeed grow into their current selves (current signifying the time of the Fracture, to orient each character within our established frames of reference).
So time does pass in the Dessendre’s world, but it moves slower than Canvas. While the Canvas world seems sped up. Within special relativity, this concept is explored within ‘time dilation.’
Position a person on Planet Earth, then send their twin toward a nearby star near the speed of light. For the twin on Earth, they would view their twin as moving slower and aging slower. While the twin on the rocket would view Earth as sped up, aging faster. Within each of their reference frames, they disagree on the temporal coordinates of events, but when they compare notes after the twin’s return home, the person on Earth will have aged more than the one on the rocket. Of course, I am doing a quick summary of this concept to avoid belaboring the point with excessive mathematics.
Regardless, it’s a fascinating phenomenon, and the game tips its hat toward it with how it differentiates the difference in temporal realities between Canvas Time and Dessendre Time. It’s also important to note that both reference frames within the twin example — the twin on Earth versus the twin on the rocket — are all valid frames. None is more ‘right’ than the other. Both frames will result in the same solution — the difference in aging, but their perspectives differ on how they experience it and come to that solution. Despite this, both frames are still equally valid.
In that same manner, the Dessendre Time is equally valid to Canvas Time, at least per this relativity postulate.
Within the Dessendre Time and World, the Canvas is seen as a created object, painted by Verso’s child-self. As a created world, it’s right to exist becomes called into question, and the neutrality of our reference frames also becomes conflicted.
Is the Dessendre reference frame, the one that was not painted, the one true frame? The One Frame To Rule Them All?
Or is both reference frames still equally valid?
So far, in our argument, we’ve posited that both reference frames are equally valid. Yes, there are differences in how time plays out within each frame but we see this only when we compare one to the other. Within the frame itself, one would not experience such differences. Meaning, those who live in the Canvas World and do not know of the Dessendre world would not know or experience a difference in time within their world. Their world would still feel time unwinding from their present just as their society has defined it.
It’s the same with the Dessendre world, where time within their world still unwinds within the definitions of their society.
So if the reference frames are equally valid, then is the question of what is created and what is not created what tells us whose reality is real and valid?
But that assumes the Dessendre world is ‘not created.’ It also assumes that if a culture is ‘created’ it is less real and valid than the ‘creator.’ This situates us within the realm of philosophy and religion, where-in some religions posit a creator who created the universe and all in it. If such a thing is true, and since the Dessendre world is still ‘created’ in the sense that the ‘creators’ are the game developers, then can we truly establish that the Dessendre world is ‘not created?’
If we put aside the fact that we are discussing a video game (at least for a moment), we have the issue of is there a ‘creator’ for Dessendre world that fits the lore and story? Religious or spirituality doesn’t truly come into play in the game. The most we see is references to myths and/or philosophy. For example, when the team goes to defeat the Axons, Monoco will cite the name of each axon as it’s part of the mythos of his people:
LUNE: So this is Visage’s Island.
MONOCO: He Who Guards Truth With Lies.
The name Monoco’s people — the Gestrals — gave the Visage Axon is layered with double meanings. It also falls neatly into the philosophical arguments concerning morality. In the Axons, we see their embodiment as ‘lessons’ painted by Renoir, who sought to capture his family into a philosophical being. Indeed, we see this in what the Mask Keeper, after giving the team Visage’s invitation, says:
SCIEL: What of the other paths?
MASK KEEPER: You are free to traverse them. Masks are not just to Obscure. They may also to Illuminate. Look for the masks that you need.
MAELLE: Meaning?MASK KEEPER: The invitation stands.
For Visage, the axon, masks are a tool that assist with not only hiding the truth, when the need arises, but illuminating the truth when the time comes. This is the closest the game ever comes to spirituality, and in truth, this is far more of a moralistic philosophy as debated by those within the Enlightenment period of Europe and Early America. Spiritual arguments will do little to assist us even if spirituality existed within the Canvas world (which perhaps it does but the game does not show it).
The Mask Keeper provides a definitive hint that Verso’s temporal reality differs from the Lumierians. He admits this when he says, “some of us stopped aging,” to Maelle, Lune, and Sciel after meeting and rescuing them. This establishes two temporal realities within the Canvas alone.
The only other hint we have is when you examine the Painter’s studio at the Start of Act 3, one will notice that canvases float around the room. This was an attribute of the Canvas world stemming from the Fracture, so what does it tell us that it appears within the Dessendre world? Is that a signal that their world is also constructed? It’s a question that is never fully answered by the game itself.
In this way, the game plays with our sense of reality. Due to how it lays out its acts, it plays with our temporal reality as well. Prologue/Act 1 focuses on Gustave as the primary perspective. This changes in Act 2, where we shift from the Lumierian timeline to Painted Verso’s timeline. Then in Act 3, we shift out of the Canvas temporal reality entirely and go back in time to an event before the other acts, where Alicia and Clea discuss the fate of the Canvas. Here Alicia will enter the Canvas, at her sister’s suggestion. At that point, the game narrates how Alicia becomes Maelle, and eventually spits us out into the temporal reality of Lumiere after the final Gommage that erased the rest of Lumiere.
Thus, the game gives us multiple temporal realities: Gustave, Verso, Alicia/Maelle. Each have their roots in different temporal reference frames: Gustave within the Lumiere reference frame, Verso within the immortal Paintress frame, and Alicia/Maelle who stands in both the Dessendre World frame but also in the Lumiere frame. Of all the characters, Maelle is the only one that steps in all of the reference frames.
As Alicia, she was born of the Dessendre family and grew to age sixteen. However, she transitions into the Canvas and end up reborn as Maelle within the city of Lumiere. She spends sixteen years there feeling slightly out of place, but she has no memories of her former life in the Dessendre world. For all Maelle knows in Act 1 and 2, she is a Lumierian. It’s only in Act 3 that she learns the truth of who she is, and she bridges her two selves, and thus both worlds within herself. Thus, she enters the ‘immortal’ frame as a ‘Paintress.’ This gives her a unique view of seeing the humanity and beautiful complexity inherent in both her Dessendre world and the Canvas/Lumiere world.
In a way, one could posit that Alicia/Maelle is the twin in the Special Relativity metaphor, who leaves her world to go to another and then returns. This journey alters her, and she experiences temporal reality differently when compared to Clea’s reference frame. However, the end result gives Alicia/Maelle a perspective that Clea lacks.
Clea, for her part, asserts the Canvas is but a playground. She does not give it any special qualities, and does not believe any person within it is truly real. We see this in her dialogue.
CLEA: She’s a grown woman, and she was the head of the Painter’s Council. She has failed her responsibilities. I don’t have time to coddle her. And before Verso died, she would have said the same.
ALICIA: …?
CLEA: I already have. Aline is a more skilled than Renoir, but I tipped the scales in his favor. I have my pets in place. “She who controls the chroma, controls the Canvas.” I can’t take her chroma, but I can keep it from returning to her. As she weakens, Renoir is able to erase her oldest creations. With the except of her obscene fake family. She made them all immortal, but luckily they’re also quite useless.
Here Clea speaks of the people in the Canvas as pieces on a chessboard. She gives them no consideration as to how the ‘creations’ feel about this erasure nor the trauma and pain it inflicts on them. For Clea, they are a distraction. She wants this ‘conflict’ in the Canvas over, so she can return to her own concerns in the present of the Dessendre World.
Her bias tilts toward the Dessendre World, for that is the reality in which she resides and has spent the majority of her time. For her, creations are simply creations that can be erased or remade at a whim. Her view here represents the oppressor view. She orients her reference frame as the superior one, and the Canvas’s frame as inferior. Thus, her conclusions result in denying the reality of the Canvas people and denying the sentience and complexity of their existence.
If she were to acknowledge their sentience and complexity, she could no longer posit her reference frame as the superior one. She’d have to reckon with the question of whether ‘erasing’ these ‘creations’ is morally good or morally evil.
Her attempt here to ignore such a question doesn’t solve it. It simply places the burden of solving it on Alicia’s shoulders, especially after she sends Alicia into the painting to “assist Renoir.”
Here the game is rather nebulous. We hear Clea’s words as Alicia falls into the Canvas, then we see how Alicia is painted over to become a baby born into Lumiere.
CLEA: Calm Alicia, or it’ll paint over you… what an auspicious start. Well, you’re about to be reborn in this world as one of Aline’s creations. Have fun.
The word “it” here seems to signify ‘chroma,’ but Clea doesn’t make clear whether it is Aline who paints over Alicia or if she herself does it. She only criticizes Alicia for her panic after giving her no real lessons on how to enter the Canvas and assist in it. Once again, she has a very flippant view of the Canvas and its inhabitants due to how she dehumanizes them with the term “creation.”
This dehumanization of groups of people are very common within authoritarian and/or fascist states. We see this in how those in power throughout America’s history called Native people “savages” or “redskins.” We see this with the slurs white people have said to Black people, such as the one starting with ‘n.’ We see this in the slurs cisgender (non trans) people give to trans people like me, such as ‘tr*nny.’
Then there is the false myths of certain populations being dangerous, or dirty, or less than in some way. This painting of a mythos to justify the eradication and erasure of an entire population. For example, in my essay concerning Disability in Clair Obscur, I spoke to how various forms of media use disfigurement and other disabilities to denote evil, badness, and villainy. I spoke to how this originated in Capitalism crafting a disposable class of people who were not abled-bodied or healthy enough to be exploitable labor. Black people were folded into the disabled category as well due to harmful race theories that posited they were ‘less intelligent,’ could bear ‘more’ pain, and other falsehoods to justify enslavement and/or imprisonment.
In her book Killing Rage, Ending Racism, bell hooks shares:
In the beginning black folks were most effectively colonized via a structure of ownership. Once slavery ended, white supremacy could be effectively maintained by the institutionalization of social apartheid and by creating a philosophy of racial inferiority that would be taught to everyone. This strategy of colonialism needed no country, for the space it sought to own and conquer was the minds of whites and blacks. As long as a harsh brutal system of racial apartheid was in place, separating blacks from whites by laws, coercive structures of punishment, and economic disenfranchisement, many black people seemed to intuitively understand that our ability to resist racist domination was nurtured by a refusal of the colonizing mindset. Segregation enabled black folks to maintain oppositional worldviews and standpoints to counter the effects of racism and to nurture resistance. The effectiveness of those survival strategies was made evident by both civil rights movements and the militant resistance that followed in their wake. This resistance to colonialism was so fierce, a new strategy was required to maintain and perpetuate white supremacy.
Here hooks lays out America’s brutal regime against the black population, and how America adjusted its temporal reference frame to craft a new strategy to control and exploit. To do this, the oppression must be recast in the past, as we have seen with Native temporal realities, while also re-enforcing false stereotypes of inferiority. By doing so, oppressors once again avoid accountability, while also continuing to assert their temporal reality onto the oppressed. Often, the oppressor will attempt to adjust the narrative to posit it is the victim that is violent rather than the oppressor. bell hooks spells this out implicitly:
Currently black folks are often depicted on television in situations where they charge racist victimization and then the viewer is bombarded with evidence that shows this to be a trumped-up charge, that whites are indeed far more caring and able to be social equals than “misguided” blacks realize. The message that television sends then is that the problem of racism lies with black people-that it exists in our minds and imaginations. On a recent episode of Law and Order a white lawyer directs anger at a black woman and tells her, “If you want to see the cause of racism, look in the mirror.” Television does not hold white people responsible for white supremacy; it socializes them to believe that subjugation and subordination of black people by any means necessary is essential for the maintenance of law and order.
These painted stereotypes then enfold into the minds of the oppressor and oppressed, and acts as another vehicle for which the dominant temporal reality to assert itself.
Paulo Freire writes about this dehumanization in Pedagogy of the Oppressed:
Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as persons—not by those who are oppressed, exploited, and unrecognized. It is not the unloved who initiate disaffection, but those who cannot love because they love only themselves. It is not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate terror, but the violent, who with their power create the concrete situation which begets the “rejects of life.” It is not the tyrannized who initiate despotism, but the tyrants. It is not the despised who initiate hatred, but those who despise. It is not those whose humanity is denied them who negate humankind, but those who denied that humanity (thus negating their own as well).
Violence starts with the oppressor — in the case of the Canvas world, the Dessendre family — initiating the Fracture and gommage that erases the Lumierian population slowly over time. Clea dismisses the Canvas people as simply ‘creations’ because she fails to recognize the Canvas people as persons. Renoir sidesteps this by recognizing, mostly at the end of Act 3, the humanity of the Canvas people, but ultimately decides his actions and the consequences of his actions are for the greater good.
The Canvas people, by fighting for their right to exist, subverts the temporal reality of the Dessendre’s. Renoir and Clea cannot preceive the monopoly of their power and privilege dehumanizes those within the Canvas as well as themselves and their family. Instead, they are caught up in the idea they have an exclusive right to act as they will, consequences be damned.
Freire goes on to write:
Humanity is a “thing,” and they possess it as an exclusive right, as inherited property. To the oppressor consciousness, the humanization of the “others,” of the people, appears not as the pursuit of full humanity, but as subversion. The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves. They can not see that, in the egoistic pursuit of having as a possessing class, they suffocate in their own possessions and no longer are; they merely have. For them, having more is an inalienable right, a right they acquired through their own “effort,” with their “courage to take risks.” If others do not have more, it is because they are incompetent and lazy, and worst of all is their unjustifiable ingratitude towards the “generous gestures” of the dominant class. Precisely because they are “ungrateful” and “envious,” the oppressed are regarded as potential enemies who must be watched.
It could not be otherwise. If the humanization of the oppressed signifies subversion, so also does their freedom; hence the necessity for constant control. And the more the oppressors control the oppressed, the more they change them into apparently inanimate “things.”
Thus, in order to justify erasure of a people, their temporal, spatial, and cultural reality must be reduced to a stereotype or in other words, a creation or construct. This stereotype and/or false reality is painted over the targeted population, then shared wildly to make it seem like the oppressor’s reference frame is the One True One — the One To Rule Them All.
But these arguments pivot on falsehoods. Pull out the falsehoods, and the arguments topple. For the Canvas people, dehumanizing them into simply “Aline’s creations” as Clea asserts, this cannot fully describe the lived realities of the Canvas people themselves. They are more than just ‘Aline’s creations.’ Their lived realities are as complex as Clea’s own, and the player knows this because they have spent the majority of the game immersed in a complex and nuanced world, surrounded by intricate people with very real concerns, dreams, ethics, sorrows, and joys.
It’s not so easy to dismiss an entire population after one has lived with them. This is why the game starts us in Lumiere, why we live with the Lumierians, so we can understand their struggle to not be erased. To not be eradicated. To have a future once more.
The reference frame of the Dessendre World versus the Canvas World are equally valid as we have seen. Just because one could be said to be a construct made by a Dessendre family member doesn’t mean the Canvas is any less real for those that live within it.
(One could argue that the Dessendre World is no less constructed, as the people within it constructed their society and their relations with one another. One can also spin in circles debating whether the Dessendre world is created or not by some other being beyond Clea’s understanding or knowledge. Philosophers have debated this very question for centuries.)
Regardless of whether a world is constructed or not, those within it experience the temporal and spatial aspects of their world fully. The game shows us through our journey with Expedition 33, and through our interactions with the Dessendre family. Of these two groups, the one that dehumanizes the other is the Dessendre family. The Canvas people go to great lengths to not dehumanize others (as we shall soon see). Freire reminds us:
When people are already dehumanized, due to the oppression they suffer, the process of their liberation must not employ the methods of dehumanization.
For American society, leaders posit a reference frame that enforces a temporal, spatial, and legal reality to supersede the reality experienced by marginalized populations. This action dehumanizes them and strips them of their agency and lived reality.
Riften in the book Beyond Settler Time speaks to how America weaponized its rigid reference frame to reorganize geographies of who exists on which land and also to erase a culture’s way of living in the present (their temporal reality). Thus, Riften identifies how America attempts to claim its reference frame is the One True Frame just as Clea attempts in regards to Dessendre versus the Canvas (and Renoir as well through the act of gommage).
In essence, American leaders, Clea, and Renoir are privileging their own frame over that of any others, regardless of the harm and often brutal enforcement of such a frame. This then reframes populations as being ‘stuck in the past’ or ‘uncivilized’ if they do not conform to how the oppressor defines civilization and humanity’s temporal reality.
Through law and policy, America sought to change Natives into suitable subjects to the American empire, thus erasing their past, present, and future. The reference frame for Native people becomes revolutionary in their struggle to assert their existence and keep alive their culture and identities. Riften argues:
The representation of Native peoples as either having disappeared or being remnants on the verge of vanishing constitutes one of the principal means of effacing Indigenous sovereignties. Such a portrayal of Indigenous temporal stasis or absence erases extant forms of occupancy, governance, and opposition to settler encroachments. Moreover, it generates a prism through which any evidence of such survival will be interpreted as either vestigial (and thus on the way to imminent extinction) or hopelessly contaminated (as having lost—or quickly losing—the qualities understood as defining something, someone, or some space as properly “Indian” in the first place). These kinds of elisions and anachronizations can be understood as a profound denial of Native being…
America’s attempt to constitute Native people in the past denies the Native being entirely; it’s a form of gommage and an attempt to control and eliminate Native resistance. However, as Nemik’s Manifesto asserts, authority is brittle, and freedom is spontaneously occurring. The ways in which our temporal reality differs from our oppressors cannot be denied, as people will and do rise up to reassert their right to exist. Recognition of our diverse temporal realities affirms our humanity.
For Native people (and other marginalized groups), multiple temporal reference frames have always existed. Native cultural practices, as diverse as the tribes within North America are, keep alive this alternate understanding of time, space, geography, ways of living and governing, identity, and one’s relationships with one another and the land. Riften writes of this by use fo the term ‘temporal orientation:’
To speak of temporal orientation suggests the ways that time can be regarded less as a container that holds events than as potentially divergent processes of becoming. Being temporally oriented suggests that one’s experiences, sensations, and possibilities for action are shaped by the existing inclinations, itineraries, and networks in which one is immersed, turning toward some things and away from others. More than a question of relations in space, orientation involves reiterated and nonconscious tendencies, suggesting ways of inhabiting time that shape how the past moves toward the present and future.
Native people understood that each culture and people within that culture were oriented toward a specific temporal reality based on their “experiences, sensations, and possibilities for action.” And in turn, these aspects were influenced by one’s environment such as the land or society, one’s connections with others (deemed networks by Riften), and the journey one took (deemed itineraries). Thus, temporality is a diverse range of multiplicity — there is no one reference frame when it came to temporal reality.
Rather than approaching time as an abstract, homogeneous measure of universal movement along a singular axis, we can think of it as plural, less as a temporality than temporalities. From this perspective, there is no singular unfolding of time, but, instead, varied temporal formations that have their own rhythms—patterns of consistency and transformation that emerge immanently out of the multifaceted and shifting sets of relationships that constitute those formations and out of the interactions among those formations. As V. F. Cordova observes, “time is an abstraction derived from the fact that there is motion and change in the world.”
America attempted (and still attempts today) to orient Native reality toward a very rigid way of existing. It denies their temporal reality and insists on only America’s temporality existing. If any failed to fit within America’s defined parameters for life, they were (and still are) eliminated/erased. Riften clarifies:
Rather than marking an absolute distinction between Natives and nonnatives, suggesting that there are unbreachable barriers that generate utterly incommensurable and hermetically sealed Indian and white forms of experience, I am suggesting the presence of discrepant temporalities that can be understood as affecting each other, as all open to change, and yet as not equivalent or mergeable into a neutral, common frame—call it time, modernity, history, or the present.
As much as America attempted a brutal and long-term gommage of Native people, they still fought back and resisted the oppressors attempts at genocide and erasure. Part of that lay in holding onto one’s temporal orientation within which the roots of one’s identity and culture grow. As Riften explains, this isn’t to say Native temporal reality and America’s temporal reality are so distinct they cannot be overlapped. Instead, the interplay between the Native temporal reality and American temporal reality affects one another in often painful and/or genocidal ways. America’s temporal reality insists on merging all other realities into one “neutral, common frame,” but in doing so erases those who do not fit its narrow and biased parameters.
The Earth holds great diversity within how one may identify, may live, the customs one may have, the relationships formed with others or with the land, and so on. These are all lived realities that are just as valid as any other, and attempts to collapse them into the One Frame To Rule Them All is our world’s version of gommage. A cultural genocide often can escalate into full genocide of both culture and body until no one is left standing within that group.
That is one thing that fascism and authoritarian/colonialism hates — diversity. It’s why fascism tries to wipe out diversity and force everyone into the reference frame carefully sculpted by the oppressor — a frame often posited as the “universal.”
Franz Fanon wrote in Wretched of the Earth:
Challenging the the colonial world is not a rational confrontration of viewpoints. It is not a discourse on the universal, but the impassioned claim by the colonized that their world is fundamentally different.
The colonial world seeks to dominate and erase the colonized, to collapse all frames into their own. This simplifies their control, but in doing so, they paint specific groups as disposable and thus erase those that fail to conform.
This same threat darkens the world of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, where a continued genocide — in the form of the erasure from gommage — seeks to destroy the people of Lumiere and steals away their future. Their ability to exist in the ‘now’ and thrive is slowly carved away as more and more of their people are lost to the Gommage.
For those in Lumiere, they do not know why they are being erased. Even when the player finally learns the full truth in Act 3, the erasure of the Lumierians is shown to be at the whim of one family. Yes, the Dessendre family aren’t truly seeking to dominate or exploit the Lumierians, only are caught in spirals of grief. However, the consequences of their actions oppress the Lumierians and cause tremendous harm to all involved. One cannot simply write off those consequences by saying “they were grieving, and erasing the Canvas stops the temptation to hide from grief.”
That still puts the fate of the Canvas people as ‘less than’ and not as real as the Dessendre family. No matter the motivations or original intentions, the consequences of erasing an entire population of people invokes genocide. The question then becomes, do we accept that the Canvas people are real and their existence valid?
That brings us back to Riften’s argument concerning the temporal realities that America thrust on the Native people. America deemed Native realities not real or valid, and thus justified the erasure and elimination of the “savage” in order to “civilize” and/or clear the land for America’s harmful “manifest destiny.” (See Indigeneous People’s History of the United States for a full breakdown of this history.) Riften speaks to this:
In 1906 Congress passed the Osage Allotment Act, extending to the Osage Nation the principles at play in the allotment program generally. These include efforts to break up Native land tenure into privatized property holding, organized primarily around nuclear family units; dismantle Indigenous structures of governance, asserting greater U.S. jurisdictional authority over Native peoples and places; insert Native peoples into the cash economy and Euramerican agricultural production; and transform everyday patterns of life so that they would conform to Euramerican conventions of dress, language, religion, literacy, gender roles, and so on. This policy imaginary draws on temporal figurations in order to remap and reorder spatial relations. Presented by officials and supporters as a means by which Indians could progress from a stunted and backward savagery toward civilization, allotment offered a vision of necessary development over time that enabled the struggle between Indigenous and settler geopolitical formations to be conceptually bracketed.
We see here how America attempted to force Native people into a very rigid binaries, in order to “civilize” them. If they failed to exist within these parameters, then destruction would befall them. For the Canvas people, they have even less agency, as there is no parameters that asserts a specific mode of being into which they are allowed to exist. Similar approaches to erasure and control was instituted on other marginalized populations as well.
The Canvas people are seen as oddities and anomalies. They are “creations” and not deemed real enough for continued existence. This is how Renoir (and Clea) is able to justify his erasure of them. In a similar vein, Riften, in his book Beyond Settler Time, points out a similar concept regarding the temporal reality of Native people:
Indigenous experiences of time may appear as oddities—anachronisms, aberrations, irrationalities, anomalies—when they do not line up neatly with dominant forms of chronology, historicism, and perception. As Sara Ahmed observes,“ Things seem ‘straight’ . . . when they are ‘in line,’ which means when they are aligned with other lines…”
The metaphor of lines is used to denote the temporal relations within groups of people. A group’s timeline may seem a straight path if aligned with other lines based on how we align such trajectories. Just as it is possible to craft a timeline or trajectory by lining up sequences of events, that does not mean this is the only way to build up temporal relations and/or paths. Other trajectories and timelines can exist in parallel.
She later notes, “Queer orientations are those that put within reach bodies that have been made unreachable by the lines of conventional genealogy,” further contending that a “queer commitment” is one that does not “presume that lives have to follow certain lines in order to count as lives…”
Here Riften quotes Ahmed’s observation that we do not have to “presume that lives have to follow certain lives in order to count as lives.” This is a crucial point for the temporal reality of people who do not fit into the dominant worldviews of the colonial society. The oppressed then, through the act of asserting their existence, proves the existence of alternate temporal realities, and the ‘straight’ lines becomes a tapestry of woven realities that may overlap, intersect, and inform one another even as they stand distinct. This plurality of worldviews is seen as a threat to Capitalists and Fascists who seek to collapse everyone into only their temporal reality.
The Fate of the Canvas People
For the Canvas people, their existence does not fit the dominant worldview of the Dessendre family. Instead, their existence is seen as a threat to the health of the Dessendre family by the act of temptation. Renoir and Clea both claim the Canvas exists only as a temptation for family members to live out a fantasy. In doing so, they deem the Canvas people a fascimile of true reality. In orienting the trajectory/timeline in this manner, the Dessendre family attempt to assert that their temporal reality matters more. That their emotions and sorrows matter more.
Except, Maelle subverts such a claim when she tells her father, at the end of Act 3, that she refuses to accept that the Canvas people must die for the family to heal. After her fight with Renoir, where they defeat him, this is part of their conversation:
RENOIR: I cannot spend another day with living corpses. Since the fire, our family has crumbled. Aline in the Canvas. Clea fighting her solitary war. You, a living ghost.
MAELLE: (shakes her head)
RENOIR: Verso’s death broke us. I want it to be fixed. I need it to be fixed! I– (coughs) I cannot lose you too!
MAELLE: Don’t you see? That’s how I feel about them! I can’t lose them either.
Here Renoir sees only his family, and he holds tightly to them. He attempts to control them through his own grief. But in doing so he takes away not only the agency of his family members, but also the agency of an entire world of people.
Maelle, on the other hand, tries to reach her father by showing how his feelings for his family is similar to how she feels about the family she’s built in Lumiere. She does her best to convince him that she’s not leaving him forever, but she can’t let him erase the people of the Canvas simply because he views them as a temptation for his family’s grief. She attempts to humanize the people of the Canvas by showing they are family too, while Renoir dehumanizes them by painting them as a temptation.
As another example, let’s look at prior to the fight. Here Maelle tries to convince him to not erase the entire Canvas.
RENOIR: I know how powerful and intoxicating it is, how deeply attached we can become to the worlds we pour our hearts and soul into. I was enthralled, and it nearly killed me.
MAELLE: It doesn’t mean you have to erase Verso’s Canvas!
For For Maelle, she sees beyond the limitations of just the family. This isn’t just Verso’s soul she’s fighting for here. She’s also fighting for the souls of every person who lives in Lumiere, who had lived until Gommage erased them. She lived sixteen years as a Lumierian, and she cannot simply erase that temporal reality simply because her father decided the Canvas is a temptation to be destroyed. For her, this goes beyond her family’s contours of grief.
Lune and Sciel both step forward to offer their truth, where they place comforting hands on Maelle’s shoulders. They lay down their claim of their different temporal reality and how it is just as valid.
RENOIR: Life keeps forcing cruel choices. We do what we must.
SCIEL: Grief often blinds us. And we make choices we can never take back.
RENOIR: You grieve for two.
SCIEL: I grieve for many.
LUNE: The choices of parents leave indelible marks upon their children. But ultimately the voices in their head have to be their own. You cannot set the boundaries of their life for them.Here Lune and Sciel both attempt to argue why their right to exist matters. They use the language Renoir is most likely to understand. This is an excellent example of how the oppressed — Sciel and Lune — leverage a shared language — grief and family — in order to re-humanize themselves and their oppressor.
When Sciel says she ‘grieves for many,’ she references all the poeple Renoir gommaged.
When Lune says ‘you cannot set the boundaries of their life for them,’ she is also referencing the boundaries of the life of her people. Renoir seeks to set a final boundary by erasing them forever, yet is that not ripping away the agency of Lune and her people as well as the agency of Renoir’s own daughter? The erasure is a violence enacted upon them and a dehumanization of their personhoods.
Thus, the people of the Canvas argue with who is essentially a godlike being for their right to exist. The oppressed, as Fanon pointed out (repeated for emphasis), must lay claim to their temporal and spatial realities:
Challenging the the colonial world is not a rational confrontration of viewpoints. It is not a discourse on the universal, but the impassioned claim by the colonized that their world is fundamentally different.
Lune, Sciel, and Maelle all have impassioned claims of their world being different than what Renoir claims. He focuses only on his own needs, and his arguments are not truly rational. Sciel rightly calls him out for being ‘blinded’ by his grief, and she shifts the perspective to a different worldview. Lune does the same by calling out his inability to recognize and acknowledge his daughter’s agency. Both are attempts to reason with Renoir, but at the same time lay out an impassioned claim to their own agency.
In this manner, the Canvas people not only attempt to humanize themselves for Renoir — the one who has oppressed them through Gommage — but also to humanize Renoir. Through the Gommage he may have stolen their humanity and erased them, but in doing so, he erased his own humanity by becoming this godlike being of death.
Paulo Friere in Pedagogy of the Oppressed puts this most succinctly:
The struggle for humanization, for the emancipation of labor, for the overcoming of alienation, for the affirmation of men and women as persons would be meaningless. This struggle is possible only because dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed.
Because it is a distortion of being more fully human, sooner or later being less human leads the oppressed to struggle against those who made them so. In order for this struggle to have meaning, the
oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both.This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well.
Thus, Lune and Sciel attempt to humanize everyone involved in the conflict. Despite their attempt, it will fail at first. They must defeat Renoir, and then and only then, is he finally willing to give Maelle and the Canvas people their agency.
RENOIR: I’ll leave a light on for you.
He leaves the Canvas in Maelle’s hands. Thus, the Canvas people have not only liberated themselves but also Renoir.
Yet, despite this win, a final confrontation between Painted Verso and Maelle will determine the true fate of the Canvas. In a way, this reflects how victories by the oppressed can push forward their fight for liberation and freedom, but there can also be inside actors that sabotage their goals.
We see this in Painted Verso, who betrays them in his goal to seek complete annihilation. He’s fallen into the despair that Friere speaks about in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, where he sees his dehumanization as being only a painted version of the true Verso. He cannot reach past this distortion to become more fully himself, something beyond what he was painted to be. His rigidity and stubbornness narrows his ability to relate to Maelle, and he attempts to force his temporal reality onto not only Maelle but the faded boy and all of the Canvas. By using leading questions, Painted Verso extracts the answer he wants from the faded boy, which he uses to justify his actions.
Verso fights for annihilation and to force upon Maelle his idea of what ‘healing’ looks like. He represents a refusal to accountability and is trapped in his own despair. (I will write a separate essay on accountability to dig into Verso’s temporal reality, so for now I will simply point out his final motivations.)
Maelle fights for her agency, the agency of her Dessendre family, and the agency of all Canvas people to exist and heal in the ways they need. She holds herself accountable and refuses to give in to despair.
In Verso’s ending, his selfish desire for annihilation will doom the Canvas entirely. He achieves his annihilation, and he tells Maelle it will be okay even as he forces her back into the Dessendre world. There Maelle becomes Alicia once more, trapped and isolated with her disability. The Canvas people have no place in this ending, their existence erased to become a segment of the Dessendre family’s past.
Yet, does this act truly bring healing to all involved? If the Canvas people are indeed real, how does this ending not doom them to erasure and genocide? To sacrifice an entire people to ensure the security and healing of another group is the death-narrative of necrosecurity, where the marginalized group are seen as less than and not as real. This only continues the cycle of violence, grief, and pain. (In my prior two essays I tackle the question of healing and agency. I also show how the Dessendre world does not offer a supportive system to aid the family, and specifically Alicia/Maelle’s, healing. I won’t belabor those points as my focus in this essay is the Canvas people’s fate.)
In Maelle’s ending, Maelle will offer Painted Verso an alternate way of existing instead of the one he currently abhors:
MAELLE: If you could grow old, would you… find a reason to smile?
By framing it this way, she offers him agency to choose his own way forward, one where he is not trapped in the bindings of another. She wishes to see him happy, to not be trapped in a cycle of despair and violence. She wants healing to blossom. The final scenes of Maelle’s ending takes place in a future point, where people have aged and Lumiere has started to rebuild.
Through the use of chroma, she aids the Canvas people in finally liberating themselves from the oppressive reference frames of the Dessendre family. Those that were erased once more find life, and Maelle’s question opens up an alternate temporal reality, one where people age and find their own happiness, without the shadow of gommage to steal away their future.
In a way, this once again parallels our reality. The oppressed often must resort to violence in order to free themselves from the yoke of their oppressors. For example, the Civil Rights Era of the 1960s involved civil disobedience, fights with racist police, and America’s assassination of Civil Rights leaders. Despite that violent backdrop, Black communities fought for their right to exist and have equal rights under the law, and they won some of those demands. Yes, this fight for justice still continues today, but each win threads a temporal trajectory toward a more just, equitable, and accessible world. That path will not be ‘straight’ line. Instead, it will curve in on itself, twist around, and yet still continue forward toward that better future.
We see this in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. This isn’t just a journey on how to deal with grief, but it’s also the question of whether the temporal reality of the Lumierians is as valid and as crucial as the Dessendre’s. And whether their reality has a right to exist and thrive.
In many video games, it’s rare for the player to play in the oppressed people’s reference frame. Generally, the game will posit a ‘hero’ that often comes from the oppressor culture or an outside ‘neutral’ culture to save the day. However, Clair Obscur turns this trope on its head by placing the player firmly within the people of the Canvas. The main characters are people of Lumiere, and our team of heroes are those that seek to end the erasure of their people — to assert their existence and restore their temporality in the present time. They don’t want to become past relics folded into the history books (the Dessendre family’s books to be precise). Instead, Lumiere and the sentient beings of the Canvas seek to exist within the present where they can build toward a shared future.
By placing us, at first, on the side of Lumierians, the player experiences the tempos of Lumierian’s ordinary life and their society (what Riften identifies as “modes of inhabitance” and “networks of exchange”). We are shown the complexity of these people and experience the reality of their world. The game may, at times, deliberately mislead the character, as we see in Act 2 with Painted Verso’s character, but this never negates how real the Canvas people’s world is. As I have shown in this essay, the Canvas World and Dessendre world are both real and valid, neither more important than the other.
We have now returned to one of the most crucial questions in the game: What is the right decision in regards to the fate of the Canvas people and the fate of Alicia/Maelle? As I have hopefully shown thus far, erasing people’s temporal realities causes immense harm and is genocide; people have a right to exist, and sacrificing them for the ‘greater good of society’ (or in this case the Dessendre family) cannot ever be the morally right answer.
Necrosecurity, as I spoke of earlier, paints a bleak and death-filled reality, where healing cannot ever take place because denial and control is at its roots. Until people’s temporal realities are respected and their agency honored, healing will forever stay out of reach.
Thus, escaping pain by committing genocide is not healing. It’s a continuation of the cycle of violence. The marginalized populations facing genocide have a right to exist, and their temporal realities are as valid and important as the oppressor. Just as the temporal reality of the Canvas people are as valid and important as the Dessendre family.
Healing can only happen when the cycle of violence ends.
#BlackPeople #civilRights #existence #gameNarrative #genocide #indigenous #IndigenousRights #justice #liberation #necrosecurity #nonbinary #Race #referenceFrames #revolution #temporality #themes #transgender
-
CW: Spoilers for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Clair Obscur: That Which Seeks The Right To Exist Temporally and Spatially
THIS IS A CROSSPOST FROM COMRADERY.
In a world built upon alienation, people seek to be heard and seen. This may happen through social media, video or podcasts, essays like this one, video game guilds, or other creative avenues. There’s this innate need for our existence to be recognized. For us to not be erased. When forces beyond our control seek to dominate and coerce us into either compliance or annihilation, people will eventually rise up to demand their freedom. Many marginalized populations within Capitalist Colonialist societies, such as America, struggle with institutions that often seek to erase their identity, culture, and their personhood.
In Clair Obscur, we can see this struggle with existence and erasure play out visibly through the yearly “gommage.” After the Fracture — a cataclysmic event — Lumeire must contend with yearly erasures of all people above a specific age. That age is determined by the number painted on the monolith, which looms oppressively over the world. Each year that number decreases, and more are erased from existence. The temporal existence of their society within their present and future lays in uncertainty.
This has a parallel with how oppressors treat the oppressed within societies. Just as the number warns Lumiere who will be next, Fascist/Authoritarian societies will declare who is unfit for society. Who they focus on, and from there we can see the potential trajectory for others who lay in their destructive path.
By constructing a specific framework to paint over marginalized people, fascist/authoritarian societies seek to control the marginalized population, and effectively erase what makes them uniquely them. Thus, like the oppressors within our world, the Dessendre family render the Canvas people’s existence as less than their own; in this way, it justifies the gommage’s genocidal consequences. However, is it true that the Canvas people are not real? That their existence is less than the Dessendre’s? Is destroying them the morally good choice? Or does it only continue the injustice preyed upon the Canvas people of Lumiere?
Parallels between Our World and That of Clair Obscur
The act of erasing people often begins through dehumanization and a redefining of the attributes of reality. For example, as of June 2025, under Trump’s Administration, nonbinary genders were erased, and gender was collapsed into a binary sex structure. This was done despite biology revealing that gender is not a simple binary, that it is based on chromosomes, primary and secondary sex characteristics. If looking simply at chromosomes, six biological genders would exist, but if one adds in the primary sex characteristics — reproductive organs for example — and secondary sex characteristics — effects of hormones on the body — one can calculate over 50 possible permutations (See chapters 11 through 13 of Evolution’s Rainbow by Joan Roughgarden).
But that reality has been erased by the Trump Administrations narrow definition. This in turn places people like myself — a nonbinary disabled person — in a state of simultaneously existing in the physical realm of the planet Earth but also not existing by American law. The erasure of my personhood and identity is a way to sterilize who I am and force me into a narrow mold, and anyone who does not fit will be eradicated.
However, no matter how much control fascist governments weaponize, freedom cannot be erased. In Star Wars Andor, Nemik writes a manifesto, where he explains how Fascist control is fragile and the spontaneity of freedom:
“There will be times when the struggle seems impossible. I know this already. Alone, unsure, dwarfed by the scale of the enemy. Remember this. Freedom is a pure idea. It occurs spontaneously and without instruction. Random acts of insurrection are occurring constantly throughout the galaxy. There are whole armies, battalions that have no idea that they’ve already enlisted in the cause. Remember that the frontier of the Rebellion is everywhere. And even the smallest act of insurrection pushes our lines forward. And then remember this. The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear. Remember that. And know this, the day will come when all these skirmishes and battles, these moments of defiance will have flooded the banks of the Empire’s authority and then there will be one too many. One single thing will break the siege. Remember this. Try.”
Thus, people who are being erased by fascism continue to reach for freedom. To try and break free of the restrictive definitions of reality. Part of those restrictions lay in the temporal reality that oppressors construct to place their victims in a past reality, where we no longer exist in the present.
This is the method that the United States of America used to control and erase the Native cultures that existed prior to the white settlers of the 1600s. Historians and lawmakers construct a temporal reality that places Native people as existing in the past, where the violence conducted against them was sanitized. As relics of a bygone age, and thus, any Native that still lives becomes coerced into the American society, their culture and identity stripped from them through relocation to reservations and brutal Indian schools. This is one part of the larger genocide against Native people’s.
Erasure of people, denial of their existence, and the question of whether such people even still exist creates a temporal paradox. Can people both simultaneously exist but not exist? In my case, I exist in the reference frame of the planet Earth, where people can see my body and speak with me directly if they so choose. However, in the realm of American (and some states’) law and history, my existence has been erased, and thus I no longer exist within the current Administration’s temporal reference frame. I am collapsed into a facsimile of who I am — a painted version of my self positioned to narrowly fit what others have decided I must be in order to be allowed existence.
This question of who is allowed to exist, what cultures can exist, and whether a population exists within our present not only shapes our discourse but also the world in which we live. We can see this in how the rights of trans people like myself have slowly been stripped away — loss of healthcare, loss of anti-discrimination laws, loss of the right to exist in public and use a restroom, etc., until nothing remains. A slow gommage that ripples through my community, until we are but petals on the wind.
Take the Gommage in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and stretch it slowly over months and/or years, where each part of the person slowly begans to evaporate away into rose petals. It’s a slow sort of temporal-based death, and is the reality of many marginalized people in our current society. However, we refuse to go quietly, just as the people of Lumiere also refused.
To resist the Gommage, the people of Lumiere send Expeditions in the hope they will defeat the Paintress and end the slow temporal and spatial erasure. So that they can secure a future for their people once more. This need to not be erased, to exist, becomes a revolutionary anthem.
It’s a parallel to the revolutionary anthem of Trans people resisting our erasure, of Indigenous people fighting against genocide as they simultaneously restore their culture and identity, of Black people and their demands for justice, of Disabled people and our refusal to just lay down and die. Marginalized populations face their own form of gommage, but it’s a much slower and traumatic death than what Lumeire faces.
To illustrate, let’s look at Gustave and Maelle speaking of death:
MAELLE: I, uh, I thought I was used to losing people. Life of a foster child, right? But not — not like that — on the beach… that man…
GUSTAVE: Yeah. Yeah… I know. Nevrons we were prepared for but not… (pause) And now we finally found other survivors and it’s… (pause) You know, that — that’s the insidious thing about the Gommage. It’s predictable… almost gentle. It makes Lumiere complacent and accepting but … the Gommage is equally violent and death… Death is just as final.
That truly is the insidious thing as the Gommage — whether it happens relatively quickly like in Clair Obscur, or over long period of time in our world — people are complacent and almost accepting of it because the institutions have normalized sacrificing populations as necessary to the good of society. But truthfully, the gommage is indeed “equally violent” as simply killing a person. To strip a person of their identity, culture, personhood? To render them as no longer real within society? That is a form of death.
This concept of sacrificing populations for the ‘good of society’ has its name in necrosecurity. Martha Lincoln writes:
Thus, though necrosecurity is deeply informed by anti-scientific and anti-expert sentiments, it is not simply a failed biosecurity, nor is it a form of biosecurity in which the project’s intrinsic flaws are made visible. Normatively, biosecurity does not call for human illness or deaths. By contrast, necrosecurity explicitly and centrally instrumentalizes death—imagining a sacrificial population whose exposure to harm will secure against losses to more qualified populations. It is a calculated attempt to leverage the pathogenic and epidemiological properties of disease towards social, political, and economic ends. Lying between passive “letting die” and overt murder of political enemies, necrosecurity entails the promotion of death intended to preempt other deaths; instead of seeking to prevent human deaths, as biosecurity would, it attempts to secure life by allowing death to flourish selectively.
We saw this concept of necrosecurity at work through the last five years, where America — and other countries — engaged in normalizing death for specific populations, in order to boost the economy for “more qualified populations.” America has also shifted to past tense regarding the pandemic, despite Covid-19 still existing, still mutating, and still disabling and/or killing vulnerable populations. This shift of placing the virus in the past is a form of temporal erasure.
Within the game, Gommage places those erased in the past. They fade into rose petals, lost to the present, and thus temporally erased from the world and Lumiere society. This Gommage is seen as a force perpetuated by the Paintress, but this is only because the Lumierians see her actions before the Gommage sweeps over their city. So they associate her repainting the number to be the act that unleashes the Gommage. With the truth masked and no other source of knowledge disputing this theory, the misinformation perpetuates through their culture and their expeditions.
In this manner, people can become misguided with incorrect information, and thus not understand the true culprit is not necessarily the Paintress at all. Lune says to Gustave at one point that, “this is a war of information.”
Indeed it is. Not just for the people of Lumiere, but also for our own world. This is why the current American Administration hid and erased data pertaining to infectious diseases, LGBTQIA people, and Black and Indigenous People of Color. Why sources of information are being placed under lock and key and no longer accessible to the public. The war on information puts the oppressed into a constant reactionary stance; if they don’t have the full information, then how do they know who to target to end their oppression?
Thus, the Lumierians, lacking the full information, focus on reaching the Paintress, but the truth of Gommage lies under the Monolith, not at its peak. Gommage doesn’t come from the Paintress, but from a being trapped under her monolith, who unleashes the Gommage after she issues her warning. It’s not until end of Act 2 that this truth is revealed.
Thus, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 forces the player to reckon with questions situated on who is allowed to exist, who is allowed to continue into a future, and if sacrificing populations are necessary for the ‘good’ of society.
Or to dig even deeper, what is this temporal reality in which Lumiere in its people exist? Is it situated in the past, soon to be a footnote in the history of the Dessendre family? Or is it a present, a hope to continue to exist despite the Dessendre family? Does the people of the Lumiere and of the Canvas hold the same value, worthy, and right to exist as the Dessendre family?
The game itself posits a neutral position, where the various endings and presentation of story are up to the player to interpret. At least that’s what some game analysts say, but I think the game pushes the player toward a specific conclusion to these questions of existence versus erasure.
We are placed immediately within Lumiere with Gustave and Maelle, and soon we meet other people in the city. We see its population preparing for the Gommage. We experience the heartache and pain with them, and the oppression they face under this totalizing force that governs their lives.
Throughout the first Act, we connect with these characters — their hopes, fears, dreams, joys — and through them we are able to see a temporal existence that paints their lives with meaning. So when we are thrust into the ‘real world’ of the Painters by the start of Act 3, it feels jarring. Disjointed and strange. We are no longer in the same temporal reality, and the truth unveiled about the nature of the Lumierian world unsettles. It shakes our understanding of reality and existence.
The game also shifts the timeline, where the start of Act 3 becomes the past. We then see the start of our journey existed beyond the world of the Canvas, where the story threads through the timelines of two linked worlds: Dessendre’s ‘real’ world and the world of the Canvas. Time between the two do not fully match either, as the decades spent in the Canvas do not match precisely with the time span in the ‘real world.’ Within this game, multiple temporal realities exist, and as the game shows, each are uniquely their own.
It’s only in the second and third Acts where the questions the games ask start to shift. Part of this is due to Act 2 being specifically Verso’s perspective, where he stands in a separate temporal reality than the Lumierians. Thus, the game asks: are other temporal realities as equally valid as the Dessendre’s? Or does the Dessendre’s temporal reality matter more?
Temporal Realities and the Right to Exist
Mark Riften writes in Beyond Settler Time: Temporal Sovereignty and Indigenous Self-Determination:
“Within post-Einsteinian notions of time, there is no such thing as an absolute time that applies everywhere at once. Instead, the experience and calculation of time are contingent. Simultaneity depends on one’s inertial frame of reference, such that two observers who are moving with respect to each other will not agree on when an event occurs or on other aspects of time’s passage. If in physics a frame of reference refers to relative motion, we also can think about that concept in more socially resonant ways. Such collective frames comprise the effects on one’s perception and material experience of patterns of individual and collective memory, the legacies of historical events and dynamics, consistent or recursive forms of inhabitance, and the length and character of the timescales in which current events are situated.”
Within Special Relativity, the inertial frame of reference is crucial to understanding a particular scenario. Reference frames describe a coordinate system in which temporal, motion, and spatial measurements of an observer can be done. Without articulating the reference frame, the situation becomes incomprehensible and impossible to measure or observe. Thus, reference frames are denoted by observers in order to agree on a shared understanding of the events in question.
Let’s place it within a social context. For example, much of American history books will label Indigenous Tribes of North America as being in the past, as if they no longer exist within the present time. For some tribes this may be so, but for many this is a falsehood, as they do indeed still exist in present time. America has crafted a reference frame here, but it posits that its frame is more real than those of Native people.
Riften clarifies:
U.S. settler colonialism produces its own temporal formation, with its own particular ways of apprehending time, and the state’s policies, mappings, and imperatives generate the frame of reference (such as plotting events with respect to their place in national history and seeing change in terms of forms of American progress). More than just affecting ideologies or discourses of time, that network of institutionalized authority over “domestic” territory also powerfully shapes the possibilities for interaction, development, and regularity within it. Such imposition can be understood as the denial of Indigenous temporal sovereignty, in the sense that one vision or way of experiencing time is cast as the only temporal formation—as the baseline for the unfolding of time itself.
As Riften describes, America seeks to situate Native people in the past in an attempt to control their narrative, their legacy, and their existence. It’s a form of erasure and genocide, to rewrite history and present time in order to exclude populations. This makes it easier to justify the death of populations if the narrative already posits them as being of the past and not the present.
Riften writes:
As in the account offered by relativity, there is no inherently privileged or mutual “now” (or sense of time’s passage more broadly) shared by disparate frames of reference. Through Indian law and policy, Native peoples have been subjected to profound reorganizations of prior geographies and modes of inhabitance, forms of governance, networks of exchange, tempos of ordinary life, and dynamics of individual maturation in an attempt to reorder Indigenous temporalities, to remake them in ways that fit non-native timescapes of expansion and dispossession.
It is true that within the laws of physics “there is no inherently privileged or mutual ‘now.’ Indeed, special relativity directly states:
- The laws of physics must be the same in all inertial reference frames.
- The speed of light (in a vacuum) is constant in all inertial reference frames.
Inertial refers to a reference frame in which everything within that frame moves at a constant velocity.
The Earth would be an inertial reference frame in the sense the planet’s motion can approximate to fit the definition. (There are some caveats here that relate to gravity and orbits, but it’s unnecessary for the overall argument). Thus, within the reference frames of those on the planet Earth, there is no privileged frame that exists as more real than another. The laws of physics are the same in all frames, and each are equally valid.
Is There One Reference Frame To Rule Them All?
To dig deeper, let’s examine the differences between Canvas Time and World and Dessendre Time and World. To compare the worlds, we must establish frames of reference. Within special relativity, this is done by situating a common origin point to start our analysis.
For Clair Obscur, that origin point is the moment of Fracture.
So at time (t) equals 0, Canvas experienced Fracture that devastated the world, broke apart cultures, and scattered the peoples of Canvas across a broken world. The city of Lumiere landed in the southern ocean, and after great upheaval a dome is constructed to keep its citizens safe.
At time-prime (t’) equals 0, the equivalent origin for Dessendre’s ‘real’ world, the Fracture represents the moment Aline, in her grief, faces off with her husband Renoir, who has entered the Canvas to bring his wife back to the Dessendre world. This cataclysmic war of Painter’s chroma causes the Fracture and starts the deadly countdown toward zero.
This is where the temporal realities then diverge. The game tells us that in Canvas a century passes; however, in the Dessendre world, a century most definitely does not pass. For that to be so, the Dessendre’s would need to be immortal and unaging. However, we can safely assume the Dessendre family is not ageless nor immortal due to the ages of the children and the aging of the parents. We see glimpses of how the children do indeed grow into their current selves (current signifying the time of the Fracture, to orient each character within our established frames of reference).
So time does pass in the Dessendre’s world, but it moves slower than Canvas. While the Canvas world seems sped up. Within special relativity, this concept is explored within ‘time dilation.’
Position a person on Planet Earth, then send their twin toward a nearby star near the speed of light. For the twin on Earth, they would view their twin as moving slower and aging slower. While the twin on the rocket would view Earth as sped up, aging faster. Within each of their reference frames, they disagree on the temporal coordinates of events, but when they compare notes after the twin’s return home, the person on Earth will have aged more than the one on the rocket. Of course, I am doing a quick summary of this concept to avoid belaboring the point with excessive mathematics.
Regardless, it’s a fascinating phenomenon, and the game tips its hat toward it with how it differentiates the difference in temporal realities between Canvas Time and Dessendre Time. It’s also important to note that both reference frames within the twin example — the twin on Earth versus the twin on the rocket — are all valid frames. None is more ‘right’ than the other. Both frames will result in the same solution — the difference in aging, but their perspectives differ on how they experience it and come to that solution. Despite this, both frames are still equally valid.
In that same manner, the Dessendre Time is equally valid to Canvas Time, at least per this relativity postulate.
Within the Dessendre Time and World, the Canvas is seen as a created object, painted by Verso’s child-self. As a created world, it’s right to exist becomes called into question, and the neutrality of our reference frames also becomes conflicted.
Is the Dessendre reference frame, the one that was not painted, the one true frame? The One Frame To Rule Them All?
Or is both reference frames still equally valid?
So far, in our argument, we’ve posited that both reference frames are equally valid. Yes, there are differences in how time plays out within each frame but we see this only when we compare one to the other. Within the frame itself, one would not experience such differences. Meaning, those who live in the Canvas World and do not know of the Dessendre world would not know or experience a difference in time within their world. Their world would still feel time unwinding from their present just as their society has defined it.
It’s the same with the Dessendre world, where time within their world still unwinds within the definitions of their society.
So if the reference frames are equally valid, then is the question of what is created and what is not created what tells us whose reality is real and valid?
But that assumes the Dessendre world is ‘not created.’ It also assumes that if a culture is ‘created’ it is less real and valid than the ‘creator.’ This situates us within the realm of philosophy and religion, where-in some religions posit a creator who created the universe and all in it. If such a thing is true, and since the Dessendre world is still ‘created’ in the sense that the ‘creators’ are the game developers, then can we truly establish that the Dessendre world is ‘not created?’
If we put aside the fact that we are discussing a video game (at least for a moment), we have the issue of is there a ‘creator’ for Dessendre world that fits the lore and story? Religious or spirituality doesn’t truly come into play in the game. The most we see is references to myths and/or philosophy. For example, when the team goes to defeat the Axons, Monoco will cite the name of each axon as it’s part of the mythos of his people:
LUNE: So this is Visage’s Island.
MONOCO: He Who Guards Truth With Lies.
The name Monoco’s people — the Gestrals — gave the Visage Axon is layered with double meanings. It also falls neatly into the philosophical arguments concerning morality. In the Axons, we see their embodiment as ‘lessons’ painted by Renoir, who sought to capture his family into a philosophical being. Indeed, we see this in what the Mask Keeper, after giving the team Visage’s invitation, says:
SCIEL: What of the other paths?
MASK KEEPER: You are free to traverse them. Masks are not just to Obscure. They may also to Illuminate. Look for the masks that you need.
MAELLE: Meaning?MASK KEEPER: The invitation stands.
For Visage, the axon, masks are a tool that assist with not only hiding the truth, when the need arises, but illuminating the truth when the time comes. This is the closest the game ever comes to spirituality, and in truth, this is far more of a moralistic philosophy as debated by those within the Enlightenment period of Europe and Early America. Spiritual arguments will do little to assist us even if spirituality existed within the Canvas world (which perhaps it does but the game does not show it).
The Mask Keeper provides a definitive hint that Verso’s temporal reality differs from the Lumierians. He admits this when he says, “some of us stopped aging,” to Maelle, Lune, and Sciel after meeting and rescuing them. This establishes two temporal realities within the Canvas alone.
The only hint we have is when you examine the Painter’s studio at the Start of Act 3, one will notice that canvases float around the room. This was an attribute of the Canvas world stemming from the Fracture, so what does it tell us that it appears within the Dessendre world? Is that a signal that their world is also constructed? It’s a question that is never fully answered by the game itself.
In this way, the game plays with our sense of reality. Due to how it lays out its acts, it plays with our temporal reality as well. Prologue/Act 1 focuses on Gustave as the primary perspective. This changes in Act 2, where we shift from the Lumierian timeline to Painted Verso’s timeline. Then in Act 3, we shift out of the Canvas temporal reality entirely and go back in time to an event before the other acts, where Alicia and Clea discuss the fate of the Canvas. Here Alicia will enter the Canvas, at her sister’s suggestion. At that point, the game narrates how Alicia becomes Maelle, and eventually spits us out into the temporal reality of Lumiere after the final Gommage that erased the rest of Lumiere.
Thus, the game gives us multiple temporal realities: Gustave, Verso, Alicia/Maelle. Each have their roots in different temporal reference frames: Gustave within the Lumiere reference frame, Verso within the immortal Paintress frame, and Alicia/Maelle who stands in both the Dessendre World frame but also in the Lumiere frame. Of all the characters, Maelle is the only one that steps in all of the reference frames.
As Alicia, she was born of the Dessendre family and grew to age sixteen. However, she transitions into the Canvas and end up reborn as Maelle within the city of Lumiere. She spends sixteen years there feeling slightly out of place, but she has no memories of her former life in the Dessendre world. For all Maelle knows in Act 1 and 2, she is a Lumierian. It’s only in Act 3 that she learns the truth of who she is, and she bridges her two selves, and thus both worlds within herself. This gives her a unique view of seeing the humanity and beautiful complexity inherent in both her Dessendre world and the Canvas/Lumiere world.
In a way, one could posit that Alicia/Maelle is the twin in the Special Relativity metaphor, who leaves her world to go to another and then returns. This journey alters her, and she experiences temporal reality differently when compared to Clea’s reference frame. However, the end result gives Alicia/Maelle a perspective that Clea lacks.
Clea, for her part, asserts the Canvas is but a playground. She does not give it any special qualities, and does not believe any person within it is truly real. We see this in her dialogue.
CLEA: She’s a grown woman, and she was the head of the Painter’s Council. She has failed her responsibilities. I don’t have time to coddle her. And before Verso died, she would have said the same.
ALICIA: …?
CLEA: I already have. Aline is a more skilled than Renoir, but I tipped the scales in his favor. I have my pets in place. “She who controls the chroma, controls the Canvas.” I can’t take her chroma, but I can keep it from returning to her. As she weakens, Renoir is able to erase her oldest creations. With the except of her obscene fake family. She made them all immortal, but luckily they’re also quite useless.
Here Clea speaks of the people in the Canvas as pieces on a chessboard. She gives them no consideration as to how the ‘creations’ feel about this erasure nor the trauma and pain it inflicts on them. For Clea, they are a distraction. She wants this ‘conflict’ in the Canvas over, so she can return to her own concerns in the present of the Dessendre World.
Her bias tilts toward the Dessendre World, for that is the reality in which she resides and has spent the majority of her time. For her, creations are simply creations that can be erased or remade at a whim. Her view here represents the oppressor view. She orients her reference frame as the superior one, and the Canvas’s frame as inferior. Thus, her conclusions result in denying the reality of the Canvas people and denying the sentience and complexity of their existence.
If she were to acknowledge their sentience and complexity, she could no longer posit her reference frame as the superior one. She’d have to reckon with the question of whether ‘erasing’ these ‘creations’ is morally good or morally evil.
Her attempt here to ignore such a question doesn’t solve it. It simply places the burden of solving it on Alicia’s shoulders, especially after she sends Alicia into the painting to “assist Renoir.”
Here the game is rather nebulous. We hear Clea’s words as Alicia falls into the Canvas, then we see how Alicia is painted over to become a baby born into Lumiere.
CLEA: Calm Alicia, or it’ll paint over you… what an auspicious start. Well, you’re about to be reborn in this world as one of Aline’s creations. Have fun.
The word “it” here seems to signify ‘chroma,’ but Clea doesn’t make clear whether it is Aline who paints over Alicia or if she herself does it. She only criticizes Alicia for her panic after giving her no real lessons on how to enter the Canvas and assist in it. Once again, she has a very flippant view of the Canvas and its inhabitants due to how she dehumanizes them with the term “creation.”
This dehumanization of groups of people are very common within authoritarian and/or fascist states. We see this in how those in power throughout America’s history called Native people “savages” or “redskins.” We see this with the slurs white people have said to Black people, such as the one starting with ‘n.’ We see this in the slurs cisgender (non trans) people give to trans people like me, such as ‘tr*nny.’
Then there is the false myths of certain populations being dangerous, or dirty, or less than in some way. This painting of a mythos to justify the eradication and erasure of an entire population. For example, in my essay concerning Disability in Clair Obscur, I spoke to how various forms of media use disfigurement and other disabilities to denote evil, badness, and villainy. I spoke to how this originated in Capitalism crafting a disposable class of people who were not abled-bodied or healthy enough to be exploitable labor. Black people were folded into the disabled category as well due to harmful race theories that posited they were ‘less intelligent,’ could bear ‘more’ pain, and other falsehoods to justify enslavement and/or imprisonment.
In her book Killing Rage, Ending Racism, bell hooks shares:
In the beginning black folks were most effectively colonized via a structure of ownership. Once slavery ended, white supremacy could be effectively maintained by the institutionalization of social apartheid and by creating a philosophy of racial inferiority that would be taught to everyone. This strategy of colonialism needed no country, for the space it sought to own and conquer was the minds of whites and blacks. As long as a harsh brutal system of racial apartheid was in place, separating blacks from whites by laws, coercive structures of punishment, and economic disenfranchisement, many black people seemed to intuitively understand that our ability to resist racist domination was nurtured by a refusal of the colonizing mindset. Segregation enabled black folks to maintain oppositional worldviews and standpoints to counter the effects of racism and to nurture resistance. The effectiveness of those survival strategies was made evident by both civil rights movements and the militant resistance that followed in their wake. This resistance to colonialism was so fierce, a new strategy was required to maintain and perpetuate white supremacy.
Here hooks lays out America’s brutal regime against the black population, and how America adjusted its temporal reference frame to craft a new strategy to control and exploit. To do this, the oppression must be recast in the past, as we have seen with Native temporal realities, while also re-enforcing false stereotypes of inferiority. By doing so, oppressors once again avoid accountability, while also continuing to assert their temporal reality onto the oppressed. Often, the oppressor will attempt to adjust the narrative to posit it is the victim that is violent rather than the oppressor. bell hooks spells this out implicitly:
Currently black folks are often depicted on television in situations where they charge racist victimization and then the viewer is bombarded with evidence that shows this to be a trumped-up charge, that whites are indeed far more caring and able to be social equals than “misguided” blacks realize. The message that television sends then is that the problem of racism lies with black people-that it exists in our minds and imaginations. On a recent episode of Law and Order a white lawyer directs anger at a black woman and tells her, “If you want to see the cause of racism, look in the mirror.” Television does not hold white people responsible for white supremacy; it socializes them to believe that subjugation and subordination of black people by any means necessary is essential for the maintenance of law and order.
These painted stereotypes then enfold into the minds of the oppressor and oppressed, and acts as another vehicle for which the dominant temporal reality to assert itself.
Paulo Freire writes about this dehumanization in Pedagogy of the Oppressed:
Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as persons—not by those who are oppressed, exploited, and unrecognized. It is not the unloved who initiate disaffection, but those who cannot love because they love only themselves. It is not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate terror, but the violent, who with their power create the concrete situation which begets the “rejects of life.” It is not the tyrannized who initiate despotism, but the tyrants. It is not the despised who initiate hatred, but those who despise. It is not those whose humanity is denied them who negate humankind, but those who denied that humanity (thus negating their own as well).
Violence starts with the oppressor — in the case of the Canvas world, the Dessendre family — initiating the Fracture and gommage that erases the Lumierian population slowly over time. Clea dismisses the Canvas people as simply ‘creations’ because she fails to recognize the Canvas people as persons. Renoir sidesteps this by recognizing, mostly at the end of Act 3, the humanity of the Canvas people, but ultimately decides his actions and the consequences of his actions are for the greater good.
The Canvas people, by fighting for their right to exist, subverts the temporal reality of the Dessendre’s. Renoir and Clea cannot preceive the monopoly of their power and privilege dehumanizes those within the Canvas as well as themselves and their family. Instead, they are caught up in the idea they have an exclusive right to act as they will, consequences be damned.
Freire goes on to write:
Humanity is a “thing,” and they possess it as an exclusive right, as inherited property. To the oppressor consciousness, the humanization of the “others,” of the people, appears not as the pursuit of full humanity, but as subversion. The oppressors do not perceive their monopoly on having more as a privilege which dehumanizes others and themselves. They can not see that, in the egoistic pursuit of having as a possessing class, they suffocate in their own possessions and no longer are; they merely have. For them, having more is an inalienable right, a right they acquired through their own “effort,” with their “courage to take risks.” If others do not have more, it is because they are incompetent and lazy, and worst of all is their unjustifiable ingratitude towards the “generous gestures” of the dominant class. Precisely because they are “ungrateful” and “envious,” the oppressed are regarded as potential enemies who must be watched.
It could not be otherwise. If the humanization of the oppressed signifies subversion, so also does their freedom; hence the necessity for constant control. And the more the oppressors control the oppressed, the more they change them into apparently inanimate “things.”
Thus, in order to justify erasure of a people, their temporal, spatial, and cultural reality must be reduced to a stereotype or in other words, a creation or construct. This stereotype and/or false reality is painted over the targeted population, then shared wildly to make it seem like the oppressor’s reference frame is the One True One — the One To Rule Them All.
But these arguments pivot on falsehoods. Pull out the falsehoods, and the arguments topple. For the Canvas people, dehumanizing them into simply “Aline’s creations” as Clea asserts, this cannot fully describe the lived realities of the Canvas people themselves. They are more than just ‘Aline’s creations.’ Their lived realities are as complex as Clea’s own, and the player knows this because they have spent the majority of the game immersed in a complex and nuanced world, surrounded by intricate people with very real concerns, dreams, ethics, sorrows, and joys.
It’s not so easy to dismiss an entire population after one has lived with them. This is why the game starts us in Lumiere, why we live with the Lumierians, so we can understand their struggle to not be erased. To not be eradicated. To have a future once more.
The reference frame of the Dessendre World versus the Canvas World are equally valid as we have seen. Just because one could be said to be a construct made by a Dessendre family member doesn’t mean the Canvas is any less real for those that live within it.
(One could argue that the Dessendre World is no less constructed, as the people within it constructed their society and their relations with one another. One can also spin in circles debating whether the Dessendre world is created or not by some other being beyond Clea’s understanding or knowledge. Philosophers have debated this very question for centuries.)
Regardless of whether a world is constructed or not, those within it experience the temporal and spatial aspects of their world fully. The game shows us through our journey with Expedition 33, and through our interactions with the Dessendre family. Of these two groups, the one that dehumanizes the other is the Dessendre family. The Canvas people go to great lengths to not dehumanize others (as we shall soon see). Freire reminds us:
When people are already dehumanized, due to the oppression they suffer, the process of their liberation must not employ the methods of dehumanization.
For American society, leaders posit a reference frame that enforces a temporal, spatial, and legal reality to supersede the reality experienced by marginalized populations. This action dehumanizes them and strips them of their agency and lived reality.
Riften in the book Beyond Settler Time speaks to how America weaponized its rigid reference frame to reorganize geographies of who exists on which land and also to erase a culture’s way of living in the present (their temporal reality). Thus, Riften identifies how America attempts to claim its reference frame is the One True Frame just as Clea attempts in regards to Dessendre versus the Canvas (and Renoir as well through the act of gommage).
In essence, American leaders, Clea, and Renoir are privileging their own frame over that of any others, regardless of the harm and often brutal enforcement of such a frame. This then reframes populations as being ‘stuck in the past’ or ‘uncivilized’ if they do not conform to how the oppressor defines civilization and humanity’s temporal reality.
Through law and policy, America sought to change Natives into suitable subjects to the American empire, thus erasing their past, present, and future. The reference frame for Native people becomes revolutionary in their struggle to assert their existence and keep alive their culture and identities. Riften argues:
The representation of Native peoples as either having disappeared or being remnants on the verge of vanishing constitutes one of the principal means of effacing Indigenous sovereignties. Such a portrayal of Indigenous temporal stasis or absence erases extant forms of occupancy, governance, and opposition to settler encroachments. Moreover, it generates a prism through which any evidence of such survival will be interpreted as either vestigial (and thus on the way to imminent extinction) or hopelessly contaminated (as having lost—or quickly losing—the qualities understood as defining something, someone, or some space as properly “Indian” in the first place). These kinds of elisions and anachronizations can be understood as a profound denial of Native being…
America’s attempt to constitute Native people in the past denies the Native being entirely; it’s a form of gommage and an attempt to control and eliminate Native resistance. However, as Nemik’s Manifesto asserts, authority is brittle, and freedom is spontaneously occurring. The ways in which our temporal reality differs from our oppressors cannot be denied, as people will and do rise up to reassert their right to exist. Recognition of our diverse temporal realities affirms our humanity.
For Native people (and other marginalized groups), multiple temporal reference frames have always existed. Native cultural practices, as diverse as the tribes within North America are, keep alive this alternate understanding of time, space, geography, ways of living and governing, identity, and one’s relationships with one another and the land. Riften writes of this by use fo the term ‘temporal orientation:’
To speak of temporal orientation suggests the ways that time can be regarded less as a container that holds events than as potentially divergent processes of becoming. Being temporally oriented suggests that one’s experiences, sensations, and possibilities for action are shaped by the existing inclinations, itineraries, and networks in which one is immersed, turning toward some things and away from others. More than a question of relations in space, orientation involves reiterated and nonconscious tendencies, suggesting ways of inhabiting time that shape how the past moves toward the present and future.
Native people understood that each culture and people within that culture were oriented toward a specific temporal reality based on their “experiences, sensations, and possibilities for action.” And in turn, these aspects were influenced by one’s environment such as the land or society, one’s connections with others (deemed networks by Riften), and the journey one took (deemed itineraries). Thus, temporality is a diverse range of multiplicity — there is no one reference frame when it came to temporal reality.
Rather than approaching time as an abstract, homogeneous measure of universal movement along a singular axis, we can think of it as plural, less as a temporality than temporalities. From this perspective, there is no singular unfolding of time, but, instead, varied temporal formations that have their own rhythms—patterns of consistency and transformation that emerge immanently out of the multifaceted and shifting sets of relationships that constitute those formations and out of the interactions among those formations. As V. F. Cordova observes, “time is an abstraction derived from the fact that there is motion and change in the world.”
America attempted (and still attempts today) to orient Native reality toward a very rigid way of existing. It denies their temporal reality and insists on only America’s temporality existing. If any failed to fit within America’s defined parameters for life, they were (and still are) eliminated/erased. Riften clarifies:
Rather than marking an absolute distinction between Natives and nonnatives, suggesting that there are unbreachable barriers that generate utterly incommensurable and hermetically sealed Indian and white forms of experience, I am suggesting the presence of discrepant temporalities that can be understood as affecting each other, as all open to change, and yet as not equivalent or mergeable into a neutral, common frame—call it time, modernity, history, or the present.
As much as America attempted a brutal and long-term gommage of Native people, they still fought back and resisted the oppressors attempts at genocide and erasure. Part of that lay in holding onto one’s temporal orientation within which the roots of one’s identity and culture grow. As Riften explains, this isn’t to say Native temporal reality and America’s temporal reality are so distinct they cannot be overlapped. Instead, the interplay between the Native temporal reality and American temporal reality affects one another in often painful and/or genocidal ways. America’s temporal reality insists on merging all other realities into one “neutral, common frame,” but in doing so erases those who do not fit its narrow and biased parameters.
The Earth holds great diversity within how one may identify, may live, the customs one may have, the relationships formed with others or with the land, and so on. These are all lived realities that are just as valid as any other, and attempts to collapse them into the One Frame To Rule Them All is our world’s version of gommage. A cultural genocide often can escalate into full genocide of both culture and body until no one is left standing within that group.
That is one thing that fascism and authoritarian/colonialism hates — diversity. It’s why fascism tries to wipe out diversity and force everyone into the reference frame carefully sculpted by the oppressor — a frame often posited as the “universal.”
Franz Fanon wrote in Wretched of the Earth:
Challenging the the colonial world is not a rational confrontration of viewpoints. It is not a discourse on the universal, but the impassioned claim by the colonized that their world is fundamentally different.
The colonial world seeks to dominate and erase the colonized, to collapse all frames into their own. This simplifies their control, but in doing so, they paint specific groups as disposable and thus erase those that fail to conform.
This same threat darkens the world of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, where a continued genocide — in the form of the erasure from gommage — seeks to destroy the people of Lumiere and steals away their future. Their ability to exist in the ‘now’ and thrive is slowly carved away as more and more of their people are lost to the Gommage.
For those in Lumiere, they do not know why they are being erased. Even when the player finally learns the full truth in Act 3, the erasure of the Lumierians is shown to be at the whim of one family. Yes, the Dessendre family aren’t truly seeking to dominate or exploit the Lumierians, only are caught in spirals of grief. However, the consequences of their actions oppress the Lumierians and cause tremendous harm to all involved. One cannot simply write off those consequences by saying “they were grieving, and erasing the Canvas stops the temptation to hide from grief.”
That still puts the fate of the Canvas people as ‘less than’ and not as real as the Dessendre family. No matter the motivations or original intentions, the consequences of erasing an entire population of people invokes genocide. The question then becomes, do we accept that the Canvas people are real and their existence valid?
That brings us back to Riften’s argument concerning the temporal realities that America thrust on the Native people. America deemed Native realities not real or valid, and thus justified the erasure and elimination of the “savage” in order to “civilize” and/or clear the land for America’s harmful “manifest destiny.” (See Indigeneous People’s History of the United States for a full breakdown of this history.) Riften speaks to this:
In 1906 Congress passed the Osage Allotment Act, extending to the Osage Nation the principles at play in the allotment program generally. These include efforts to break up Native land tenure into privatized property holding, organized primarily around nuclear family units; dismantle Indigenous structures of governance, asserting greater U.S. jurisdictional authority over Native peoples and places; insert Native peoples into the cash economy and Euramerican agricultural production; and transform everyday patterns of life so that they would conform to Euramerican conventions of dress, language, religion, literacy, gender roles, and so on. This policy imaginary draws on temporal figurations in order to remap and reorder spatial relations. Presented by officials and supporters as a means by which Indians could progress from a stunted and backward savagery toward civilization, allotment offered a vision of necessary development over time that enabled the struggle between Indigenous and settler geopolitical formations to be conceptually bracketed.
We see here how America attempted to force Native people into a very rigid binaries, in order to “civilize” them. If they failed to exist within these parameters, then destruction would befall them. For the Canvas people, they have even less agency, as there is no parameters that asserts a specific mode of being into which they are allowed to exist. Similar approaches to erasure and control was instituted on other marginalized populations as well.
The Canvas people are seen as oddities and anomalies. They are “creations” and not deemed real enough for continued existence. This is how Renoir (and Clea) is able to justify his erasure of them. In a similar vein, Riften, in his book Beyond Settler Time, points out a similar concept regarding the temporal reality of Native people:
Indigenous experiences of time may appear as oddities—anachronisms, aberrations, irrationalities, anomalies—when they do not line up neatly with dominant forms of chronology, historicism, and perception. As Sara Ahmed observes,“ Things seem ‘straight’ . . . when they are ‘in line,’ which means when they are aligned with other lines…”
The metaphor of lines is used to denote the temporal relations within groups of people. A group’s timeline may seem a straight path if aligned with other lines based on how we align such trajectories. Just as it is possible to craft a timeline or trajectory by lining up sequences of events, that does not mean this is the only way to build up temporal relations and/or paths. Other trajectories and timelines can exist in parallel.
She later notes, “Queer orientations are those that put within reach bodies that have been made unreachable by the lines of conventional genealogy,” further contending that a “queer commitment” is one that does not “presume that lives have to follow certain lines in order to count as lives…”
Here Riften quotes Ahmed’s observation that we do not have to “presume that lives have to follow certain lives in order to count as lives.” This is a crucial point for the temporal reality of people who do not fit into the dominant worldviews of the colonial society. The oppressed then, through the act of asserting their existence, proves the existence of alternate temporal realities, and the ‘straight’ lines becomes a tapestry of woven realities that may overlap, intersect, and inform one another even as they stand distinct. This plurality of worldviews is seen as a threat to Capitalists and Fascists who seek to collapse everyone into only their temporal reality.
The Fate of the Canvas People
For the Canvas people, their existence does not fit the dominant worldview of the Dessendre family. Instead, their existence is seen as a threat to the health of the Dessendre family by the act of temptation. Renoir and Clea both claim the Canvas exists only as a temptation for family members to live out a fantasy. In doing so, they deem the Canvas people a fascimile of true reality. In orienting the trajectory/timeline in this manner, the Dessendre family attempt to assert that their temporal reality matters more. That their emotions and sorrows matter more.
Except, Maelle subverts such a claim when she tells her father, at the end of Act 3, that she refuses to accept that the Canvas people must die for the family to heal. After her fight with Renoir, where they defeat him, this is part of their conversation:
RENOIR: I cannot spend another day with living corpses. Since the fire, our family has crumbled. Aline in the Canvas. Clea fighting her solitary war. You, a living ghost.
MAELLE: (shakes her head)
RENOIR: Verso’s death broke us. I want it to be fixed. I need it to be fixed! I– (coughs) I cannot lose you too!
MAELLE: Don’t you see? That’s how I feel about them! I can’t lose them either.
Here Renoir sees only his family, and he holds tightly to them. He attempts to control them through his own grief. But in doing so he takes away not only the agency of his family members, but also the agency of an entire world of people.
Maelle, on the other hand, tries to reach her father by showing how his feelings for his family is similar to how she feels about the family she’s built in Lumiere. She does her best to convince him that she’s not leaving him forever, but she can’t let him erase the people of the Canvas simply because he views them as a temptation for his family’s grief. She attempts to humanize the people of the Canvas by showing they are family too, while Renoir dehumanizes them by painting them as a temptation.
As another example, let’s look at prior to the fight. Here Maelle tries to convince him to not erase the entire Canvas.
RENOIR: I know how powerful and intoxicating it is, how deeply attached we can become to the worlds we pour our hearts and soul into. I was enthralled, and it nearly killed me.
MAELLE: It doesn’t mean you have to erase Verso’s Canvas!
For For Maelle, she sees beyond the limitations of just the family. This isn’t just Verso’s soul she’s fighting for here. She’s also fighting for the souls of every person who lives in Lumiere, who had lived until Gommage erased them. She lived sixteen years as a Lumierian, and she cannot simply erase that temporal reality simply because her father decided the Canvas is a temptation to be destroyed. For her, this goes beyond her family’s contours of grief.
Lune and Sciel both step forward to offer their truth, where they place comforting hands on Maelle’s shoulders. They lay down their claim of their different temporal reality and how it is just as valid.
RENOIR: Life keeps forcing cruel choices. We do what we must.
SCIEL: Grief often blinds us. And we make choices we can never take back.
RENOIR: You grieve for two.
SCIEL: I grieve for many.
LUNE: The choices of parents leave indelible marks upon their children. But ultimately the voices in their head have to be their own. You cannot set the boundaries of their life for them.Here Lune and Sciel both attempt to argue why their right to exist matters. They use the language Renoir is most likely to understand. This is an excellent example of how the oppressed — Sciel and Lune — leverage a shared language — grief and family — in order to re-humanize themselves and their oppressor.
When Sciel says she ‘grieves for many,’ she references all the poeple Renoir gommaged.
When Lune says ‘you cannot set the boundaries of their life for them,’ she is also referencing the boundaries of the life of her people. Renoir seeks to set a final boundary by erasing them forever, yet is that not ripping away the agency of Lune and her people as well as the agency of Renoir’s own daughter? The erasure is a violence enacted upon them and a dehumanization of their personhoods.
Thus, the people of the Canvas argue with who is essentially a godlike being for their right to exist. The oppressed, as Fanon pointed out (repeated for emphasis), must lay claim to their temporal and spatial realities:
Challenging the the colonial world is not a rational confrontration of viewpoints. It is not a discourse on the universal, but the impassioned claim by the colonized that their world is fundamentally different.
Lune, Sciel, and Maelle all have impassioned claims of their world being different than what Renoir claims. He focuses only on his own needs, and his arguments are not truly rational. Sciel rightly calls him out for being ‘blinded’ by his grief, and she shifts the perspective to a different worldview. Lune does the same by calling out his inability to recognize and acknowledge his daughter’s agency. Both are attempts to reason with Renoir, but at the same time lay out an impassioned claim to their own agency.
In this manner, the Canvas people not only attempt to humanize themselves for Renoir — the one who has oppressed them through Gommage — but also to humanize Renoir. Through the Gommage he may have stolen their humanity and erased them, but in doing so, he erased his own humanity by becoming this godlike being of death.
Paulo Friere in Pedagogy of the Oppressed puts this most succinctly:
The struggle for humanization, for the emancipation of labor, for the overcoming of alienation, for the affirmation of men and women as persons would be meaningless. This struggle is possible only because dehumanization, although a concrete historical fact, is not a given destiny but the result of an unjust order that engenders violence in the oppressors, which in turn dehumanizes the oppressed.
Because it is a distortion of being more fully human, sooner or later being less human leads the oppressed to struggle against those who made them so. In order for this struggle to have meaning, the
oppressed must not, in seeking to regain their humanity (which is a way to create it), become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both.This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well.
Thus, Lune and Sciel attempt to humanize everyone involved in the conflict. Despite their attempt, it will fail at first. They must defeat Renoir, and then and only then, is he finally willing to give Maelle and the Canvas people their agency.
RENOIR: I’ll leave a light on for you.
He leaves the Canvas in Maelle’s hands. Thus, the Canvas people have not only liberated themselves but also Renoir.
Yet, despite this win, a final confrontation between Painted Verso and Maelle will determine the true fate of the Canvas. In a way, this reflects how victories by the oppressed can push forward their fight for liberation and freedom, but there can also be inside actors that sabotage their goals.
We see this in Painted Verso, who betrays them in his goal to seek complete annihilation. He’s fallen into the despair that Friere speaks about in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, where he sees his dehumanization as being only a painted version of the true Verso. He cannot reach past this distortion to become more fully himself, something beyond what he was painted to be. His rigidity and stubbornness narrows his ability to relate to Maelle, and he attempts to force his temporal reality onto not only Maelle but the faded boy and all of the Canvas. By using leading questions, Painted Verso extracts the answer he wants from the faded boy, which he uses to justify his actions.
Verso fights for annihilation and to force upon Maelle his idea of what ‘healing’ looks like. He represents a refusal to accountability and is trapped in his own despair. (I will write a separate essay on accountability to dig into Verso’s temporal reality, so for now I will simply point out his final motivations.)
Maelle fights for her agency, the agency of her Dessendre family, and the agency of all Canvas people to exist and heal in the ways they need. She holds herself accountable and refuses to give in to despair.
In Verso’s ending, his selfish desire for annihilation will doom the Canvas entirely. He achieves his annihilation, and he tells Maelle it will be okay even as he forces her back into the Dessendre world. There Maelle becomes Alicia once more, trapped and isolated with her disability. The Canvas people have no place in this ending, their existence erased to become a segment of the Dessendre family’s past.
Yet, does this act truly bring healing to all involved? If the Canvas people are indeed real, how does this ending not doom them to erasure and genocide? To sacrifice an entire people to ensure the security and healing of another group is the death-narrative of necrosecurity, where the marginalized group are seen as less than and not as real. This only continues the cycle of violence, grief, and pain. (In my prior two essays I tackle the question of healing and agency. I also show how the Dessendre world does not offer a supportive system to aid the family, and specifically Alicia/Maelle’s, healing. I won’t belabor those points as my focus in this essay is the Canvas people’s fate.)
In Maelle’s ending, Maelle will offer Painted Verso an alternate way of existing instead of the one he currently abhors:
MAELLE: If you could grow old, would you… find a reason to smile?
By framing it this way, she offers him agency to choose his own way forward, one where he is not trapped in the bindings of another. She wishes to see him happy, to not be trapped in a cycle of despair and violence. She wants healing to blossom. The final scenes of Maelle’s ending takes place in a future point, where people have aged and Lumiere has started to rebuild.
Through the use of chroma, she aids the Canvas people in finally liberating themselves from the oppressive reference frames of the Dessendre family. Those that were erased once more find life, and Maelle’s question opens up an alternate temporal reality, one where people age and find their own happiness, without the shadow of gommage to steal away their future.
In a way, this once again parallels our reality. The oppressed often must resort to violence in order to free themselves from the yoke of their oppressors. For example, the Civil Rights Era of the 1960s involved civil disobedience, fights with racist police, and America’s assassination of Civil Rights leaders. Despite that violent backdrop, Black communities fought for their right to exist and have equal rights under the law, and they won some of those demands. Yes, this fight for justice still continues today, but each win threads a temporal trajectory toward a more just, equitable, and accessible world. That path will not be ‘straight’ line. Instead, it will curve in on itself, twist around, and yet still continue forward toward that better future.
We see this in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. This isn’t just a journey on how to deal with grief, but it’s also the question of whether the temporal reality of the Lumierians is as valid and as crucial as the Dessendre’s. And whether their reality has a right to exist and thrive.
In many video games, it’s rare for the player to play in the oppressed people’s reference frame. Generally, the game will posit a ‘hero’ that often comes from the oppressor culture or an outside ‘neutral’ culture to save the day. However, Clair Obscur turns this trope on its head by placing the player firmly within the people of the Canvas. The main characters are people of Lumiere, and our team of heroes are those that seek to end the erasure of their people — to assert their existence and restore their temporality in the present time. They don’t want to become past relics folded into the history books (the Dessendre family’s books to be precise). Instead, Lumiere and the sentient beings of the Canvas seek to exist within the present where they can build toward a shared future.
By placing us, at first, on the side of Lumierians, the player experiences the tempos of Lumierian’s ordinary life and their society (what Riften identifies as “modes of inhabitance” and “networks of exchange”). We are shown the complexity of these people and experience the reality of their world. The game may, at times, deliberately mislead the character, as we see in Act 2 with Painted Verso’s character, but this never negates how real the Canvas people’s world is. As I have shown in this essay, the Canvas World and Dessendre world are both real and valid, neither more important than the other.
We have now returned to one of the most crucial questions in the game: What is the right decision in regards to the fate of the Canvas people and the fate of Alicia/Maelle? As I have hopefully shown thus far, erasing people’s temporal realities causes immense harm and is genocide; people have a right to exist, and sacrificing them for the ‘greater good of society’ (or in this case the Dessendre family) cannot ever be the morally right answer.
Necrosecurity, as I spoke of earlier, paints a bleak and death-filled reality, where healing cannot ever take place because denial and control is at its roots. Until people’s temporal realities are respected and their agency honored, healing will forever stay out of reach.
Thus, escaping pain by committing genocide is not healing. It’s a continuation of the cycle of violence. The marginalized populations facing genocide have a right to exist, and their temporal realities are as valid and important as the oppressor. Just as the temporal reality of the Canvas people are as valid and important as the Dessendre family.
Healing can only happen when the cycle of violence ends.
#BlackPeople #civilRights #existence #gameNarrative #genocide #indigenous #IndigenousRights #justice #liberation #necrosecurity #nonbinary #Race #referenceFrames #revolution #temporality #themes #transgender
-
Glimpses of Grace by Judith Bowen
A delightful collection of emotionally soothing essays that celebrate one woman's lifelong commitment to care, compassion, and creativity
The post Glimpses of Grace by Judith Bowen appeared first on Independent Book Review.
https://independentbookreview.com/2026/04/01/glimpses-of-grace-by-judith-bowen/#bookreview #AtmospherePress #essays #GlimpsesofGrace #indieauthor
-
Reuters: How a quiet Dutch retiree helped uncover Nazi-stolen art in Argentina. “Dutch systems specialist Paul Post had glimpsed the notebooks that contained his father’s Nazi-era diaries before, but when he rediscovered them in an attic 15 years ago, the recent retiree finally had time to closely examine them. Post, 74, had no idea that they would ultimately lead to Argentina, where in […]
-
Mehajer Emerges: A Glimpse Post-Incarceration
Salim Mehajer, former deputy mayor, is back on social media after being released from prison on parole on July 18, 2025. He faces ongoing legal issues.
#SalimMehajer, #FormerPolitician, #Parole, #SocialMediaReturn, #Auburn
https://newsletter.tf/salim-mehajer-returns-social-media-after-prison/
-
Author Spotlight: Black Sapphic Vampire Romance author Liza Wemakor
Liza Wemakor (she/they) is a writer and a Ph.D. candidate in UC Riverside’s English Department. Her fiction has been published in Strange Horizons, Anathema Magazine, Baffling Magazine, and elsewhere. Her debut novella, Loving Safoa, was published by Neon Hemlock Press in February 2024.
AUTHOR LINKS:
Website: www.lizawemakor.com
Instagram: @lizawemakor
Bluesky: @lizawemakor.bsky.socialBook Link: Loving Safoa (Neon Hemlock)
Book Elevator Pitch for readers/book clubs
If you enjoy paranormal romance with literary stylings, you will enjoy Loving Safoa!
Get a copy from Neon Hemlock.Your novella, Loving Safoa, is out now with Neon Hemlock. What were your main inspirations behind this sapphic vampire novella?
I wanted to write a vampire story that reflected underrepresented elements of my worldview. It seemed sensible to lean into Safoa’s experience of being an undocumented immigrant in the Western world across a long expanse of time, and to demonstrate how this extended period of uncertainty and precarity forces Safoa into survival mode. Meanwhile, she is also recovering from the trauma of being held captive by a sadistic colonizer for a number of years, as well as experiencing new kinds of freedom in New York, and eventually Maryland.
Cynthia, on the other hand, feels orphaned — she is navigating adulthood without her mother or any other parent, yet becoming a maternal figure to her students. She also feels a level of insecurity about her connection to her motherland, as a Ghanaian-American woman, and faces this head-on in her relationship with Safoa, who she imagines as a pure embodiment of African identity. Safoa and Cynthia’s lives are quite complex, and together they tell a story of diasporic reunification.
The novella features woven stories from different places and time periods, from 18th-19thC Ghana to a near-future Maryland. How did you decide what segments of these characters’ lives to include, and were there scenes and times that you played with but ultimately decided to cut?
I wanted to maintain a focus on Cynthia and Safoa’s romance, so I omitted some portions of their lives before they met; I may have explored more of those past moments in a longer project, like a novel, but a novella length felt right for this story. I wanted the passage of time to be a bit surreal, because it is surreal to have lives as long as Cynthia and Safoa’s. Time itself and the details of their lives are a blur.
I was seriously toying with showing glimpses of Safoa’s life in London — her lovers, and her brief skirmishes with other European predators. I would’ve emphasized how she was simultaneously powerful and vulnerable to exploitative people, which motivated her departure to the U.S. after a few decades. I didn’t include these scenes because Cynthia may have been lost in the larger narrative — there wouldn’t have been as much of a balanced representation of their lives, and Safoa would have taken over the story.
How does vampirism and the donor concept work in your novella, and is this based on any folklore?
I was very inspired by Jewelle Gomez’s approach to vampire networks in The Gilda Stories — vampire communities that are explicitly political, and whose politics have been informed by their previous experiences of being hurt, exploited, and truly loved.
I was also inspired by Octavia Butler’s approaches to both community and feeding in Fledgling. Shori depends upon a host of human companions and vampires while navigating a white supremacist vampire hierarchy. Shori’s companions also gain a lot from her presence, in a symbiotic fashion.
Tamara Jerée wrote beautifully about these dynamics in her Strange Horizons essay, “How to Make a Family: Queer Blood Bonds in Black Feminist Vampire Novels“.
There was a hint of Ghanaian folklore in the novella, though I took creative liberties. Safoa and a character named Yaba occasionally refer to the first vampire they met as ‘ɔbonsam’ — or a demonic entity. In some Ghanaian folklore, there are vampiric, humanoid creatures called ɔbonsam or sasabonsam that have very long hair, like Safoa does at some point, and live / feed on people in the forest. I didn’t opt to include other details like sharp teeth and bat-like features in my depiction of vampires. Tongue feeding was more fun for a smutty sapphic story.
At some point in my life I encountered myths related to the obayifo (another West African vampire) as well, and I took liberties with the factoid that they are phosphorescent, i.e. when Cynthia noticed a blue aura around Safoa’s body.
Can you tell us more about Cynthia – where did she come from, and what made you set her as a schoolteacher in the early 1990s at the start of this novella? How did you develop her character, her voice, and her desires (e.g. to be an “everlasting elder”)?
I am one of those people who insists on a vaguely-defined, somewhat secretive spirituality that undergirds my writing practices. In the spring of 2021, Cynthia and Safoa appeared to me almost effortlessly, and I was compelled to write about them. Not long before that, I’d gotten into the Ph.D. program I am at the end of now, and I started writing feverishly before my time and energy became more limited. Cynthia and Safoa were fascinating to me, and their chemistry was palpable; at times I blushed when writing and editing their sex scenes, because it felt like an intrusion upon their privacy.
Cynthia’s life resembles my life in some ways, but not all. I haven’t lost my mother, and she (Cynthia) has spent more of her life in New York City and Maryland than I have, but her anxieties about her authenticity as a Ghanaian diasporan and her interest in teaching certainly resonate with me. I am sure that some of my own subjectivity informed how I wrote Cynthia, though a lot of it was subconscious.
I had a moodboard for both Cynthia and Safoa, and Cynthia’s moodboard included images of the actresses Nicole Beharie and Moses Ingram, and the model Dede Mansro. I was interested in channeling not only the softness of their appearances, but the moodiness and subdued seductiveness they are able to convey.
Regarding the choice to begin in the 1990s: it was a perfect fit both aesthetically and politically. The 90s was a period of intense political maturation for educators, artists, and the general public. There was, especially for queer black people, queer people of color, a mingling of death and renewal — an increasing awareness of identity (and its constructedness) mingling with the optimism of entering a new millenium. The perfect setting for politically conscious vampires to come into themselves.
Can you tell us more about Safoa, the vampire, her Ghanaian roots, her relationship with tattoos and her place in her communities across time as a body artist, and how she came to be shaped on the page? What was the character development process like for her, and was there research involved to craft her journey from 1799 onwards – if so, what research did you do?
A pattern that is emerging in my answers to these questions is that I placed Cynthia and Safoa in historical moments that were hotbeds for social resistance. I wanted Safoa to live through multiple eras of Black and African resistance, and I wanted readers to see her putting in the work to pursue what she saw as her purpose in life, which was being a body artist from the beginning, and then evolved, through meeting Cynthia, to include more social pursuits.
In writing Safoa, I revisited a few books from a class I took in college about pre-colonial African history, and I read a few books and articles about West African empires and West African mythology. I also made an effort to research some of the geography (landscapes and flora) of West Africa, and brushed up my knowledge of some Twi terms and phrases, which I grew up hearing from my maternal family. Ultimately, only some of these details made it onto the page, because making the world feel lived in required me to look at these landscapes through Safoa’s eyes.
What research did you do for the different settings in the novella, and what sociopolitical/ideological projections were you going with for the development of your near-future Maryland setting to avoid it being a utopia/dystopia?
I wanted each of the major settings of the novella, 19th century West Africa, 1990s New York City, and 1990s / 21st century Maryland, to reflect major political movements of their time. Safoa’s time in the part of West Africa we now know as Ghana was inflected with rising anticolonial sentiments. New York City is and was sensational for the community organizing within its boroughs, though it was not without the risk of violence (see: the 2003 murder of Sakia Gunn in the nearby Newark, New Jersey). Like New York City, the DMV is and was a major locus of queer arts organizing (especially literary arts) and queer political organizing, which I aimed to reflect in Cynthia and Safoa’s commune involvements.
I wouldn’t say I was consciously avoiding the story being classified as a utopia or dystopia, and this defiance of categories came about because I had naturalistic inclinations in the writing of this novella. I wanted my writing to reflect how deeply traumatic and how stunningly gorgeous people can be. For the Maryland commune in particular, I wanted to hint at the fact that there were conflicts commune members had already worked through before Cynthia and Safoa arrived, and working through these conflicts laid the groundwork for Cynthia and Safoa to soar, as cooperative leaders in their new community.
Would you ever consider expanding upon the story of Cynthia and Safoa, perhaps in a connected story, and/or are you moving on to other projects (if so, what’s next?!)
I would love to write a short story or novelette focused on Safoa’s time in London / Europe, when the time seems right to do so. I’ve written several short stories that I’m proud of since Loving Safoa came out in 2024, and it’s just been a matter of finding the right magazine at the right time for the stories that haven’t been published yet. I also have a few short stories that are in partial states, that I am slowly finishing as my dissertation takes priority.
I also have a novel project that is half-drafted! The novel project follows a polarizing, and potentially revolutionary, celebrity musician.
Beyond my own fiction, I am a nonfiction editor and finance manager for Anathema Magazine, a venue dedicated to speculation fiction by and for queer people of color that is relaunching after a 3-year hiatus — yay!
Add Loving Safoa to GoodreadsLike This? Try These:
Author Spotlight: Vampire Fiction Author Lucius Valiant
Meet Lucius Valiant, a Danish-British author, and learn more about his series, The Thornhill Vampire Chronicles.
by cmrosensOctober 29, 2025February 3, 2026Author Spotlight: Vampire Fiction Author Talia Wall
Meet Talia Wall and her dystopian vampire series, ‘Until Equinox’ trilogy! Books 1&2 are out now, and Book 3 is coming soon.
by cmrosensOctober 8, 2025January 7, 2026Author Spotlight: Vampire Fiction Author Eule Grey
Meet Eule Grey (she/they), a Sculpture artist, disability activist, and disabled author of queer, sparkly books. We talk about disability and sapphic elements in their work.
by cmrosensJune 27, 2025January 7, 2026Author Spotlight: Horror & Vampire Fiction Author C. Lenz
C. Lenz is a Canadian author and scientist who lives with her wife Zoey in Hamilton, Ontario. In this spotlight interview, she discusses her monster-vampire slasher, Thyrst Festival.
by cmrosensApril 18, 2025February 3, 2026Author Spotlight: Vampire Fiction Author Frankie Sutton
Frankie Sutton writes paranormal and urban fantasy, and talks to us about her novel, Vampiric Crush.
by cmrosensFebruary 28, 2025January 7, 2026Author Spotlight: Queer SFF and Vampire Fiction Author H.S. Kallinger
Meet one of the authors from the Authors for Palestine event, H.S. Kallinger (he/they). Kallinger discusses his work, vampires, and what’s next for their queer Sci-Fi series.
by cmrosensJuly 31, 2024January 7, 2026 Subscribe to my newsletter to stay updated! I send newsletters around once a month. You can also subscribe to my site so you don't miss a post, but I also do a post round-up in my monthly newsletters, along with what I've been working on, what I've been reading, and what I've been watching. I will often update newsletter subscribers first with news, so stay ahead of the game with my announcements and discount codes, etc! #AuthorInterview #AuthorSpotlight #BlackAuthor #paranormalRomance #queerAuthor #sapphicBooks #vampireBooks -
The First Inuit in Scotland: the thread about John Sakeouse; Hunter, Explorer, Artist, Interpreter, Kayaker, Friend of Leith and
The registers of the Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh record that on 17th Feb 1819 a man was interred there, having died 3 days previously from fever. They say he was 22 years old, although nobody was exactly sure. What they do not say is that he was far from the land of his birth and that he was a truly remarkable man. He was John Sakeouse and this is his story.
John Sakeouse, a portrait by Amelia Anderson, engraved by W. & D. Lizars. CC-by-NC National Galleries ScotlandJohn was well known in Edinburgh and Leith, infact it was fair to say he was something of a celebrity, for he was a unique character in the city; he was a Kalaaleq , an Inuk from West Greenland, and was the first of his people to travel to Scotland. He was born around 1797 in Disko Bay on the west coast of Greenland at a latitude of 69° North. We do not know his name in his native language, but he grew up in an area where Danish missionaries were active and from them he took the biblical names Johannes Zakaeus; John Zacchaeus (also Anglicised to Sackhouse, Saccheuse, but he signed himself Sakeouse so we shall go with that.) From the missionaries he learned about the bible and had a knowledge of and interest in Christianity. He also learned of the world beyond his horizon and picked up a little English.
Icebergs Disko Bay. Cc-by-SA 3.0 AlgkalvJohn had wanted to satisfy a curiosity as to what was over the horizon and beyond the land of his birth, and he wanted to learn about art. He may have been further motivated by being unlucky in love and rejected by the mother of a potential bride. But his reasons were his own and using his own initiative and ingenuity in May or June of 1816 he took to his kayak and paddled out to a whaling ship that was getting ready to depart the Davis Strait. Using his basic English, he managed to convince the crew to help him stow away and the seamen took pity and smuggled not just John but also his kayak aboard. Once he was safely over the horizon he announced his presence to the master of the ship; who either offered or threatened to turn around and put him ashore, but John was obviously a persuasive communicator and the master, John Newton, was convinced to take him home with him. That ship was the Thomas and Ann, it was owned by Peter Wood and Company of Leith, and that port was its destination. That is how on the 15th August 1816, John Sakeouse came to Scotland “with 11 fish“, as a very special passenger.
The Leith Greenland whaler “Raith”, also owned by the Woods and a contemporary of the “Thomas and Ann”. A model in the collection of Trinity House, Leith.On the long journey back to Leith, he earned his passage by assisting the seamen in their duties and occupied himself in improving his English.Standing between 5 foot 6 and 8 inches tall, with a head of thick black hair, he was of stocky build and impressed his hosts with his great physical strength, his dexterity and also his gentle nature and eagerness to learn. When the Thomas and Ann finally arrived back in Leith, news of his presence seemed to spread like wildfire and large crowds assembled wanting to catch a glimpse of this unusual visitor. The crowds prevented Master Newton from unloading his precious cargo of whale, so he had Sakeouse taken ashore and lodged in his house in the Timber Bush area. The crowds simply followed and gathered outside Newton’s house instead.
But although John had never seen this many people in his life, he hadn’t come to Scotland to hide himself away. So he took himself and his kayak down to the new Wet Docks, lowered himself into them and with great showmanship put on an hour long display of his proficiency and dexterity in it. He thrilled the crowds by being able to roll his boat over at will, paddle it while inverted and roll it back upright again “in the twinkling of an eye… and scuds off as if nothing had happened“. A ship’s biscuit was floated on the water and from 30 yards he would hit it – and split it – with his harpoon.
John Sakeouse in his kayak, from an illustration by Amelia Anderson, engraved by W. & D. Lizars, CC-by-NC National Galleries ScotlandHis show was an instant hit, and it was put on each day for the crowds. Handbills were printed and money was collected. On Thursday 5th September, a grand race was organised; John against the best whaling boat and six of the best crew that Leith had to offer. “A vast assemblage of persons of all ranks were collected at Leith. The piers, windows and roofs of houses and the decks and rigging of the vessels, were crowded with spectators; and the water from the harbour to near the Martello Tower was covered with boats, filled with Ladies and Gentlemen.” They set off from the end of the pier, the course being around the Martello Tower and back again; John was the clear winner, taking just 16 minutes.
An exhibition of some of his artefacts was put on in a dockside warehouse, described as “two sea unicorn’s horns, the skulls of a sea horse and bear, the ear of a whale and the preserved skin of a black eagle“. The money these ventures raised helped support him financially; to provide him with the food and clothes that he needed to get through the winter in Scotland until he could return home the following season when the whalers went north again. By the end of August news of him had spread the length of the country; with newspapers not just in Scotland and London, but all across England, in Belfast and in Dublin relating the story of “the Esquimaux* now at Leith“.
* = the French term which was in written use at the time in the press for Inuit. The Scottish whalers used the term “Yackie”, in some contemporary accounts he refers to himself as “Yakee”, a term he undoubtedly picked up from the whalers.
Lodging with Newton and his family, when John was not putting on his displays he attended to studying English in “which he made considerable progress“; he learned to play the flute a little and to dance. He told his hosts that he had received some schooling in his childhood, had some basic knowledge of the wider world and historical facts and had heard of an elephant – but never having seen one was “much delighted” when shown a picture. He had not, however, seen or heard of a cow and on first encountering one fetched his harpoon with which to defend himself from this strange beast. He sat for portraits, was taken to the theatre, and was the toast of the evening soirées of Leith and Edinburgh, comfortably ingratiating himself with all who met him.
John Sakeouse’s handwriting, from an engraving by W. & D. Lizars, CC-by-NC National Galleries ScotlandIn the spring of 1817, the Leith whalers set out again for the Davis Straits and John was with them, once more on board the Thomas and Ann. Newton was under strict orders from his employer, Peter Wood, that John was to be “treated with the greatest kindness” and returned to where he had been picked up, and not to return with him unless John explicitly desired to. On reaching his home however, John was distressed to find that his only living relative, his sister, had died over the winter. On learning that she had believed him dead and had died of a broken heart, he returned to Newton and made it known that he wished to stay with them and “revisit his country no more.” And so it was in September 1817 once again the newspapers in Edinburgh reported that the Thomas and Ann had returned to Leith and once more it had a special passenger aboard. And once again, this exciting news was reprinted from Inverness to London and from Cambridge to Belfast.
That winter, John exhibited the selfless kindness to others for which he was knows. Enjoying he snows that had fallen, and walking far beyond Leith, he came across two young children whom he observed “to be suffering from the cold“. He took off his sealskin jacket, wrapped the pair of them in in it and carried them safely home to Leith. He refused all attempts at a reward, not thinking himself having done anything remarkable. It was on another winter walk that John’s adventures took an interesting new direction, for who should he by chance bump in to but one Alexander Nasmyth; pupil of Alan Ramsay and one of Scotland’s foremost landscape and portrait painters at that time. Nasmyth recognised John by his dress, and having once drawn a set of native clothing that had been brought to Scotland he was keen to ingratiate himself. He invited John up to Edinburgh and had him sit for a portrait in return for providing him with drawing lessons. Nasmyth got his painting, now part of the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland, and John got his lessons, proving to have a natural talent and be a quick learner. He was the first Inuit to recieve formal art training, although he came from a rich artistic culture.
John Sakaeus (Sakeouse) by Alexander Nasmyth, c. 1817, CC-by-NC National Galleries ScotlandIt was through the well connected Nasmyth that John’s life took its next turn; he was introduced to the naval explorer Captain Basil Hall and his father, Sir James, the President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The Halls were aware that the Admiralty was preparing an expedition to search for a Northwestern Passage, under fellow Scot Capain John Ross (later Sir John), and were quick to realise that having a native guide who could also act as a translator could prove invaluable to the mission. The Halls wrote to Sir John Barrow, Second Secretary to the Admiralty, who agreed with them and asked for John to be sent to London if he was willing. John seems to have turned down offers of payment for his services, and was keen to join the expedition so long as it was not a ruse to send him back to the land of his birth.
In London, John ingratiated himself with his usual ease, and – having taken it with him – as usual thrilled the crowds with kayaking and harpooning displays in Deptford Docks. A trick that went down very well was to throw his harpoon, which he could do with great accuracy over 50 yards, and then follow it up with smaller “darts” with which he could hit the handle of the floating harpoon, time after time. Captain Ross and the Admiralty wasted no time in engaging John’s services, however it nearly wasn’t to be; in late March a stranger, who may have been an agent for the Aquatic Theatre, attempted to lure him away from the expedition and onto the stage, with offers of money and a considerable quantity of alcohol. The usually sober John almost succumbed to temptation, but on recovering his faculties and suffering his hangover thought better of it, apologised to Ross for his change of heart and stayed firmly on board and away from the dockside taverns thereafter. The Admiralty quietly ordered that he was to be kept on board and away from strangers thereafter.
Ross’s expedition departed London on board a small fleet of hired Hull whaling ships on 18th April 1818. Ross led on his flagship Isabella, with Captain Buchan on the Dortothea, Lieutenant Parry on the Alexander and the ill-fated Lieutenant Franklin on the Trent. Their search was for the Northwest Passage and the Bering Strait beyond, and part of the expedition intended to strike out for the North Pole. Their journey would find none of those destinations, but would take them further north than any British navigator had yet been.
“Portraits of the Vessels of the Polar Expedition of 1818”, an illustration by John Ross © Royal Museums Greenwich.The convoy arrived off Greenland in mid-June. By the end of the month, they reached 70° North. This was Disko Bay, the land where John – or Jack as the sailors had taken to calling him – had been born 19 or 20 years before. John took take to his kayak, returning with specimens of birds for the expedition’s scientists, and also with a party of local Inuit he had contacted. Acting as a translator, he negotiated for a larger party of them to return with the gift of a dog sled for Ross. They were invited aboard for coffee and biscuits and shown around, had their portraits taken and further gifts were exchanged. An impromptu cèilidh was then held on the deck, with the Inuit dancing Scottish Reels with the seamen to the music of their fiddler. Ross describes John as acting as the “master of ceremonies”, calling out the dances. Catching the attention of a young woman in the Inuit party, “by far the best looking of the group“, John was given a lady’s shawl by one of the officers to present to her. She returned his affections with the gift of a ring, and Ross was in “no possible doubt [he] had made an impression on her heart“.
After the ball concluded with more coffee, the guests departed and John was permitted to escort them home and perhaps return with more specimens for the expedition. It was at this point however that he suffered an unfortunate accident; demonstrating a gun to some of the Inuit, he over-filled it with gunpowder under a mistaken assumption that he described himself as “plenty powder, plenty kill. Letting the weapon off, he could not handle the recoil and broke his collar bone. A search party had to be sent out to retrieve him when he did not return to the ship.
Ross’s ships (one ship is in the distance, on the right of the image) in the land of John’s birth at Disko Bay, an illustration by Andrew Skene, an officer and artist on the expeditionThey did not linger here and continued north into Baffin Bay, intending on making an anti-clockwise navigation in search of the North West Passage. Ross made an illustration of his little flotilla as it moved carefully through the ice at 70°44′ North. They pressed on and at 75°25′ North they reached a bay that the Greenlanders call Qimusseriarsuaq. Although whalers had been here before, they hadn’t troubled to give it an English name, so Ross Christened it Melville Bay, after Robert Dundas, 2nd Viscount Melville, the First Lord of the Admiralty, the man who had given Ross his first commission and a son of Edinburgh (for whom Melville Street is named).
“Through the Ice, June 16 1818, Lat. 70° 44′ N.”, an illustration by Captain RossThe were able to sail as far north as 75°55′, before becoming trapped in the ice at the start of August and could go no further. It was with a great deal of skill, hard work and luck that they were able to extricate the Isabella and the Alexander, and now headed west around the top of Baffin Bay. An illustration made by Captain Ross shows this desperate scene.
“Perilous Situation of the Isabella and the Alexander”, illustration by Captain RossSoon they were heading south again and on August 9th 1818, the Isabella and the Alexander came to what Ross called Prince Regent Inlet. Here, at 75°55′ North, 65°32′ West, and with the unique help of John Sakeouse, they made first contact with what Ross called the Arctic Highlanders: the native Inughuit.
It was the Inughuit who spotted them first. By the time Ross’s lookouts spotted them in return, they took these men far out on the ice to be stranded whalers, and made for them. As they approached, they realised that they were natives travelling on dog sledges. When they came within shouting distance, John attempted to call to them in his language, but the men took to their sleds and fled. Boats were sent out and some gifts left on the ice for them. Ross also had the men make up a large flag showing the image of the sun and the moon, with an outstretched hand holding a spring of a native shrub in the manner of an olive branch (this western metaphor would of course have been completely lost on them.) This was run up a pole in a prominent position on the ice, to which was also affixed a bag of gifts and a large outline of a hand pointing to the ships.
The next morning a larger party of men returned with 8 sleds, stopping on the ice a mile short of the ships. The flagpole enticed the men and their sleds closer, but they remained cautiously 300 yards distant, apparently in conversation. It was at this point that John stepped in. Taking a bag of gifts, and a white flag (another hopeless symbol for communicating with people who had never encountered white men before), John strode out on the ice. Dressed in the garb of a western sailor, they had no idea who he was, or what his act of removing his hat meant, and as he approached they pulled a knife on him, implored him to be on his way and made it clear that they could kill him if needs be. In return, the ever placid John offered them a British-made knife in his possession, tossing it to them. On examining it, the men were impressed and pulled their noses, a sign of friendship. John pulled his nose too, and a rapport was formed. John now presented them with a string of beads and showed them a chequered shirt. This was not just the first time the Inughuit had met white men, it was their first exposure to a Kalaaleq, a western Greenlander. After some initial difficulty, John recognised their dialect as one an old woman who once nursed him had spoken, and was slowly able to communicate. Using his natural talents and the tuition in Western art acquired from Alexander Nasmyth, John would paint a picture to capture this scene, presenting it to Captain Ross.
First Communication with the Natives of Prince Regent Bay, as John by John Sackheouse and Presented to Captain Ross, August10th 1818John, wearing the blue jacket, with his arm held in a sling and wearing a beaver cap, is seen holding the chequered shirt while two Inughuit inspect the other gifts he has presented them with, one of whom may be holding up one of the mirrors with which they were presented and which caused them wonder and delight. In the foreground, Captain Ross and Lieutenant Parry offer other gifts, receiving narwhal tusks in return. Another man is arriving on his dog sled, and two others are in the distance admiring the ships and a boat which had been hauled onto the ice for repairs. The Inughuit had never before seen a ship; indeed they were not seafaring people, had never seen a kayak and had no word for it, living entirely on the land and using dog sleds for travel and hunting. So it was with some difficulty that they were eventually enticed aboard onto these winged “Islands of Wood” (they had never before seen a shrub with a trunk wider than your finger, so the ships timbers were an incredible sight for them). The men were given a tour of the ship, before being convinced to sit in chairs (something they had never seen and whose purpose they did not understand) to have their portraits taken. They were offered ships biscuit, salt beef, plum pudding and Aquavit, all of which they thoroughly disliked.
Ervick, one of the Inughuit who met the Ross Expedition in 1818, an illustration by Captain RossWith John acting as interpreter, they were able to learn that the Inughuit did not count beyond ten, that their knives were fashioned from iron extracted from a rock in the mountains, that they lived in family units by a form of mutual agreement between the husband and wife, but had sent their women and children into the mountains to safety; the menfolk had come forth only to ask the interlopers to leave. They had a chief – Tulloowah – to whom other families gave a tribute. They had no organised religion, but each family had a “sorcerer” who could be called upon to commune with the weather or supplies of animals for food. They had no concepts of weapons or war, or of lands and people beyond their own. They assumed that the white-faced Europeans must be some sort of ghost whose ships had flown down from the air. Before leaving, the Inughuit were presented with planks of wood that they had expressed a desire in possessing.
The Inughuit returned a few days later on the 13th of August and again on the 14th. This was a different party than those they had met before, and had come forth after seeing the gifts that the first had returned with and having received assurances that the “Islands of Wood” and their ghostly residents were not an immediate threat. More gifts were exchanged, and the leader of the party helped himself to Ross’s telescope, shaving razor and a pair of scissors, which Ross was pleased to overlook. Before their final departure, Ross gave them a portrait of the Prince Regent as a present for “their king”.
They now pressed further south and west, coming to Lancaster Sound at 74°19½’ North 78°33′ west at the end of August where he took a fateful decision. Imagining that he could see distant mountains (they were actually a mirage), he was convinced that there was no way further through by sea and turned around against the wishes of his subordinate Parry. So convinved was Ross, that he named this distant range – the Croker Mountains – and made a detailed landscape illustration of them.
Lancaster Sound, as seen from HMS Isabella, 3PM, August 31st 1818. The distant range of the Croker Mountains was a mere mirage. By Captain RossRoss now headed south along the western edge of Baffin Bay, taking detailed meteorological and astronomical observations, collecting geological and animal specimens and otherwise occupying the expedition now with science rather than their stated goal of seeking the North West Passage. By the end of September they were at Resolution Island at 61°30′ North and well out of the Arctic Circle, and Ross decided to end operations for the season and head for home. A month later, on October 29th, they sighted Foula, the westernmost island of the Shetland Archipelago. On November 14th they dropped anchor for the last time, in Grimsby Roads, and Ross set off at once for London and their Lordships of the Admiralty with his logs, journals, charts and letters.
Ross, unfortunately, did not find the hero’s welcome that he might have imagined. Instead, his subordinate officers challenged his decision to turn around in Lancaster Sound, and Parry was vehemently and publicly sceptical of the grounds on which Ross made that decision. The Admiralty were convinced by Parry and his conspirators that Ross’s findings were not to be trusted, and they organised an expediction for the following year, led by Parry, and on which Ross was not invited. The press lampooned him, a particularly scathing satirical cartoon showing him pompously leading his crew, all mutilated by frosbite, carrying back nothing but specimens of animals and rocks. The implication was clear; Ross’s expedition had been a failure and the scientific results and objects he returned with were worthless.
Landing of the Treasures or Results of the Polar Expedition!!! By George Cruikshank © The Trustees of the British MuseumRoss publicly praised John Sakeouse as “very intelligent and willing to learn as well as being grateful to those who instruct him. A man on whom the utmost dependence may be placed“. The satirist – George Cruikshank – unfortunately did not treat him with the same respect and credit that he merited. Instead he showed him as a deeply racist stereotype, a savage called “Jack Frost”, carrying a narwhal tusk, wearing a fur skirt, and clutching an album of his drawings. The sailors to his right, on wondering “what will they do with Jack Frost“, suggest he should have his throat cut and be stuffed. This was a sad end to the important expedition, and a cruel way to dismiss the contributions of John Sakeouse, which no other man could have made.
John Sakeouse, shown as the savage “Jack Frost”.John did not stay long in London, and asked to be returned to his friends in Leith. Parry – although contemptuous of Ross – recognised the importance of John and arranged that he should be included again in the 1819 expedition. Unfortunately this was never to be.
John took ill at the start of the year with “a violent inflammation in the chest“. John Newton, the whaling master who had first been convinced to bring John to Leith, and his family nursed John through his illness. At first he seemed to improve, and despite doctor’s orders to the contrary – soon felt well enough to venture out in the search of fish, which he brought back to his lodgings to cook for himself.
A few days later however, he had relapsed into fever. He told his companions that his late sister had come to him in a fever dream and called to him, and that he knew now that he was dying. Calling for his Catechism – in the Danish language that he had been tutored in by missionaries – he grasped it “till his strength and sight failed him, when the book dropped from his grasp, and he shortly afterwards expired“. All of Leith mourned his loss, and a respectful funeral was arranged in the Canongate Kirkyard and paid for by his friends. “He was followed to the grave by a numerous company, among whom were not only his old friends and patrons from Leith, but many gentlemen of high respectability in this city“. His final resting place is not marked, but was given as “in the area 8 feet south of Fraser’s ground and 4 feet from the north walk“.
Approximate location of the last resting place of John Sakeouse. © SelfHis possessions, including his sealskin clothing, were left to Captain Ross, who donated them to the Museum of the University of Edinburgh.
Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.
If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.Explore Threadinburgh by map:
Travelers' Map is loading...
If you see this after your page is loaded completely, leafletJS files are missing.These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.
NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.
#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret -
By Grin Reaper
Known for cultivating legendary acts such as Cult of Luna, Meshuggah, and Refused, Umeå, Sweden, sows fertile ground for seminal rock and metal bands.1 Formed in 2022, Skogskult joins their compatriots with a self-titled debut of grimy stoner doom in hand. From Swedish, Skogskult translates to ‘forest cult,’ and with roots firmly planted in scuzzy soil, this fey foursome drinks deeply from the wells of Acid King, Monolord, and Black Sabbath. Skogskult conjures six tracks that pull from Scandinavian mythology and the arcane to warn of dark days getting darker,2 setting a grim and eldritch tone from the outset. So come, friend, and take my hand. Let us walk into these woods together and uncover what mysteries lurk within.
Skogskult studied their forebears closely, as anyone who blindly tangles with Skogskult won’t need long to guess its genre. Many moments are saturated with indica atmospherics thick enough to induce contact highs. Hypnotic plods (“Lyktans Låga”), mid-paced gallops (“Pakten”), and the occasional stirring solo (“Snöblind”) furnish an assortment of backdrops and give individual songs enough character to prevent them from blurring together despite the pervasive gloomy fuzz. Cutting through said fuzz is vocalist Simon Rosengrim, who pierces the dense haze with tempestuous conviction, antithetical to the indolent trappings of stereotypical stoner doom. All told, Skogskult begets a familiar soundscape even casual fans of the genre will at once recognize, molding a unique personality alongside influences and reference points.
Skogskult’s merger of buzzing heft and raw emotion concocts powerful moments across their debut. Opening duo “Lyktans Låga” and “Turs” conform to genre conventions, grooving with ponderous mass as Samuel Nordström and Albin Kroon lumber along on guitar and bass. In fact, most of Skogskult is blanketed in wool, though “Sol” acts as a crucial change-of-pace, offering reverb-drenched strums and echoey vox that recall Sabbath’s “Planet Caravan.” Central tracks “Jag Ger Mig Av” and “Pakten” embolden Skogskult with lively frills, such as the stark baritone vocals midway through the former and the catchy-as-hell 90s post-grunge lilt of the latter. Pulling away from direct inspirations allows Skogskult to forge an identity all their own. In a genre where bands closely adhere to stoner doom’s core sound, it’s not a coincidence that Skogskult’s best moments occur when the album extends past them. In particular, Rosengrim’s performance electrifies when grit and pathos dial to eleven. His singing forgoes the comparatively mellow rhythms and measured deliveries associated with Sleep, Dopelord, and others, instead penetrating stoner doom’s miasma with immediate and undeniable passion. While this ingredient sets Skogskult apart from other outfits, it’s not quite enough to overcome Skogskult’s deficiencies.
Though many of Skogskult’s songwriting tendrils take root, some flounder for purchase. The juxtaposition of urgent vocals and hypnotizing grooves spellbind in a broad sense, but focusing just on the instrumentation reveals a lack of consistency over the entire album. Though flush with talent, Skogskult’s penchant for repeating riffs too often over six to seven minutes erodes some of its charm, which is further exacerbated over repeated listens. Bluesy solos and accelerated tempos afford welcome breaks, but more variety through the refrains would invigorate Skogskult’s musical backbone; without more riff diversity, shrinking song lengths could help remedy the repetition. Still, Skogskult boasts plenty of successes, as well. The production is a triumph, with each instrument (and vocals) afforded ample space in the mix. The only understated element is drummer Alexander Söderlund, who supports the band ably within a restrained pocket. Also, Skogskult deftly constructs tension throughout entire songs. Even if each track could lose thirty to sixty seconds, every payoff satisfies through unhurried climaxes and hints at a higher ceiling for the band’s songcraft.
Skogskult is a young band brimming with potential. They guide listeners through the murky fog of stoner doom that cloaks the forest they inhabit, shining a light on the path while allowing listeners to glimpse the dangers just off of it. Skogskult isn’t perfect, but Skogskult impresses with accessible retrofuzz, standout highlights, and a powerhouse vocalist. If they can refine the songwriting approach for their sophomore album while preserving what makes this one special, our next trip through the cult’s forest might just convert us.
Rating: Good
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Bonebag Records
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: December 5th, 2025#2025 #30 #AcidKing #BlackSabbath #BonebagRecords #CultOfLuna #Dec25 #DoomMetal #Dopelord #Meshuggah #Monolord #Naglfar #NocturnalRites #Persuader #Refused #Review #Reviews #SelfTitled #Skogskult #Sleep #StonerDoom #StonerDoomMetal #StonerMetal #SwedishMetal
-
By Grin Reaper
Known for cultivating legendary acts such as Cult of Luna, Meshuggah, and Refused, Umeå, Sweden, sows fertile ground for seminal rock and metal bands.1 Formed in 2022, Skogskult joins their compatriots with a self-titled debut of grimy stoner doom in hand. From Swedish, Skogskult translates to ‘forest cult,’ and with roots firmly planted in scuzzy soil, this fey foursome drinks deeply from the wells of Acid King, Monolord, and Black Sabbath. Skogskult conjures six tracks that pull from Scandinavian mythology and the arcane to warn of dark days getting darker,2 setting a grim and eldritch tone from the outset. So come, friend, and take my hand. Let us walk into these woods together and uncover what mysteries lurk within.
Skogskult studied their forebears closely, as anyone who blindly tangles with Skogskult won’t need long to guess its genre. Many moments are saturated with indica atmospherics thick enough to induce contact highs. Hypnotic plods (“Lyktans Låga”), mid-paced gallops (“Pakten”), and the occasional stirring solo (“Snöblind”) furnish an assortment of backdrops and give individual songs enough character to prevent them from blurring together despite the pervasive gloomy fuzz. Cutting through said fuzz is vocalist Simon Rosengrim, who pierces the dense haze with tempestuous conviction, antithetical to the indolent trappings of stereotypical stoner doom. All told, Skogskult begets a familiar soundscape even casual fans of the genre will at once recognize, molding a unique personality alongside influences and reference points.
Skogskult’s merger of buzzing heft and raw emotion concocts powerful moments across their debut. Opening duo “Lyktans Låga” and “Turs” conform to genre conventions, grooving with ponderous mass as Samuel Nordström and Albin Kroon lumber along on guitar and bass. In fact, most of Skogskult is blanketed in wool, though “Sol” acts as a crucial change-of-pace, offering reverb-drenched strums and echoey vox that recall Sabbath’s “Planet Caravan.” Central tracks “Jag Ger Mig Av” and “Pakten” embolden Skogskult with lively frills, such as the stark baritone vocals midway through the former and the catchy-as-hell 90s post-grunge lilt of the latter. Pulling away from direct inspirations allows Skogskult to forge an identity all their own. In a genre where bands closely adhere to stoner doom’s core sound, it’s not a coincidence that Skogskult’s best moments occur when the album extends past them. In particular, Rosengrim’s performance electrifies when grit and pathos dial to eleven. His singing forgoes the comparatively mellow rhythms and measured deliveries associated with Sleep, Dopelord, and others, instead penetrating stoner doom’s miasma with immediate and undeniable passion. While this ingredient sets Skogskult apart from other outfits, it’s not quite enough to overcome Skogskult’s deficiencies.
Though many of Skogskult’s songwriting tendrils take root, some flounder for purchase. The juxtaposition of urgent vocals and hypnotizing grooves spellbind in a broad sense, but focusing just on the instrumentation reveals a lack of consistency over the entire album. Though flush with talent, Skogskult’s penchant for repeating riffs too often over six to seven minutes erodes some of its charm, which is further exacerbated over repeated listens. Bluesy solos and accelerated tempos afford welcome breaks, but more variety through the refrains would invigorate Skogskult’s musical backbone; without more riff diversity, shrinking song lengths could help remedy the repetition. Still, Skogskult boasts plenty of successes, as well. The production is a triumph, with each instrument (and vocals) afforded ample space in the mix. The only understated element is drummer Alexander Söderlund, who supports the band ably within a restrained pocket. Also, Skogskult deftly constructs tension throughout entire songs. Even if each track could lose thirty to sixty seconds, every payoff satisfies through unhurried climaxes and hints at a higher ceiling for the band’s songcraft.
Skogskult is a young band brimming with potential. They guide listeners through the murky fog of stoner doom that cloaks the forest they inhabit, shining a light on the path while allowing listeners to glimpse the dangers just off of it. Skogskult isn’t perfect, but Skogskult impresses with accessible retrofuzz, standout highlights, and a powerhouse vocalist. If they can refine the songwriting approach for their sophomore album while preserving what makes this one special, our next trip through the cult’s forest might just convert us.
Rating: Good
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Bonebag Records
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: December 5th, 2025#2025 #30 #AcidKing #BlackSabbath #BonebagRecords #CultOfLuna #Dec25 #DoomMetal #Dopelord #Meshuggah #Monolord #Naglfar #NocturnalRites #Persuader #Refused #Review #Reviews #SelfTitled #Skogskult #Sleep #StonerDoom #StonerDoomMetal #StonerMetal #SwedishMetal
-
CW: Sexually suggestive
Happy Cinco de Mayo. Ready for Sex de Mayo? This is a glimpse of the gallery going up tomorrow. #nsfwsky #femalefeetcreators #feet #herfeet #feetsky #arches #toes # #spicysky #nsfwbluesky #prettyfeet #tits #legs
-
CW: Sexually suggestive
Happy Cinco de Mayo. Ready for Sex de Mayo? This is a glimpse of the gallery going up tomorrow. #nsfwsky #femalefeetcreators #feet #herfeet #feetsky #arches #toes # #spicysky #nsfwbluesky #prettyfeet #tits #legs
-
Resources for African American History Month: Selected Digital Collections – Teaching with the Library
Teaching with the Library Primary Sources & Ideas for Educators
ISSN 2691-6916
Share & Subscribe to this blog
- Home
- Resources for African American History Month: Selected Digital Collections
Resources for African American History Month: Selected Digital Collections
February 10, 2026, Posted by: Colleen Smith
Share this post:
This is the second post in a series that looks at different resources from the Library that support teaching and learning about the achievements and contributions of African Americans throughout U.S. history. The first post highlighted several primary source sets from Teaching with the Library; today’s post brings attention to the Library’s digital collections.
More than twenty-five of the Library’s digital collections relate to the rich histories, cultures, traditions, and contemporary experiences of African Americans. A few are highlighted below, along with ideas for using collection items in the classroom.
Selected Collections
African American Photographs Assembled for the 1900 Paris Exposition
W. E. B. Du Bois compiled a series of photographs for the “American Negro” exhibit at the 1900 Paris Exposition. His goal was to show the diversity and successes of African Americans as a counter to common stereotypes. The Library of Congress holds approximately 220 mounted photographs reportedly displayed in the exhibition.
- Teachers might use items in this collection to introduce, investigate, or reinforce aspects of DuBois’s approach to combating racism and segregation.
- Images from the collection are powerful visuals of African Americans holding professions in diverse fields. This may help broaden students’ understanding of African American life at the time and bring attention to the experiences, successes, challenges, and contributions of African American individuals and communities.
By Popular Demand: Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s
To honor the remarkable life and legacy of Jackie Robinson, Library staff put together this collection featuring sources from across many different divisions of the Library.
- The colorful prints and photographs make this an inviting collection to explore with younger learners. Teachers could bring some of these visuals to support existing materials they use to celebrate Robinson and his contributions.
- For older learners, consider sending them to this set of brief essays. Topics include Robinson’s career and the greater subject of segregation in the sport of baseball.
This collection features digitized plays by Hurston (1891-1960), an author, anthropologist, and folklorist.
- A timeline offers a glimpse into Hurston’s life and career and could help students find an angle or selected topic for further research.
- Teachers interested in finding more on Huston’s work might also consult this resource guide from the American Folklife Center, where Hurston’s audio recordings are held. The guide highlights unique unpublished and published materials.
Frederick Douglass Newspapers, 1847 to 1874
Douglass, a leader in the black press, used the medium to communicate and persuade the public on the abolition of slavery and women’s rights. With this collection, students can explore newspapers edited by Frederick Douglass.
- These articles and essays are helpful for finding your way through the collection and identifying aspects to explore further. For example, this post gives further context to Douglass’s famous speech, “What to the American Slave is Your Fourth of July?“
- Ask students to consider how Douglass used the media of his time to capture public attention. In what ways do public figures use media today to communicate a message? What differences and similarities do students notice?
We hope this overview is helpful for considering how you might bring some of the Library’s digital collections to your classroom. If you are interested in more ways for students to engage with materials from the Library, you might check out the latest transcription campaign from By the People: the papers of Christian Fleetwood an African American Union soldier during the Civil War.
Do you enjoy these posts? Subscribe! You’ll receive free teaching ideas and primary sources from the Library of Congress.
Categories
Continue/Read Original Article Here: Resources for African American History Month: Selected Digital Collections | Teaching with the Library
Tags: 1900 Paris Exposition, 25 Collections, African American History Month, American Negro, Blogs, By the People, Christian Fleetwood, Colleen Smith, Frederick Douglass Newspapers, History of Black Americans, Jackie Robinson, Library of Congress, Selected Digital Collections, Teaching with the Library, W.E.Ba. Du Bois, Zora Neal Hurston
#1900ParisExposition #25Collections #AfricanAmericanHistoryMonth #AmericanNegro #Blogs #ByThePeople #ChristianFleetwood #ColleenSmith #FrederickDouglassNewspapers #HistoryOfBlackAmericans #JackieRobinson #LibraryOfCongress #SelectedDigitalCollections #TeachingWithTheLibrary #WEBaDuBois #ZoraNealHurston -
Interview: I.D.K.
Photo courtesy of the band.Following the release of their latest single, “Nark 5,” we sat down I.D.K. to peel back the layers of their catchy, memorable, and energetic sound.
In this conversation, we dive deep into the thematics driving their lyrics, thoughtful songwriting and composing process that allows them to balance hardcore punk energy with a larger-than-life scale. We also get a glimpse into what’s next for the band, including their upcoming music video collaboration with Stone Fisted Production and their ambitious plans for the future.
Hello, thank you for taking the time to answer these questions. How have you been?
I have been well. Can’t complain.
It’s been over a decade since your last original release. Coming back in late 2025, did “Nark 5” feel like the natural first choice for a comeback, or were there other tracks in contention?
No other tracks when we wrote Nark 5. Nark 5 was the spark that drew us out of the life cave and back into the creative expressive side of the world. We are working on more tracks now but at that time our goal was to get a fresh new tune out there.
You’ve cited Star Wars: Andor as the primary catalyst for this track. What was it about the Narkina 5 that specifically resonated with the punk rock ethos of I.D.K.?
Just like in life, there’s always a fight. There’s always some force trying to wreck something good, trying to inject chaos into what’s working. It never stops. It’s always something.
To me, punk is about doing your thing and saying fuck everything else. Fuck the noise. Fuck the pressure. Fuck anyone trying to tell you who you’re supposed to be. The second you cross the line and violate my freedom — or anyone else’s — then it’s on. That’s when it shifts from punk rock to a hardcore beatdown, metaphorically speaking… or in the case of the prison break, literally.
Nark 5 is about the Empire’s bullying — about being pushed, controlled, and locked down — and then finally fighting back. It’s about breaking out and crushing the bully at the end of the prison break arc. That moment? That’s punk rock at its purest.
The song shifts between the perspectives of Cassian Andor (Keef Girgo) and Kino Loy. How did you approach translating those two very different emotional states, the confusion of capture versus the desperate leadership of an escape, into the music?
I feel like both situations share that same kind of crazy intensity. There’s the mental shock of being taken against your will, and then there’s the raw, survival-mode intensity of a life-or-death situation.
I knew right away that both of those moments matched the energy of the music. So what I did was split the song in half — the first half captures the abduction, and the second half drives the prison break.
You also plan to release a music video, done by Stone Fisted Production. How do you feel the visual narrative enhances the cinematic sound you were aiming for?
The video is almost finished. Nedd from Stone Fisted is doing an incredible job with it — he’s really bringing it to life. It’s currently in the post-production phase, and we’ll be announcing a premiere date soon.
I think people are really going to dig it. It’s a great blend of our live performance energy with the Narkina 5 imagery and concept woven throughout. We had a lot of people help us make it happen, and it’s definitely going to be a fun one.
How has the songwriting dynamic changed between you all since your 2008 releases? Is the process more collaborative now, or does it still start with a singular spark?
With Nark 5, the process was more collaborative. The initial spark came from Fabio and Mike, whereas I’m usually the primary songwriter.
Our 2008 EP was officially released in 2008, but it had actually been recorded a few years earlier. Those songs were created in a less collaborative environment, although all the members at the time still weighed in and gave their input on the material.
You’ve described the new sound as having cinematic dynamics. For a veteran hardcore punk band, how do you balance that grander, more polished scale without losing the raw, basement-show energy fans expect?
I’d say Nark 5, especially when combined with the video we’re making for it, has a very cinematic vibe. The song tells a story you can really visualize through the lyrics and the energy it gives off.
The video leans into that as well — there’s a strong cinematic feel, with storytelling woven into the visuals. That said, we feel it still falls right in line with our previous material sonically. The grit? That really comes out in our live shows — and that hasn’t changed.
Musically, “Nark 5” feels so precise. Did the long break change how you approach your instruments or the gear you use in the studio?
Not at all. In terms of playing and our overall approach, we stuck to what we’ve always done.
“Nark 5” deals with the cost of freedom. In today’s political and social climate, do you find yourselves writing more about fictional resistances as a metaphor, or do real-world events still bleed into the lyrics?
A little of both. It’s nearly impossible to keep the real world from bleeding into the lyrics — especially with Nark 5, given the current political and social climate.
How does the North Jersey/Cliffside Park scene look to you in 2026 compared to when you were last active? Is that old guard spirit still there?
It absolutely is. I.D.K. will forever be associated with being one of — if not the first — hardcore/punk bands from the area to really make a mark.
There aren’t necessarily as many shows happening like there were back in the day, at least to our knowledge, but people remember. The spirit is still there, and it gets passed down to the younger kids.
Whenever we play gigs up in the North Jersey area, there are always Cliffside and Fairview people representing at the shows.
You’re now releasing via Scorpion Records across platforms like Spotify and Bandcamp, tools that weren’t the standard back in 2008. How has navigating the modern digital landscape changed your perspective on being an independent band?
It hasn’t necessarily changed our perspective. What it has done is give us more tools at our disposal when it comes to promoting and getting the music out there — which is cool.
Does it take a little away from the more socially organic way things used to work — passing music through friends, grabbing a physical CD or record, and not having access to it outside of that? Sure.
There are pluses and minuses to it.
Hardcore and punk have undergone numerous sub-genre shifts over the last 15 years. What’s your take on the current state of the genre? Is it healthier now than it was during your hiatus?
That’s hard to say. I’m an older head, so I’ll always love what I experienced growing up in the New Jersey hardcore scene in the ’90s. I don’t get out to see shows as much as I’d like to these days, so it’s tough to really speak on the current live gig vibe.
I do follow newer bands online, though, and there are a lot of great ones out there — especially the heavier beatdown and metal-influenced hardcore bands. From what I can see from a distance, that scene is raging.
I don’t see as many bands like us, with more of a traditional punk/hardcore influence in the style. But that could also just be me being a little out of touch, haha.
“Nark 5” is the lead-in for a new EP on Scorpion Records. Can we expect a full concept record based on similar themes, or will the EP explore different territories?
Good question. We’re in the process of putting the music together now. Once we get into writing the lyrics, we’ll see where it takes us. It’s hard to say right now.
Now that the music is out and the video is on its way, what do the touring plans look like for 2026?
We haven’t played any gigs yet since the release of Nark 5, but we’re definitely excited to see how the crowds react — especially once the video drops.
Photo courtesy of the band.How are the new tracks, especially “Nark 5,” translating to a live setting? Is there a specific moment in the song where you really feel the crowd rising up with you?
Again, we haven’t gigged since the releasee so, we shall see!
What do you want the “2020s era” of I.D.K. to be remembered for? Is this a one-off reunion, or is the engine fully restarted for the long haul?
I’d say we’re like an engine that moves steadily, going where it can, when it can. Yes — we’d love to keep this going for the long haul. Our pace and the way we approach it will ultimately determine that.
That’s it. Thank you so much for your time. Anything you would like to say to our readers at the end of this interview?
Absolutely. First, we want to shout out our friend—and sometimes sixth member—Scott Dorey, who’ll be helping with guitar duties at our upcoming March 7th gig in Morris Plains New Jersey at the Autodidact.
Also, Nedd Jacobs and Stone Fisted Productions, who directed our upcoming Nark 5 music video. He’s doing a great job, and we can’t wait to release it.
We also want to give a shout-out to Scott Earth of Scorpion Records to help with our releases and promotion.
Last but certainly not least, our families—for putting up with the noise and the scheduling. I.D.K. simply wouldn’t happen without their support.
#HARDCORE #HARDCOREPUNK #IDK #INTERVIEWS #melodicPunkRock #MUSIC #PUNKROCK -
Shabbat Shalom, friends 🤍
This marks the 29th Shabbat in a row that I’ve had the privilege of sharing your beautiful photos and messages in response to my weekly Shabbat greeting. What began as a simple post has grown into something far more meaningful than I ever imagined.
Week after week, you bring light, warmth, and connection into this space. Seeing the images you share, whether candles, tables, family moments, or quiet reflections has turned this into a truly special tradition for our community.
What started as a collection of lovely photos has become something deeper. Many of you now share glimpses of how Shabbat lives inside your homes and hearts, and it’s incredibly moving to witness those moments.
And this week, perhaps more than ever, as conflict continues in the Middle East, my heart longs for a Shabbat filled with lasting peace for Israel, for the region, and for the world.
Wishing all of you a peaceful and meaningful Shabbat.
-
Shabbat Shalom, friends 🤍
This marks the 27th Shabbat in a row that I’ve had the privilege of sharing your beautiful photos and messages in response to my weekly Shabbat greeting. What began as a simple post has grown into something far more meaningful than I ever imagined.
Week after week, you bring light, warmth, and connection into this space. Seeing the images you share, whether candles, tables, family moments, or quiet reflections has turned this into a truly special tradition for our community.
What started as a collection of lovely photos has become something deeper. Many of you now share glimpses of how Shabbat lives inside your homes and hearts, and it’s incredibly moving to witness those moments.
And this week, perhaps more than ever, as conflict continues in the Middle East, my heart longs for a Shabbat filled with lasting peace for Israel, for the region, and for the world.
Wishing all of you a peaceful and meaningful Shabbat.
-
Shabbat Shalom Friends 🤍
For the 25th Shabbat in a row, I am so grateful and deeply touched to share the beautiful photos and images you post in response to my weekly Shabbat Shalom message. What began as a simple exchange has grown into something truly special.
My heart is full knowing that week after week, we come together to share blessings, peace, light, and connection through Shabbat.
What started with lovely images has blossomed into something precious, as many of you now share glimpses of your personal Shabbat practices. Seeing how Shabbat lives in your homes fills my heart with gratitude and joy.
This has become a cherished tradition—our community coming together again and again. Reading your messages is my favorite way to welcome Shabbat.
I want to thank the countless offerings of support and comfort I received after my Shabbat Shalom post. I am feeling better and resting today ❤️
-
Shabbat Shalom Friends 🤍
For the 24th Shabbat in a row—and on Valentine’s Day, a day that celebrates love—I am so grateful and deeply touched to share the beautiful photos and images you post in response to my weekly Shabbat Shalom message. What began as a simple exchange has grown into something truly special.
My heart is full knowing that week after week, we come together to share blessings, peace, light, and connection through Shabbat.
What started with lovely images has blossomed into something precious, as many of you now share glimpses of your personal Shabbat practices. Seeing how Shabbat lives in your homes fills my heart with gratitude and joy.
This has become a cherished tradition—our community coming together again and again. Reading your messages is my favorite way to welcome Shabbat. If I miss responding, please know it’s never intentional—sometimes this platform hides comments—but I’m always with you in spirit on this sacred day 💙
-
Shabbat Shalom Friends 🤍
For the 23rd Shabbat in a row, I am so grateful and deeply touched to share the beautiful photos and images you post in response to my weekly Shabbat Shalom message. What began as a simple exchange has grown into something truly special.
My heart is full knowing that week after week, we come together to share blessings, peace, light, and connection through Shabbat.
What started with lovely images has blossomed into something precious, as many of you now share glimpses of your personal Shabbat practices. Seeing how Shabbat lives in your homes fills my heart with gratitude and joy.
This has become a cherished tradition—our community coming together again and again. Reading your messages is my favorite way to welcome Shabbat. If I miss responding, please know it’s never intentional—sometimes this platform hides comments—but I’m always with you in spirit on this sacred day 💙
-
Shabbat Shalom Friends 🤍
For the 22nd Shabbat in a row, I am so grateful and deeply touched to share the beautiful photos and images you post in response to my weekly Shabbat Shalom message. What began as a simple exchange has grown into something truly special.
My heart is full knowing that week after week, we come together to share blessings, peace, light, and connection through Shabbat.
What started with lovely images has blossomed into something precious, as many of you now share glimpses of your personal Shabbat practices. Seeing how Shabbat lives in your homes fills my heart with gratitude and joy.
This has become a cherished tradition—our community coming together again and again. Reading your messages is my favorite way to welcome Shabbat. If I miss responding, please know it’s never intentional—but I’m always with you in spirit on this sacred day 💙
-
CW: Albums the Fediverse Loved in 2025 (CW'd because it's a looooooong post)
Albums the Fediverse Loved in 2025
And here we have it: a list of 151 albums (plus a few artists/labels in general) that kept 64 of us going in 2025, nearly 75% of those 2025 releases and the rest earlier gems! Given our collective eclectic tastes, voting/ranking was not attempted, but bolded titles and post tags indicate albums that were submitted by multiple Fedizens. Genre tags are included as tasting notes (apologies if I got any wrong), each title is linked to its Bandcamp/Songlink when possible, and footnotes list who submitted each album along with extra comments they included (warning: comments may include MOAR ALBUMS; also note: footnotes look way better on the blog). So, click and listen away – perhaps you’ll find a new-to-you album that gets you through 2026!
Thanks so much to the Fedizens who joined in, it’s so nice to see familiar faces from the 1001 Other Albums project as well as some new ones! And, as always, it’s lovely to get a glimpse of how diverse our tastes in music are, and to see people trying something new solely based on a random Fedi recommendation. The Fedi music community truly is a bright spot, and I personally am immensely grateful for it. 🙏🏻
Band – Title (year released, place of origin; genre)footnote
Action/Adventure – Ever After (2025, US; pop-punk)1
AFI – Silver Bleeds the Black Sun… (2025, US; post-punk, gothic rock)2
Against Me! – White Crosses (2010, US; punk rock)3
Alkaline Trio – Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs (2024, US; punk rock)4
Am I in Trouble? – Spectrum (2025, US; avant-garde black metal)5
Ami Taf Ra – The Prophet and the Madman (2025, US/Morocco; Moroccan gnawa, gospel, jazz)6
An Abstract Illusion – Woe (2022, Sweden; atmospheric black/death/prog metal)7
Analog Africa (label, in general) (1960s-80s, Africa; reissues)8
Anna Tivel – Animal Poem (2025, US; indie folk)9
Archon Satani – The Righteous Way to Completion (1997, Sweden; death ambient/black industrial)10
Ashbreather – La Grande Bouffe (2025, Canada; progressive sludge/death metal)11
Au4 – …And Down Goes The Sky (2013, Canada; prog rock)12
aya – hexed! (2025, UK; electronic, noise)13
Bad Cop/Bad Cop – Lighten Up (2025, US; punk rock)14
Baghed – Smear Campaign (2025, US; punk rock)15
Bank Myna – Eimuria (2025, France; post-rock/metal, doom gaze, slow core)16
Belle and Sebastian – Push Barman to Open Old Wounds (2005, Scotland; indie pop)17
Benedicte Maurseth – Mirra (2025, Norway; folk, jazz)18
Bill Frisell – Harmony (2019, US; folk-jazz)19
Black Flower – Kinetic (2025, Belgium; Ethio-jazz, Afrobeat, dub)20
Bon Iver – SABLE, fABLE (2025, US; indie folk/pop)21
Brittany Davis – Black Thunder (2025, US; cosmic jazz, r&b/soul, singer-songwriter)22
CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso – Papota (2025, Argentina; experimental trap, hip-hop, EDM, jazz, Latin pop)23
Caroline Shaw / Attacca Quartet – Orange (2019, US; classical, ambient, folk)24
Castle Rat – The Bestiary (2025, US; fantasy heavy metal)25
Causa Sui – Pewt’r Sessions 1 (2011, Denmark; psych/stoner rock)26
Celeste – Woman of Faces (2025, UK; neo-soul, jazz, singer-songwriter)27
Charlie Hunter, Carter McLean featuring Silvana Estrada – s/t (2018, US/Mexico; jazz)28
Circuit des Yeux – Halo on the Inside (2025, US; singer-songwriter, experimental)29
Civic – Chrome Dipped (2025, Australia; punk)30
clipping – Dead Channel Sky (2025, US; hip-hop)31
Dan Mangan – Natural Light (2025, Canada; indie rock/folk)32
Daniela Pas – Spira (2023, Italy; singer-songwriter, electronic, experimental)33
Data Rebel – Single Cell (2025, UK; electronic, IDM, ambient)34
Dax Riggs – 7 Songs for Spiders (2025, US; blues metal/shoegaze blues)35
Deafheaven – Lonely People With Power (2025, US; blackgaze, metal)36
Degraved – Spectral Realm of Ruin (2025, US; death metal)37
Delobos – Cabal (2025, Spain; post-alt rock, post-rock, psychedelia)38
Devil ANTHEM. – Profound Rebuild (2025, Japan; J-pop)39
Die Spitz – Something to Consume (2025, US; punk, alt rock)40
Divide and Dissolve – Insatiable (2025, Australia; doom, drone, neo classical)41
Dödsrit – Mortal Coil (2021, Sweden; atmospheric/melodic black metal, blackened crust)42
Dool – The Shape of Fluidity (2024, Netherlands; rock, alternative)43
downy – 8th Album/Untitled (2025, Japan; math rock/post-rock)44
Drab Majesty – Completely Careless (2012-2015) (2016, US; darkwave, shoegaze, dream pop)45
Dropkick Murphy – For The People (2025, US; Celtic punk)46
Eikichi Yazawa – I believe (2025, Japan; rock)47
El Pino & The Volunteers – The Long-lost Art of Becoming Invisible (2009, Netherlands; alt country/folk)48
Elli De Mon – Raìse (2025, Italy; blues, dialect, garage, psychedelic)49
Eric Church – Evangeline vs. The Machine (2025, US; country)50
Ethmebb – Allo Babar et les Caramboleurs (2025, France; progressive melodic blackened death power metal)51
Ex-Vöid – In Love Again (2025, UK; indie pop/rock)52
EYES – Spinner(2025, Denmark; hardcore, noise rock)53
FACS – Wish Defense (2025, US; noise rock, neo-post-punk)54
Faetooth – Labrynthine (2025, US; fairy doom/stoner metal)55
False Aralia (label) – ALL the new 12-inch singles (2025, US; abstract electronic)56
Fever Ray – The Year of the Radical Romantics (2025, Sweden; experimental, electronic, pop)57
FOKALITE – Fokas, Lite & Four Shooting Riddles (2025, Japan; J-pop)58
Françoise Hardy – La question (1971, France; French pop, Brazilian saudade/bossa nova)59
Fust – Big Ugly (2025, US; rock)60
Geese – Getting Killed (2025, US; art/experimental rock)61
Gnome – King (2022, Belgium; stoner/prog/hard rock)62
Habak – Mil orquídeas en medio del desierto (2025, Mexico; melodic crust)63
Hallelujah the Hills – DECK (2025, US; indie rock)64
HANABIE – Bucchigiri Tokyo (2024, Japan; metalcore)65
Hatchie – Liquorice (2025, Australia; indie/dream pop)66
Hole – Live Through This (1994, US; alt rock)67
IAN – Come On Everybody, Let’s Do Nothing! (2025, UK; experimental, post-rock/metal)68
Igorrr – Amen (2025, France; experimental/avant-garde metal)69
Imperial Triumphant – Goldstar (2025, US; experimental metal)70
In the Womb of the Universe – Searching for Sunrise (2024, US; electronic, synthpop)71
In the Woods… – Otra (2025, Norway; avant-garde metal)72
Insomnium – Shadows of the Dying Sun (2014, Finland; melodic death metal)73
Jade Bird – Who Wants to Talk About Love (2025, UK; folk rock, singer-songwriter)74
JER – Death of the Heart (2025, US; ska punk)75
Jethro Tull – Thick as a Brick (1972, UK; prog rock)76
Judas Priest – Invincible Shield (2024, UK; heavy metal)77
Just Mustard – We Were Just Here (2025, Ireland; post-punk, noise, shoegaze, trip hop)78
Kaku P-Model – unZIP (2025, Japan; experimental, electronic)79
Kieran Hebden and William Tyler – 41 Longfield Street Late ‘80s (2025, UK; electronic)80
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Float Along – Fill Your Lungs (2013, Australia; psychedelic pop)81
Kostnatění – Přílišnost (2025, US; avant-garde black metal)82
Küenring – In Search of Paradise (2025, Austria; heavy metal/hard rock)83
L.A. Salami (artist, in general) (UK; folk, post-modern blues, acoustic, rock)84
Labyrinthus Stellarum – Rift in Reality (2025, Ukraine; atmospheric/cosmic black metal)85
Lorien Testard – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Original Soundtrack) (2025, France; soundtrack)86
Lorna Shore – I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me (2025, US; death metal/deathcore)87
Lucy Dacus – Forever is a Feeling (2025, US; indie rock, folk-pop, singer-songwriter)88
Maeror Tri – Multiple Personality Disorder (1993, Germany; ambient, noise, drone)89
Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force – Khadim (2025, Germany/Senegal; mbalax, experimental, dub techno)90
Marshall Allen – New Dawn (2025, US; avant-garde jazz)91
Max Cooper – On Being (2025, UK; electronic, ambient, avant-garde)92
Messa – The Spin (2025, Italy; doom metal)93
Michel Legrand – The Essential Michel Legrand Film Music Collection (2005, France; soundtrack, compilation)94
MIKE – Showbiz! (2025, US; hip-hop/rap)95
Miynt – Rain Money Dogs (2025, Sweden; indie/bedroom rock)96
Modern English – Mesh & Lace (1981, UK; post-punk)97
Momma – Welcome to My Blue Sky (2025, US; alt/indie rock)98
more eaze & claire rousay – no floor (2025, US; experimental, ambient, avant-pop, sound collage)99
Moron Police – Pachinko (2025, Norway; concept album)100
Morris Kolontyrsky – Origination (2025, US; ambient, drone, experimental)101
Nærværet – Når Man Ser Inn I En Annens Hjerte (2024, Sweden/Norway; experimental, field recording, tape manipulation/loops)102
Nailed to Obscurity – Generation of The Void (2025, Germany; melodic/prog death/doom metal)103
Nicolas Gombert & James Weeks / Apartment House – G O M B E R T (2025, Flanders/UK; contemporary classical)104
Nora Brown and Stephanie Coleman – Lady of the Lake (2023, US; folk)105
Nout – Live Album (2024, France; alternative, punk, rock, jazz, noise)106
Olga Anna Markowska – Iskra (2025, Poland; modern classical, ambient)107
Ozzy Osbourne – Ozzmosis (1995, UK; heavy metal)108
Pino Palladino & Blake Mills – That Wasn’t a Dream (2025, Wales/US; experimental jazz)109
Point Mort – Le Point de Non-retour (2025, France; blackened crust postcore)110
Plague of Carcosa – In The Dreamless Deep (2025, US; doomnoise, experimental metal)111
Population II – Maintenant Jamais (2025, Canada; art/prog/psychedelic rock)112
Primal Scream – XTRMNTR (2000, Scotland; experimental electro-rock)113
Priscilla Block – Things You Didn’t See (2025, US; country, singer-songwriter)114
Psychonaut – World Maker (2025, Belgium; post-metal)115
Queens of the Stone Age – Alive in the Catacombs (2025, US; rock)116
Radiopuhelimet – Kosminen Tiedottomuus (2020, Finland; alt rock)117
Rebecca Foon & Aliayta Foon-Dancoes – Reverie (2025, Canada; modern classical)118
Rivers of Nihil – s/t (2025, US; death/prog metal)119
Rogue Jones – Dos Bebés (2023, Wales; folk, indie pop)120
Shayfer James – Summoning (2025, US; noir-pop, dark cabaret)121
Shedfromthebody – Whisper and Wane (2025, Finland; doomgaze, [post-]metal)122
Shepherds of Cassini – In Thrall to Heresy (2025, New Zealand; prog metal)123
Silvana Estrada – Vendrán Suaves Lluvias (2025, Mexico; singer-songwriter)124
Silvana Estrada (with Charlie Hunter) – Lo Sagrado (2017, Mexico/US; singer-songwriter)125
Širom – In the Wind of Night, Hard-Fallen Incantations Whisper (2025, Slovenia; instrumental avant-garde imaginary folk)126
SKC & The Poem – s/t (2025, Belgium; alt/folk rock)127
SKLOSS – The Pattern Speaks (2025, US/Scotland; space gaze, post-metal)128
Soulwax – All Systems Are Lying (2025, Belgium; electronic alt rock)129
Spiritbox – Tsunami Sea (2025, Canada; metalcore)130
State Azure – The Light That Remains (2025, UK; electronica, ambient, downtempo)131
Stereolab – Switched On Volumes 1-5 (2024, UK/France; avant-pop)132
Steve Tibbetts – Close (2025, US; jazz fusion)133
Stick To Your Guns – Keep Planting Flowers (2025, US; hardcore)134
Suede – Antidepressants (2025, UK; post-punk, gothic rock)135
Summer Walker – Finally Over It (2025, US; R&B, singer-songwriter)136
Susan Bear – Algorithmic Mood Music (2024, Scotland; electronic, alt-pop)137
Swansea Sound – Twentieth Century (2023, Wales; indie pop)138
TDJ (artist, in general) (Canada; electronic)139
Terveet Kädet – Lapin Helvetti (2015, Finland; hardcore punk)140
Tool – Lateralus (2001, US; prog rock/metal, art rock)141
The Bug Club – “Have U Ever Been 2 Wales” (2025, Wales; indie rock)142
The New Eves – The New Eve Is Rising (2025, UK; avant-garde/art rock)143
Trio del Mango – Cómelo (2025, US/Puerto Rico; experimental, noise)144
Turnstile – Never Enough (2025, US; alt rock)145
UNIVERSITY – McCartney, It’ll Be OK (2025, UK; punk, noise rock)146
Water Damage – Instruments (2025, US; experimental psych/drone-rock)147
Weakened Friends – Feels Like Hell (2025, US; indie rock)148
Weirs – Diamond Grove (2025, US; trad folk, experimental noise)149
Wet Leg – moisturizer (2025, UK; indie rock)150
White Lies – Five V2 (2019, UK; post-punk)151
X-Cetra – Summer 2000 (Y2K 25th Anniversary Edition) (2025, US; sleepover core, dance-pop)152
Yara Asmar – everyone I love is sleeping and I love them so so much (2025, Lebanon; modern classical/ambient)153
Yugen Blakrok – Anima Mysterium (2019, South Africa; hip-hop)154
Yws Gwynedd – Codi/ \Cysgu (2014, Wales; indie rock)155
Footnote Number. Fediverse username(s): Comments
- poisonous ↩︎
- buffyleigh: My emotional support album of the year. I’ve been a fan of AFI since 2000 but haven’t liked an album since 2006. The second I heard the first single “Behind The Clock”, my expectations for this album skyrocketed, and they were absolutely exceeded. It sounds nothing like anything they’ve ever done, and yet it feels like this was the album they’ve always been moving towards. Song of the year goes to the entirety of side A, and Davey Havok’s unexpectedly different sound on this album is my overall favourite vocal performance of year. ↩︎
- Braininabowl ↩︎
- umrk: top album requested by my kids in the car this year ↩︎
- brh ↩︎
- RolloTreadway: The most gloriously unhinged album I’ve heard this year. Twists together ideas from everywhere without the slightest consideration of whether doing so might be normal or accepted. The kind of album where a classic French chanson or some deep filthy funk just appears out of nowhere and then is never referred to again. It shouldn’t work but it absolutely does. ↩︎
- gavin57: That last one is an all-timer. It’s astonishing. ↩︎
- platenworm ↩︎
- rachelcholst ↩︎
- 3rik: This has been a year for nighttime music and music for trying to sleep. ↩︎
- swampgas: definitely my most played this year. A sludgy, deathdoom concept album about greed and gluttony and corruption thats riffy and groovy af. These are driving rhythms that chug hard! ↩︎
- MichaelMcWilliams: The one album that tops my list this year also appears in the 1001 Other Albums list. Band website offering free download of the album: https://au4.ca ↩︎
- brh ↩︎
- poisonous ↩︎
- jake4480 ↩︎
- mbr ↩︎
- riff: Most “Wait why did i never listen to this band before ?” of the year. ↩︎
- keefeglise ↩︎
- eamonn ↩︎
- _slotek_ ↩︎
- onuryasar: My kind of, very balanced Indie Pop: just the right amount of Indie but not too much and just the right amount of Pop but not too much 🙂 ↩︎
- icastico ↩︎
- santialone ↩︎
- eamonn ↩︎
- burnitdown || MetalheadDana ↩︎
- cloudtripper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_e5kKzlFqU&list=RD8_e5kKzlFqU&start_radio=1 ↩︎
- nevar23 ↩︎
- debonaire: Recency bias is pushing me to three Silvana Estrada albums. I love her voice, I love the music, I love her with Charlie Hunter. ↩︎
- otherdog ↩︎
- fistfulofdave: Aussie punk in the vein of The Saints and Radio Birdman. ↩︎
- rothko ↩︎
- Chigaze: what happens when four guys to go a cottage in Ontario, find a flow state, and record an album over a few days. I got to see them play the album through at the Winspear in Edmonton and it’s way up there on my concert experience list. ↩︎
- evilchili: The Italian singer and composer’s debut is a hypnotic journey of loops, bloops, and dramatic and impassioned vocalizations. ↩︎
- nellie_m ↩︎
- fistfulofdave: Blues metal? Shoegaze blues? I don’t know or care, I like it. ↩︎
- tym || niels ↩︎
- jake4480 ↩︎
- santialone ↩︎
- Kingu ↩︎
- tym || demon6 ↩︎
- otherdog ↩︎
- MetalheadDana: I listened to this album when it first came out in 2021 but for some reason it didn’t click with me. But apparently 2021 Dana had horrible taste in music, because in early 2025 I randomly tried Dodsrit – Mortal Coil again and fell in love and have been obsessed with it all year, it’s the perfect blend of crust punk and black metal and I love it. ↩︎
- TG_Esq ↩︎
- rustynail ↩︎
- alicemcalicepants ↩︎
- Chigaze: nails it just as a solid Dropkick’s album but goes farther with songs made for the times. “Who’ll Stand With Us” and “School Days Over” are amazing workers songs while “Chesterfields and Aftershave” takes me back to my own grandfather. ↩︎
- thesinkingbelle ↩︎
- Braininabowl ↩︎
- riff: Most listened this year. ↩︎
- Mark52 ↩︎
- Moss ↩︎
- e (eva) ↩︎
- steveroyle: Leaving out Never Enough by Turnstile as I’m sure that’ll get plenty of votes. ↩︎
- fistfulofdave: Angular, noise rock, neo-post punk. Unsettling, laid-back, yet aggressive. And yes it was the last album Steve Albini recorded. ↩︎
- MetalheadDana || demon6 ↩︎
- soundclamp: Runner-ups – https://lineimprint.bandcamp.com/album/muzak-for-the-encouragement-of-unproductivity; https://myheartaninvertedflame.bandcamp.com/album/my-heart-an-inverted-flame-apparitions-split; https://timbarnes.bandcamp.com/album/lost-words-1 ↩︎
- buffyleigh: I’ve known of Fever Ray since first seeing the TV show Vikings, but I for some reason didn’t check them out further until this year, when their s/t album came up for a blog post. I was floored. As it happens, their kinda sorta live album was set to come out soon after my first listen of the s/t, so I got caught up on the full Karin Dreijer discography, got super duper obsessed with their spectacular ARTE concert (which is essentially the same versions performed on the new album), and proceeded to be immensely inspired – nay, awakened – by this artist. ↩︎
- Kingu ↩︎
- onuryasar: I’ve first discovered the song Apocalypse by Cigarettes After Sex (I know, late comer), which brought me to Greg Gonzalez’s Wikipedia page, that says “Gonzalez was heavily inspired by French singer Françoise Hardy and her album La question”. I remember this album being mentioned in my Fedi timeline recently, so I gave it a spin and it turned on and on for the remainder of the year. [Editor’s note: Also see the 1001 OA spotlight on this album from earlier this year!] ↩︎
- rachelcholst ↩︎
- mynameistillian ↩︎
- burnitdown ↩︎
- demon6 ↩︎
- donutage: I was a bit skeptical of this, and sure, in a 52-song project there’s some unevenness, but between the sheer audacity of the attempt & the frequent successes it scores, definitely one of the more remarkable records of the year. ↩︎
- Tak ↩︎
- e (eva) ↩︎
- Lizahadiz ↩︎
- mbr ↩︎
- brh ↩︎
- umrk: my fav album released in 2025 ↩︎
- superflippy ↩︎
- raisedfist ↩︎
- gavin57 ↩︎
- Mark52: Jade Bird has been by far my most listened to album this year. ↩︎
- poisonous ↩︎
- derthomas: I kept coming back to this album because it just fits every mood. It’s peak Jethro Tull if you ask me, it’s perfect in any way. Also the Steven Wilson Remaster sounds incredible. ↩︎
- burnitdown ↩︎
- jebeyer: a longer list is here – https://www.buymusic.club/list/whistlingkitty-some-of-my-favorite-2025-releases ↩︎
- thesinkingbelle: honorable mentions – Scare – In The End, Was It Worth It; Creatvre – Toujours Humain ; Guck – Gucked Up ; AVTT/PTTN – AVTT/PTTN; Saor – Amidst the Ruins ; Jessica93 – 666 tours de periph’ ; Deadguy – Near-Death Travel Services; LS Dunes – Violet; Aesop Rock – I Heard It’s A Mess There Too ; Fishbone – Stockholm Syndrome ; Dead Pioneers – Po$t American ; Ethereal Wound – Defile | Demise; Sci Fi Industries – Initial States ↩︎
- soundclamp ↩︎
- cloudtripper ↩︎
- rustynail ↩︎
- derthomas: My AOTY from a very underground Heavy Metal band from Austria. ↩︎
- platenworm ↩︎
- raisedfist ↩︎
- thesinkingbelle ↩︎
- t4s: Honorable mentions – The Halo Effect, Machine Head, Heaven Shall Burn, Spiritbox, Jinjer, Allegaeon ↩︎
- rachelcholst ↩︎
- 3rik ↩︎
- Wintergr33n: Percussion-driven music from Senegal on a self-released album: https://ra.co/news/82509. ↩︎
- platenworm: 5 things that ruled my world musically this year:
– The Analog Africa Label
– The Artist L.A. Salami
– The knowledge that you can have too much music
– The knowledge that you can make your solo debut album when you are 100 years old……Hail Hail Marshall Allen
– And that everybody loved Ozzy ↩︎ - nellie_m: The music project that somehow touched me most deeply was the result of two years of work by Max Cooper. „Powerful works of art have traditionally sprung from some source deep within an artist and, if they strike the right tone, resonate with an audience to leave a lasting mark. But what if that equation were reversed: what if an artist were to draw their inspiration from deep within their audience, and use that to reflect those ideas, emotions, hopes, fears, pains and aspirations back to us?…“ ↩︎
- niels || TG_Esq || sentynel || otherdog || umrk ↩︎
- eamonn ↩︎
- jake4480 ↩︎
- steveroyle ↩︎
- alicemcalicepants ↩︎
- BramMeehan ↩︎
- avi_miller: All three fall into the more ambient realm, and they all are absolutely phenomenal. I love music that is based more around textures and creating a mood than creating a melody, and this year had some really good ones. ↩︎
- niels ↩︎
- TG_Esq ↩︎
- 3rik ↩︎
- raisedfist ↩︎
- keefeglise: Compositions by Nicholas Gombert and James Weeks. Performed by Apartment House. Flanders/UK. Contemporary Classical (Debatable! Gombert died in 1560.) ↩︎
- evilchili: Two hipster kids from Brooklyn play 100 year old Appalachian folk tunes and make them come alive. Honest, reverential, and true. ↩︎
- riff: “Instantly burned in my brain” this year (well, it was actually their KEXP session from april that blew my mind, but since i have to submit an album, it’ll do nicely 🙂 ). ↩︎
- avi_miller ↩︎
- derthomas: I discovered this album this year on a metal journey (yeah, late to the party) and I loved it. It’s my favourite Ozzy album. ↩︎
- _slotek_ ↩︎
- mbr ↩︎
- tym: Oh and not a brand new release, but the remaster and new tracks for the 20th anniversary reissue of ‘Takk…’ by Sigur Rós are pretty great. That and ( ) are still what I listen to the most, this year and apparently every year. ↩︎
- Kingu ↩︎
- epu: I had all but forgotten party drug enthusiasm tracks like ‘higher than the sun’ from 1991, and it turns out they made so many albums since I last tuned in. This one really resonates with my reaction to USpol this year. It rekindled my love for this band; I bought Evil Heat import on CD, my first physical purchase since last year. ↩︎
- Mark52 ↩︎
- sentynel ↩︎
- Braininabowl ↩︎
- jiiruu ↩︎
- avi_miller ↩︎
- jiiruu || t4s || gavin57 ↩︎
- Steffi ↩︎
- superflippy ↩︎
- rustynail: most played ↩︎
- sentynel ↩︎
- debonaire ↩︎
- debonaire ↩︎
- TwoClownsEating: I discovered this band in 2025. Absolutely incredible, I’ve bought their entire catalogue and had the privilege to see them live a few months ago. Unbelievably good musicians. Magical music. ↩︎
- jomel: 2025 was a great year for Belgian music. Stef Kamil Carlens, co-founder of dEUS has released a gem with his new band The Poem. I have seen SKC twice this year, once in a solo gig, and the second time (in less then 2 weeks) for the “worst Case scenario” rewind from (and so with) dEUS, those two concerts were fabulous, and at the time, I wasn’t expecting this release.
Bonus Albums: The live album from Depeche Mode – Memento Mori: Mexico City; Arvo Pârt – Credo (released Alpha Classics label) which includes his “hits” – Credo , Fratres , Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten (my favourite one) https://outhere-music.com/en/albums/arvo-part-credo; 2025 Bryan Ferry release, with Amelia Barrat as female lead singer/speaker. Some of his material came from the 70’s and were updated, it’s a timeless album, and elegant as always https://soundcloud.com/bryanferry/sets/loose-talk-4 ↩︎ - jebeyer ↩︎
- jomel: (AKA 2manydj’s) Yep, those guys will make you dance, and rock, I guess they’ve listened to Kraftwerk & Front242. ↩︎
- Tak ↩︎
- nellie_m ↩︎
- cloudtripper ↩︎
- _slotek_ ↩︎
- t4s ↩︎
- Lizahadiz ↩︎
- slamma ↩︎
- e (eva): algorithmic mood music was my fav last year! but i’m still listening to it and i didn’t submit anything then. ↩︎
- Steffi ↩︎
- BramMeehan: I’ve listened to so much TDJ, though no one release in particular. ↩︎
- jiiruu ↩︎
- buffyleigh: There’s so many other albums I’d love to list here for exposure, but it feels more honest to list this masterpiece, my first obsession of the year, courtesy of catching their amazing set at the big Black Sabbath/Ozzy send-off concert. I mean, I even titled my AOTY list “Forty Six & 2”, since that was the first song Tool played there and got my attention. Said list is here. ↩︎
- epu: Ok, this one’s kind of a cheat, it’s an EP.
2024, my friend turned me on to Bug Club for its lo-fi production aesthetic, humor and infectious fun/dark undertones. Marriage from 2023 album ‘Rare Birds: Hour of Song’ was the hook.
You can get this band straight into your heart and mind with this EP. And it takes me back to that one time I did go to Wales. ↩︎ - jomel: This newcomer British female band has written the ultimate feminist anthem as opening track. || RolloTreadway: I don’t tend to be very much of a rock person, so for a big brash rock record to have such an impact on me must say something. It’s noisy and it’s loud and it has guitars and drums and punkiness. And, er, flutes. Harmonicas. Cellos. Weird interpretations of bible stories. All chaos and absurdity and celebration and being absolutely done with the patriarchy and above all else fun. So much fun. ↩︎
- soundclamp ↩︎
- santialone ↩︎
- steveroyle ↩︎
- jebeyer ↩︎
- donutage: far & away my number 1; an angry & desperate neo-grunge banger. Sonia Sturino is a force of nature. ↩︎
- RolloTreadway: In parts weird and experimental, in others traditional. Here there’s strange droney noise, and then there’s some light, old-fashioned fiddle playing. Electronic distortion, a choir recorded live outdoors singing a simple hymn. It’s an astonishingly creative and unique folk record. ↩︎
- donutage: not as jaw-dropping as their debut (my runaway 2022 fave), but with a lot of the same qualities. It’s dancy, smart, & sexy, without ever once being submissive. || slamma ↩︎
- alicemcalicepants ↩︎
- slamma ↩︎
- keefeglise ↩︎
- evilchili: Afro-futurist South African Hip-Hop Mysticism. Blakrok instantly became my favourite female MC. ↩︎
- Steffi ↩︎
#AOTY #AOTY2025 #CastleRat #Deafheaven #DieSpitz #Faetooth #ListenToThis #Messa #music #musicDiscovery #RiversOfNihil #TheNewEves #WetLeg