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[armchairaleck]

Chapter 6 in which I had to write a lot of things outside my comfort zone, original characters, WITH names.. I hate making up names.. but plot has to move on.. anyway in this chapter Viren gets some new clothes, as a little treat for me..

[armchairaleck]

Chapter 5 in which Viren reflects on magic and his err amazing relationship with Soren and the angst tag will be heavily leant upon... I live for the angst tag so warning for that and for self inflicted injuries.

[armchairaleck]

Each chapter I edit ends up with about 50% more dialogue added in, because I forget that there's a lot of stuff Corvus probably doesn't know and will need to know for later conversations/story beats..

But then... I'm also like, they're on a 400 mile road trip or whatever it is, let's assume they talk in the in-between downtime a bit too... can I allow that someone reading will infer this, or do I write them all out in detail? The answer is… IDK??... I'm not really used to writing dialogue heavy multi chaptered fics... anyway I hope it works okay to read..

[armchairaleck]

Urgh, my cold turkey tumblr quit is going about as well as a smoker crawling behind the bike sheds three times a day...

[armchairaleck]

Chapter 4 in which Viren goes through the cosmic horrors, if you’re reading this and getting the impression that Viren’s just gonna go through a lot of cosmic horror… YES this is that fic.. but I hope it will be entertaining anyway.. 

I wanted to write something fun and happy for Viren’s birthday but this is taking all my spare time right now..

[armchairaleck]

"No, he's the same.

He's my father."

from TDP Reflections: Strangers

[armchairaleck]

This is so interesting! I have been thinking about the Kpp’Ar line ‘you made the choice you’ve always made the one that gives you power’ because it’s a great roast… and it can be used as the line of - yeah this is what Viren’s always been about, everything else he says is a lie - but I feel like there’s a lot of other stuff going on with Viren’s choices.. as you say he’s done a poor job if all he was interested in was power, by s1 he should have AT LEAST been regent and worked on garnering a little more popularity among the other council members who seem largely indifferent or hostile to him.. and tbh given Viren’s latent power, if power was his sole motivation Harrow would surely have had an ‘unfortunate accident’ at some point along the way during one of the numerous assassination attempts they’ve apparently faced..

Also interested in whether it’s the ghostly spirit of Kpp’Ar giving him this roast (in which case I’m guessing a little bitterness has crept into his assessment after a decade plus in the coin) or Viren’s projecting, in which case a part of his psyche is feeding him that line… which tbh I probably prefer the idea of just because he’s acknowledging this somewhere in his subconscious, and I like the idea of this internal battle between the motivations of family or power that's going on within him and that he can’t really acknowledge, and is likely some messy, conflicting combination of the two.

I like to feel that Viren’s choice to save Soren was a choice motivated by love/family rather than power, I mean I guess there’s a pitting yourself against the forces of nature potential, but it’s not like he gains any recognition from anyone else (other than Lissa leaving..)

So there are always the conflicting motivations within him, humanity, family, power, and how they oscillate and change and warp over the years is one of the things that makes Viren a fascinating character to me, but I think pre show at least it’s usually a blend of the three..

Also in terms of the cycle being broken, and I guess this was probably discussed ad infinitum back at the time it aired but I never really ever see anything on it… unless Harrow and Viren had gone off to kill Avizendum nothing would have changed… everyone would be sitting behind the border the same as they’d ever been… it takes a catalyst of violence to break the cycle? (I’m pretty sure this isn’t the message I should be taking from the show but it’s the one I keep coming back to..) so the kids break it for all the right motivations, but it’s the adults who start it for all the wrong ones..

I don’t honestly know if Viren makes that initial assassination choice for power, it’s not really going to change the overall balance, there are plenty of other arch dragons waiting in the wings and he presumably knows this, does he think it will start a war, is he planning for that? In which case better to have the Katolis army prepared already, and maybe have put out some tentative feelers with the pentarchy.. Is it for family (i.e. Harrow) where presumably he atones for Sarai’s loss and maybe garners some political (power) points with the king… is it for humanity to get rid of this threat at the border and hope it will be replaced with a lesser one (while knowing you could bring down a whole raft of vengeance?) To me it seems like another mash of all his motivations, coming together with, oh look… now I have the unicorn horn the final missing piece, let’s go…

I'd Do Anything (... But I Won't Do That)

This started out kind of weird and petty but then turned into an actual thing about the relationship of Viren's character arc(s) to the Arc 2 "I'll do anything for you" theme, because that's actually pretty important for the context of how both Callum and Claudia will have to confront the same conflict.

Pictured: Do NOT take a shot every time we get a callback to this line, you will die.

Basically, the petty part is that I think evaluating Viren's Arc 1 decisions through the "I will do anything for my family" lens is... disingenuous is too strong a word, but maybe simplistic? The "Viren doesn't reveal/offer the egg to save Harrow's life because he's too preoccupied with hanging on to his own power" take has never sat right with me because the real core problem of Viren is a lot more complex than just "he's lying (to himself)," it's a whole pattern of denying his own agency in doubling down on his mistakes. He'll make one bad/selfish decision, and it becomes a cascade of subsequent actions that he sees as being unavoidable, but that aren't necessarily even informed by the same reasoning or values as the initial decision. Like everything else in Viren's dream, Kpp'Ar's take that his choices are all oriented toward power is both accurate and not necessarily as literal as it seems.

Because, like... Viren's not actually a manipulator or even much of a planner—he's a very skilled opportunist. That's why all his choices wind up being based entirely on the context of past choices, and frequently make no sense when you look at them from a "hey buddy, where exactly do you think you're going with this" angle. It also contributes to why he's so desperate for control all the time, in that he acts primarily in a reactive way rather than proactively, which is always an inherently less secure position.

Pictured: The kind of statement that definitely always leads to things going super well.

Even taking the egg in the first place is a reactive decision—not that he doesn't make a choice there, or that he doesn't choose power over the threat he believes the egg poses, but he did actually walk all the way up the Storm Spire, fight five or six Dragonguard, and get kicked down a flight of stairs with the intent of destroying it. He didn't argue with Harrow about destroying it while secretly planning to take it for himself. He only even thinks of it as a weapon because Tiadrin planted the idea in his mind—as an opportunist, the temptation to leave an avenue to power open rather than close it off is what he can't resist. He sat on Sarai's last breath for ten years waiting for a chance to weaponize it to maximum effect, he can sit (figuratively... or literally, I'm not gonna stop him) on the egg for as long as it takes for an appropriate use it to appear. Tiadrin even specifically encourages that he not "waste" it, both specifically by destroying it now, and implicitly by using it too quickly and foolishly.

Pictured: Smart mom, dumb ass.

Tiadrin's angle, of course, is that the longer Viren hangs on to the egg without actually using it, the higher the chance it can be recovered. She doesn't know that Viren will leave things in a state where the assumption is that the egg was destroyed, meaning no one will think to try recovering it, but that's not really her fault and it still pays off.

The gamble Viren makes, on the other hand, is that the opportunities the egg affords will be worth the risk of it somehow falling back into Xadian hands. If the egg returns to Xadia alive, he's back to square "his name will be vengeance" in the game of We Killed the Dragon King. So yeah, you could say Viren values keeping the egg over Harrow's life, but in doing that he's actually operating largely on the exact same values and beliefs that made him argue for destroying it in the first place. It's just that his prior choice of risking humanity's security for the sake of potentially world-altering power has backfired in the context of an immediate and direct threat to Harrow's life. Really, the entire rest of s1 and s2 are him doubling down specifically on keeping the egg from returning to Xadia while also milking the opportunities coming from that course—e.g. the egg cannot go back to Xadia, therefore Callum and Ezran cannot return to Katolis either with or without it (knowing their goal is to return it to Xadia, which it will be difficult to stop them from doing once Ezran is king), and that means someone has to take the throne. If the egg can't be recovered, their only hope is a decisive first strike against Xadia, so someone has to mobilize the Pentarchy immediately. None of them are things he planned in the sense of "well, if Harrow dies then I can get his sons out of the way and make myself king, and then conquer Xadia." It's all reactive to the situation with the egg. You could argue that he'd do the same things if the egg wasn't a factor, like it's possible he's always been kind of lying in wait to push Harrow's sons aside and seize the throne... but if that was the case, he'd really do much better to make a bid for regent like any normal evil advisor would.

Anyway, all of that does still undermine the statement that he'd do "anything" for his family (which includes Harrow), and it is ultimately because of that initial choice he made to take the opportunity of power over the certainty of securing humanity's future. It's just not as simple as, "Viren says he would do anything for his family, but he won't sacrifice his own power and ambition." In the wake of his critical failure to prioritize humanity in destroying the egg, he's making choices that do prioritize humanity (from within his worldview that Xadia is an existential threat barely held at bay)... but they're still bad choices because they're all reactive to that original bad choice. It's not that he's working at cross-purposes to what he says his goals are, it's that he genuinely thinks digging his hole deeper will somehow work out positively, or at least better than the alternative would.

Pictured: Another statement that for sure indicates you're doing totally great.

Really though, I don't think you can (or are supposed to) look at the trifecta of self-individuals-world and point to one that Viren—or really any character outside of Callum, Rayla, and Claudia—puts at the top. Part of the whole point here is that elevating one of those at the expense of the others is never going to be the right choice all of the time. Obviously always putting yourself first is shitty, but we get multiple examples of over-prioritizing one of the other two as being self-destructive and dangerous. Consistency isn't supposed to be positive, here—a core part of this arc is likely to be Callum grappling with that, and that's without even looking at what's going on with Claudia.

The other thing is that "I will do anything for my family"-Viren is actually on some level a different character than Arc 1 Viren, such that evaluating one based on the context of the other doesn't actually make sense. We don't get even a hint of the "I would do anything for my family" in the series until s4, after Viren has died and been revived. Yeah, we had it earlier in the novels, but in there it's really about Claudia and her relationship with Viren, not Viren's values or actions. Arc 1 Viren and Arc 2 Viren inform each other as characters, but most of the point is the ways they aren't the same. And while Arc 2 Viren is understandably preoccupied with the concept of sacrificing for family—given that he's been stripped of everything that was in his life except Claudia, who went to terrible lengths on his behalf—Arc 1 Viren is actually quite consistent with how he's laid out in his Tales of Xadia character sheet:

Like, check out those Liberty and Glory statements—not even close to the same ballpark as Callum's "I value those close to me more than anyone or anything" Devotion and "I'm beholden to my inner circle, not some silly kingdom" Liberty, but quite accurate as the through-line on his s1-s3 actions. There's nothing in there about family, because Arc 1 Viren isn't actually meant to be associated with "I will do anything for my family," and he's not lying to himself by not acting consistently with it in Arc 1.

Arc 2 Viren is then a kind of emotional reboot back to a particular point earlier in his life—not necessarily the point before he first did any dark magic at all, but before he did his ill-defined "anything" to save Soren, which is implied in multiple places to be the point where he started in on a spiral that had tangible and fairly rapid effects on his personality and outlook. That's further emphasized by the contents of his dream in s5—seeing him behave in a genuinely loving and joyful way with Soren is shocking, and immediately raises the question of what the fuck happened and why.

Pictured: Healthy coping mechanisms.

Part of what still distinguishes Viren's "I will do anything for my family; however dangerous, however vile" from Callum's developing "I would do anything for you" is that Viren is always deliberately addressing the "things that are so unforgivable, you will never forgive yourself" facet while Callum leaves it implicit because he doesn't really understand and/or want to acknowledge that yet (and also Rayla would probably twist his nose again, which fucking hurts). In how Viren describes it to Terry, he is using that up-front acknowledgement to then essentially abdicate any emotional responsibility for... well, anything at all. The entire "however dangerous, however vile" mantra is another way of denying his own agency, because if he'll do anything, then he doesn't actually have to go through the difficult emotional process of making those decisions and dealing with the aftermath.

Pictured: H-healthy coping mechanisms?

Terry correctly pegs this questionable excuse for philosophy as "not having feelings," and generally not the best approach, because it will do things like lead to a default state of emotional unavailability to your children—oh, wait. I think it's not unlikely that Viren's emotional distancing from what "I will do anything for my family" meant contributed a lot to the degradation of it as his core value and his ensuing Arc 1 state. A lot of what's going on in his s5 dream is that he's being confronted with the consequences of "I will do anything for my family," specifically. He's being forced through an emotional speedrun of what it has cost him and everyone around him, and what has he got to show for it? Claudia, corrupted beyond recognition, proudly repeating his own words back to him.

Pictured: Whatever the opposite of daddy issues is.

Because the whole point of Viren's "I will do anything for my family" in Arc 2 is the challenge of whether he would/will do it all again. If he holds to that value the same way he did before, he'll do whatever it takes to save Claudia—however dangerous, however vile. Most of Viren's moral and emotional stuff has been based on his self-serving resignation to having "no choice." He's so tragically trapped in a chain of spiraling consequences he can never break... except oh wait, he totally can. S5 is all about Viren recognizing the dark magic feedback loop and that he has the agency to break it, and his best and only chance to avoid doing further harm to Claudia is to not be willing to destroy himself that way again, even it it means his death will cause her terrible emotional pain.

We'll see how that works out. Because let's be real: Claudia's gonna Claudia, regardless. However it goes, there's an important narrative precedent being set for both breaking free from dark magic/Aaravos and evaluating the "I will do anything for you" impulse in a more nuanced way.

[armchairaleck]

Chapter 3.. remembering again why I don’t write long fics.. it takes so long to edit each chapter that I’ve sorta stopped writing, so although I’m trying to update this story weekly that will probably slip..

Anyway, no special warning for this one, this is just what happens when all you want is to write little viren/corvus smut and the brain starts asking but how.. how would this ever actually happen..

[armchairaleck]

Chapter 2 of Viren/Corvus, (Things Fall Apart) in which Viren undergoes the horrors, but ehh there’s plenty more horrors to come..

This fic will be somewhat dark in tone, and I'm trying to tag for it.. but a general warning, should someone connect to the star arcanum I want it to be pretty traumatic.. so that’s what I’m writing..

[armchairaleck]

You put into words some things I've been thinking about but can’t really say.. I’ve kinda stopped looking at the Viren tags because sometimes there seems to be a vitriol against him and especially about what any parallels to him may or may not mean..

End of the day I enjoy Viren and my takes on him may not fit what the narrative is trying to say, but personally I feel it should be about enjoyment first and foremost.. I do believe fandom should be a place for just being a little wild and crazy if you want, and loving what you love and having the freedom to dig into those angles rather than needing to worry if your way of looking at something is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.. idk..

Reading all the "people are obsessed with Viren/Callum parallels and hate it when we point out the Callum/Amaya parallels" honestly makes me happy I don't post character analysis stuff (or post it rarely) because it's so rude to me when you're called obsessed for liking a character reading someone else thinks is insignificant. Who are even those people who are against the Callum/Amaya parallels? Was it like two people dismissing the idea and now all Viren/Callum parallel fans are idiots who don't know shit and wouldn't be able to tell a """real""" parallel if it spat us in the face? What is up with this elitism?

I like different takes on the same character, I like people's creative theories even if canon doesn't support them, I like to approach a character from a million different angles, see that character through the eyes of many different fans, compare them to many different characters, ship them with different characters too and figure out how the most unlikely ships would work out.

I never actually cared about Callum until I started to talk to the people who like him, started reading their analysis posts or simply little headcanons. I got an appreciation for him because I got to see him through the eyes of the people who love him and now that he's become a mainstay in my own stories (upgraded from a background character to one of the main 6) and all the stuff I read and conversations I've had are really helpful in shaping my version of Callum.

Oh, canon elitists, you would hate my Callum as I put a lot of emphasis on his parallels with Viren and Aaravos. Aaravos as a person, not a mystical cosmic entity. You'd hate my Aaravos even more, now that I think about it.

The reason I cling so strongly to the Callum/Viren parallels in particular is because I actually love Viren. Not the "love" as in "I love ice-cream" but the "love" as in "I deeply care about him and wish to see him happy". There's a reason Viren is one of the POV characters and him mirroring the protagonist is important to me. I like Callum/Amaya parallels too, by the way. I agree with y'all on them. It's just, while I have found appreciation for Callum, when I think about the Viren/Callum parallels, I think about what they mean to Viren first, which is why I personally care about this particular parallel more than other Callum parallels. And maybe the other people "obsessed" with this parallel also like it because they like Viren. I don't know.

Anyway, y'all are valid, your headcanons are valid and your reading is valid. Just don't be dicks about it.

[armchairaleck]

This is something I’ve struggled with because yeah I’m acutely aware that anything I create is gonna fail any tests of female inclusivity.. but also I know if I’m going to invest the time writing something it will probably be to fit my very niche interests, which is pretty exclusively m/m relationships..

Lissa is definitely interesting to me for two main reasons and one of them is she’s Viren’s ex.. combined with the Soren angle that's a juicy angsty relationship, I suppose this angle is bad? I really don't know, I might want to think about real world inequalities and how it correlates to fandom, but mostly it's an escape yk..

(The other angle of Lissa I love is definitely that she’s a mother who left her family. This is something I find compelling because it is not often portrayed either in fiction or something that happens often in life.. I think there’s a lot to unpick there, but I try to hold back, mostly because I’m still waiting for the reveal that Viren did something shady to her.. jeez I hope not haha)

I skim read the article and I want to read it properly when time allows, it looks really interesting, and idk I guess makes me think how hard it is to generalise about these things, looking in from an ace/non-binary perspective is different again and it’s difficult to judge. I think people are in fandom from such a huge variety of perspectives and interests, some love the world building, some love to try and figure out what will happen next, some love meta and analysis.. I'm not very good at any of those things, they're all interesting angles into characters and relationships tho.. and some of them I love to read and others not so much.

I'm really just here for the slash, I'm so shallow lmao.. BUT I don't feel personally this is due to a lack of compelling female characters, or at least not in tdp. I could def see that it would be the case in some media.

IF I was interested in writing about the younger characters, then Claudia and probably Rayla are far and away the most intriguing to me.. sadly I just prefer my characters with about 40+ years worth of bad choices, pain and regret to reflect on.. Lissa and Sarai are both pretty absent, from a creative pov that gives a lot of freedom AND a lot of gaps to fill.

I feel like I used to at least read way more widely when I was younger but as spare time gets less I stick more to my interests, and when writing this is doubly so because of the huge time sink.. I DO feel bad for the poor forgotten women tho..

"Fandom ignores female characters while inventing elaborate backstories for male characters with no speaking lines."

is a common fandom copypasta but also

these people clearly haven't heard of Lissa The Dragon Prince and the 5 people on Tumblr who have formed a dedicated fandom around her.

[armchairaleck]

Currently trying to avoid tumblr as I have no self-discipline and an academic deadline looming, BUT also starting to post the long fic that I've been on and off working on since season 5 aired I think... idk I’m a slow writer, it FEELS like a long fricken time.. 

Mostly because I know if I don't start posting it before the next season hype starts I never will, and because procrastination is my middle name..

This is so far off the radar of anything that could conceivably happen in the show, but since I ship Viren and Corvus and I have seen no other shippers for this paring, oh well.  

It's purely self-indulgent, appeals to all the dumb tropes I love and will probably get a little dark as time goes on...

Please mind the tags, I will be adding to them..

[armchairaleck]

Give me the control Just sign on the dotted line Give me the control He whispered softly

[armchairaleck]

Schrödinger's King in the Bird Box

Time for a return to the single topic that most torments me in this entire franchise canon: is Harrow in the goddamn bird or not?

Except not really. I'm not going to go over the evidence again. I've done it before. Almost everyone has done it before. It has only gotten stronger. At the absolute minimum, an attempt was made to put Harrow in the bird. That's not really disputable. I admit it. It's over.

This is actually the second time that I've struggled with narrative cognitive dissonance regarding a real core factor of this show (like not "what's the deal with Archdragon reproduction," but something that is clearly supposed to be thought about with the intent that it will eventually make sense), and eventually managed to rotate it so hard in my mind that the way I wanted to see it slipped out of my grasp and I saw it the way it's actually intended. Ironically, I think I may have been thinking about the Ocean arcanum at the time.

Anyway, what previously always bothered me about this question was mainly two things:

It would have a devastating impact on Ezran's character development if Harrow reappeared during s1-s3, but the timeskip and arc of s4-s5 made it so it would also be deeply weird for him to reappear before the show ends.

If Harrow is in Pip's body, both Viren and Pip's subsequent behavior, as well as how Pip is treated by the narrative on a meta level, make absolutely no fucking sense.

But... if Viren doesn't know whether the spell was successful or not? If we are meant to not know whether the spell was successful or not, because it's not going to get resolved in the show itself?

If we accept that the earliest point with any chance of the hooks for this plot being set is late s7—because yes, Aaron Ehasz would do an exact beat-for-beat repeat of Zuko and his mom—that both puts Ezran far enough in his growth for it not to be threatened by the "real" king returning, and keeps Harrow out of the loop for long enough that it doesn't really make sense for him to do anything but step down from the throne in favor of Ezran, anyway. As for Viren and Pip's behavior, if the show isn't going to advance that plot much further during its runtime, there's no reason for us to be constantly reminded of it. The setup has been made, and they can just let it stew because it's not actually relevant.

That being said, Viren's behavior actually does make a lot of sense if "is Harrow in the goddamn bird or not" is a question that is also tormenting him. To that end, I'll be doing some digging here on the nature and context of the body-switching spell, Pip/Harrow's behavior post-swap, and what the hell is going on in the Harrow section of Viren's dark magic dream.

The Spell is Made Up (Unlike All Those Real Spells)

First of all, I think there's been some long-term incorrect assumptions made about the body-switching spell. It's not a known spell: this is Claudia and Viren essentially flying by the seat of their pants... but we rarely stop to think about how that contextualizes the rest of the discussion around it.

The initial plan is to find the assassins and ambush them before nightfall. As Soren points out and Viren himself confirms: if they fail, the assassins will be unstoppable under the full moon and Harrow is as good as dead. Claudia decides to put her mind to that problem, so naturally she stops to flirt with Callum in the library and gets the inspiration for the spell from something he says.

(Fun fact: none of that happens in the novelization. Zero amount.)

She brings the idea to Viren, and they develop the spell from there. It's not really clear if Claudia actually knows whether something like that would be possible, but Viren does know that transferring the essence of a person can be done—he's got a nice little coin collection that proves it.

As for the snake, there's no way Viren "acquired" a two-headed soulfang serpent because he has a book somewhere on how to use a rare, malformed specimen of a dangerous Xadian creature to switch people between bodies. He probably thought "that's weird, but could be useful," or maybe whoever sold it to him just had a great sales pitch. A non-trivial amount of success at dark magic is in having access to rarer and more powerful reagents than your competition.

Anyway, what this means is that Viren has absolutely no idea what success looks like for this spell, particularly when using it on subjects of different species. When he describes it to Harrow, he is 110% talking out of his ass. He sounds like he knows exactly what the spell will do and how, and I think a lot of us kind of fell for that. He needs to sound confident, because if he admitted that he doesn't know if it will even work, with a possible failure condition of "snake eats your soul," well... a) Harrow rightfully wouldn't go for it, and b) he'd look incompetent, which is the worst thing ever.

When he goes to Harrow's room, he casts the spell... but did it work? I think that whatever it did, it did it in a way that Viren can't tell whether it worked or not. Maybe both Harrow and Pip passed out. Maybe Viren just didn't want to hang around for the aftermath—in the novelization, when he exits the room and runs into Callum, his eyes are still black from spellcasting.

Activities of Dr. Pip Harrow, Ph.D.

Probably the thing that has always bothered me the most about the entire Harrow-Pip theory is that yes, literally everything in the lead-up and immediate aftermath of the assassination points to that being exactly what happened... and then the narrative lens of the show completely drops the rope. Pip doesn't even appear in the novelization until Viren's pre-coronation scene, which is funny given his looming presence over half the scenes with Harrow in the show.

Pip appears exactly twice after the assassination—once in s1 and once in s2—otherwise he goes completely ignored. He's not in the background of Viren's office, or the throne room, or Harrow's bedroom. No one ever mentions him ever again. Ezran never mentions him again, in the show or in any supplementary materials. You'd think the boy who can talk to animals might have some interest in his dead dad's beloved pet... but who knows, maybe Pip has always been an asshole and Ezran's actually like "thank goodness I never have to speak to that dude again."

Anyway, in all of Pip's appearances, he behaves like... a bird. A trained bird—Harrow can rely on him not just fucking off—but he doesn't demonstrate human-like intelligence the way Bait does. That being said, Bait is essentially a main-cast character (at least as much as, say, Corvus... maybe even Soren) while Pip is a plot device, and even then it takes until well into the first arc for Bait to show the kind of complex reasoning and initiative that separates him from an unusually smart dog. Pip's human is also a stressed-out king, rather than a rambunctious ten-year-old, so he's probably a bit more sedate overall. I would personally bet, given the way the show has progressed with regard to Xadian creatures, that Pip is as intelligent as Bait.

The point of that is: even if Harrow's consciousness is occupying Pip's body, he's not really doing anything with it. He's pissy, sure:

But is that Harrow's pissy-ness or Pip's? Even if Pip is only as intelligent as a trainable bird, that's plenty intelligent enough for both grieving/confusion that their human is gone and holding a grudge against obvious assholes. Viren cages him, but is that because he flipped out and got bite-y? And was it Harrow flipping out, or Pip? Or is he caged just because Viren's of the general attitude that animals belong in cages? Those who fail tests of love... We just don't know.

A lot of us also, to circle back to assumptions about the spell, have tended to think of a body swap between Harrow and Pip resulting in Harrow flailing his arms around wildly and screeching... but again, we know literally nothing about this spell, nor do we actually know anything about Harrow's behavior after Viren leaves his room. Maybe his body sat catatonic on the bed until Runaan came in and shot him. Maybe Pip, being intelligent, was able to maintain the facade—once everyone's in the heat of battle, it would be hard to notice even significant deviations from normal behavior. Even if "Harrow" appeared to fight only halfheartedly, or give up entirely... well, he hasn't been the same since he lost Sarai. Maybe the spell only partially worked, and only half of his soul is inside Pip, with minimal or no influence over the bird body's behavior.

Viren does appear to take some precautions in case Harrow is alive inside Pip. The cage, for one... but he also has nearly all subsequent important conversations outside of his office. Like I said earlier, Pip's cage isn't rendered in the background of any scene, but since he escapes from Viren's office I'm assuming that's where he's been. Even if Pip was just out of frame in every scene in Viren's office post-assassination through end of s2, the only things he's seen are... Viren eating butterflies, and the conversation between Viren and Claudia about the mirror and her side mission to bring the egg back at all costs. He doesn't know about Soren's instructions to murder the boys. He knows about the mirror and Viren's obsession with it (which he could have known before), but he doesn't know about Aaravos. He may know that Viren stole his seal but only if Viren was stupid enough to stamp the letters with it in front of him (which... look, he could be). The only things he's really learned are that a) his sons are alive, and b) Viren lied to him and the egg is alive.

Now, realistically, if we were meant to hang on to the is-Harrow-in-the-bird plot thread because it's going to be significant within the scope of the show... I'd be expecting to see at least one cut to Pip glowering at some point during all these machinations. If it weren't for the mirror and Aaravos, I'd expect Viren to be yelling all his monologuing at Pip, too. But the show does none of that. Instead, the next time we see Pip, we see him peace-ing out of the show for at minimum the next three seasons, and possibly the remaining two, as well. If Harrow's in there... why? Did he go to find Callum and Ezran himself? It's not actually clear that he knows Ezran can understand animals, so it would be reasonable for him to think Viren is his only chance at ever not being a bird again. Maybe he thinks that chance is gone with Viren's arrest and would rather not spend the rest of his life in a cage. Maybe he really isn't in control of the body.

Back to Viren, though: since Pip refuses to demonstrate any behavior that could be taken as distinctly Harrow's, Viren actually has no idea at any point whether Harrow's in there or not. He doesn't know if Harrow lived. He doesn't know if he succeeded or failed. It's a constant reminder that he's almost, but not quite, in control. Almost, but not quite, good enough to achieve what he wants.

It probably drives him absolutely insane.

Did You Think You Were Somehow Getting Out of This Without Me Mentioning Kpp'Ar?

Just kidding, it's finally time to talk about Viren's dream. We've gone two entire seasons and a two-year timeskip without any mention of Harrow or Pip (though those maniacs dropped the fucking snake basket on us as an incidental but obvious prop early in s4), and then suddenly we get punched in the face by Viren's subconscious.

First, though, I do actually need to point something out in the scene with Kpp'Ar. Bear with me, I promise this is relevant.

Viren sealed Kpp'Ar's soul in a coin 12-ish years ago, and the coin has been sitting collecting dust in his secret dungeon for... some amount of that time. Now he opens the door and finds Kpp'Ar standing there, free—and I will note that I don't believe Viren actually knows how to free people from the coins, or whether it can even be done. His reaction is surprise, followed by suspicion and wariness:

When he encounters Harrow—dead—his reaction is horrified shock, which is fair since the last time he entered the room that way there was no surprise body chilling out waiting for him in it:

Then, when Harrow speaks to him, suddenly alive and unharmed, he drops straight into relief:

Some of this is undoubtedly due to the differences between Viren's relationship with Kpp'Ar and his relationship with Harrow. With Kpp'Ar, after that initial moment of confusion, he's absolutely determined to not show a single hint of ignorance or weakness—this is a trick, or a test, and a passing grade in "light verbal sparring with the mentor you're pretty sure you remember betraying" is a thing that is both normal to want and possible to achieve. For Harrow, who he wants so desperately to call him brother, who he walked into this very room ready to die for, before everything went horribly awry—he not only immediately and willingly goes to his knees, he literally prostrates himself.

... I'll give everyone a moment to get all the innuendo and suggestiveness out of their systems, because that's not the point. This time.

What is the point is that Viren's reaction to Harrow isn't disbelief, but relief. Hope. Kpp'Ar is supposed to be in a coin, and Viren immediately questions how he got out. Harrow is supposed to be dead but Viren doesn't give a second thought to how he's not. Fortunately, Harrow helpfully explains:

Fun fact: back in s1, we don't actually see Viren actually taking action against the assassins. We don't even see evidence that he re-entered the room at all—it's only Soren and Claudia who participate in Runaan's capture.

I haven't actually touched a lot on the complex shit going on for Viren, emotionally, throughout all of this—I mentioned it's was probably driving Viren insane over the course of the first two seasons, but let me elaborate. If Viren successfully switched Harrow and Pip, that means Harrow survived... but he expressed his feelings on the proposal in no uncertain terms, and there's a good chance he will literally never forgive Viren. I don't think Viren thought far enough ahead to consider how to get Harrow into a human body again, but I do think he's dragging his feet on it a little because if he can work things to his advantage—unite the Pentarchy against Xadia and follow through on the war Harrow was avoiding—he'll prove to Harrow that he was right all along. Any chance of that flies out the window with Pip at the end of s2.

If the body-switching spell failed, it means Viren essentially killed Harrow himself. That's the reality I think he grows more and more resigned to over the course of s1 and s2, when Pip remains unresponsive. He had no choice but to take the best chance at saving someone he loved—but this time, instead of saving Harrow, he murdered him.

In the dream, Harrow has not only survived, but credits Viren with his survival. He doesn't just dismiss Viren's show of remorse, but makes his own apology to Viren. He calls Viren brother. After an impossibly long nightmare, everything is okay. All is forgiven. Maybe there was nothing to forgive, in the first place. Maybe Viren was right all along.

Then it all turns sinister with the callback to the coin incantation, and we have a sharp return to reality:

The cinematography here treats Pip a lot more like how I would expect him to be treated in s1/s2 if we were meant to know he was actually Harrow. There's focus actually on him, instead of just other characters' reaction to him. He "speaks"—as I noted in another post—in raspy sounds very unlike his songbird chirps from s1. This is absolutely Harrow as Viren actually left him—even if he's not dead, he's in a warped prison of dark magic, a perverse mockery of himself.

Oh wait.

Harrow-who-is-both-human-and-alive was never an option, and what we've got now is mirror images of Harrow-the-dead-human and Harrow-the-live-bird, and they're going to do to Viren what he did to them.

Now, it's not that none of this makes sense if Viren knows for sure that Harrow is in the bird... but it makes a lot less sense and has less emotional resonance. If Viren knows Harrow survived as Pip, he'd be more likely to question Harrow's human form than his survival—the way he does with Kpp'Ar. He might be more guarded, expecting hostility—which, I will note, is what he gets when Pip enters the scene. Instead, because until now he believed that he actually killed Harrow in his attempt to save him, he's so relieved to see Harrow alive that for that one moment he loses all pride and is ready to beg for forgiveness at Harrow's feet.

Since legitimately none of this makes sense if Viren didn't at least attempt to put Harrow in the bird, we're left with Harrow maybe or maybe not alive, Viren having maybe or maybe not been the one to actually kill him (gonna be a fun one with the Runaan context), and a plotline that is definitely not going to be resolved in the remaining two seasons of the show. I'd be kind of surprised if they even did any more setup for it (like Callum/Ezran finding out it's a possibility, or even a hint drop like Runaan being all "it was fucking weird, he just sat there" or something) outside of future supplemental media.

Conclusion

Either Harrow is alive and in the bird, with the future intent being to do a spinoff story The Search-style, or we're in for a huge bummer of a "actually, it was Viren all along who killed Harrow, therefore Runaan is a good guy and we can all be one happy family" pile of absolute bullshit. Yes, they said Harrow's dead. Harrow's body is dead, we knew that all along. There's a note in the artbook that Viren was actually going to rip the shroud off at Harrow's funeral in order to publicly prove it's his body, because that is an extremely normal thing to do.

The show just treats it extremely weirdly because, even as the only person with any chance of knowing, Viren is in the same uncertain boat as the rest of us. (Actually more uncertain than the rest of us, since he's not genre-aware.) Also it's another chance to torment Viren emotionally, and they'd never pass that up.

Thanks for coming to my absolutely ridiculous TED Talk on this topic, I hope this screenshot now does as much psychic damage to you as it does to me:

[armchairaleck]

If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading

[armchairaleck]

Reblog and put your rare pair in the tags/comments! I want to see the depths people will go to create, for the most random two characters in the most obscure media.

[armchairaleck]

look Aaravos is a terrible influence in every way, Ziard would for sure go around with his tits out

anyway I realized that the 2002 emo goth feral witch aesthetic I was subconsciously channeling came straight from Morrigan Dragon Age and I thought it would be funny to lean in on that just once