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blueheronteanook2024-05-04 04:37 pm
lunecat16) wrote in blueheronteanook2024-05-04 04:37 pm
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Past, Present, and Future: An Essay on the Belanger Circle
Title: Past, Present, and Future: An Essay on the Belanger Circle
Major Warnings: Allusions to familial abuse
Summary: An essay and minor character analysis discussing the Belanger Circle members' major flaws
The Belanger circle, for the most part, absolutely fucked up their handling of the compound raid. Tanner broke down and left Gillian to suffer alone, and Wye decided not to even come in person, instead calling in and hanging up when there were no easy solutions for Gillian. Somehow, out of everyone, Chase was the person who stepped up and offered real, tangible help and a way to fix the Belanger family’s problems.
This raid, of course, was also after multiple chapters where we’ve seen or heard of how the Belanger circle members were doing after Alexander’s passing. We got a look at Wye as a more genuine person than Alexander, who did seem to be kinder and more considerate despite his flaws. Tanner seemed like the most decent person, enough for Nico to be relatively okay with him marrying Gillian eventually. Compared to some of the greater evils in Pale, they just seemed like pretty normal, sometimes oblivious or shitty guys.
However, their character flaws have always been in the background–and sometimes the foreground–of Pale. It’s only natural that things would come to a head during a family crisis. And in the end, only Chase was really able to overcome his own failings.
Major Warnings: Allusions to familial abuse
Summary: An essay and minor character analysis discussing the Belanger Circle members' major flaws
The Belanger circle, for the most part, absolutely fucked up their handling of the compound raid. Tanner broke down and left Gillian to suffer alone, and Wye decided not to even come in person, instead calling in and hanging up when there were no easy solutions for Gillian. Somehow, out of everyone, Chase was the person who stepped up and offered real, tangible help and a way to fix the Belanger family’s problems.
This raid, of course, was also after multiple chapters where we’ve seen or heard of how the Belanger circle members were doing after Alexander’s passing. We got a look at Wye as a more genuine person than Alexander, who did seem to be kinder and more considerate despite his flaws. Tanner seemed like the most decent person, enough for Nico to be relatively okay with him marrying Gillian eventually. Compared to some of the greater evils in Pale, they just seemed like pretty normal, sometimes oblivious or shitty guys.
However, their character flaws have always been in the background–and sometimes the foreground–of Pale. It’s only natural that things would come to a head during a family crisis. And in the end, only Chase was really able to overcome his own failings.
Tanner
“I don’t know how you guys handle things at your fancy practitioner boarding schools, but for the mundane person, ‘oh no’ is usually said in reaction to something bad.”
We don’t actually know a lot about Tanner. We’ve heard of his history as ‘the Aware Alexander took from Bristow’, we know about his auspice–a framed piece of drywall, and we’ve seen Gillian’s previous view of him through rose-tinted glasses. We know he’s talented, sharp, and a bit ambitious. We can, however, make a lot of inferences.
Tanner seems to be someone who lives with an eye towards the future. Not only was he obsessed with the auspice’s prophetic writings, but his actions before and during Pale seem to be for the sake of securing the best possible future for himself.
Bristow seems to have rescued him from a terrible fate, but he leaves Bristow to be Awakened as a practitioner under Alexander. This would, in Tanner’s mind, probably be the best future for him, instead of living under Bristow as property in everything but the name. Then, years later during the BHI headmaster dispute, he leaves Alexander because he wants to rise up in practitioner society, and Bristow has given him the opportunity through a position in a powerful family and a marriage.
It’s difficult to blame him for both of these betrayals. Bristow let aspects of his Aware bleed into each other at his convenience, and Tanner may have been told this fact by Alexander. It’s hard to blame someone for wanting to get out of a situation where their very Self isn’t entirely theirs. In the case of betraying Alexander, wanting more status is a more selfish reason, but he did have a friend, or friends, siding with Bristow. He mentions talking to Reid Musser, and given how he’s still sore over Reid’s death in 20.e, Reid was probably a friend (being friends with Reid is a character flaw in and of itself, but that’s unrelated). Chase was almost certain to defect as well, so he wouldn’t have been the only augur on Bristow’s side.
However, we do start to get a picture painted of an ambitious person who’s willing to abandon others for his own gain. He’s fine working with Wye at the time, but what happens if a better opportunity comes along? Is Wye really his friend, or just a convenient stepping stone? We even see this mindset embodied with his relationship to Gillian. He’s fine with the idea of a successful future with her, but we don’t actually know how he feels about her in the present.
With that in mind, Tanner seems really terrible at learning from his mistakes, or handling the present. Despite the entire reason he fell into the magical world being that his auspice went from prophecies of success to prophecies of ruin, he still follows the metaphorical writing on the wall in his life, without regard for unforeseen consequences. Alexander warns Tanner that his future with Bristow may not be as good as it seems. And when things stop being good…Tanner just seems to break down. In 7.8, when he was losing the fight against the trio, he just gave up and accepted an easy way out. When Gillian is in front of him, twisted and suffering, he can’t even bring himself to stay around for her. His future with her is gone, and what’s currently happening to her is very distressing, so he just leaves her for his own peace of mind.
He keeps an eye towards his future, but he’s blind to how his actions in the present affect others, and how those actions could hurt him in the long run more than enduring a little hardship and misfortune ever could.
Wye
“Whiskey, cigarettes, whatever, we should meet tonight, talk. Maybe we remember Alexander. The good parts.”
Wye is stuck in the past. From Wye’s interlude and the most recent chapter, we get an impression of a man who’s grieving the loss of a beloved mentor and father figure–probably the closest thing to a father Wye ever had, given the state of the main Belanger family. In a world with Alexander, he could have had plenty of time to be prepared to take over as Belanger family head, and the Belanger circle would remain a fun workplace and club for him and the other members.
Then Alexander died, and Wye had to take over. Even worse, he had to take over during the reign of the Carmine Exile, which saw BHI shut down, the Belanger circle swept up in Musser’s campaign, and then the rise of hostile Lordships ruled by monsters. The circle likely had to work much more than usual, and with more high risk jobs. They even got attacked by the Tea Party Bogeymen! Even worse, amidst all of this violence, Wye’s had to deal with family politics, and the question of who the next family head will be.
This doesn’t leave much room for grieving, or moving on and forward. Instead, Wye understandably focuses on keeping what he used to have, under Alexander–he wants to get the boys back together, to drink and reminisce about the good old days. He starts mimicking Alexander to preserve his memory and the better practices the circle had, much to Nicolette’s concern. It’s an improvement to Alexander’s manipulation, and seems like a genuine attempt to do better, but it’s still Wye holding onto an idealized version of the circle that he knew.
The idea of holding onto the past falls apart when it comes to the main Belanger family, however. We’re introduced to Wye’s tension with the Belangers in his interlude, during his conflicts with Jen. While she has valid concerns about Gillian’s involvement with the circle, she’s also a bitter, spiteful person, and later we learn the rest of the family are just different stripes of terrible, stagnant people who end up hurting each other. It’s no surprise that Wye doesn’t like them, but he continues to insist on taking over the family.
The question is, why? Wye asks this himself in 20.e, to the point of quizzing the Bitter Street Witch on her own attachment to her hometown and people. She tells him that if it’s not worth it to try and change things when she returns home, then she’d simply leave, but it takes a lot of quizzing to get to that answer. Meanwhile, Wye seems to have made up his mind that his family isn’t worth going back to. He’s searching for an answer, and he doesn’t seem to have found one, considering he doesn’t even show up for the compound raid.
So, why? His family clearly makes him miserable, and they’re obviously soul-crushingly horrible. His circle is already a successful business, and he has far more resources and connections than his family. Why not just cut ties?
The most likely answer is that by cutting ties, he’d be letting go of the plans he had in the past, and the security he got from those plans. In the past, he would have taken over the circle with no protest, and he could have smoothly led his family to be better–at least, that was his way of thinking of it (he wouldn't have succeeded he's a fucking idiot good god have you seen the rest of the Belangers). He probably wants that perfect ending, where he gets to keep the circle, keep family resources, and occasionally even pick up a new apprentice from the family, all without really engaging with them.
That isn’t how things can go now, however. The family is disgruntled and split due to Alexander’s untimely death. He can’t just sit on a phone call miles away and expect that to be enough for his family, and if he takes over, it’s probably going to be a rougher process than it would have been. Having to be the head of the family and regularly listen to them or attend their gatherings also seems like it would be a huge drain on Wye’s already precarious mental health. And honestly? That constant, toxic pressure drags you down too. He wouldn't have made progress. He would have just become like his family, or like Alexander, continuing the cycle.
However, Wye isn’t ready to face the present or the future yet. So he stays on his phone, far away from his family, even though they’re getting bombarded and he has a responsibility to help them -- one he wouldn't have had if he cut ties earlier. And when he faces the consequences of his half-hearted avoidance in the form of Gillian, who he maybe could have saved if he arrived earlier, or even in person, he can’t handle it. By trying to hold onto the past, he’s hurting other people and even hurting his own future.
Chase
“I don’t know for certain,” Chase said, quiet. “I’m better at looking to the present than I am at looking forward. I find people, I don’t…”
Chase is the most outwardly unlikable Belanger circle member. He’s transphobic, he’s sexist, and he’s all around abrasive and crude. He lives in the present, admitting in 20.e that he has a lifestyle some would consider hedonistic, regularly drinking and ‘thinking with his dick’. He blurts out off-color jokes without giving much thought to the consequences or how no one else is really amused by them.
He’s supposed to lead his family, practically being the head of it already, but he spends his free time drinking with the other circle members and presumably, doing anything but leading. This is because Chase dreads the responsibility and expectations the family placed on him. He’s the Whitt who got successful with Alexander, who has all of the contacts and power, and the pressure is unbearable. It makes sense–at 17 years old in 6.z, he’s far too young to deal with that responsibility, when he should be spending time being a kid and growing up.
It’s no surprise that he tries to ward off the future through escapism, with drinking and partying. He doesn’t look back and reflect on his actions often, because that would ruin his enjoyment of the present. When he does reflect, like during his conversation with Fernanda where he regrets not being a better brother for her, it just reminds him of how much of a fuck-up he is. Of course, by the time he tries to change things, and be a better brother to Fernanda, it’s far too late. He ignored the issue for too long, and their relationship is irreparably broken.
So Chase is stuck in the present, and by selfishly staying in the present, his actions hurt his relationships with others. Tanner is stuck in the future, and by selfishly pursuing the future, he hurts his relationships with people in the present. Wye is stuck in the past, and by selfishly holding onto the past, he’s hurting his future and other people in the present day.
However, there’s one thing that sets Chase apart from the other two. Chase is capable of looking beyond his own needs, and he’s actually done so. In 6.z, when betraying Alexander, there’s a part of his actions that involve running away from his responsibility. He doesn’t want to be his family’s sole hope, and doesn’t want that pressure placed on him. However, siding with Bristow won’t make him happy. He knows that. Instead, Chase gives up his own happiness for his family’s future. He sees that all of them are better off and happier people, and even if he’s left out of that happiness, it’s enough to make him betray Alexander.
And he did it again. He saw that neither Wye or Tanner would step up to help Gillian, and no one else would do it, so he offered to take on the Horror curse to save Gillian. Sure, he escaped being the de-facto family head, but the cost was high enough that the benefits don't really matter.
Post-Pale Retrospective
I wrote this essay after 20.e. I kind of expected something big to come out of it. I also deeply hoped that Chase's horror form would be something cool and interesting.
The plotline fell off as the trio focused on pursuing Charles exclusively and were kicked out of Kennet. Which is fair -- with Pale having so much to cover with so little in-setting time, things fall to the wayside.
But I think at the end overall...You know visual novels? And how through their multiple routes, they're able to have character arcs that fizzle our, fall to the background, and character arcs ultimately remain unfulfilled or not concluded, because you (the player) made the explicit choice to spend more time with one character than another, ended up on a different route, and as a result you don't get to see those stories, or characters end up in bad places without the insight another route would've given them?
That's what this is. Pale did not cast its eyes on the Belanger Circle, and so the trio never learned or changed. We did learn that Reid and Raquel are Wye's morality pets which is hilarious, but Wye never realizes he should've gotten out of dodge years ago, Tanner never shapes up, and Chase disappears and Nico outright states he didn't change. With luck he just dies randomly, I genuinely think that would be more merciful for Chase and for me. It's bleak! Three young men, better than the adults and bad influences in their lives but not by much, left to fend for themselves without Alexander or Bristow or anyone else in charge, and they completely fumble it, as expected, when they don't have the tools to actually do better.
Prayer circle that Wye Belanger makes like that one gay Garrick uncle and steals his family's shit and leaves forever.
“I don’t know how you guys handle things at your fancy practitioner boarding schools, but for the mundane person, ‘oh no’ is usually said in reaction to something bad.”
We don’t actually know a lot about Tanner. We’ve heard of his history as ‘the Aware Alexander took from Bristow’, we know about his auspice–a framed piece of drywall, and we’ve seen Gillian’s previous view of him through rose-tinted glasses. We know he’s talented, sharp, and a bit ambitious. We can, however, make a lot of inferences.
Tanner seems to be someone who lives with an eye towards the future. Not only was he obsessed with the auspice’s prophetic writings, but his actions before and during Pale seem to be for the sake of securing the best possible future for himself.
Bristow seems to have rescued him from a terrible fate, but he leaves Bristow to be Awakened as a practitioner under Alexander. This would, in Tanner’s mind, probably be the best future for him, instead of living under Bristow as property in everything but the name. Then, years later during the BHI headmaster dispute, he leaves Alexander because he wants to rise up in practitioner society, and Bristow has given him the opportunity through a position in a powerful family and a marriage.
It’s difficult to blame him for both of these betrayals. Bristow let aspects of his Aware bleed into each other at his convenience, and Tanner may have been told this fact by Alexander. It’s hard to blame someone for wanting to get out of a situation where their very Self isn’t entirely theirs. In the case of betraying Alexander, wanting more status is a more selfish reason, but he did have a friend, or friends, siding with Bristow. He mentions talking to Reid Musser, and given how he’s still sore over Reid’s death in 20.e, Reid was probably a friend (being friends with Reid is a character flaw in and of itself, but that’s unrelated). Chase was almost certain to defect as well, so he wouldn’t have been the only augur on Bristow’s side.
However, we do start to get a picture painted of an ambitious person who’s willing to abandon others for his own gain. He’s fine working with Wye at the time, but what happens if a better opportunity comes along? Is Wye really his friend, or just a convenient stepping stone? We even see this mindset embodied with his relationship to Gillian. He’s fine with the idea of a successful future with her, but we don’t actually know how he feels about her in the present.
With that in mind, Tanner seems really terrible at learning from his mistakes, or handling the present. Despite the entire reason he fell into the magical world being that his auspice went from prophecies of success to prophecies of ruin, he still follows the metaphorical writing on the wall in his life, without regard for unforeseen consequences. Alexander warns Tanner that his future with Bristow may not be as good as it seems. And when things stop being good…Tanner just seems to break down. In 7.8, when he was losing the fight against the trio, he just gave up and accepted an easy way out. When Gillian is in front of him, twisted and suffering, he can’t even bring himself to stay around for her. His future with her is gone, and what’s currently happening to her is very distressing, so he just leaves her for his own peace of mind.
He keeps an eye towards his future, but he’s blind to how his actions in the present affect others, and how those actions could hurt him in the long run more than enduring a little hardship and misfortune ever could.
Wye
“Whiskey, cigarettes, whatever, we should meet tonight, talk. Maybe we remember Alexander. The good parts.”
Wye is stuck in the past. From Wye’s interlude and the most recent chapter, we get an impression of a man who’s grieving the loss of a beloved mentor and father figure–probably the closest thing to a father Wye ever had, given the state of the main Belanger family. In a world with Alexander, he could have had plenty of time to be prepared to take over as Belanger family head, and the Belanger circle would remain a fun workplace and club for him and the other members.
Then Alexander died, and Wye had to take over. Even worse, he had to take over during the reign of the Carmine Exile, which saw BHI shut down, the Belanger circle swept up in Musser’s campaign, and then the rise of hostile Lordships ruled by monsters. The circle likely had to work much more than usual, and with more high risk jobs. They even got attacked by the Tea Party Bogeymen! Even worse, amidst all of this violence, Wye’s had to deal with family politics, and the question of who the next family head will be.
This doesn’t leave much room for grieving, or moving on and forward. Instead, Wye understandably focuses on keeping what he used to have, under Alexander–he wants to get the boys back together, to drink and reminisce about the good old days. He starts mimicking Alexander to preserve his memory and the better practices the circle had, much to Nicolette’s concern. It’s an improvement to Alexander’s manipulation, and seems like a genuine attempt to do better, but it’s still Wye holding onto an idealized version of the circle that he knew.
The idea of holding onto the past falls apart when it comes to the main Belanger family, however. We’re introduced to Wye’s tension with the Belangers in his interlude, during his conflicts with Jen. While she has valid concerns about Gillian’s involvement with the circle, she’s also a bitter, spiteful person, and later we learn the rest of the family are just different stripes of terrible, stagnant people who end up hurting each other. It’s no surprise that Wye doesn’t like them, but he continues to insist on taking over the family.
The question is, why? Wye asks this himself in 20.e, to the point of quizzing the Bitter Street Witch on her own attachment to her hometown and people. She tells him that if it’s not worth it to try and change things when she returns home, then she’d simply leave, but it takes a lot of quizzing to get to that answer. Meanwhile, Wye seems to have made up his mind that his family isn’t worth going back to. He’s searching for an answer, and he doesn’t seem to have found one, considering he doesn’t even show up for the compound raid.
So, why? His family clearly makes him miserable, and they’re obviously soul-crushingly horrible. His circle is already a successful business, and he has far more resources and connections than his family. Why not just cut ties?
The most likely answer is that by cutting ties, he’d be letting go of the plans he had in the past, and the security he got from those plans. In the past, he would have taken over the circle with no protest, and he could have smoothly led his family to be better–at least, that was his way of thinking of it (he wouldn't have succeeded he's a fucking idiot good god have you seen the rest of the Belangers). He probably wants that perfect ending, where he gets to keep the circle, keep family resources, and occasionally even pick up a new apprentice from the family, all without really engaging with them.
That isn’t how things can go now, however. The family is disgruntled and split due to Alexander’s untimely death. He can’t just sit on a phone call miles away and expect that to be enough for his family, and if he takes over, it’s probably going to be a rougher process than it would have been. Having to be the head of the family and regularly listen to them or attend their gatherings also seems like it would be a huge drain on Wye’s already precarious mental health. And honestly? That constant, toxic pressure drags you down too. He wouldn't have made progress. He would have just become like his family, or like Alexander, continuing the cycle.
However, Wye isn’t ready to face the present or the future yet. So he stays on his phone, far away from his family, even though they’re getting bombarded and he has a responsibility to help them -- one he wouldn't have had if he cut ties earlier. And when he faces the consequences of his half-hearted avoidance in the form of Gillian, who he maybe could have saved if he arrived earlier, or even in person, he can’t handle it. By trying to hold onto the past, he’s hurting other people and even hurting his own future.
Chase
“I don’t know for certain,” Chase said, quiet. “I’m better at looking to the present than I am at looking forward. I find people, I don’t…”
Chase is the most outwardly unlikable Belanger circle member. He’s transphobic, he’s sexist, and he’s all around abrasive and crude. He lives in the present, admitting in 20.e that he has a lifestyle some would consider hedonistic, regularly drinking and ‘thinking with his dick’. He blurts out off-color jokes without giving much thought to the consequences or how no one else is really amused by them.
He’s supposed to lead his family, practically being the head of it already, but he spends his free time drinking with the other circle members and presumably, doing anything but leading. This is because Chase dreads the responsibility and expectations the family placed on him. He’s the Whitt who got successful with Alexander, who has all of the contacts and power, and the pressure is unbearable. It makes sense–at 17 years old in 6.z, he’s far too young to deal with that responsibility, when he should be spending time being a kid and growing up.
It’s no surprise that he tries to ward off the future through escapism, with drinking and partying. He doesn’t look back and reflect on his actions often, because that would ruin his enjoyment of the present. When he does reflect, like during his conversation with Fernanda where he regrets not being a better brother for her, it just reminds him of how much of a fuck-up he is. Of course, by the time he tries to change things, and be a better brother to Fernanda, it’s far too late. He ignored the issue for too long, and their relationship is irreparably broken.
So Chase is stuck in the present, and by selfishly staying in the present, his actions hurt his relationships with others. Tanner is stuck in the future, and by selfishly pursuing the future, he hurts his relationships with people in the present. Wye is stuck in the past, and by selfishly holding onto the past, he’s hurting his future and other people in the present day.
However, there’s one thing that sets Chase apart from the other two. Chase is capable of looking beyond his own needs, and he’s actually done so. In 6.z, when betraying Alexander, there’s a part of his actions that involve running away from his responsibility. He doesn’t want to be his family’s sole hope, and doesn’t want that pressure placed on him. However, siding with Bristow won’t make him happy. He knows that. Instead, Chase gives up his own happiness for his family’s future. He sees that all of them are better off and happier people, and even if he’s left out of that happiness, it’s enough to make him betray Alexander.
And he did it again. He saw that neither Wye or Tanner would step up to help Gillian, and no one else would do it, so he offered to take on the Horror curse to save Gillian. Sure, he escaped being the de-facto family head, but the cost was high enough that the benefits don't really matter.
Post-Pale Retrospective
I wrote this essay after 20.e. I kind of expected something big to come out of it. I also deeply hoped that Chase's horror form would be something cool and interesting.
The plotline fell off as the trio focused on pursuing Charles exclusively and were kicked out of Kennet. Which is fair -- with Pale having so much to cover with so little in-setting time, things fall to the wayside.
But I think at the end overall...You know visual novels? And how through their multiple routes, they're able to have character arcs that fizzle our, fall to the background, and character arcs ultimately remain unfulfilled or not concluded, because you (the player) made the explicit choice to spend more time with one character than another, ended up on a different route, and as a result you don't get to see those stories, or characters end up in bad places without the insight another route would've given them?
That's what this is. Pale did not cast its eyes on the Belanger Circle, and so the trio never learned or changed. We did learn that Reid and Raquel are Wye's morality pets which is hilarious, but Wye never realizes he should've gotten out of dodge years ago, Tanner never shapes up, and Chase disappears and Nico outright states he didn't change. With luck he just dies randomly, I genuinely think that would be more merciful for Chase and for me. It's bleak! Three young men, better than the adults and bad influences in their lives but not by much, left to fend for themselves without Alexander or Bristow or anyone else in charge, and they completely fumble it, as expected, when they don't have the tools to actually do better.
Prayer circle that Wye Belanger makes like that one gay Garrick uncle and steals his family's shit and leaves forever.