They really make her an isu-crazed person in the end like..It contradicts so many things that I saw in her. If her decision was temporary? I understand. But she really spends her final days studying god knows what isu knowledge in vinland? All Alone by herself 🤔🤔?? For what? Why? Even with this ending, They could delve into her more human side story, making the story makes more sense. But they simply chose not to🫤 what a way to treat a protagonist. They have no respect
What they have done is erase Eivor as her own person to make Odin the thing that matters in the minds of players, so they can sell future AC games with connected Isu lore. And we have got a lot of gaslighting explanations from Darby about this, how this game was “created with Odin in mind” from the beginning (which he never said before, but is saying now when people are complaining that Eivor was disrespected) and she’s really just a vehicle for him. But this makes zero sense, because you don’t play with Odin in mind at ALL.
In fact, the way he is portrayed is adversarial and a narrative foil for Eivor. He is a cautionary tale. Yes, I realize they are technically one person. But we play through the second life, from 9 to 40. We cared about the SECOND LIFE, and the way the story is written in base game, is the first life was something to improve upon. One of those things is to not become a narcissistic, apathetic and selfish asshole who screwed the world over for glory, knowledge and immortality. This is exactly why she was presented with the dilemma in the Yggdrasil chamber. And why she chose “everything else.” If they wanted to reverse this without showing why, other than “I am older now and want to learn” (I still cannot… CANNOT…. Believe that was her explanation to Valka y’all) they might as well have just let her stay in the Yggdrasil chamber and chose the opposite of everything else. THAT would have actually have connected with the last chapter. Darby swearing that her refusing to do what everyone was pushing her to do, further glory, and retreating to Vinland as some kind of additional proof she is better than Odin? That didn’t land. Because she wouldn’t have a abandoned her people to spend the rest of her life seeking knowledge about the Isu, if she was truly better than Odin. They could have made her choice much more thoughtful and consistent with minimal tweaks in the last chapter but they just had her rush to their AC lore point with ZERO forethought. And as such, Eivor’s development was erased, her individuality in her second life was also blown apart.
A great example of how this doesn’t make sense, and how it feels like erasure of Eivor as a character, is how she responds to the memory of Odin with Fenrir and Tyr in the conclusion of the mythological arc of base game. He allows Tyr to lose his arm for the sake of imprisoning Fenrir, to preserve his own life. When Eivor awakens, and tells Valka about this and how she says she “felt nothing,” tearfully. And Valka tells her that this perhaps is a caution to not be so apathetic and selfish, as it alarmed Eivor BECAUSE IT WAS SO FOREIGN to even think that way. And yet… in the last chapter… that is EXACTLY how she behaves as she abandons her people on the dock in the middle of the night, without a goodbye, despite the fact that Alfred and Guthrum made it abundantly clear pagans will have to make a choice to continue living on those lands. Her people were not safe! Convert, or leave (or be killed, which historically happened. Google St Brice’s Day Massacre.) Eivor swore to Hytham she would give her life to protect them. She chose everything else, which was then… spending her existence with those she loved. That was her legacy, after finally understanding why her father did what he did (another thing that is proof this was about Eivor, an entire life wrestling with the death of her parents and that trauma)
So, upon learning the future of her people (SHE CAN SEE TIME, we know this because of Vinland, she flat out tells us her bones are tied to that land!), knowing what danger they will be in, she….. LEAVES and does it in the most cowardly way possible?! She leaves Valka behind, someone who will be in the most danger as a pagan seer?! She becomes the exact thing she never, ever was in base game. It actually made her upset in her memory of Odin to even THINK that way. So, this in itself is outrageous retconning and an attempt to erase Eivor to make her become “one being” but more like becoming Odin in a new body. It’s appallingly bad and poorly written. It has zero consistency.
To be 100% clear, I do not believe this explanation for one second that Valhalla was about Odin. I did not spend 100+ hours building Ravensthorpe to settlement level 6 for that. I did not go through so many alliance arcs for that. I did not romance Randvi for that. I did not play all the seasonal content, the DLCs in either year for that. TWO of the year 1 DLCs didn’t even include Odin at all!!!! I believe this is convincing the OG fans to buy Mirage and get back into the series by erasing Eivor and elevating the Isu narrative for their satisfaction, and attempting to gaslight people into buying this despite so much evidence to the contrary. I also think this was an attempt for someone to restore the reputation of a game they created as an “assassin’s creed game” in the eyes of AC fanboys and executives who brought him back. I don’t want to personally attack Darby here, but this feels like an attempt to redeem a project by prioritizing lore and erasing a character he felt didn’t fit that box the way he needed to for that lore to work. Some fans will buy this, hook, line and sinker. But ACTUAL FANS OF VALHALLA, especially players who aren’t AC lore nerds (and AC lore nerds, for the most part, were not the most passionate fans of this game. Let’s be real!!!), know damn well this doesn’t make any sense. And we know a character assassination and a complete retcon when we see one. We’ve spent way too much time playing, analyzing, etc. to be fooled. I do not have a room full of Eivor merch for someone to tell me she was not who Valhalla has in mind when that story was written. I didn’t play this game for 1300 hours to be lied to like that. And they won’t do that to my girl without me having words about it. Go bullshit someone else, Ubisoft.
To me of the future,
First of all, don’t feel too bad about yourself if you didn’t manage to achieve your goals. That can happen and it doesn’t mean that you are a failure. Progress comes in small steps before it comes in big steps.
Your most realistic goal was to do something mindfully every day. Brushing your teeth is probably the best way to do this - it’s hygienic and fun.
If you kept up with your other goals of building in some mindful physical meditation it will have helped you to so something different, relax yourself and also keep yourself mentally disciplkned. These are all positive goals to have set yourself and goals that I believe you can do.
If you did not, then now is a good time to start them. The tension and stretchig exercises are relatively simple and quite rewarding. Maybe teach them to your registration class. Maybe just do them at interval, or Friday period 5.
Further instructions will not follow. You’re on your own from now on.
Thanks to the ubiquity of recordings, we live in a less musical world than our ancestors did. Within living memory, it was the norm for nearly everyone to sing while they worked, while they worshipped, as entertainment for themselves or a few friends, or for no reason at all. Now, anyone can have music made for them at the push of a button, and anyone with a less than perfect voice is reluctant to sing at all. I enjoy singing for students in local schools and the only real takeaway I want to give them from my programs is You can do this, too! Music is not something you have to be exceptionally clever or particularly talented to make. When is the last time you heard someone singing in public for no discernable reason? I would like to hear it more often.
Anyone who knows me personally knows I yell about this all the time. And yes part of it is due to the nature with how we play music nowadays but theres also the issue of where it is appropriate to make music! Of all the jobs I’ve ever had there has only been one where I was allowed to sing, and I’m a trained vocalist. It was in the bakery at Walmart and it was mainly due to the fact that we were tucked away in the back and the overhead fans meant that unless you got really close to the entrance of the bakery you couldn’t hear me. Many of our ancestors would see it as unthinkable that we aren’t allowed to tell stories, crack jokes, hum, sing songs and entertain ourselves musically while we work. We have whole folk music traditions DEDICATED to different types of work, and now we are expected to participate in long hours of the day where we can’t even make up a little ditty.
And this is just one place! Think of the aces we could be making music! The park! Idly humming to one’s self in the grocery store! singing in bars! public transit! We are so devoid of communal music and it makes me so sad. It doesn’t have to be complex, you can tap a rhythm, you can make up your own little tunes, use someone else’s tune and make up words. Its not the silence we should prize, silence is an absence, its how we choose to fill it.
i love the original frankenstein novel a normal amount
How can you read “I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other” as a closeted teenager and not be changed on an atomic level because of it
