time adventure & clow/yue
part of the reason i made this sideblog is that i recently heard the song Time Adventure and i can’t stop thinking about this in a clow/yue context, as a song from yue’s point of view. not necessarily in a reciprocated romantic context; i think it can also be easily interpreted as yue pining alone.
if you’ll forgive me a very long post:
this version of the song is what’s giving me Thoughts, and the lyrics go like this:
Time is an illusion that helps things make sense So we are always living in the present tense It seems unforgiving when a good thing ends But you and I will always be back then You and I will always be back then
Singing will happen, happening, happened Will happen, happening, happened And will happen again and again ‘Cause you and I will always be back then
If there was some amazing force outside of time To take us back to where we were And hang each moment up like pictures on the wall Inside a billion tiny frames so that we could see it all, all, all
It would look like: will happen, happening, happened Will happen, happening, happened And, will happen again and again 'Cause you and I will always be back then 'Cause you and I will always be back then You and I will always be back then That’s why you and I will always be best friends
---
time is an illusion that helps things make sense so we’re always living in the present tense i think living with someone who sees the future and is unable to stop doing so - whether that manifests in a constant, uncontrollable way or in an occasional-deep-visions way - would lend a sense of blurriness to the experience of time. clow seems incredibly future-oriented: he believes so strongly in the inevitability of things, and also plans extensively for the futures he sees. even if these visions and plans aren’t something he shares with kero and yue while they’re living together - and i think he usually didn’t, really - i think his future sight affected the way he interacted with people, and also how he thought about time. in my mind, clow’s distant manner isn’t just something he puts on for sakura as a mentor-facade sort of thing. for example, he’s also very calm and composed when he’s talking to kero and yue about how he’s going to die. i don’t think he was always like that with them, or always like that in other areas of his life¹, but it makes me think that distance is something he was good at using, something he was good at putting on. more specifically, that’s a way that i might expect someone to act if they were deeply distracted or upset by something but still needed to interact with others. i don’t think it would have been uncommon for clow to interact with yue and kero that way while being lost in thought about the future, or planning for it, or while otherwise immersed in a time that isn’t happening now. i think being close to someone like that, someone who’s at least sometimes halfway in the future, would make it especially easy to see time as an illusion that helps things make sense. this is, i think, maybe the kind of view a powerful magician who can’t turn off his future sight would adopt, if he believed in inevitability. events laid out all around him, spiraling out, with consequences he can and can’t foresee, everything stretching away while he’s rooted here and now. he can see that all of these things will happen, and they might as well be happening for him right now given all that he’s planning and thinking about them. but he isn’t actually there. he’s here, living in the present tense only, subject to his own understanding of the passing of time while he’s also wrapped up in what-will-be. living through will happen, happening, happened.
i think yue being as close to clow as he was - whatever interpretation you make of that - would make it easy for yue to pick up on that way of thinking. i don’t think yue is the kind of person who would directly oppose, or think to oppose, clow’s idea of hitsuzen; i think he would actually have a lot to process when faced with evidence that clow wasn’t omniscient and couldn’t plan for everything. (if yue didn’t outright idolize clow, i think he came very close.) so i think yue would have thought the same way as clow about time and how it works in relation to people, even if yue isn’t experiencing the things that make clow see time the way he does.² i imagine that refrain (will happen, happening, happened) as something yue tells himself to comfort himself now, after clow’s death. remembering how he thought of things before, and remembering how his master thought of things; holding onto the past through a mindset that interprets time less as an arrow moving forward and more as a blur of will happen, happening, happened.
it seems unforgiving when a good thing ends of course it does. yue grieves. even though he warms up to sakura very quickly, i have a hard time believing yue could process what’s happened with clow in any comparable timeframe.
but you and i will always be back then you and i will always be back then i think of this as yue remembering what things were like, when clow was there and things were okay. if interpreting with a ship lens, “you and i” takes on a more painful meaning here for yue, but in any case the way that this is repeated softly over and over throughout the song is really emotionally effective. it makes me imagine someone thinking this to themself, wrapping themself in memories, reminding themself that what’s now lost isn’t and can’t be truly gone forever, not as long as they hold onto this.
singing will happen, happening, happened will happen, happening, happened and will happen again and again 'cause you and I will always be back then i’ve already talked about this refrain a little, but it really plays well into how i see clow (and yue)’s perspective on time, plus yue’s grief and reluctance to move on. as long as he holds on, it doesn’t have to end. the repetition of these lines throughout the song really reinforces that for me - the singer, holding onto their memories, warding off the pain of separation as best they can.
if there was some amazing force outside of time to take us back to where we were shoutout to the return card, which doesn’t exist in the manga and thereby denies manga!yue even the chance to dream of sakura sending him back in time with it.
the simplest interpretation here, i think, is that yue can’t use the cards himself to go back in time anyway, or that he wouldn’t want to hurt sakura by actually asking her to do this, so he’s left just dreaming about this. but i think there’s a longer (and possibly weaker) explanation, too.
i think clow’s perspective on time and inevitability would have also included not being able to go back to exactly the way things were.³ when the inevitable happens, it’s done. it was inevitable, and it’s happened, and that’s how it is. after that, going back, or trying to change things from what’s happened, will have its own set of consequences. from a doylist perspective, this could be because it’s really hard to tell a satisfying story involving time travel that ends in a perfectly resolved reset, but from a watsonian perspective i think it’s less a rule of the multiverse that time magic can’t be used this way and more that clow’s perspective on inevitability limits what’s possible for him and his magic - i think clow’s ability to use time-related magic is limited to a sort of... relatively beginner way, compared to how someone like kaito might use it, because of his perspective.⁴ i like to think that the way clow thought about things affected the way that the cards’ power manifests, especially before they’re transformed into sakura cards.⁵ in the anime episode concerning the time card (which also doesn’t exist in the manga, i am so sorry yue) sakura and syaoran aren’t able to change the basic events of the repeating day. even then, kero comments that it takes so much power to rewind an entire day that it can only be done once a day, at midnight. what’s happened has happened, and it takes a lot of power to go back and re-experience it, and even then the changes you could make are limited. that’s incredibly different from how kaito constantly rewinds time in clear card, and while it might just be that the time card is weaker without someone to wield it i think it’s that clow’s potential proficiency with time magic is limited to begin with.
anyway, all that to say: wishful thinking on yue’s part, to want to go back and have more time with clow.
and hang each moment up like pictures on the wall inside a billion tiny frames so that we could see it all, all, all this isn’t actually interpretation of the song, sorry, but this line reminds me of butterflydreaming’s Clow Stories. it’s such a good collection of clow/yue moments, and i think it builds the relationship beautifully and gives them both a lot of depth. the beginning of the fic frames the story in a very similar way to the lyric here - unwrapping memories one by one, remembering them like individual pictures on a wall.
fic recs aside, i think this is a lovely lyric that really captures the feeling of wanting to hold onto every moment, every second of your time with someone. the whole song has that same feeling to it, that longing to keep everything in your hands forever, and i think that’s perfect angst material.
you and I will always be back then that’s why you and I will always be best friends the interpretation of the ending really depends on the way you’re seeing clow and yue relate to each other - it could be completely inapplicable, the wrong term for what they had with each other; or it could be yue trying to comfort himself with the idea that he was at least a good companion and friend to clow when he wanted more; or it could be yue taking refuge in the fact that his feelings don’t have to end with clow’s death. cyoa!
anyway, this song gives me a lot of feelings. this was so long if you have made it this far thank you for coming to my ted talk
---
¹ (i have no idea what he’s like in tsubasa chronicle. but since afaik yue isn’t in tsubasa chronicle and never sees him in any context other than ccs, i don’t think clow in tsubasa would change too much of my interpretation here.) ² i headcanon that yue’s magical bond with clow also gives yue some level of emotional/mental connection with him. i’m not set on, or picky about, what that level is - it might just be a sense of where clow is and that’s all, or it might be on a level where yue is also affected by the way clow thinks and feels. i think the latter especially lends itself to how i interpret clow and yue, here. ³ not even counting Clow’s Fun Adventure regarding Trying To Keep Things The Way They Were Forever; i just think this is a natural consequence of believing so strongly in the inevitable. ⁴ i think this better explains why clow wasn’t able to use the book that powers kaito’ time magic in clear card. “clow’s mindset and understanding of the world is inherently incompatible with time magic” makes more sense to me than just “it was just too hard for clow, who is repeatedly stated to be one of the strongest magicians in the world”. in chapter 57, kero says that “he got his hands on [the book]… but it wasn’t enough. clow couldn’t achieve the impossible.” and i wonder if that’s really all there was to it. while i do think “momo and the book hated the idea of working with clow and refused to do so” is really funny on its own, i think clow’s mentality being incompatible with time magic is a good explanation too. (and of course there’s the interpretation where they just wanted to establish kaito as a really scary extremely competent magician, much moreso than clow, but i think that isn’t nearly as fun to meta about.) ⁵ the way sakura creates clear cards makes me think of this, too; the way she perceives things and understands the world manifests in her magical instruments. of course sakura’s power is out of control, and is not creating purposefully the way i imagine clow was, but i think it does lend some credibility to the thought that the creator’s understanding of the world affects how a card works.
