To cope with the way Caleb's third myth also sundered my heart I'm going to ramble about my thoughts, calebmc story parallels, and also some new (and recurring) themes I caught.
[Major spoilers below the cut]
My thoughts
I'm REALLY impressed by the entire myth overall, while it didn't leave me crying actual tears like Sylus' (his third myth and Caleb's Lucid Dream are still the only two that have ever gotten real tears from me), it did carve out a hollow, painful feeling in my chest that still hasn't gone away and had my eyes welling up a few times. The pacing felt perfect -- none of it dragged and the way it ended didn't feel rushed (like it usually does for me) -- the plot points felt cohesive, and we were fed a lot of great foreshadowing without it making the end obvious or the middle convoluted.
I feel like I really experienced the full spectrum of love in this story, from familial and platonic, to innocent and sensual, as well as all of its facets, the violent and the vulnerable, the scary and the beautiful. I've always said that Calebmc are everything to each other, they'd call each other mother, partner, brother, enemy, anything as long as saying that word means they can be permanently infused into each other's lives, and that was beautifully displayed here.
Actually, their intimacy and comfortability with each other was really heartwarming. In the current timeline, Caleb has a lot of shame around his love for MC, and he and MC are constantly trying to navigate the social taboo of their relationship, as well as their own personal hang ups. None of that was present here, and even when the story forces them to reckon with it in the form of the Ghosts at Hesperion Reach ribbing at them about kissing each other shamelessly--
--both of them were so secure and caught up in their love for each other, that it barely registered and it came across as a funny joke. (Even funnier when you take the CN translation into account, since the Ghost actually mentions the fact that they're siblings). Seeing them so free and unrestrained in their love and affection for each other made me long for it all the more for our current Calebmc.
As always, Calebmc know exactly how to simultaneously tear me apart and piece me back together with their soul-deep, DNA-ingrained, world-transcendent love for each other.
The biggest example of this, and one of the big things that devastated me, is how easy it is for both of them to make the toughest decision without a second thought when it comes to the safety and well-being of the other, to the point where it's actually quite self-destructive in my opinion (more on this in a few paragraphs): like Caleb running himself ragged to bend the rules of the world (taking up the mantle as Netherlord even though it was MC's role, creating the lotus pond, bringing the Ghosts to Dingxu) just to keep her comfortable and satiated. Or MC committing to an immortal life without him just to make sure he never dies to another calamity again.
Some other things I found both beautiful and devastating I've sorted into the following themes (because why not keep your depressing spirals organized :D ):
The womb, rebirth, and the cycle of life
I looooved all of the nurturing descriptions ('cultivating' and 'cradling' and 'taking root') when it came to calebmc and their lotuses, specifically when it came to the lotus pond that Caleb made for her and how it symbolizes a womb -- a place to gain strength, a place to seek protection while weak, to receive nourishment, and then be reborn anew into each other's arms.
The lotus pond Caleb creates is their shared 'source,' their shared womb, and it portrays what i said earlier about this story covering the familial aspect of love too. First, it's used for MC, it's where Caleb takes her when he finds her, when she's weak, and nurtures her until she's reborn. Until she comes back in a childlike state, trying to learn the way of the world (trying to learn his name). In fact, some of Caleb's actions could be seen as both maternal and that of a lover:
At the end, the lotus pond is for Caleb, where MC gathers the pieces of his scattered soul and nurtures him until he's reborn. She is just as maternal as him, if not a little more, because she's the Netherlord, the embodiment of death and destruction, and yet she cares for him with only the best, most pure and vibrant pieces of herself. And the way she talks to him throughout his ‘gestation’ like rebirth is reminiscent of a woman that's expecting, a future mother imbuing the new life growing 'inside' of her with warmth and vivacity and unconditional love.
Self-destruction and the Ourobouros (Dragon/Snake eating its tail)
This is probably just my personal fascination with this theme/symbol and not as obviously portrayed in the myth, but this is also THE single most devastating thing about the myth to me that is still making my heart hurt: their self-destructive love across all timelines.
In the story, by the time Caleb finds her, MC has reduced herself to an empty husk. She's a barbaric, snarling shell that has erased all of herself except for one word, one instinct: Caleb. She’s destroyed every other fragment of her soul so completely just to find him, that when "her Caleb" does appear, she can't even remember his face or even say his name.
When she's A-01, she's forcibly reset and erased by her minders/captors after each 'use' of her destructive abilities, and once again the only thing she knows when she awakens each time is: Caleb.
In Lucid Dream, she was prepared to do the same thing, and if Caleb hadn't intervened and removed the Toring Chip from MC's brain, she had every intention of this being her goal just so she could join him.
Across every death and rebirth, the only person or concept MC has ever kept with her is Caleb.
Caleb is exactly the same way in his self-destruction: from jumping out of the space craft as X-02, to being torn apart by Ghosts during a calamity, and to an even greater degree, to being okay with the Toring Chip erasing/destroying who he is (while only preserving the 7% of himself that embodies MC).
All of this calls to mind one of the most fascinating portrayals of self-destruction, the ourobouros (the dragon eating its own tail), which symbolizes eternity and rebirth, as well as the self-sufficient nature of the cosmos (which... as we've been told a few times, mc is the cosmos, so that’s a fun tidbit).
And I can't help but think how that fits so well into the dynamic of Calebmc. They're so inextricably linked, they are themselves as well as each other, and therefore, across lifetimes, for eternity, they are also destined to destroy each other every time they destroy themselves (with the karmic irony being that they only destroy themselves FOR each other), or in other words:
Except, for Caleb, there's guilt added to this inevitable cycle, because he is always the one who's aware of and/or perpetuating the cycle. MC does turn into a Ghost despite all his efforts to trade places and have her survive. MC jumps to her death with him as A-01 despite all his efforts to trade places and have her survive. And MC does inject herself with the Toring Chip and catch Ever’s eye despite all of Caleb's efforts... you guessed it, to trade places and have her survive.
And it makes me wonder if her inevitable death is Caleb's cosmic penance for constantly defying his own fate to ‘save’ her -- locked into an unsustainable cycle, unable to evolve... a self-pollinating flower that's doomed to wither and die.
WELL ... I'm not really sure how to end this lol, except to say my biggest takeaway or 'lesson' (for lack of better word) from this myth is that, by making calebmc who they were, I think I have just as deep of a love for MC now as I do Caleb. It sounds kind of silly since MC is "me" and that kind of self-reflection and self love is probably the entire point, but I don’t think I can feel the love I feel for Caleb's character without acknowledging, and loving, the pieces of him that are her reflections within him, now that I know there are so many.
Caleb is who he is because MC put him together, cared for him, and nurtured him to be that way. Likewise, Caleb did the same for MC. So, my love for her is now inextricably linked to my love for Caleb. Because he is her, and she is him.
WELL if you want my deep deep dive, i just wrote a whole essay about all the reasons I think Caleb's myth was a tragedy (sorry i think one of my tags earlier today auto corrected bc i was in caps lock 💀) that my heart will never recover from.
Buuut if you want a shorter reason (major spoiler):
IT'S THE WAYYYY that, true to exactly who they are, both Caleb and mc can remember each other once they separate yin and yang. And yet... AND YET it's an entirely one-sided remembrance because Caleb doesn't know that MC misses him and thinks about him like she does. MC feels it from Caleb every day, from the new souls, from the nether wards, from the rain, he literally showers her with his love and memories of her throughout his lifetime.
But MC can't do the same for Caleb. There's no way for her to reach him, to send him the same message, to make sure it gets back to him. And she must be agonized every day to think that he might believe his messages don't reach her. Or worse, that she doesn't remember him at all.
But I also think Caleb is okay with it, I think he'd prefer to believe that MC doesn't remember him. That she's living her life not yearning for someone who could never be with her
SO IVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT THIS ever since the Throne of Eros banner actually because even in the AU he called her his 'baby' sister? Which is interesting because that means in every universe something happens for them to see each other as older or younger!
I know 'something' is very unspecific but it also seems to me that with each iteration of calebmc, the 'cause' of the 'age difference' is unique. Like, I'm assuming that in the current Colonel Caleb timeline it's bc MC was being killed over and over again in Ever's experiments when they were both in the lab, and every time she... restarted life, he was still aging, right? So he was 2-3 years older and more experienced in uh, living, by the time she restarted for the last time.
[netherlord!caleb spoiler below the cut]
For the Netherlord myth, it seems like they are constantly going through a cycle of death and rebirth together but however that cycle started (bc the spiritmaster and his sister probably weren't even the first iterations of them you know?), Caleb is the one who's taken on the role of the older caretaker. Especially portrayed when he finds her in their 'afterlife' and nurtures her back to health from her childlike/Ghost state.
I think Decoherence is the only timeline we've seen where calebmc weren't hung up on seeing each other from an older or younger perspective. Though, similarly to the Colonel myth, she is the one who is being constantly 'reset' or 'reprogrammed' and starting anew whenever she starts to take a liking to Caleb, while Caleb continues living and watching her thru that one way glass. AND similar to the netherlord myth, A-01 is the more childlike one and Caleb is there to teach her about the world (like the meaning of home and friend and Caleb), so there's a 'natural order' of him being perceived as older even though he might not be by our definition.
Despite all these more 'evidence-based' reasons though, I think the true answer is a little more amorphous and abstract than all that. Because time (as we see it) doesn't really apply to calebmc in a... linear way like that. To me, one is not able to exist without the other, so as soon as one pops into the existence, the other does too (for example: light exists so by nature darkness automatically does too, bc it's a result of that light existing), and it's not really about first or second, if that makes sense?
They're just always going to be born 'together' and Caleb will always be the one that wants to take care of her, no matter what time says about their age!
