Character VS Status Quo in "Chicory: A Colorful Tale"
Second essay in the series: exploring the character of Chicory in the context of a harmful standard of performance; discussing generational trauma, Shadows, and isolation
Content warnings:
struggle with mental health, depression and self-loathing; implied suicidal ideation;
toxic/abusive teacher figure;
pretty constant mentions of food (because of the nature of the game).
The post also contains instances of bold text.
Art by Fleur Marigold; check out their socials for more!!
Welcome back! Perhaps. Or maybe nice to meet you :-) It’s time for the second post in the “Character VS Status Quo” series! This time, we actually do media analysis, and I want to open with a real banger: “Chicory: A Colorful Tale”.
image description: a digital colored illustration of Chicory and Pizza from “Chicory: A Colorful Tale”. Chicory is giving a very excited Pizza a piggy-back ride and looking at them with an affectionate smile. end id
This 2021 video game is a coloring book adventure that deals with themes of artistic self-determination, legacy, expectation, pressure, struggle with identity and self-worth in the face of an exclusive societal role, as well as mental health, generational trauma and personal and communal Shadow-work. So very juicy. Let’s dig in!
(This one is really wordy, so buckle up! As a fair warning, I might talk in circles from time to time out of the urge to emphasize. I wish you patience, and hope you do enjoy!)
Disclaimer: Yes I Know It’s Not Technically Anti-Capitalist
In the introduction essay I posted as the very first entry, I ramble at length about the faults of capitalism and the related struggle with identity vs standard, as well as the role marginalization and specifically disability may play in that. Reading the intro is not necessary to understand the following post, but it may provide more context for some parts. I will be elaborating on any relevant aspects of the game as I go, too, but if you haven’t experienced it yet, please consider purchasing it (the game play is brilliantly accessible) or, if you want, check out this play-through by PlayFrame!
The play-through is very much a happy place for me, and the joyful and enthusiastic gushing combined with insightful commentary highlight all the best aspects of the game so well.
Back to the essay! Quite remarkably, “Chicory” is set in a world that is very directly shown to be untouched by capitalism. Things seem to operate on more socialist terms and you only gain (completely non-essential) items in exchange for services or through barter, or by trading trash you pick up, because we gotta’ reward commonfolk’s environmental efforts! In one of my most beloved bits of dialogue of all time, a couple of background characters discuss the book one of them is reading, which describes this wild and ridiculous economical theory of free markets and corporate liberties. Capitalism very literally has never been a thing, which for me makes it that much easier to get attached to the world we’re interacting with.
Still, my previous lengthy post feels relevant to the narrative even considering the setting - because the latter is still far from idealistic. Because there are rigid structures at play here, too; because there is a standard and a subsequent measure of failure, and those affect the inhabitants of the peaceful socialist Picnic profoundly. Because there are societal roles that overpower personal identities, and people (well, creatures) find themselves either crushed by the weight of responsibility or hopelessly overlooked as unimportant.
Greg Lobanov’s games often deal with the artistic plight to feel “enough”, to make oneself heard and to find a sense of belong in the world. “Chicory” is a story that is all about being an artist; and sharing your utmost self with the world is bound to come with challenges, regardless of the political and economical system you live under. I hope that me drawing parallels between what is clearly a personally meaningful narrative and a concept that is different, yet similar, would not feel like I’m doing a disservice to the game’s original message. In fact, barely any of the pieces of media I am going to discuss within this framework actually aim to talk about capitalism - but all will challenge similarly rigid and unforgiving realities by centering a disabled and/or neurodivergent character.
Speaking of the latter! It is time I introduce you to our game’s deuteragonist, named in the very title.
Chicory’s Characterization a.k.a. Don’t Meet Your Heroes(?)
The game opens with Chicory’s introduction, narrated by the player character, who is colloquially dubbed “Pizza”. We are told that Chicory is Picnic’s most recent Wielder - someone who holds the magic Brush, which is the singular source of color in this black-and-white world. (Coloring book, remember?)
There is only one Brush, getting passed on from mentor to student - and Chicory came into Wielding not so long ago. In our character’s eyes, she is the greatest one to ever have had the honor - and Pizza is certainly excited about Chicory taking over.
The event that kick-starts the plot of the game is the sudden disappearance of color, all of it, at once. Pizza, who is busy doing their janitor duties at the time, goes to check on things only to find the Brush abandoned outside of Chicory’s locked room. Being an excited and slightly overenthusiastic little dog who’s secretly waiting for a chance to express and “prove” themself, they quickly pick it up - as a “service” to Chicory, of course. (/s)
Pretty early on, Pizza encounters Corruptions: dark thorny vines and trees sprouting all over Picnic, blocking passage, draining color, emanating dark and ominous energy and attacking those who come too close. As the current apparent Wielder, Pizza is tasked with the responsibility to handle the problem, and everyone is looking to them for answers, expecting them to deliver messages, reunite loved ones, rescue lost kids - you know, player character stuff. The Brush seems to have a status attached to it that goes beyond just a glorified mural painter - a Wielder is expected to be a true pillar of the community, simply because of the fact of their exclusivity. …And also the Brush gives them magic powers that let them get to difficult areas, I guess.
As the plot progresses, we get to meet Chicory herself - and coming face to face with their idol is a rough journey for Pizza. They are occasionally oblivious, perhaps deliberately in denial, but to the player, it is obvious from the start: Chicory is deeply, overwhelmingly depressed, and struggling to an alarming degree.
She seems indifferent to the fate of the Brush, leaving it with Pizza since they've already picked it up; it’s clear she never wants to wield it herself again. She seeks isolation and distance, and with time, it becomes clear she is drowning in self-deprecation and guilt. A crucial plot point is Pizza (and us) realizing that the initial loss of color and the appearance of Corruptions are devastating external expressions of Chicory’s mental and emotional breakdown - and in her state, she is not taking that fact well, finding ultimate justification of her self-hatred in the fact that she seems to be actively harming the world around her.
During one of the Corruption encounters, Pizza gets confronted by Chicory’s Shadow, who mocks and dismisses them mercilessly and threatens to "erase" them, seeing them as "undeserving". They rush to bring it up to the real-world Chicory, and the news cause her to come completely undone. She feels that a horrible, ugly truth about her has been revealed. She is convinced that the Corruptions are entirely her fault, and that her appearing in them only proves it further.
Chicory pushes Pizza away, pleading for them to see what an awful person she is and to finally leave her alone once they do; she speaks of herself as broken and wrong, and a danger to others. She fully identifies with the Corruption and internalizes it; it is coming from her, and so she could not possibly be anything but a horrible person, and she deserves to be alone, kept isolated and severed from the world. As far as she is aware, no one else wielding the Brush ever caused anything of the sort.
Chicory’s Personality Complex: a Deeper Dive
Seeing how Chicory’s Shadow attacked Pizza and threatened them with “erasure” for not being good enough to Wield, that may be interpreted as having a troubling, heartbreaking connotation for Chicory's relationship with herself. If she is “wrong”, if she should have never wielded, does she deserve to be "erased", too?
Fortunately, no matter how hard Chicory tries to push Pizza away, claiming that everything is her fault, Pizza does not back away. In one of my favorite lines of dialogue, they exclaim: "I don't care where [the problems] came from! I can't face it all alone anymore".
I feel like that is a very powerful and radical statement when it comes to resolving a present danger within the community. The idea of blame is fundamentally individualistic, isolating and harmful to our sense of identity. It is certainly important to take responsibility for how we affect the world; but when there is an issue that cannot be resolved by any one individual person's actions, we need to look into solutions, cooperate and uphold each other, not pin blame.
The blamed person being saddled with the entire weight of others' pain is no longer seen as themself; their understanding of themself as part of the community gets replaced by overwhelming guilt. They fully assume the identity of "the one who broke things", with the limited capability to define themself outside of the specific event or specific system. And with major, global issues that affect the entire community and need everyone's joined effort to set things right, it is rarely realistic to put the blame on just one person or institution. We will likely be dealing with a plethora of overlapping factors, including our community's history, the complexities of our mentality and relationships, and often - our communal Shadow, the dark and stormy collective unconscious.
That is the case with Chicory. As the plot progresses, it becomes clearer and clearer that she is not the only person with a Shadow that acts within the negative space. Pizza encounters their own unconscious side, who viciously criticizes them and exposes all of their deep issues with the sense of self-worth and accomplishment, their endless desire for approval from someone they pedestal as "better" and "bolder" and more exciting and special than them. Eventually, the negative space allows us a glimpse into the mindset of Blackberry - Chicory's predecessor and mentor, a harsh, critical person that seems very ready to blame her pupil for what is happening - and who also struggles with repressed guilt at the thought of having let Chicory down, pushed her away, not having prepared her well enough.
The more insight Pizza and Chicory get into the nature of the Corruption, the more ready Chicory seems to admit that the problem might not be that she is "broken", after all. Pizza faced Chicory at her lowest moment - and still stayed and asked for her help, essentially affirming that Chicory is someone Pizza cares about unconditionally and someone they trust to have their back, to help them. It's not about Chicory's use as much as it is about the two of them belonging alongside each other, and Pizza asking to not be left alone with the predicament they're facing. And that lets Chicory breach her own self-isolation and retain a sense of identity beyond her perceived failure as a Wielder.
However, she is still extremely hard and down on herself. Right before Pizza faces Blackberry's shadow, they and Chicory have a talk at the site of Chicory's last conversation with her teacher. Pizza once again tries to convince their friend that she doesn't need to carry full responsibility for how her Wielder period turned out, but Chicory is seeing the most corrupted place they've encountered yet, sees the dark trees that sprouted the moment she had her final fight with Blackberry - and feels like the world itself is reflecting her ugliest feelings back at her. Chicory cannot help but feel at fault, cannot speak of herself as anything but weak and unworthy. She cannot do the things other people do; she cannot cope as well as others. Maybe she needed support and didn't get it, but she doesn't want to need help. The fact that she does makes her feel inherently broken, not fitting the standard of an average capable person; and either way, since she knew all of that about herself already, she should never have taken onto the immense responsibility of Wielding and risked endangering others.
What we witness here is Chicory coming up against a demanding and inhumane Standard, pushing herself to measure up to it, inevitably failing - and internalizing that failure, choosing to berate herself for being “lesser” than everyone else, than what she should have been; for having a mental illness and struggling with managing it on her own without proper support. The rigid system of Wieldership puts emphasis on Chicory’s performance over her needs and wishes, actively worsens her mental state - and then seems to offer no ways of accommodating it. And for Chicory, that is a sign of her being “broken”, and her sense of identity suffers greatly for it.
Wielder Tradition and Loss of Direction
As the game progresses, we get important insight into the tradition and history of Wielding - and find out that perhaps, the way things are now is a distorted version of the initial vision and experience of it. We visit the Wielder Temple, which helps the newly initiated explore the meaning and pitfalls of creativity: the connection it builds with the world, others, your unconscious self and “the sublime”. Art is presented as an act of deliberate and expansive connectivity - yet Chicory feels othered and unwelcome in the world. The teachings of the Temple do not seem enough to help with the current challenges, or maybe they are simply not practiced properly, with mentors failing to guide their students through this psychological rite of passage.
On an individual level, this might be interpreted as a cautionary tale against the dangers of neglecting one’s well-being for the sake of creating. But the notions of the collective, generations, history and shared suffering are inseparable from the game’s narrative; what we’re talking about here is more than one individual’s personal responsibility for their mental and physical health.
The Brush, which, as we discover, carries the Shadows of everyone who ever Wielded, represents the building weight of generational trauma;
the desire to become a Wielder often stems from an ailment shared by many (if not most) characters: a sense of personal unimportance, a loss of audible voice in a huge, loud world;
and, of course, there’s the fact that the Wielder system was put in place to stop actual wars once fought over the Brush. With the Shadow-work theme, that can be interpreted as a meditation on the ways of the world: society inventing rules meant to regulate the most survival-based parts of us, and those parts getting banished into the unconscious, then acting out destructively because of our poor handling of them, our lack of honesty and/or compassion for ourselves.
All of these narrative elements come together to paint a world in which an individual creator cannot exist and function outside of the context of history and culture and psychological journey of humanity*. Art builds a connection with yourself, but also with the world, others and the universal transcendental aspects of life. Chicory’s story is inseparable from the context of the Wielder tradition and the history of her world. The Wielder Temple as narrative tool is not only here to show what an individual should do to take care of themself: it is also meant to create the necessary background of tradition and explore how these values get passed on and transformed, illustrate how the connectivity happens through guidance and communal healing (or lack thereof).
A literal as well as symbolic expression of that is Chicory’s relationship with Blackberry - and it is through learning about Blackberry’s own Shadow that Chicory gets the insight she needs to start forgiving herself, once she realizes that what has happened is more than just her “brokenness” or “wrongness”.
Blackberry’s Character: Perfectionism and Black-and-White Thinking
From what we hear about their relationship, Blackberry was the main motivation for Chicory to mask, to hide her every "weakness" and deal with her personal challenges on her own.
Blackberry seems extremely strict, demanding and unforgiving as a teacher. On top of that, she held onto the Brush for longer than anyone is expected to: Wielders seem prone to quick burnout, after all. It's no surprise that Chicory felt pressured to appear perfect, masquerade as flawlessly collected, in control, strong and independent: Wielding had been her dream for most of her life, and she must've been terrified of giving Blackberry any reason to doubt her readiness and candidacy and to decide to hold onto the Brush a while longer instead of passing it on.
To Chicory, Blackberry's figure is an object of both deep respect and deep resentment: a form of pedestaling Pizza is prone to, as well. Chicory rightfully feels deeply hurt by her mentor, but also inherently inadequate in comparison to her, shamed by her teacher's example rather than inspired. From the start, Blackberry was an emblem of perfection and self-control that Chicory could never even hope to genuinely aspire to, and that left her feeling pathetic, unworthy, wrong.
Being told that Blackberry has a Shadow of her own, a dark, hidden, emotionally messy and conflicted side, must've been such immense help in overcoming the deep shame of being The One Person in the world who is wrong and incapable of managing her feelings. Chicory gets to see Blackberry as more than a cold, dismissive image of alienating perfection. The flawless front is finally revealed to hide emotion just as human and just as destructive.
The confrontation with Blackberry’s Shadow also demonstrates a form of absolutist black-and-white thinking. The Shadow is stuck in a memory of Chicory and Blackberry's last conversation: Blackberry aborts the ceremony of officially passing the Brush over to her student at the last moment, and Chicory basically takes it by force and runs off with it.
Blackberry's unconscious struggles to process that event. It is completely overwhelmed with guilt and tries to shift the blame to avoid carrying a feeling this intense. One moment, she calls herself a monster, physically transforming into one in the symbolic negative Shadow space. Next, she tears into Chicory, repeating all of the cruel things she says about her throughout the game: Chicory is weak, unprepared, unworthy, this is all her fault. Throughout all that, however, Blackberry’s Shadow retains a monstrous form, which hints at the fact that deep inside, she still feels that she has wronged her student - which is very much fair, in my opinion.
Regardless of her obvious wrongs, though, Blackberry’s guilt goes beyond manageable and self-compassionate. Just as Chicory felt she had failed so horribly she might not deserve to exist, Blackberry subconsciously experiences her own wrongdoing so intensely she starts identifying with it, not leaving herself any sense of self outside of it, no space to breathe. In her eyes, she is not a person who failed to guide their student: she is the failure itself, she is the monster, because someone has to be.
And, of course, she cannot retain her sense of self from a place of such intense self-loathing. But instead of breaking down, like Chicory, Blackberry feverishly pushes blame onto the other, to avoid feeling so unbearably awful about herself. Which isn't fair to Chicory and is borderline abusive, edging uncomfortably close to victim-blaming.
The deep and bitter irony of that is that such behavior does not help the part of Blackberry that hates herself for hurting Chicory and pushing her away.
That's the danger of black-and-white thinking, where any wrong is irredeemable and one’s identity gets fully replaced by the external expression of one's existence, with no room for compassion and nuance. You either carry the guilt and find yourself a mark on the world that is probably better erased, or give in to the urge to shift this sort of blame onto someone else, scarring them in the process.
Going back to Chicory, we can see how similar mentality progresses once she is allowed to feel okay about herself. The idea that there must be an incurable, unjustifiable Wrong in the universe that needs to be eliminated for things to go back to normal does not go away. The difference is that Chicory stops seeing herself as such wrong - and instead shifts the blame to the Brush. It gives shape to the wielder's darkest thoughts, it makes dangerous emotions tangible and makes them hurt the world - therefore, it needs to be destroyed. Only that can keep everyone safe. Having color is not worth the danger of the Corruption, which only keeps spreading.
When Chicory presents the idea of destroying the Brush to Pizza, she asks: “Would a black-and-white world really be that bad?”. As the PlayFrame duo pointed out at that moment, the choice of words is most likely deliberate, pointing towards Chicory’s absolutist mentality.
At the same time, the fact that the Brush has hurt Chicory so deeply means she also possesses a unique and personal understanding of its dangers, like any traumatized person carries intimate knowledge of what something traumatizing looks like and how it operates. There is a line between hypervigilance and awareness, and it would feel wrong to dismiss Chicory’s insight by claiming she is way too biased and cannot see the “gray areas” when it comes to the problem of the Brush.
Even more so, at the end, the Brush is destroyed - but what isn’t lost is color, and the option of self-expression.
Binary VS Spectrum; Destruction VS Transformation
The Brush’s power to dip into someone’s unconscious and bring it forward is what scares Chicory the most - but even with the Brush gone, that magic isn’t lost. Instead, it’s transformed; and so Picnic gets to keep its color, the world does not become black-and-white. Chicory was justified in her fear of the Brush - but its real danger was not in the option of creative communication, however turbulent dealing with someone’s unconscious might be.
Unconscious blame-game and black-and-white thinking, generational trauma versus the individual, the culture of an exclusive status - all of these come together to bring about the previously discussed loss of identity in a binary system. In terms of Wielding, the binary is "worthy or worthless", "capable or broken"; in the context of interpersonal conflict, it becomes "right or wrong", in the most absolute forms of them. Same treatment is extended to the natural phenomena of the world: something can be chosen as the ultimate evil, and getting rid of it will allegedly fix everything that is wrong in our lives.
What really, really excites me about this is that in the introduction essay, I suggested the idea of a spectrum of “standard-passing” to counteract the binary of "standard vs outcast". And “Chicory: A Colorful Tale” offers you to use a magical brush and a few pleasant palettes to very literally transform a black-and-white world into a gradient of color.
Individual VS Generations
What's important to us is that the collective Shadow taking over in moments of intense self-loathing and perceived rejection, it lashing out, at the individual, others or the world, is inseparable from the history of a suffocating system. The Brush carries hurt and fear and jealousy and disappointment of every Wielder prior. Every next person saddled with it carries the immense weight of legacy and generations of unpacked baggage, adding more to it in the process.
This is a powerful metaphor for centuries worth of unresolved familial or cultural genetic trauma that never gets properly tackled before another person is brought into the world to continue the cosmic chain. It is also a great reflection of the growing agony of our society, eroded by centuries of loss of community, inhumane political and economical systems, suppression of non-standard identity, oppressive structures targeting vulnerable groups, so on and so forth. It does feel like we are coming into a new awareness of our shared societal trauma - but the weight of it often feels overwhelming.
Going back to Chicory's character, we see not only how the rigid system inherited from previous generations rejected her, but also how it shaped Chicory's sense of identity and led her down the path of severe emotional breakdown. At one point, Chicory shares that the dream to become the Wielder consumed her life from a very young age. She didn't seek connection, she didn't do things for fun or to unwind. She worked diligently, isolated herself and constantly pushed herself to be good enough, all on top of desperately trying to hide any sign of struggle from others and by that locking herself out of getting help and support. The Wielder was an image, a title to measure up to, a standard set impossibly high - and Chicory gave up the rest of what made her life worthwhile and pinned everything onto this one goal.
At the end, it is no wonder that once she faced difficulty in her new role, Chicory could not find any identity outside of it to ground herself in, to save herself from feeling like a failure in every way: she was fully dedicated to “earning” this one thing, and lacked any other worthwhile pursuit in her life.
We cannot know if Chicory’s depression predated her ambition. She might’ve broken under the weight of legacy and generational trauma simply because they’ve grown beyond what any one person could handle. Maybe she struggled before that, and the pressures she faced exacerbated those issues to an unmanageable degree.
What we do know either way is that the system hurt her, and that there was no one to accommodate Chicory’s needs and guide her through proper self-care and mental health maintenance. Whether Chicory always needed that more than most other people does not change the fact that everyone needs it, at some point, to some degree.
Chicory’s point of view is valuable not only because she inherently deserves support and accommodation; it also exposes how deeply the system hurts every person within it. Because it was damaging to Blackberry, committed to a toxic and unrealistic standard of perfection. It made her so hopelessly stressed out by the pressure of legacy that she could barely even find a replacement for herself, and then proceeded to tear herself and Chicory apart out of the dread she felt at having failed every Wielder before her. It hurt Cardamom, Blackberry's predecessor, who struggled to the point of his work becoming unbearable by the end of it, and who probably let his desperation affect Blackberry, too. (Ask me about my Blackberry and Cardamom mini-theory, I beg.) One way or another, Wielding became an exhausting and scarring experience for all of them, and for every Wielder before them.
image description: a monochrome illustration showing a line-up of Cardamom, Blackberry, Chicory and Pizza. The first three are holding the Brush, Cardamom and Blackberry stoically, Chicory hunching over; Pizza is leaning over the Brush abandoned on the floor in surprise. end id
That's the crux of the emotional journey Chicory goes through: she starts off feeling broken and wrong for struggling, and eventually finds out that, yes, maybe she was the one to crash and burn under the weight of it all, but that weight has been accumulating over centuries, and it's been hurting every person who came in contact with it. And not one of them found a way to dissolve it, only passing it on to the next, adding their own sorrow to the baggage. That, ultimately, should give Chicory some self-compassion, and in a way, it does open her up to it; that's why at the end she is able to develop a bond with Pizza, not shut them off.
But the "failure" identity is a hard one to kick. I'm not sure forgiving herself is at the forefront of Chicory's mind at any point of the game; I'm not sure she is that concerned with her own well-being at the climax of it. Her thoughts are fully focused on the Corruptions and the pain they bring, and she seeks to solve the problem quickly, decisively, because she is likely still struggling with a sense of responsibility. Maybe the Corruptions appearing are not just a sign of her being cosmically "wrong", but they still coincided with her breakdown and externalized it, and she still left Pizza to deal with them.
Chicory is acting from a place of urgency, exhausted from seeing constant manifestations of her depression and the trauma she starts realizing she's carrying for every previous generation. That manifestation is hurting the world, and she needs it gone. Destroying the Brush seems like the natural option to her - except, much like in “Wandersong”, another amazing game by Greg Lobanov, you cannot destroy a "negative" force without erasing the world the way we know it. Shadow is cast from an object; if you seek to be rid of it, you would also have to destroy the matter itself.
At the end, what needs to go is not Chicory, and it’s not the ability for creative and colorful expression, gifted to people by the world and land itself. It's the toxic and rigid system of standard and legacy built around an individual's expression.
Legacy VS Outsider
Chicory’s relationship with that legacy is fascinating, and seems to echo the sentiment I shared in the introduction post: it’s the idea of being a “crumbling brick” that brings the wall down with it. Chicory is openly resentful of the image of dead artists she is somehow supposed to honor and live up to, and her forsaking the Brush and leaving it with Pizza, who is not trained for Wielding, is a form of rebellion. She will not force herself for a moment longer, she will not continue her duties and wait for a “deserving” candidate to come along, she’s done with the very idea of “deserving”.
The initial sentiment is inconsiderate of Pizza’s feelings and well-being, with them receiving the Brush not because Chicory believes in them (something they are desperate for), but because she does not care, refuses to care, and so will not encourage them or help them or simply let them know she thinks they’ll do great. I can sort of imagine Chicory finding grim vindication in the fact that the next Wielder turned out to be her janitor, too: eat that, Blackberry and the entire Art Academy.
But the feeling behind her action is also ultimately loving at its core, compassionate to herself and others, regardless of whatever twisted way it manifests: Chicory refuses to have another person traumatized by the legacy the same way she has been.
And that’s how Picnic ends up with Pizza, who is new to the Wielder tradition, does not understand much about it at the start, never went to the Academy, did not have the sentiment of “upholding the legacy” repeated to them over and over and never received a mentor’s guidance before picking up the Brush. They enter the system as an outsider - and their new perspective and fresh insight are a blow to the status quo. They are, coincidentally, the exact things Chicory needs to understand herself and her situation better.
Chicory watches Pizza wield just as wonderfully as any acclaimed artist would - with the focus being put on their bravery, passion and open-heartedness. The Brush is something that gives them a way to express themself, to leave a mark on the world and feel like that mark is welcome.
At the same time, Chicory sees them struggle with expectation and comparison. Even without the pressure of legacy, it is enough for Pizza to have Chicory to compare themself to.
That reveals the main issue with the way of things: the deep debilitating self-doubt that comes with the idea of taking up an exclusive place - and always having to wonder if you deserve to. And that’s what makes any perceived failure so life-shattering: it feels like it exposes you-the hoax to the rest of the world, for everyone to despise you for even daring to think you deserved the chances you were given.
Chicory and Pizza’s experiences are different, yet similar, with the same system hurting them, same expectations breaking them, same self-doubt eating away at them. At the end, that is the key to challenging the status quo: overcoming the illusion of isolation.
Because Chicory is not an isolated case, not a cosmic mistake that was never meant to exist in this world since she is not able to operate within it. And she is more than just a symptom of sickness, either. She is a sick part of the body, a part that starts hurting first - but is not the root of the ailment, and must be treated as the whole organism slowly recovers.
Healing the Outcast
The ultimate thematic resolution to “Chicory: A Colorful Tale” is the end of isolation and loneliness.
The depth of Chicory’s dread, depression and self-rejection are facilitated by her deeply held belief into her unique “brokenness” and “wrongness” when held up to the standard of the world. Blackberry’s utter failure as a teacher and a guide lands Chicory with an internalized notion that what is needed of her is to reach the standard at the cost of her own well-being. Blackberry fails to prepare Chicory for the challenge ahead because she is too terrified to admit that she herself might at times struggle and make mistakes. She never even shared her own experience with Corruptions with her student, and so Chicory was left to assume that no one before her ever messed up so badly as to bring them about. Quite a poignant metaphor for the impostor syndrome, isn’t it?
As the result of their failed teacher-student relationship, Chicory never has her sense of overwhelming pressure acknowledged and validated, because that would require Blackberry to be vulnerable and to question how sound the requirement is, instead of devotedly rising to it. Chicory starts Wielding already exhausted, already full of self-doubt and self-loathing, already used to burning the candle at both ends in a desperate attempt to hide her own inadequacy from others. At the end, it’s so easy for her to assume that she is the problem, inherently weaker, less stable and less deserving than everyone else around her.
Her bond with Pizza opens Chicory’s mind up to the idea that the struggle is shared and universal; that the problem is not with her but with the status quo everyone has been desperately upholding at the price of their own well-being, out of fear of what it would mean - to challenge a defining aspect of the culture, to ask if a colorful world is worth the personal sacrifice and whether there are better ways to achieve it.
Having suffered in isolation for so long, Chicory is pushed to make the call everyone else is too afraid to: to destroy what’s hurting her, what has been hurting everyone for so long.
But the resolution, once again, does not lie through destruction. What ends is not the Brush as a phenomenon - what ends is isolation. Things don’t get undone - the world opens up and widens. Instead of the one singular Brush, carrying the legacy and pain and fears of generations, there are countless new brushes, and with them - endless possibility for self-reinvention, for recovering your independent identity. And once everyone is allowed to openly be themselves, uncover the hidden and scary and beautiful and artistic parts of their (un)conscious and express them through art, the shared loneliness ends.
“Chicory: A Colorful Tale” presents an experiment in mitigating this illusory divide between the individual and the collective. Isolation and feeling of separation from the world hurt the individual and the world itself. And, in a paradoxical way, being pressured to conceive of yourself in the collective context as a bearer of a specific and exclusive title that replaces your identity is exactly what can make someone feel alone and separated.
Personal expression in place of standardized expected performance, sense of self beyond one’s use and function - these can help a person understand their true place in the world and their community. They help us reconnect with our neighbor and create a world of mutual respect and flourishing collective self-expression.
Once Wielding is “de-monopolized”, there is no more need to prove one’s “worth” just to have a place and to leave a mark on the world - one of the many, many colorful marks. A sense of self that is free of societal pressure and expectation helps someone find their sense of belonging within the collective.
In “Chicory”, the status quo is exposed, challenged and transformed into true communal connection in two vital steps.
First, the faulty foundation crumbles under centuries worth of weight, in true Tower symbolism, if you are a Tarot nerd like yours truly. The crumbling is easy to blame on one person, the first brick to crack - as Chicory gets blamed, both by herself and Blackberry. That separates and isolates the person in question - but they may feel a sense of righteousness, likely bitter and spiteful, for not dropping the weight onto the next pair of shoulders.
Still, that doesn’t do enough to heal the world: if the fault is on one person or one object, rather than the collective environment we are all creating, it’s too easy to cast them out as the faulty link and start rebuilding the same traumatizing, toxic system anew.
That’s when the second step must happen: another person must reflect the outcast’s struggle and doubt and self-loathing back at them, ultimately affirming their probably already existing suspicion that the structure wasn’t doing anyone any good to begin with. This second person reaches out, offering help, understanding, companionship. They reject the very concept of responsibility and blame, instead searching for a solution that everyone can and must be a part of and benefit from.
In the process, the second person reveals their own fears and pain, experiences all the harshest realities of the established culture and system. The status quo can no longer be reinstalled under the (uncompassionate and discriminatory) pretense that the problem was with the outcast. It becomes abundantly clear that the toxic expectation hurts every person existing within its perimeter. The world is affected by it in ways that are not always obvious and perceivable, but the pain is there, shaping our unconscious patterns, affecting our treatment of each other as well as our self-perception. It affects people you would least expect to buckle under the weight of things, too - sometimes most drastically, considering the lengths they have to go to to appear as perfect and adjusted as they are.
An individual’s pain always deserves compassion; if the individual is isolated in it, that is the issue with the way of the world that spans more than just one person’s struggle. That means that a fundamental instinct of compassion and mutual care is missing - and we need that instinct if we want to survive and thrive. To quote a certain well-named moletaur, “None of us are comfortable until we are all comfortable”.
Status quo and a standard of personhood distance us from the possibility of that compassion and care, replacing people with images of productivity and performance and making it that much scarier to confide in others about the way the world hurts us, or to be vulnerable enough to listen when others confide in us.
At the end, one individual is unlikely to feel enabled to challenge the status quo. But if they happen to express their pain, publicly, the full unapologetic scale of it, that can create a possibility of conversation. For the rest of us, the task is to find enough bravery to be honest and vulnerable and compassionate to them and ourselves and every other living thing, and through that hopefully cultivate meaningful change that will absolutely benefit every single one of us.
image description: Chicory sitting down next to Pizza, who is brandishing a large brush and smiling excitedly, a little blush on her face along with a splatter of pain; Chicory is leaning onto her paw and looking at them with an affectionate smirk. end id
In conclusion: Chicory is the character ever. Thank you, Greg Lobanov.
Tune in next time if you want to hear all of this ^^^ again but with a SPIN! Next up: “Encanto” 🎶