‼️ Preface before you read the rest of the web page: Content warning: Spoilers for most of Vylet Pony lore.
Gwen is not openly plural. This is not prescriptive, or a diagnosis, or anything. I am interpreting the media that sea has created, and relating it to my own experience. Please don’t use this to go and call sea a plural system. This is rude. If you are transgender you can relate this to people going and probing openly cis people about their gender expression. I’m sure that Vylet Pony could be read way differently by someone with other flavors of mental health issues.
All art on this page can be found on the Vylet Pony Wiki. Clicking an image will take you to the wiki page for the image.
huh why did i code switch to uppercasing
First off: Vylet Pony is a multimedia project. Sure, there’s the obvious music, but the booklets and the comic series are useful aides for understanding the overarching lore of the project.
Carousel
Carousel is the obvious pick here for a plural reading. During the course of the album, Vylet Lulamoon splits with Creekflow, a shadow.
Shadows are the main metaphor that can be read as plurality:
“Shadows are sort of like souls, by the way. But they’re also not like souls at all. Shadows have no true bodies, so they choose their forms based on vibes and stuff. Woof! I wish I could do that. And unlike souls, Shadows can actually do things. Like hang out and eat stuff and go on walks. They are born from lost ambitions, forgotten dreams, and abandoned whimsies. Psst! Between you and me, we get an influx of new Shadows manifesting in The Locus during graduation seasons. Ahaha! But they become agents of Aria and help keep track of everything everywhere.”
— Cadence
Shadows seem to retain the memories of their host. They can take any form and are separate consious beings. The only differences are that shadows are separate physical beings, and that the reasons for manifesting are maybe different from a normal understanding of plurality.
You have to understand that most of vylet pony post-carousel is about these two. it’s about the relationship between them.
Monarch of monsters
under construction
Post-carousel (to be gentle, to be kind)
This is the start of the comic series, the 13 page To be gentle, to be kind. It’s a dialogue between Lulamoon and Creekflow.
there are others. within you. yes. they’re not. like me they are not shadows. but they exist in the same capacity that you do you are. frightened. they’ve consumed me. and i’d hoped to cast them out, forever. but it must all be different from that. i have to learn kindness for the very things that have driven me mad.
you could learn a lot about me, by knowing each version.
god. whoever you are, wherever you are, whatever you are, whenever you are, whyever you are… and if ever you are… hear my cry. give me the strength to trust and have faith. bathe me in the feelings of everything in the universe, so that i may always find the path to a gentle understanding and love. in this blessing, i will strive to become better and to help the world in its own healing. help me remember everything. every petal. every flame. every smile. every tear. every caterpillar. every butterfly. in this blessing, i will chronicle the world within my soul, which preserves every memory in a primal amber. grant me the resolve to search within myself and recognize the hurt and the fear. in this blessing, i can nourish the fragmented being and be stronger for those around me. allow my most tender hopes to flourish. in this blessing, i will hold fast in my absolution forever and ever. amen.
The start of the ‘main’ comic series is the cultivation of the garden. This appears to take place in Lulamoon’s World, which was mostly destroyed by Creekflow in the events of Carousel.
I feel like the garden as a metaphor is about learning to love yourself. (Okay this is a very broad lens and can be applied to most readings of Vylet text.) Okay maybe it’s more: learning to live with your self. Learning to be patient, to slowly cultivate, to be gentle, to be kind.
Love & Ponystep
Love & Ponystep is about Top 5 Videos (Vid) getting broken up with, having a fling with Lulamoon, coming to love vidself, then getting back together with Dubstep Growl.
But, in the process of making GWAW, and subsequently Monarch, there effervesced profound and unresolved aspects of myself which had gone truly unexamined for far too long, with which I heralded the dissolution of my relationship. I was, and am, a creature incorporated of abandonment issues, paranoid dependencies, rampant jealousies, and selfish intuitions. I failed to change, failed to develop self control, and failed to examine these things with my therapist, despite being asked to repeatedly. I had done enough hurting, and I had become the porcupine I swore I couldn’t be. And so, there I was. There we were not.
I finished making GWAW, then finished making Monarch. Then, I was left with this next record to do, one which I had conceptualized during a period of my life which I had initially perceived to be exciting, adventurous, and positive. But not only had this separation recontextualized what this album had to be, but I was reminded of how difficult I had always made things since the start. The last few years of my life were only so bright for me because I had cast an impenetrable shadow over the person who sacrificed everything to help me feel that way. I recognized that this album needed to be about a systemic, deeply interwoven mental struggle that required a truly exhaustive scrutiny to unfold.
— Gwen
vid’s dialogues
under construction
the garden burns
I don’t really know how to interpret the garden burning. It’s allowing yourself to end things. It’s trying not to be scared of transience anymore. The temporary.
I think the garden might be a relationship metaphor, at least in part. In 2021, Gwen released a single ‘Space Garden’. On the Canon Catalogue this is listed with ‘seemingly meaningful relationship start’. There’s a later song labelled ‘seemingly meaningful relationship end’. So burning the garden is maybe symbolism for ending a relationship. Destroying something that you’ve nurtured together with someone. Trying to make something new out of that feeling, and the ash.
the slow dance
vid and i won’t last i know. so cherish it.
Lulamoon decides that after going to the prom with Vid, sea will break up with it. This is after… a lot of encouragement from others.
when we danced tonight, i thought like it didn’t matter if it didn’t last forever i would never forget the love or anything just like i never forgot about that first dance the transient. beauty. of the every day. the ordinary. the extraordinary. and all things. in between.
how can love be anything you know this. is what i had hoped. for you. you understand. this. could have only come. from burning. the garden. that perhaps. you have not been. bound to. nostalgia. any longer. instead. you have grown. and bring. pieces of life. with you. moving forward. in time. in space. that’s really beautiful to me
like a river. to live. and to learn. the stream. twists. and turns. inwards. outwards. backwards. forwards. it leads somewhere. eventually. but no path. worth taking. is straight.
how does any of this relate to plurality? you figure it out.
it feels like i’ve been a different person so many different times and if. you had. not. would life. have been. so colourful? i guess not. but i feel like i keep forgetting everything. i feel like i keep forgetting who i am. or who i should be. who. do you want. to be. i don’t know. i really don’t know. and it’s really scary. i. understand. to be. honest. i have felt. the same.
The Graveyard Shift and further
The comics past L&PS in part explore Yorick and Windmill. They are both shadows that tend to the Annals of the Locus, a library that contains…
Everything that has ever happened, never happened, will happen, and will not happen is written and unwritten here in every book.
These two characters serve as a sort of guide to Lulamoon, visiting her within a dream. Yorick seems to speak in a British accent, and Windmill speaks in in mostly-illegible blurred scribbles.
… but windmill seems oddly familiar to me. and i can understand it a little bit. i’m really confused about that. Tsk. Tsk. O’ Windmill. Do you not hear her? She has already forgotten her own shadow. Again.
The little lochness
This is the first appearance of Windmill outside of the comic series.
am i more than my memories, that you’ve locked away?
little lochness in my mind
you know me like i never will again
little lochness, intertwined
should i feel safer when you cover my eyes?
If there was an explicitly plural song, I would think it would be this one. In lore-terms, Windmill is a shadow. But I don’t think that’s what the song is about, really. It’s about being scared of losing memories, losing your identity, the fear of not knowing what you don’t know, maybe c-PTSD.
In more concrete terms, Windmill is a sort of memory holder member in a system. It protects (or is trying to protect) others in the system by preventing access to memories.
Creature Man
Creature Man is about struggling with romantic love, I think.
