{How can this ending be complete without this included? (As the internet will say: the “feels” were strong in this one.) It would be a crime not to include some emotional background music.}

Unto the story proper, or how your Symbolic Father basically abandoned you and how it parallels the empty universe that Christians felt when Christ died on the cross... what, dost thou want me to do this? and dost thou want it in a poem as well?... not the latter but definitely the former, I see... well let’s get to it the story then, albeit I feel like doing a Kirkegaardian existential analysis but shall delay that...

Well for the reader that thinks for a second, the theme of father-son relations (or creator-created on a conscious level) had definitely carried over from the prompt to the ending. This whole non-contradictory antagonism is seen throughout were the created begs for recognition, to then only recieve near moments of his death, to then demanding things of his creator, to then finally be betrayed for the last time. (Nota bene, it is in this case non-contradictory as in their opposition is rather passive than active until the very end.) Id est, even when we have a contradictory antagonism at the end, it was immediate and only superseding, overcoming or aufheben, one thing: roles. This sudden change of roles is rather haphazard as it forces a synthesis, but in the end neither resolving Ethan’s desires nor Yoh’s subtle incompetence to do more than Yoh had. Which leads me to saying the first part: how your Symbolic Father basically abandoned you.

Because in essence, Yoh does another betrayal even when Yoh recognizes Ethan: abandoment. Yoh could create, but he couldn’t live up to see the created question Yoh on matters Yoh knew Yoh would never know how to answer. But what about the Symbolic part other than the prothesis (limb) of the story? The Symbolic part is that Ethan knew, but didn’t had to necessarily believe to feel whole, that the Consciousness of Yoh dictated everything from both material being to their general meaning... or had been trying to make meaning out of everything. See, when Ethan asked things the Symbolic Father had failed to make knowable (or couldn’t signify), the Conscious of Yoh was stuck. It knew that these semblances existed and Yoh worked hard to tidy these up, yet it failed and now appears as holes in itself. In particular, Meaning.

And so we live up to the drama of how your Symbolic Father basically abandoned you: it couldn’t signify these things out of its grasp that it has been struggling to subdue for who knows long. And so, instead of continuing the awkwardness and being continually challenged, it suspended Ethan like the Symbolic Order does to the Imaginary (Conscious) Order when it feels threatened. But in the act of suspending and re-arranging Ethan, the Conscious of Yoh leaves one final blurb to suggest that it won’t even cooperate with Ethan and suggest that Ethan is Yoh now; the ultimate betrayal left at the gates, the abandoment of something it cannot subdue. Thus this supersession is not ascension in the negative sense, but instead a positive one: it just updates a current project in newer conditions. (Or to put into an example: imagine how contrasting free will and determinism were throughout the ages, especially when the first debates rose to now with all our philosophical wanking.)

Which leads to the smaller subject: emptyness or how it parallels the empty universe that Christians felt when Christ died on the cross. See, with all these religious metaphors and general theological theme, it needs not explaining. See the abandoment and forced assimilation carried out by the previous Yoh and Jesus’s crucifixion parallel each other on major themes. What matters really is the moment after: for Ethan, it confirms a Universe that has its creator singing creation without a Meaning; for Christ’s followers, it confirms that the Universe really is an empty one. And yet give both a seemingly hyprocritical yet lovely Kirekegaardian message; id est, their journey towards Faith did not end but instead strengthened. For both Ethan and the followers of Christ were knights that were infinitely resigned, for which these two cathartic events both had their effects on challenging what both knew what Faith to be. In the end, despite knowing the Universe to be empty, they hadn’t necessarily given up on what they did. And instead found their horizons expanded and, once more, renewed their journey to achieving the end of the Dialectic of Faith.

Through abandoment, our journeys just start anew.

Upvot’d and resteem’d.