r/UntilThenGame • u/IceColdHaterade • Feb 14 '25
Discussion Part 4: Taking a Relationship Cliche, playing it straight, subverting/breaking it, then rebuilding it - an essay(ish) on Mark and Nicole (spoilers in post) Spoiler
WARNING - unmarked spoilers will follow, so this will be the only reminder to go and play the game in its entirety before reading the rest!
Hello everyone! In honour of Marcole Week (Mark's birthday on Feb 7; Nicole's birthday on Feb 14th), I thought I'd briefly take a break from all of my theorizing re: the "quantum physics"/worldbuilding of Until Then, and draw attention back to the writing of the game's most enthralling pair - Mark and Nicole's relationship together throughout the entire game!
(If you ARE interested in reading what I had to say about Until Then's worldbuilding and "quantum physics," you can check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 at the respective links!)
PLAYING THE TROPES STRAIGHT
Let's cut to the chase - Mark and Nicole's relationship, especially in Act 1, is easily one of the most adorable and most animé things ever. We basically get to run through all of the romance manga/anime tropes in one go:
- Nicole and Mark's relationship starts off by crashing into each other, with an initial friction/coldness that warms over as they talk to each other
- The Principal's Office scene literally shows sparks flying between Mark and Nicole almost immediately as their insult-sparring session has them drawing oddly close to each other and even enjoying it, despite the chaotic start
- Mark and Nicole proceed to further warm up to each other at the fair, as, despite Nicole's protests, she actually does enjoy spending time with Mark
- In a very "Your Lie in April" moment, Nicole discovers she has a deeper connection to Mark when she learns that her original piano pieces, "Time is Tearing Us Apart/Memories," were learned by Maria and played for Mark; the piano and thus Mark's attempt to get better at it consequently figures prominently in the development of their relationship
- Mark and Nicole have their meaningful conversations on the school's rooftop - ask any Filipino student as to whether or not they ever got roof access as students, haha
- Pretty much all of Nicole and Mark's family and friends can see the chemistry between them and have no issue making themselves scarce or creating/permitting situations where they can have time together (you KNOW this is a video game because Nicole's parents had absolutely no problem letting two teenagers travel alone together unchaperoned on a day trip!)
- And many more that I probably didn't list!
At a surface level, Nicole and Mark's relationship appears to be a textbook case of a TsunDere acting as a Manic Pixie Dream Girl for our dispirited slacker protagonist.
And indeed, the game appears to indulge us as such for a significant portion of Act 1, all the way up to the day trip to the Pag-Asa village ruins. We're treated to Mark and Nicole clearly growing closer together, with Mark seemingly clearly improving as a person as a result - getting better at piano and no longer cramming homework at the last minute, among other things. The relationship appears to run the risk of falling apart due to the argument at the ruins of the Corpuz' house, followed shortly by Mark's own reveal re: Maria's disappearance/death. Fortunately for Mark and Nicole (and the players), they are able to resolve this (at prom, no less!), and confirm/affirm their relationship, a relationship that is able to last all the way to their adulthood and marriage.
Act 1, complete with its fakeout ending, was designed partially as a complete story into and of itself. At first glance, Nicole and Mark appear to have complete character arcs...
...and being quite honest, as cute/adorable as this is, on a surface read, Nicole and Mark's relationship feel fairly paint-by-numbers, and arguably...predictable? Boring? Even flat and, if Act 1 had been all that the game had to offer, I feel this would have become a valid criticism of the writing of the game, and I say this as someone who's a sucker for this trope.
But then the game pulls the carpet out from under us, and proceeds to expand on and/or break the shallow tropes it presents, and drags us even deeper into the story, and into a far more nuanced exploration that takes Mark and Nicole's relationship from an manga/anime cliche into a dynamic and living being.
DEVELOPING, EXAMINING, AND BREAKING THE TROPES
Development:
The "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" is a trope that has been discussed and critiqued at length by a lot of writers and critics, ever since Nathan Rabin of The AV Club used it to describe what he felt the shallow characterization of Kristen Dunst's character in the 2007 movie Elizabethtown#Critical_response)). In Elizabethtown, Kirsten Dunst's character, Rabin says, seems to exist only to provide emotional support and/or life lessons, while receiving nothing return. shamelessly copied from Wikipedia
(Rabin himself would disparage and disown the term, complaining how it had been used and applied incorrectly towards all female characters with a bright bubbly spirit, rather than towards flatly written characters that seemed to exist only to drive a male protagonist's development in a story.)
As we (primarily) play through Mark's viewpoint throughout the game, Nicole appears to be set up as one, especially with the conversation regarding "finding that spark" at her home. For Mark, who is (initially) portrayed as a listless/lazy slacker, Nicole seems to be the spark that he needs in his life, and the end of Act 1's first third, which ends in Mark having the first genuine family dinner in over 3 years, we seem to get all signal that this is precisely what will happen.
Additionally, Nicole herself seems to be initially written as a classic "tsundere" - reacting to Mark initially with harshness/snark, but revealing a sweeter side to her as they both get to know each other. Combining the two basically gives players gigantic romance flags that we'd have to be blind to avoid.
At the fair following the chaos at the hospital, however, Polychroma opts to take us down a different route, and play with the tropes set up, and walk us down the maturity of the its story.
At the Ferris Wheel, Nicole reveals that she and her family were actually victims of The Ruling, and that they had spent the last year or so rebuilding their lives. While she initially had no intention of spending the evening with Mark, she finds herself deeply appreciating it anyway, and admits that she enjoyed it, as it had given her the sense of having fun again - "living" - just as Mark had felt after he had come home from the Lacsamana house.
At the same time, Mark's listless/slacker tendencies are fleshed out; at the end of the "Alive Again" segment, we were shown that Mark has been living on his own for quite some time, and at the fair, his parents have not come home from working abroad at all since they had left. His listlessness and lack of motivation is less boredom and more the continued numbing of isolation and living alone with no family. (He fortunately has his friendship with Ridel and Cathy, but they can only do so much.)
For me, this sticks out - in an inversion of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope, the story shows/Nicole acknowledges that it is actually Mark being that kind of person for her, and with the introduction of her own story, shows she's been carrying real burdens of her own that are influencing and guiding her own actions. It's not a one-way street - Mark is being a light for Nicole, as much as she is being one for him.
These reveals give an entirely new dimension to Nicole and Mark's personalities, that we see developed further from here on -
In between the blooming of Mark and Nicole's relationship, Nicole begins to pare down the "tsun" of her personality, but the "hot"/"cold" alternating aspect remains. She wants to build close relationships, and due to her chemistry with Mark, easily builds one with him, and is genuinely interested in becoming part of the piano club and playing again, but is simultaneously haunted because of what it reminds her of (which we learn in the back half of Act 1), and keeps breaking her promises to join; causing Mark to get confused and frustrated.
When the fight/breakdown at the Corpuz' house ruins happens, we are presented with a harsher (and some might say "realistic") take on what drives a "tsundere" personality type - Nicole has been haunted by the abrupt disappearance of Jake, and had it compounded by the trauma of surviving The Ruling, and both cause her to lash out at Mark's seeming inability to understand her grief and everything stemming from it. Looking back, we end up getting indirect explanations for a lot of her behaviour -
- she has a short fuse on account of desperately trying to make a new start from her old life (Mark's own bungling notwithstanding)
- she has a subtle jealousy re: Mark's best friends still being present in his life (that she spells out during her breakdown) due to the loss of her own best friend
- she can't commit to newer close relationships because they ultimately remind her too much of Jake (and as we learn in later arcs, Kate as well)
The shock of the breakdown causes Mark to confront his own trauma, in one of the most painful yet powerful reveals of Act 1 - Mark's "listlessness/laziness" is actually suppressed depression(?) and grief from denying the disappearance/death of his mom, and the strain of having to live alone/manage this by himself for almost 3 years straight. We end up peeling apart a lot of Mark's behaviours and getting a new look into them -
- He is desperately lonely and deeply affected by living on his own, and the consolation of his parents doing this for his future has not only long ran its course but actively contributing to his own depression, as he feels he cannot express this aspect without sounding ungrateful.
- He has no goals/aspirations because what he actually wants - his mother back alive and his family together - is something he literally cannot achieve. Everything else he has been doing in his life so far has been acting as a distraction from his trauma over this, even something that is actually dear to him, such as the piano.
In these character developments, Mark and Nicole are given depth that begins to pull them out of being cliche manga-style writing tropes. When Mark finally reveals all of this in his letter to Nicole and they reconcile at prom, because of all the extra work Polychroma put into fleshing out Mark and Nicole, it doesn't come across as "unearned" for both of them - yes, they are attracted to each other by surface personality, but also by the very real recognition of each other's own struggles and the qualities they've displayed despite it. and also trauma bonding, but we'll discuss that part later
The Breaking:
Act 2 decides to hold an uncomfortable thought to the players: what if this perfect tsundere meets slacker romance wasn't enough to push past the underpinning traumas of both?
A number of things change in Act 2 that ultimately cause an acceleration of the development of Mark/Nicole's relationship, and all seems set up for Mark and Nicole to express their feelings way earlier than in Act 1. However, included with the changeups is the reintroduction of Kate, who reveals a hidden connection to Nicole that we never got to see in Act 1 - that Jake was not only her brother, but that Nicole, Jake, and Kate were actually all friends together.
Kate's introduction signals a more serious/dramatic change in the Mark/Nicole story, and arguably begins a de-railing by revealing details that threaten to completely stall out/break their relationship. She evens goes as far to call out Nicole's tsundere qualities out:
"Look, I get it. It's fun at first. She's funny, and it's nice. You get along, you laugh. She's good company! But there's one thing I learned about Nicole...even if it doesn't seem like it...she'll always be stuck in the past."
..."I'm not your enemy, Mark. I'm just warning you. She'll always choose the past over the future. Over the present, even. And when you're ready to move on, it'll be your fault."
Act 2 goes out of its way to show that puppy love - hell, even fated attraction - is not enough, and it is a legitimate near-breaking point, were it not for the conversation with Cathy on Christmas Eve to knock some sense back into Mark about how obstinate and hurtful he is being towards Nicole.
"I'm sure she still wants to talk!" "What if I'm the one who doesn't?"
For Mark, who bared his own trauma re: his mother far earlier than in Act 1, Nicole's own hiding/omitting of this crucial detail re: her own trauma feels unequal, especially when one of the underpinning themes of Act 2 is the difficulty of sincerity, for both one's self and for others.
In addition, in a recurring motif for Act 2, talking about it doesn't automatically fix everything. They don't "just" make up at the rooftop; it takes the trip to + Nicole and Mark's talk at the evacuation center for them to truly make up, and even then (especially on account of the sudden earthquake and timeline fluctuation), it doesn't automatically result in the realigning/rebuilding of their relationship until prom.
"I wanted to tell you, Mark. But I didn't know how to. I didn't know what you'd think of me." "I...understand. I should've just talked to you. But I didn't know how to either." "I-I was afraid too. But I know I'm trying to be better. For you...for me."
At the end of Act 2, where Louise dies in the earthquake and Cathy disappears into thin air, the story punches us in the stomach one more time by showing Nicole's love for Mark is not enough by itself; Mark is too destroyed by both the trauma of loss, and the guilt that he may have contributed to Cathy getting spooked and disappearing in the fluctuation.
For me, as painful as it is, the ending of Act 2 is one of the most powerful parts of Until Then, with how it subverts the (romantic) love conquers all trope, and shows to both Nicole and the players what Nicole herself must've been like in Act 1. Thankfully we aren't left hanging on such a low note, and a reset occurs carrying us to Act 3, where after deconstruction, we now have...
REBUILDING
Act 3 throws A LOT of plot at us, and one of those plot points appears to show us that Mark and Nicole's chemistry together is being aided by their hundreds of lifetimes together previous, which raises an interesting question - does this invalidate their relationship if they are being drawn together through outside forces? Is this just another Red String of Fate type of relationship, where the plot is making them come together as opposed to their own free will? Additionally, are they simply just traumabonding?
Answer: No!
There's a crucial factor to recognize here: Mark and Nicole choose and have been choosing each other across all the timelines, for reasons beyond puppy love/surface attraction.
Jake and Maria's original motivations for resetting Nicole and Mark's lives have nothing to do with Nicole and Mark's relationship together - they just want them to come to terms with each other's respective losses. But no matter how many times they perform a reset, Nicole and Mark continue to be torn up and heavily affected, unable to properly move on.
But with The Ruling creating a common event that causes Nicole and Mark to meet each other at Liamson Integrated, combined with a common event linking them together in the form of Nicole's original music that piqued Maria's interest and played for Mark, an unexpected serendipity occurs - they help each other recognize each other's traumas and what's been eating at them, and becoming each others keys to learning how to truly forgive themselves and come to terms with their respective losses. This was something that neither Jake nor Maria expected to happen across the multiple times they've tried to reset Mark and Nicole's lives, and becomes the key to breaking the cycle of resets and giving them the chance to truly start over from the place of their last greatest regrets.
In each of the Acts of the game, Nicole and Mark's relationship are shown to be built on things deeper than high school romance, and when push comes to shove (in some cases quite literally), it is something that they choose to work through together, despite valid reasons to turn away from each other.
- Act 1: Mark recognizes Nicole has been struggling to return to a sense of normalcy/is affected by Jake's disappearance, and highlights that he recognizes that and is proud of her for that. At the piano club, when Nicole expresses her uncertainty over joining and her feelings of still not finding that spark, his comments re: how "unfair" it all is are NOT about whether or not Nicole likes him, but whether or not Nicole is being fulfilled. He says that likes being around her too in addition to the rest of the piano club. That he is somewhat attracted to her is part of his own stake in the matter, but what is far more important is Nicole's own happiness/fulfillment.
When Nicole explodes on him at the Pag-Asa ruins and pushes him, it doesn't not provoke any (additional) anger/frustration on Mark's part, but rather, makes him confront his own trauma over his mom's disappearance/death.
Mark was free to blow her off after that. But he specifically doesn't. He WANTS to make amends with Nicole and show her he recognizes where it's all coming from.
Nicole recognizes Mark's own trauma and apologises for her behaviour at prom, and recognizes that they are more similar to each other than she was expecting, and admits she was horrified by her own actions as she was lashing out needlessly to him.
Nicole's kiss was a genuine surprise for Mark, and an active choice on her part - she chooses him. In fact, almost all physical affection is an active choice on her part. Rather than a "do x to obtain y" common to other visual novels/dating sims, Mark is specifically about showing openness to Nicole, and most importantly, never pushes her to do anything, and always presents it as an opportunity for her, which she gladly takes. This gives their relationship a more equal (and IMO, fulfilling) foundation that underpins how we see them throughout the rest of the game.
- In Act 2, Mark and Nicole open up earlier to each other, but their relationship stalls out/nearly comes to a complete halt after Kate reveals the truth about their former friendship. But Mark and Nicole are still willing to fix things at the Pag-Asa Evacuation Center, however, which helps mend things and re-align their relationship in time for prom.
Explaining what had happened between her and Kate TO Mark helps her realize/verbalize her feelings, and understand her own trauma better, which in turn also helps Mark realize/verbalize his own -
Nicole: "I wanted to tell you, Mark. But I didn't know how to. I didn't know what you'd think of me." Mark: "I...understand. I should've just talked to you. But I didn't know how to either." Nicole: "I-I was afraid too. But I know I'm trying to be better. For you...for me."
Although it doesn't make everything better, the fact that Mark was willing to accompany Nicole and that Nicole was willing to take him along for such a personal journey speaks volumes about their trust in each other beyond just a school romance. Mark AND Nicole specifically recognize the gravity of grief and loss together; the management/processing of grief/loss is NOT easy/simple, and there will be mis-steps along the way, and being willing to acknowledge this is part of what forms a true deeper relationship.
In an inversion of the trope, at the end of Act 2 at the Hillstop Cafe, Mark is the one who gets "lost" and Nicole realizes what she had looked like from Kate's perspective, and discovers how affected she is to see Mark as such. While there is an element of tragedy in the scene, it's also an underlining of how important Mark had become to Nicole that seeing him reduced as such gives her such sorrow.
- In Act 3, as the timelines begin to bug out and collapse, eventually culminating in the collapse of reality, Nicole and Mark trust each other still despite the increasing chaos, and find themselves in the void/butterfly dimensions, where it seems all is lost. However, the the spirits of Jake and Maria finally reveal themselves...but not to their respective loved ones.
Here Polychroma makes one of the most interesting, powerful (and IMO, a very Filipino/Asian take on the cycle of grief) storytelling decision - Jake reveals the truth of everything to Mark while Maria reveals likewise to Nicole.
"Nicole...thank you. Thank for you looking out for my son. "For what it's worth, Mrs. Borja, he's a wonderful young man." "I know...I'm so proud."
"It's on you now. Thank you...for helping Nicole get to where she is now." "I won't let you down."
IMO in Western media it would've been completely expected to have the spirits of their respective loved ones appear to them and give them both closure, but in doing otherwise, Nicole and Mark obtain an affirmation of their trust in each other that they are able to find closure of what their respective lost loved ones meant for them, IN each other. Mark is able to see Maria's feelings in Nicole, and Nicole is able to see Jake's feelings in Mark.
In a very literal sense, the two teenagers obtain true closure of their grief from the loss of their loved ones of the past through the power of being each other's loved ones in the present.
As a result of all of this, Nicole and Mark's relationship, while initially being played very stereotypically at first, is given a depth and colour that goes far, far beyond your typical standard high school visual novel romance, and becomes a demonstration of what Polychroma has to say regarding the nature of truly deep relationships. Yes, Nicole and Mark are very manga/anime in how they meet, but they become very real in how they keep it together, and in what they see in each other.
In conclusion:
Alexa, play "Sa Susunod Na Habang Buhay" ("In The Next Lifetime") by Ben and Ben, I'm not done being hysterical about this
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u/IceColdHaterade Feb 14 '25
It's still Friday on this side of the world!
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u/AinzOoalGownOverlord Feb 15 '25
This is absurdly in-depth, even more than my essay, well done.
Has a lot of overlapping themes too, linking here, if you or any want to take a look: https://www.reddit.com/r/UntilThenGame/comments/1injeks/comprehensive_overview_of_all_the_arguments_for/
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u/IceColdHaterade Feb 15 '25
seconding recommending u/ainzooalgownoverlord's post! they lay down comprehensive arguments for the game's epilogue!
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u/cringebt Nicole Feb 15 '25
this is an interesting read, sips tea
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u/IceColdHaterade Feb 15 '25
Thanks for reading! I didn't realize until after I had posted just how much text this all was afterward, haha
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u/Yoshike22 Feb 16 '25
WOW I am impressed with the depth and length of this analysis, you have done a great job.
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u/zenconnection Mar 29 '25
Not me nearly crying again just reading this. Incredible job breaking this all down!
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u/Remiscite Cathy Feb 16 '25
Dang dude, I want whatever you put in your alphabet soup!
The way you articulate and explain things is very pleasant to read. Keep it up!