Violet Evergarden AMV | "All the Lonely People" | DopplerDo

Violet Evergarden AMV about the rollercoaster process of confronting PTSD and how unearthing the core sorrows of others deepens our empathy but concurrently increases the depths we can explore ourselves, for better or for worse.

Happy Thanksgiving, wonderful subs! Even though this is a drama, I thought this timing was interesting. If you're alone for whatever reason on Thanksgiving, it may be a kind of release to watch something like this; if you're surrounded by family and watch this after festivities fizzle, the contrast might pull you in even more. Either way, I just hope you enjoy it for what it is.

...Are the new viewers gone yet?

I've been working on this for a year and a half now, since before starting (the) "Unbearable Weightlessness of Love" AMV (   • Violet Evergarden AMV | "The Unbearable We...  ) and put in more energy than any project to-date. In really diving into the source material here, I find that the art in Violet Evergarden very intentionally elevates the role of hands in exposing characters' true feelings. This is obvious for Violet, who has a hard time expressing anything with her face -- she will fidget nervously behind her back with a stoic expression, reach out to connect with someone and hold back, clutch her green broach to hold on to her memories of the major whom she can't let go -- but others in the show use their hands similarly because their face is actively masking their unspoken pain. Violet's inability to infer how people are feeling from their facial expressions actually works in her favor as she is very sensitive to all other clues, especially how people use their hands to interact with the world, e.g. caressing bottles of alcohol, how others hold family photos, how the major held Violet, etc. I spent a lot of time trying to focus on that and distill it here.

More at the core of this AMV is trying to represent how PTSD can change the perception of time. A flashback is not *then*, it's now -- and strong enough to consume the present. The memories in this AMV are clearly stylized and distinct from the present, but there comes a point where the consequence of exploring the most traumatic memories results in a complete swap of what is perceived as "now" -- the pain of the past becomes more real than reality and the present is more like a memory, like you're walking through life as a hollow husk of yourself, more a vessel for phantom grief without room for forward-looking dreams. So there is a point at which timelines aggressively mingle and roles are swapped.

Most importantly, happy Thanksgiving once again. I hope you have the best day and feast like goddamn royalty. I am very thankful for you and that you are interested in my work. I trade hundreds of hours for minutes of your attention because I am passionately appreciative of people like you and how intensely people feel about AMVs. Even the abstract version of you, which is all I'll get to know, is very lovely. And though I addressed this embarrassingly long description to subscribers, if you're not subscribed, the unconditional love extends to you, too.