K but the fact that Kristen is just a regular human being. Just a standard, average person in a land filled with mystical beings and magic spilling from every crack, nook and cranny.
And here's Kristen Applebees, the first born child of typical suburban parents, born into a religious neighborhood where everyone goes to church every Sunday and prays every night and everyone has a white picket fence with a perfect manicured lawn and not-so-subtly shuns those who are in anyway different from them.
Was Kristen not chosen by her God, by Helio himself, because of her perfect average parents with their perfect average house in their perfect average neighborhood?
Kristen wasn't rich, she didn't have a powerful bloodline, her parents weren't important, there was no prophecy foretelling her birth. No, Kristen was an attainable goal. Kristen was a good example for the youth, an example of what could be achieved if you just played along and played your part.
Kristen was destined to be the perfect picture of a devoted follower of Helio. She was the poster child, born smack dab in the center of Helio's flock, surrounded on all sides by followers and moulded into the perfect unquestioning chosen one since birth.
But by choosing Kristen, by marking her as property of a God, Helio gave Kristen power. Power over him, power over good and evil, the divine and infernal. Because Kristen is promised to Helio, because she was chosen by him and prophesied to be his, Kristen wields the power to start the end of days and crumble nations with a snap of her fingers. Should she want to, Kristen could destroy the world by simply not doing that, by not ending up in Helio's afterlife to live for eternity by his side, by proving a God wrong.
And it's with this power, this leverage that Kristen holds over Helio's neck like the sword of Damocles, that Kristen is able to free herself from his grasp. It's slow, at first. Joining a 'risky' school, meeting people outside of the religion, questioning elders, researching history and religions. And she doesn't understand how much power she has, not at first, because the power she possesses isn't magic, but a divine promise and unspoken rules that govern a world that she was never supposed to know.
But despite not having magic, despite being chosen for her averageness, despite being trained to be naive and blinded to the realities of the world, Kristen is overpowered as, if you'll excuse the pun, hell.
Helio creates divine religious scholars to protect her when she doubts and strays from him. Helio creates an entire new deity and religion for Kristen, allowing her to think that YES! (and, later, YES?) is it's own separate power from his and he does all of this, not out of generosity or love, but because he needs to keep Kristen alive. Kristen cannot die before she rejoins Helio's flock or the divine promise will break and Helio would be fucked.
So Helio gave her power under the pretense of it being from elsewhere, solely so that he could keep Kristen alive until he changed her mind.
And then! And then Kristen dies! And is revived. And she's Saint Kristen Applebees now (but the Saint of who?) and Helio has fully given up on her and turned his back on her (but his prophecy cannot be unspoken and he cannot be proven wrong so does he really? Can he really?) and Kristen finds a new God, a broken God and Kristen chooses her.
Kristen names her, creates her, Cassandra the Goddess of Doubt and Night, and Kristen finally has her religion, a source of power that doesn't stem from Helio, she's finally escaped his grasp.
And yet.
And yet, Helio still spoke his prophecy, still chose Kristen and she will always have that power over him.
And yet, in his own foolish shortsighted attempt to keep Kristen within his grasp, Helio still created a deity for her, a separate divine entity that chose her as well.
And yet, Kristen is still the undying, the follower of Night and Doubt, Saint Applebees, Creator of Cassandra.
With no real magic to speak of, with nothing special in her bloodline, with no real talents or money to her name, the perfect picture of normalcy in every way, Kristen has managed to twist the divine sphere around her little pinky finger. She has so much power and she has so little awareness of it.
And also she's going to be President, bitch.
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Ryne and Gaia are like. Such good parallels and foils to each other it makes me just a little insane.
Like Ryne is sweet and caring and she always wants to help others and make them feel better even to the detriment of herself because she has seen and known suffering and doesn't want others to have to live like that too. If she can make someones life better, even if just a little bit, then she will. But she also puts everyone elses well-being and feelings so far above her own that she often ends up trying to help in a way that doesn't actually solve anything because it still ends up with someone hurt (such as trying to properly fuse with Minfilia knowing it might end up with herself disappearing). She's not a doormat, but she does have some people-pleasing tendencies.
Gaia, however, is the exact opposite. She's prickly and sarcastic and thinks of herself and her needs first and foremost, everyone else is secondary. It's not that she's cold or uncaring, she doesn't ignore people's problems, she just doesn't see them as her business most of the time (A product of being raised in Eulemore most likely). She doesn't consider the long-term outcome of what she does or says, she lives solely in the present and the future is a problem for when it happens.
These opposite traits also play into each other. Ryne inspires Gaia to care more about others and Gaia inspires Ryne to prioritize herself more. Gaia makes Ryne live more on the moment without thinking solely of what the future will bring, and Ryne makes Gaia think more on what her life will be going forward and to actually consider what she does and says and how that affects things. They feed into each others good traits (Ryne's caring nature and Gaia's sense of self) while also helping them deal with the bad traits (Ryne's people-pleasing and Gaia's aloofness).
Their pasts are good paralells too. Ryne was isolated and lonely until Thancred took her away but even then, he was distant and emotionally neglectful, so she ended up lonely in an entirely different way. Gaia had a family and caretakers that she wasn't particularly close to, but after the 'Fairy' started talking to her they got even further away until she couldn't even remember them, and the 'Fairy' was the closest thing she had to a friend even though it was what isolated her to begin with. Ryne had constant companionship but no support, and Gaia had 'support' but no companionship.
Even just. Regarding the whole identities thing they are just. Perfect. Ryne has lived with Minfilia's shadow on her shoulder her entire life and never got to learn who she actually is. She thought that she had to become Minfilia for her life to be worth anything, that it's the only way her existance is justified. The person closest to both her and Minfilia(Thancred) indicated(in her mind at least) that he wanted Minfilia to be here in Ryne's stead(which wasn't really the case but she didn't know that). The only way to get her out of that shadow was to remove her from the identity of Minfilia, hence why her new name is so important(as well as the hair and eyes being her natural colors instead of Minfilia's all too recognizable ones).
But Gaia didn't even know about Mitron or Loghrif until Eden. She had the 'Fairy', but to her it was just some voice in her head which was nice enough to her. To her, Loghrif is just some lady Mitron loved, she has no real connection to her. She has a connection to Mitron, both as the 'Fairy' and as remnant feelings from Loghrif, but none to Loghrif herself(aside from the obvious reincarnation stuff). Gaia has always been her name. It may have been Loghrif's originally, but she is so far removed from that identity that even for all of Mitron's effort to 'return' her to Loghrif, it'd never work. Loghrif is Gaia, but Gaia is not Loghrif. Simple as that.
Eden's story works so well because Ryne and Gaia are opposites in that specific way that compliments each other, rather than pits them against each other.
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I'm still on chapter two of my second run but I'm learning and questioning a lot about Dutch the more I stay at camp.
The way he flicks from "you were always special to me, Arthur" to "I know you'll betray me in the end, you're the type" in the same day - and how frankly unfazed Arthur is to any of this really makes me wonder what it was really like for him growing up with Dutch as one of his parental figures.
Was it normal for Dutch to go back on his praises so often? Was it normal for Arthur to not take Dutch's words to heart because he knows he probably won't mean it? Did Arthur grow up having to be desensitised to any kind of praise because of Dutch's constant hot and cold reactions? What part did Hosea have in helping Arthur understand Dutch's ways?
Did anybody else see how Dutch (and partly Hosea, he isn't free of blame either) was indoctrinating Arthur through all their years together? How Dutch had perfectly crafted Arthur into being his personal work horse and guard dog?
Even in his final breaths, Arthur did not once blame Dutch for his demise or express any anger, he simply confessed how much he had tried and given Dutch all he had. He was hurt and exhausted and confused, the man who raised him had left him to die again.
He had chosen Micah, a man Dutch had known for not even a fraction of the time he had known Arthur, because Micah tells Dutch all the things he wants to hear.
Whereas Arthur asks questions, offers suggestions and isn't afraid to express his opinion - All the things Dutch dislikes and tends to mock him for (take the 'I insist' conversation for example), he sees it as a question of his authority and his 'faith' ideals.
Dutch seemed to need Arthur so much more than Arthur needed Dutch, was he afraid that Arthur would realise that?
Was Dutch threatened by Arthurs place in the gang?
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Just reading back a little and saw this moment
And I think it's just sort of telling? How Best Jeanist refers to Tomura as destruction personified and Izuku says nothing, yet when En refers to him as sort of the same thing he voices what he really thinks
And I can only think that every time someone has referred to Tomura as something without a shred of sympathy and Izuku's kept silent, it might be something he takes note of. Especially now that he's become aware of Tomura's pain. Hearing everything they call Tomura, like he's just some sort of thing, like he doesn't have a name or a past or a house that was once his (something he explicitly said TO Izuku as he fell from UA), it's gotta open his eyes or something, right?
Even Nana has referred to Tomura as a "thing", though she must have meant the version of Tomura that is "the finished product" (hence the wings after the chrysalis that was shown during the surgery) - someone truly incapable of being saved (and thus removing herself mentally/emotionally from the crushing fact that he is family)
Reactions like this one below; saying nothing when coming across a different opinion
Reminds me of this
And I suppose there is also an element of something back from when Izuku told Gran Torino he wanted to save Tomura. Torino had said the words "Killing can be another way of saving", and at the time, Izuku wasn't entirely sure if there was anything left of Tomura/Tenko inside the fusion. Up until that moment he asked if Tomura was still there, he couldn't have fully known whether he would have to kill him or get to save him like he wanted to do. So, essentially, keeping quiet when people referred to Tomura as "destruction incarnate" (and other things), just in case that really was what he'd become
Though I guess that detail doesn't really matter now, what with Izuku wanting to save him, finally seeing Tomura was still in there and digging his heels in with the set determination of saving him. He saw Tomura's personality, the human in him, after all
Anyway
Now it sort of seems like Izuku is speaking up? Not just in the presence of those who think otherwise but against Tomura himself. En says Tomura is like "destruction incarnate" and immediately after, Izuku says "It's deeper than that. You're human"
In the end, I wonder if it matters more that Izuku spoke up to Tomura first, someone who NEEDS to know the truth and who would greatly benefit from someone challenging his thoughts head-on, rather than mentioning it every time someone refers to Tomura as some "thing" instead
I guess it adds more of an impact to the story too, that way
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