Very interesting to me that a certain subset of the BES fandom's favourite iterations of Mizu and Akemi are seemingly rooted in the facades they have projected towards the world, and are not accurate representations of their true selves.
And I see this is especially the case with Mizu, where fanon likes to paint her as this dominant, hyper-masculine, smirking Cool GuyTM who's going to give you her strap. And this idea of Mizu is often based on the image of her wearing her glasses, and optionally, with her cloak and big, wide-brimmed kasa.
And what's interesting about this, to me, is that fanon is seemingly falling for her deliberate disguise. Because the glasses (with the optional combination of cloak and hat) represent Mizu's suppression of her true self. She is playing a role.
Take this scene of Mizu in the brothel in Episode 4 for example. Here, not only is Mizu wearing her glasses to symbolise the mask she is wearing, but she is purposely acting like some suave and cocky gentleman, intimidating, calm, in control. Her voice is even deeper than usual, like what we hear in her first scene while facing off with Hachiman the Flesh-Trader in Episode 1.
This act that Mizu puts on is an embodiment of masculine showboating, which is highly effective against weak and insecure men like Hachi, but also against women like those who tried to seduce her at the Shindo House.
And that brings me to how Mizu's mask is actually a direct parallel to Akemi's mask in this very same scene.
Here, Akemi is also putting up an act, playing up her naivety and demure girlishness, using her high-pitched lilted voice, complimenting Mizu and trying to make small talk, all so she can seduce and lure Mizu in to drink the drugged cup of sake.
So what I find so interesting and funny about this scene, characters within it, and the subsequent fandom interpretations of both, is that everyone seems to literally be falling for the mask that Mizu and Akemi are putting up to conceal their identities, guard themselves from the world, and get what they want.
It's also a little frustrating because the fanon seems to twist what actually makes Mizu and Akemi's dynamic so interesting by flattening it completely. Because both here and throughout the story, Mizu and Akemi's entire relationship and treatment of each other is solely built off of masks, assumptions, and misconceptions.
Akemi believes Mizu is a selfish, cocky male samurai who destroyed her ex-fiance's career and life, and who abandoned her to let her get dragged away by her father's guards and forcibly married off to a man she didn't know. on the other hand, Mizu believes Akemi is bratty, naive princess who constantly needs saving and who can't make her own decisions.
These misconceptions are even evident in the framing of their first impressions of each other, both of which unfold in these slow-motion POV shots.
Mizu's first impression of Akemi is that of a beautiful, untouchable princess in a cage. Swirling string music in the background.
Akemi's first impression of Mizu is of a mysterious, stoic "demon" samurai who stole her fiance's scarf. Tense music and the sound of ocean waves in the background.
And then, going back to that scene of them together in Episode 4, both Mizu and Akemi continue to fool each other and hold these assumptions of each other, and they both feed into it, as both are purposely acting within the suppressive roles society binds them to in order to achieve their goals within the means they are allowed (Akemi playing the part of a subservient woman; Mizu playing the part of a dominant man).
But then, for once in both their lives, neither of their usual tactics work.
Akemi is trying to use flattery and seduction on Mizu, but Mizu sees right through it, knowing that Akemi is just trying to manipulate and harm her. Rather than give in to Akemi's tactics, Mizu plays with Akemi's emotions by alluding to Taigen's death, before pinning her down, and then when she starts crying, Mizu just rolls her eyes and tells her to shut up.
On the opposite end, when Mizu tries to use brute force and intimidation, Akemi also sees right through it, not falling for it, and instead says this:
"Under your mask, you're not the killer you pretend to be."
Nonetheless, despite the fact that they see a little bit through each other's masks, they both still hold their presumptions of each other until the very end of the season, with Akemi seeing Mizu as an obnoxious samurai swooping in to save the day, and Mizu seeing Akemi as a damsel in distress.
And what I find a bit irksome is that the fandom also resorts to flattening them to these tropes as well.
Because Mizu is not some cool, smooth-talking samurai with a big dick sword as Akemi (and the fandom) might believe. All of that is the facade she puts up and nothing more. In reality, Mizu is an angry, confused and lonely child, and a masterful artist, who is struggling against her own self-hatred. Master Eiji, her father figure who knows her best, knows this.
And Akemi, on the other hand, is not some girly, sweet, vain and spoiled princess as Mizu might believe. Instead she has never cared for frivolous things like fashion, love or looks, instead favouring poetry and strategy games instead, and has always only cared about her own independence. Seki, her father figure who knows her best, knows this.
But neither is she some authoritative dominatrix, though this is part of her new persona that she is trying to project to get what she wants. Because while Akemi is willful, outspoken, intelligent and authoritative, she can still be naive! She is still often unsure and needs to have her hand held through things, as she is still learning and growing into her full potential. Her new parental/guardian figure, Madame Kaji, knows this as well.
So with all that being said, now that we know that Mizu and Akemi are essentially wearing masks and putting up fronts throughout the show, what would a representation of Mizu's and Akemi's true selves actually look like? Easy. It's in their hair.
This shot on the left is the only time we see Mizu with her hair completely down. In this scene, she's being berated by Mama, and her guard is completely down, she has no weapon, and is no longer wearing any mask, as this is after she showed Mikio "all of herself" and tried to take off the mask of a subservient housewife. Thus, here, she is sad, vulnerable, and feeling small (emphasised further by the framing of the scene). This is a perfect encapsulation of what Mizu is on the inside, underneath all the layers of revenge-obsession and the walls she's put around herself.
In contrast, the only time we Akemi with her hair fully down, she is completely alone in the bath, and this scene takes place after being scorned by her father and left weeping at his feet. But despite all that, Akemi is headstrong, determined, taking the reigns of her life as she makes the choice to run away, but even that choice is reflective of her youthful naivety. She even gets scolded by Seki shortly after this in the next scene, because though she wants to be independent, she still hasn't completely learned to be. Not yet. Regardless, her decisiveness and moment of self-empowerment is emphasised by the framing of the scene, where her face takes up the majority of the shot, and she stares seriously into the middle distance.
To conclude, I wish popular fanon would stop mischaracterising these two, and flattening them into tropes and stereotypes (ie. masculine badass swordsman Mizu and feminine alluring queen but also girly swooning damsel Akemi), all of which just seems... reductive. It also irks me when Akemi is merely upheld as a love interest and romantic device for Mizu and nothing more, when she is literally Mizu's narrative foil (takes far more narrative precedence over romantic interest) and the deuteragonist of this show. She is her own person. That is literally the theme of her entire character and arc.
694 notes
·
View notes
Have you heard of the "Crowley is Malleus' dad" theory going around? Where Prince Levan (or whatever his name is) didn't actually die and just went out to get some milk and is now known as Dire Crowley, the silly man? The implications of that theory is absolutely hilarious when you think about it
hold on, we can figure this out, we just need LISTS
PROS THAT CROWLEY IS SECRETLY REVAAN/LEVAN/LAVERNE/WHATEVER:
unspecified fae of some kind, with similar coloring to Mal
the animal masks are apparently a Briar Valley thing
has some kind of big blackmailable secret that was alluded to in episode 4, and then as far as I know never brought up again
(unless this was just Azul bullshitting, which is extremely possible)
based on Diablo, which...maybe means something?
has canonically worn Dad Shorts
CONS:
(gestures to Crowley's entire personality)
NO LISTEN Revaan was the guy they sent off on diplomatic missions and to take care of delicate political situations, and...look, I love this dweeb, but would you trust Crowley to be in charge of negotiating your war treaties
despite my brain insisting on reading his name as "Raven", Revaan's title does imply that he was also a dragon (or super into longan berries, I'm not ruling that out)
currently unclear why Lilia "my closest friend Revaan...he is no longer with us...I used to make fun of him for being kind of a priss about eating jerky..." Vanrouge has somehow not noticed or said anything
Malleus' Aloof Anime ~Aristocrat~ vibe had to come from somewhere, and by all accounts it was NOT his mom's side of the family
???:
turns into a bird in the opening, I don't know if that means anything but it's kinda cool, I guess
all that aside, if Malleus and Yuu are any indication, then the Draconias have...questionable taste in their social choices. so anything is possible!
2K notes
·
View notes
im sure this has been done soooo many times but gffa au where anakin goes to the jedi council and fesses up to being married and they immediately think he means to obi-wan and he thinks they understood that it's to padmé
("how old were you when you got married?"
"Nineteen, just after I became a Jedi Knight. I wasn't a padawan anymore!"
"Consensual, was it? Feel pressured, did you?"
"Not at all! I had to do the convincing. I really begged, for like. an embarrassingly long amount of time. I wanted this marriage more than anything in the entire galaxy."
"Has this marriage affected your reasoning during the war?"
"no way! We have the same principles, fight for the same things. Now I'm just fighting to come home as well so we can be together again.")
and anakin doesn't realize this until obi-wan gets back from a mission, does his debrief with the council, and comes to anakin's quarters with the strangest look on his face. "padawan, why did six members of the Jedi Council just wish me congratulations on my nuptials? to. my. former. padawan."
and anakin is gobsmacked and goes about trying to set the record straight, but now no one believes that he isn't married to obi-wan. they think padmé has agreed to be the cover-up because obi-wan got pissy that anakin told the council before he felt ready.
and to top it all off, now anakin can't stop thinking about actually being married to his master. he hadn't realized that was an option?? but everyone's making some pretty strong cases for it......
804 notes
·
View notes
Cannot stop thinking about an au where Turnabout Trump doesn't happen/happens but Olga is convicted instead so Apollo is still working at the Gavin law offices for his first few cases. He meets Trucy at one of the crime scenes and she tags along on his investigations, but she doesn't tell him about her connection to Phoenix until after their first case together. Ema likes Apollo less at first bc she doesn't like the fop and you work for his brother, who she also hates bc he's very condescending when he cross examines her in court.
When you meet Klavier in the second case you can ask Kristoph about him and vice versa. They don't interact with each other but you get to learn some more things about the brothers, their opinions on each other and their backstory. You also find out that Klavier was the one who got Phoenix disbarred and Kristoph is apologetic about it, given that Phoenix is his "friend" (though they haven't interacted at all since phoenix was found not guilty).
At one point Trucy is visiting Apollo at the Gavin Law Offices when Kristoph returns and "politely" kicks her out. She then reveals to Apollo who the daddy she keeps talking about actually is. You get to meet Phoenix again in the next case and find out more about the incident 7 years ago.
Over the course of the game you/Apollo starts to grow more suspicious of Kristoph and his intentions, alongside a growing sense of horror that you got an innocent person convicted in your first case. It all comes to a head in Succession when Drew Misham finally uses the stamp, which turns up fixed to a letter in the Gavin Law Offices postbox that Apollo collects on his way in one morning. You hand it to Kristoph and he promptly disappears with it, feigning excuses. Phoenix uses this case to finally spring his trap and test the jurist system. Kristoph gets the double whammy of his brother and mentee turning on him at once and the murder of Shadi Enigmar is properly resolved. It's also revealed that Trucy started tagging along on Apollo's investigations to collect intel for Phoenix.
At the end of Succession, Apollo is offered a role at the newly-renamed Wright Anything Agency and there's a final rise from the ashes-style case that serves as Apollo's first proper case as an official WAA employee and helps tie up some loose threads/lets the characters deal with the fallout of Succession.
Idk I just think it'd be fun/satisfying to realise slowly that there's more to everything than meets the eye.
183 notes
·
View notes
Since writing my last post about how Vanitas understands "salvation" as the preservation of one's self, even at the price of death, I've been thinking about how that plays into Vanitas's thoughts on resurrection. It's only two short lines, but I find the view he expresses in this scene absolutely fascinating.
Vanitas tells Misha that the dead "don't come back," and the fact that he phrases it that way stands out to me. He doesn't say that resurrection is impossible on a physical level; he implicitly concedes that maybe Misha could "bring back" something that looks and acts like Luna. He doesn't quibble about the practicalities of reanimating someone whose body turned to ashes or bring up whatever concept of the afterlife he may have.
Instead, Vanitas says that a resurrected Luna would simply be "something else that looked like her." A resurrected Luna would lack some fundamental part of whatever it was that made Luna who they were in their first life.
But what would they lack? I don't think he's implying that a resurrected Luna would lack their soul—not really. Setting aside the absence of souls as a conceptual presence in VnC, I think that would be too concrete and specific for what Vanitas is gesturing toward. Rather, he's conceiving of the Self in a somewhat ineffable way. On a metaphysical level, a version of Luna brought back from the dead simply Wouldn't Be Her, and he can't put it in more concrete terms than that.
So why does he think this way?
I think the concept of resurrection is awful enough to Vanitas that he has to reject it outright for his own stability. He cannot even slightly entertain the notion that resurrection might be possible, because that would destroy one of his main coping mechanisms.
Resurrection is nightmarish to a man that relies on death as an escape. Vanitas is suicidal, but beyond his self-hatred, his relationship to death is very particular. He's someone whose body and being has been corrupted and violated several times—through violence, through experiments, and through Luna's bite, and he's desperate to retain control of himself in the aftermath. He's desperate for control in regards to everything in his life, but especially his body and his death.
Vanitas is being slowly transformed into something inhuman, and he plans to die someday to escape that fate. The idea that after he's gone, someone could override that decision and force him back into living a life he doesn't want must be unacceptably horrific to him. He dismisses it out of hand because he has to.
Vanitas says a resurrected Luna would, on some level, not really be Luna. Whatever comes back might look like them, but it would lack some fundamental self that makes Luna "Luna." Thus, if Vanitas himself were ever "resurrected" after his death, it would be the same. Death remains an absolute escape for him, and even if someone contrives to bring back something that looks like him after he's gone, it won't be him. That life won't be his problem.
In addition to whatever beliefs Vanitas might have about death and afterlives the feasibility of resurrection, I think this is a key part of his relationship to the concept. He lives his life knowing that death waits for him as an escape valve. He needs that looming death as his salvation. Thus, faced with the concept of resurrection, his argument basically boils down to "nuh-uh." He shoots down the concept and declares that a resurrected person wouldn't be themselves in some nonspecific way, because the possibility of anything otherwise isn't something safe for him to consider.
101 notes
·
View notes