no but essek's abnormal behaviours in the last arc and especially in episode 140 are my roman empire. which is ironic because aeor is something of a roman empire itself. but in all seriousness, it was the episode that made me realise i love essek and his development so much and it kinda summarised it even before caleb's epilogue.
and i mean the "it's not fair" scene specifically. it's like, an epitome of his whole character progression from a person who put An Objectively Important Goal above all else without hesitation to someone who can't help but care for people around even more than his goal, no matter how big and relevant it is.
the mighty nein - and he alongside them - pretty much saved the world and freed an ancient city from thousand-year-long suffering. they defeated nine extremely powerful menacing entities who managed to stay out of everyone's sight for years and were so close to achieving their goal and dooming exandria in the process. they did the impossible and became heroes and somehow, they survived, even though they had bidden farewells a couple of hours ago because they had already understood what they had been facing. and nevertheless. they made it.
and none of them was celebrating.
mighty nein are basically essek's only friends. he knew them to be very unusual people, to put it lightly, loud and stubborn and completely inescapable once they consider you to be one of their own. and they showed him so much kindness and put so much faith in him, they were here playing the most atrocious music ever and digging clay in his backyard for a spell they invented just to help one of theirs and asking him if he could bring them pastries the day after they found out he was lying to them and had started a war. they were chaotic and weird and sometimes unbearable but most importantly they were carrying so much hope with them all this time - a hope they could end the war, a hope they could stop the angel of irons cult, a hope they could get better, a hope he could get better, and now, finally, that they could save their lost friend.
and that hope shattered, just like that, the moments after they'd already made the impossible. they saved so many souls - and then could not get back just that one.
for essek "my intentions were never good they were important" thelyss it just. shouldn't have mattered. they won. it could have been worse. people die and when they die they rarely come back. they should've been happy everyone else barely made it alive.
but for some reason, mighty nein being so defeated after they saved the world exposed him to that overwhelming feeling of injustice and unfairness. and i mean, there were many things essek considered to be unfair, but when i watched his first appearance and his interactions with mighty nein later on til their reunion in aeor arc, i wouldn't dare to guess that one of the things on that list would be something that personal. and personal not even to him.
the thing is, essek didn't even know who that guy was. why mighty nein cared about him so much. he had an idea, i guess, that he was their friend once, or someone in that body was. it was also a person who wanted to unleash a terrifying horrific aberration onto the material plane. it was a person very dedicated to killing essek and his friends - and they still didn't take any pleasure in fighting him. essek didn't feel strongly about lucien or molly, because he never knew them.
i don't think he mourned his death and failed resurrection. he mourned mighty nein's hope, the one they put in him when they had no reason to, the one they offered yasha in the cathedral and the one they kept after the spell for veth failed and the one they carried til the very end because they wanted it to reach molly. they had saved people with this hope. they had saved nations. they had saved the world. but they ended up feeling like it hadn't even been worth anything.
how desperate would it feel, witnessing people who for some reason always saw good in you when they absolutely shouldn't, who made literal miracles out of nothing, who ended wars and fought gods and tricked the hags and freed cities from horrors beyond anyone's comprehension purely because they thought it was the right thing to do and also loved their friends this much, silently crying over a dead body they couldn't bring back to life? how desperate would it feel to realise that with all your knowledge about time you dedicated your life to and threw away any principles for, you can't undo this? no one can. some things are left to fate alone and this time it wasn't kind to them. no matter how much good they did, they still got slapped in the face.
and it was, i think, such a genuine moment of empathy. like, essek is the character who prefers to put up a facade and act distant and self-composed but this time he just. walked away unable to watch this. the could only say to fjord that it wasn't fair. even when he was caught off guard in nicodranas he was able to explain himself and his motives to an extent even though he was a nervous wreck whose extra important plan went to hell the second the only people he cared about appeared. this time he had nothing to elaborate on. it just wasn't fair. it wasn't fair his friends didn't get what they wanted the most. it wasn't fair he couldn't do anything to make it right.
it is such a sad and beautiful and even cathartic scene because it is about person who started a war that destroyed so many lives - and then met this ragtag group of weirdos who saw a lonely stand-offish guy and said "hey, let's be friends!" and didn't even wait for him to answer. he saw them being serious and calculated and he saw them being ridiculous and extremely stupid, he saw their mistrust to outsiders and their loyalty to each other, he made spells with them and paid a visit to their hot tub, he ate their stale pastries and drank their hot chocolate mixed with whiskey, he was welcomed amongst them and in their wonderful home, both in xhorhas before they even found out what he had done and in the tower when they already knew - and then, he saw them mourning their loss, defeated and helpless, and he, a person who believed there were things more important than whole nations, let alone just one life, couldn't help but share the pain they felt. a pure display of compassion from someone who detached himself from it, who didn't believe he could grow into a better person capable of it again, but became one nonetheless without even realising it
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You said that you don’t like Jonerys, but do you see it happening in the books? Do you see them actually falling in love?
there is nothing about their personalities that has ever lead me to believe they’d be capable of tolerating each other for more than 10 minutes before a slap fight started. nor do i think jon will be amenable to making any more alliances with targaryens after aegon vi dies, especially with the North in such peril due to the others. that + sansa’s distrust of The Great Game & the people who play it + arya spending half her storyline in a city that hated valyria & it’s legacy of slavery + bran telling br he can take his borg hivemind and shove it all leads me to believe that the starks are gonna be petty at best & actively hostile to the iron throne at worst by the time dany lands.
and by the time dany lands…we’ll have the burning in vaes dothrak, which is likely to be a huge moral turning point for her bc as george said, her being unburnt was a once in a lifetime magic event. she’s likely ordering drogon to burn the khals which is so much different - and more villainous! - than just lighting a torch & watching the place go up in flame. we’ll have “to go west you must go east” which is going to involve her sacking a city with the dothraki. we’ll have the battle of fire in meereen & a team up with a greyjoy which just spells disaster. then she lands in westeros with an army made up of dothraki screamers, unsullied slaves, and headed by jorah fucking mormont and a greyjoy. i’m not even sure when she has the time to meet jon let alone get dicked down by him!
(part of my “snowspear is real” trutherism is that i think dany in the show was given like half of aegon vi’s plot. considering arianne is going to meet them at storm’s end, which is a hop, skip, and jump away from dragonstone, it makes way more sense to me that the main targ the starklings would be dealing with is aegon. i also think that jon finding out he’s lyanna & rhaegar’s as he’s dealing with rhaegar’s trueborn son & has completely thrown his lot in with the north is gonna hit way more emotionally than jon finding out he fucked his aunt. george does a lot with romance, this is true, but the main relationships in this series? they’re siblings! they’re parents & children! cersei & robert are haunted by the ghost of lyanna but lyanna has always been a stand in for robert’s love for NED. cat & ned’s relationship is doomed before it even starts by LYANNA and JON, not by a former lover! all three lannister kids wonder how their lives would have turned out if their mother had lived!! it’s about ~these ties that bind us~ it’s about the human heart in conflict with itself! i just don’t see how you pass up two unknown half brothers meeting & clashing & then finding out they’re related in favor of…a very predictable, very boring romance between your fire & ice coded mains).
tldr i still generally feel no bc i’ve never thought they’d get along very well, plus there’s no time, but i’m pretty ready to eat my words on that one and cringe my way through a sex scene between them.
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*inhales copium* and now, a bleach "no breaths from hell" analysis to soothe the soul
i've been rewatching bleach (both canon and filler eps) and rereading the TYBW arc, and nothing can convince me that the opening page to the NBFH one-shot isn't about ukitake.
two things stood out to me: the very sentimental language ("when i was younger"; "i adored the dear things"; "seeing that brought me great relief"), as well as the metaphor of the two fishes – one large, the other small, until one day the larger one passed away.
but then, with the larger fish's death, the smaller one grew bigger, and even "flourished". the narrator of the tale finds great relief at this – thank goodness, they say. the story then ends with a cryptic, "it was good that the larger one died".
while i might have to check with the japanese originals for the phrasing, i immediately clocked the two fishes as referring to ukitake, for his zanpakuto – sogyo no kotowari.
more than that, i think the story of the two fishes also parallel his life: a small child who coexisted with a larger, infinite being to stay alive on borrowed time. stagnating, in other words; the exact term used in the panel, similar in description to mimihagi's abilities, delaying ukitake's sickness and death.
and i think it wasn't – or won't be, depending on where this story is headed – until ukitake's sacrifice that he comes to grow bigger than he is, into his powers, and what he was meant to be. we see, for a brief time during his sacrifice, that he becomes the soul king himself; later on, we are told that ukitake's reiatsu far surpasses the sheer volume that the other captains can put together – these things indicate ukitake's transformation to come, as seen by the large zanpakuto that he wields in hell:
[i'm just gonna ignore the possible implications of the familiar language used here by syazelaporro: "ahh... you're early...", like this has happened before(?) elsewhere(?)]
but it is also worth noting that a large zanpakuto isn't necessarily a good thing – it could also mean that ukitake is having difficulty controlling his immense spiritual pressure now that he does not need to use it to sustain mimihagi and his life. which also only raises the question: just how much more reiatsu did he have when he was alive, and potentially now that he's the (likely) gatekeeper of hell?
and more than that, the epithet that ukitake is referred to – "kamikake", or "god-sworn"/"divine possession" – references no doubt his past life as a host for mimihagi. it is indeed curious that he would be referred to as such in the afterlife/hell, and i can only suppose that his title or duties are related somewhat to the sacrificial ritual, or even the soul king.
which, in the end, brings us back to the first panel – the death of the larger fish allowing the smaller fish to grow and flourish. when one considers the literary significances of fishes in world literature, particularly in christianity, which the TYBW is rooted heavily in, then the small fish could also be a symbol of resurrection and rebirth.
when kubo-sensei hopefully picks up this story, i look forward to seeing if ukitake does get to become the fighter that he could be without his illness, possible even transcending those barriers placed upon him when he was living.
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