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sabaramonds · 2 years

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the intimacy of possession: a glimpse into hyde-brand formative yaoi

hello, everyone! i mentioned once or twice here on tumblr and several times over on twitter, but my good friend @tshirt3000 organized a zine among its friends with the topic being yaoi. specifically, formative or otherwise largely influential yaoi in our lives or what yaoi means to us. a few topics came to mind when this was presented before me. one of those topics was murder or violence as a love language and the overlap between joshneku (twewy) and akeshu (p5). however i would have had to replay both games because its been so long and i didnt have the time; luckily someone else discussed joshneku (which made me super happy to see) so thats another essay for another day. instead i ended up writing about - you guessed it - possession, and not of the material kind. in my entry i discuss how i view it and use several ships that impacted me greatly enough to definitely qualify as ‘formative yaoi’. the following will contain spoilers for: yu gi oh (the manga), kagerou project (the light novels), and season 1 of the kekkai sensen/blood blockade battlefront anime adaption. you can find the full zine, all 81 pages of it!, over here. the digital pdf is free to read, so please enjoy it at your leisure. so, lets talk about possession

there is an unavoidable intimacy in possession. no matter the circumstances, no matter how the characters feel about one another on a personal level, there is an intimacy that simply cannot be denied. no matter how hard you try to maintain a distance between you and the one you share a body with, there is an inevitable overlap, a bleedover of information, of self. who else could ever know you as well as the one who has cradled your soul, your mind, your heart, within their own vessel; who else could ever know you as well as the one who fit themself within your body, within your heart, as if it were their home? CASE ONE: TENDERSHIPPING. in YGO, ryou and his spirit, the thief king, are not often shown together despite acting as narrative foils for yugi and his spirit atem. in fact ryou is scarcely shown at all: he fades into the background like a ghost more often than not and we are very rarely afforded a glimpse into his life outside of his introductory arc, at least in the manga. we know he is socially isolated from both friends and family: he has himself and his dioramas and his ghost. so i think his possession would be a relief for him; instead of having no one, he always has someone, even if that someone is zorc-pilled, prone to violence, and repeatedly puts him in dangerous situations.

unlike yugi, ryou, is for the most part cut off from his spirit. they do not visit each other in their soul rooms; the thief king actively excludes ryou from his plans despite piloting his body to achieve his goals. and yet, towards the end, it is ryou who constructs a diorama at the thief king’s behest as the battleground for his revenge plot against atem. this must have required extensive communication, with the level of detail it had. i imagine ryou glad to grasp the opportunity to know the one who has haunted him all these years, both hurting and protecting him, especially knowing with confidence that yugi and his friends have defeated the king of thieves once before and that they could surely do so again. after all, if he was bothered by the thief king's anything, he wouldnt have stolen the ring back from yugi after it was taken from him in the wake of battle city. the thief king is HIS shitty roommate from hell to evict if he so chooses!! there is also, of course, the thief king: one who hurts more than he helps, one who cannot care for ryou the way he might have if it werent for his zorcpilled grief and thousands of years of a festering grudge to fuel him.

he manages to care anyway; there was no reason for him to trap the soul of a teacher who had harassed ryou in a figurine, or to keep ryou alive during the battle city arc, either, when it risked his working relationship with malik. its hard not to care for the boy whose body you have lived in for years, no matter how zorcpilled you are; a boy who you have been alone together with for a long, long time; a boy who does not forgive you for the way you hurt him but keeps letting you in anyway. we dont get to see any resolution between them, by the way. at the end of it all, when yugi is saying goodbye to the spirit of his puzzle and the millennium items are being taken away for good, there is nothing for ryou and the ghost who has been with him since childhood; the ghost who has been, for the most part, the only company hes kept for many years. i like to think that at the end of it all, de-zorc’d, the thief king might have let ryou in the way ryou has always let him in. just once, just for a moment. an honest goodbye. we dont know, though. i guess thats typical of ryou and his thief king. we never get to see them during such private, pivotal moments. CASE TWO: HARUKA, KONOHA, AND THE SNAKE OF CLEARING EYES. kokonose haruka has known he was going to die for at least six years by the time shintaro, the protagonist, meets him; by the time the story itself begins in volume one, he is already two years gone.

kagerou project, the series he’s from, contains the daze: a world which ‘devours’ pairs of people close to death. to help them survive, its creator began to give some of these people parts of herself and her power, via her snakes. a caveat: the power given has to suit the human. can you guess what harukas most earnest wish might have been? this is how konoha was born. konoha was not a person, not at first; he had been harukas oc for a video game he played with his classmate and friend, takane. he was harukas idealized self: not only healthy but inhumanly strong and capable of being of use to those he cared for. konoha is who and what haruka was meant to be, yet haruka, who rejected this body, was stuck within the daze, in an endless white room and his hospital bed, only able to see the outside world in glimpses of konoha’s eyes.

he resents konoha. konoha is living a life that was meant to be his—although that, too, is a life haruka was not meant to have. hes always been on borrowed time.

konoha, himself instead possessed by a fragment of the daze’s creator’s power in the absence of haruka, is barely aware of haruka beyond his understanding that he resembles someone his friends have lost.

the snake of clearing eyes is a parasitic entity constantly recreating a series of events that will lead to him being able to possess a physical vessel, however briefly, before one of the other protagonists—mary—forces time itself to loop back several years in a fit of grief over those she has lost. he’s the one who actually created konoha, having secretly been the one to meet haruka instead of the daze’s creator. he finds konoha convenient and ultimately takes him over, having told haruka when he created the body, ��i am very glad this was your wish for me [...] if you do not wish for anything, i cannot ‘fulfill’ anything.” it’s only in the act of fulfilling the most ardent wishes of others that he is capable of action, and only then: only when he is doing what others beg of him. so he spends timeloop after timeloop brutally murdering a bunch of teenagers to get the perfect body for himself, even knowing mary will, in her grief, rewind time itself. and then he does it all again. so much work. years and years of effort expended over and over again in loop after loop—just for a taste. is it worth it? we know after the series ends, haruka is alive. but it begs the question of how he lives. i like to think he took the snake of clearing eyes into his actual flesh and blood body to act as that substitute life. but why do i find that so compelling? because he sees himself in the snake of clearing eyes. kokonose haruka is a boy who has always known he was going to die no matter how desperately he wished otherwise. if he resents konoha for living, it stands to reason that he would empathize with the snake of clearing eyes, so desperate for a life of his own, even if the rest of those around them would not think the same. he can give the snake of clearing eyes a lifetime to live. his own lifetime, shared, and maybe that could be enough to satisfy him. i think the snake of clearing eyes would hate him for this kindness. a shared lifetime that isnt on a timer that leads inevitably to repeating the same several years, again and again: a gift he does not deserve and did not ask for. its a punishment as much as it is a gift, anyway, given that it isnt truly a life that is the snake of clearing eyes alone. i think thats funny as hell. CASE THREE: THE KING OF DESPAIR AND WILLIAM “BLACK” MACBETH. kekkai sensen takes place in the city of hellsalems lot (fka new york city) in a world after an apocalyptic event called “the collapse.”

now let me talk about william ‘black’ macbeth. black spends his whole life repressing his immense power both because his twin sister mary ‘white’ macbeth was born without it and because hes afraid of it. during the collapse, his parents give up their lives to turn his sister into a piece of the barrier that keeps the effects of the collapse from spreading, and he embraces despair both literally and metaphorically. the king of despair is…well, nobody really knows who or what he is, but where the thief kings motives were rooted in grief and vengeance and the snake of clearing eyes motives laid in a desire to live, the king of despair wants one thing: to die. towards the end of episode 11, he monologues: “...how fragile a thing eternal life is, a fate of endless wandering; without death in mind one cannot be said to be truly alive. and so, forgotten by death, the despair that i am shall at least take my foolishness to bed with me.” he says this very dramatically on a live broadcast to the entirety of hellsalems lot by the way. right as he kickstarts the collapse 2: electric boogaloo! it is uncertain who or what the king of despair is, but we know hes been ‘a silent observer’ since ‘rome’. prior to meeting black, he was a shapeless fracture of blue light, having presumably lost his physical body in one of his many previous suicide attempts. guy really just wants to die. im especially fond of him because despite his behavior, he is actually the sort of guy who cares a whole lot about other people, specifically at the very least, black. during their fight in the season finale, another character says: “as long as you crave the light, you cannot kill him. It is precisely because you desire hope that you sought him out, is it not?” the him, of course, is black.

this enrages despair. despite that, despair does eventually admit—in a breathless, wavering voice—that actually, he had not taken blacks body by force. “you came to rescue him from me, but i didnt take him by force. he welcomed me.” top 10 most haunting lines in all of anime. to me. the tenderness in his expression, in his voice, the raw ache of it: and then, when the protagonist leo arrives with white, the fear and hope. black wants to live, despair wants to die, and even if despair didnt want to kill black alongside himself he was willing to do it. he doesnt, of course. its not the right choice. but despair wants to die and black wants to live, so until despair stops trying to kill them both, hes got to leave.

ive talked a whole lot about these ships now. whats their common denominator? I’d have to say the friction in each relationship. theres something so incredibly gripping to me about two (or, um, three if we count the haruka situation?) fundamentally different people (or entities) sharing a body. the thief king and his millennia of grief and rage, worsened by zorcs proximity. ryou and his passive detachment from himself, his relief at knowing someone will always, always be with him: he is not as alone as he thought. the snake of clearing eyes and who knows how many centuries or millennia spent desperate for a life of his own, grasping for it no matter what the cost, no matter how repetitive. haruka and a lifetime spent knowing he was living on borrowed time, that he would die young just like his mother—younger even than she had. konoha, caught between them, a vessel of both hope and rejection. the king of despair and his yearning for death. for that final, eternal sleep. caring despite himself, hesitating in the face of the young man who had welcomed despair into himself. black and a lifetime of repressing himself and fearing everything, but mainly his own power—but not despair. not really. so i want to ask everyone who read this a question. do you think its gay to possess someone and be possessed in turn?

#my writing #um. i guess.#should i even tag the fandoms #ygo #kagepro #kekkai sensen #thank you again to tshirt for organizing this #the real yaoi truly was the friendships we made along the way

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chibivesicle · 2 years

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The sadness of Steven A. Starphase.

How Kekkai Sensen/Blood Blockade Battlefront is painfully realistic. In the most banal adult ways possible.

With me going back to rewatch Trigun before Stampede began to air, I was itching for more work by Yasuhiro Nightow. However, his follow up manga that started as a one-shot that became Kekkai Sensen/Blood Blockade Battlefront came out while I was in grad school and when the anime was briefly on Crunchyroll later, it didn’t ping me as a suggestion. I’m very much a josei/seinen person with occasional forays into good sports or slice of life series, then shoujo and then shounen series if they have a good sense of humor. Essentially, I need something like FLCL or Gintama to keep me amused.

With Stampede not meeting what I’m realizing were unrealistic expectations, I was curious and decided to follow up on Blood Blockade Battlefront (B3). The title alone would be a turn off for me; I put faith in it that it would have that original Trigun quirky vibe. Honestly, I wish they’d not have translated and told me it was Kekkai Sensen, I would have been easier to convince to watch it. I watched the first episode and was already loving the style, the artwork and the OST. That OST man - so good. And the VA cast - so many actors from Gintama and I was shocked no one was commenting that Femt, the King of Depravity, was voiced by one of my fav VAs, Akira Ishida! What sealed the deal for me, besides the incredible graphic design, story boarding and attention to detail from studio Bones was the entire sequence in S1E3 - A Game Between Worlds when Klaus and K.K. go to the Alterworld following the former Soviet chess grandmaster to the Alterworld Mafia Don’s home.

As the story unfolded in season one, I started to gravitate towards my usual character types; tough independent females and tall, dark, and handsome males. Yeeeaaaaah; I love Chain Sumeragi, K.K. and Steven A. Starphase. I also appreciate Leo with Sonic and Klaus Von Reinhertz is the best male tank character I have ever seen. He’s so adorable! And gentlemanly with his tie and oxford brogues. B3 is a workplace drama/comedy that just happens to take place in a secret organization that handles weird supernatural stuff. Seriously, that is a great summary and it is a great cast even if I’d likely kill Zapp and punch Brody & Hummer for being double ditzes.

I haven’t finished season two yet (I’ve watched through S2E7 - so no spoiler comments for the rest of season two or the manga please!). But the character who ticks all my boxes is Nicholas D. Wolfwood - er - I mean, Steven A. Starphase. Steven is the second in command of Libra, one of the oldest team members (over thirty), has a facial scar, dark hair, sarcastic, stylish and the team member; who gets shit done. That peaking bit of a tattoo and his ruffly black hair . . . Chain may have gotten Wolfwood’s outfit and is a werewolf, but Steven is the evolution of Wolfwood, balancing out Klaus’ unwavering principles, and willing to take on the role of doing the dirty work in the background which is necessary. The body language of Steven is the same as Wolfwood, he’s a mix of straight lines, angles and noodle.

Steven is also paired with Vash - I mean - K.K. on missions. Following the anime format he’s teamed up with her in S1E5 - Bloodline Fever where they have to fight a Blood Breed in a subway station. Unlike, Vash and Wolfwood, K.K. is not keen on him all the time calling him black-hearted and giving him the mocking nickname of Steven-sensei (I guess since he is the logistics expert of Libra always coordinating the teams while K.K. is a lone sniper character).

However, despite their one-sided discord, the two of them work well together where he shows his noodle qualities saving K. K. and the young girl and her mother in S1E8 - Z’s Worst Day - Part 1. Interestingly, Steven takes K.K.’s criticism rather seriously as he’s shaking as she scolds him . . . Steven takes K.K.’s words into account indicating that he does want work well with her.

Before, reverting to his oft “Now, now, now” line to de-escalate things. The two also naturally balance each other out and communicate well with their options when trying to determine which of the two mysterious individuals is the Blood Breed from the India Gate.

They are also characters who are able to info dump quite naturally due to them being the most senior members of Libra in the main cast besides Lucky Abrams. And the storytelling makes their info dumping flow with the story - sometimes they are trying to figure something out, sometimes Steven is pondering a situation. Either way it works well for the second in command to be the man with a bookmarked to hell reference text and even have a color swatch for a Blood Breed’s aura. He also has lots of paper reports which indicates he’s the kind of guy who likes to read through physical items than scan a computer all the time.

By the end of season one, we know that Steven is for the most part, serious about work, a deadpan snarker, leans towards the more pessimistic side despite having hope for the future. e.g. he’d likely describe himself a realist as opposed to Klaus being a dreamer.

It gives us enough information that he’s been beaten down and is no longer an idealistic youth. Take when he asked about why Leo wouldn’t accept higher pay despite struggling financially and comments that Leo is an upstanding young man. He also originally was hesitant for them to even invite Leo to join Libra in the first place, despite knowing the value he brought to them, we know this is alleviated by S1E5 when he takes a literal beating to stall for time. Steven looks chronically burnt out - he is the only character who always has lines under his eyes. His facial expression is rarely one of him smiling or laughing and he maintains a sort of meh or down turned expression when not dealing with serious work situations. Even in the image below when he’s smiling it isn’t a happy smile, he’s thinking about the situation they are about to enter, looking back on the past three years.

His character is frequently shown with a cup of coffee - at the office, he has a blue mug with a red bottom that matches his shirt, frequently when he has papers in the other hand. He will also drink tea with Klaus but it is clear he’s reached that working adult phase of life where coffee is fundamental to your day to day function. Steven is also shown to down energy drinks in times of extreme deadlines as well.

Season two, B3 & Beyond appears to be a season of back filling manga chapters that were skipped in season one to have a tight story. The one aspect that was a bummer in season one for me was how characters besides Leo, Klaus, Black and White got loads of development and growth everyone else was just in the background as support. Season two likely pulled from manga chapters that were published earlier which lead to some confusing/unclear points for viewers aka, like why K.K. calls Steven black-hearted and the Steven-sensei nickname. It is too bad they didn’t have these episodes earlier but I’ll take my character development background whenever, just give it to me.

We first get the explanation from Klaus and Steven at the hospital that reappeared about their personal experience of the Great Collapse to Leo and the introduction of Dr. Lucina Estavez (who should totally date Klaus) as well as defeating the Blood Breed that the two hand been training to fight.

The episode that really hit on my idea that there is a sadness to Steven wasn’t until S2E3 - Day In Day Out. We get a few parallel story lines that show what happens in Leo, Zapp, Steven and Chain’s day where they are independent of each other but still cross paths by the end.

The first thing we learn is that Steven has an amazing loft apartment with a balcony and cool artwork and an Alterworld/Beyondian housekeeper, Mrs. Veded. He emerges from a bedroom with a cup of coffee in one hand and the newspaper as he greets her. With a genuine smile too.

I can look beyond his choice to put milk in his coffee - however, that goes against K.K.’s comment that he’s got a black heart. I’ll excuse his milk in coffee for his stress and soothing his tummy. The phone rings and he goes to pick it up.

We can still see the lines under his eyes so again, he is either always exhausted or we are to read them as actual wrinkles. Maybe both - he’s older and tired due to working hard. A rather playful female on the phone jokes with him about waking up early - at 11AM and it is clear that he hasn’t been up that long either.

There is a conversation about how much alcohol to bring tonight, cluing us into the fact that he’s having a dinner party at his place. Which again, is freakkin’ swanky as all hell. I want Steven’s place.

He’s got a carefree attitude as he talks to two different people on the phone about arrangements for the evening. These are not Steven at the office looks, these are Steven potentially having an outside life facial expressions!

When he gets off the phone, Mrs. Veded comments that he looks happy and Steven seems shocked. She also noted that he seemed very stressed out and tense all the time and she is glad to see him not in such a state.

Since we know that Steven keeps a straight face for the most time at work, he can’t help but reply that he’s shocked at her observation. Which is true, I’m sure Klaus can read him pretty well in work situations, but it is his thing to keep his cards close to his chest. In season one, he is frequently the go between for Libra and the government whether it is the FBI, HLPD, the League of Casters and so forth. Angelica’s comment of Klaus-san and Steven-shi shows that she knows Klaus from previous interactions, but the -shi on Steven implies that she’s never met him, but knows of him and speaks to him respectfully. The English equivalent would be like staying, “Oh, you’re the well-known organizer at Libra, Steven Starphase.” The point is, Steven is well known in certain circles and is respected professionally.

In season one, he was only happy when they were successful at work or his plans went well. For example, his delight at how Leo was able to spot the Ghost Wagon and how he told Klaus that he needed to work on his management skills of others. He additionally has a mix of a dark and offbeat sense of humor, able to laugh while Leo is wrapped up in bandages.

This is not a relevant image other than that it shows time has passed and I still want Steven’s loft.

Mrs. Veded has been helping him all afternoon to prep for his party and we see that he even gets in on the action cooking and wearing an apron of course. He goes with his more casual dress shirt with no tie. There is an almost excited look on his face. I’d guess he hasn’t had people over in sometime.

He goes to let people in and he hands the flowers to Mrs. Veded (who adorably inhales their scent looking happy) and after greeting them, trips over. Of course the friends comment that he’s been working too hard. Steven, adulting hardcore.

The gifted flowers are placed on the table in a vase by Mrs. Veded and he thanks her for all of her help. However, it is clear that he doesn’t need her for the rest of the evening and she takes her leave.

Again, we see another nice subtle smile from him here but something about it lingers, like he’d like to say more but can’t. After she departs, he talks to himself about getting things started, grabbing a bottle of champagne from a bucket of ice and commenting they should get started.

The next time we return to his place, all of the party guests are eating, drinking and chatting up a storm. There is chill music on, everyone looks fashionably dressed, wealthy - and human. All of this gives us the indication that outside of work, Steven has the most ‘normal’ social group. Look at his swanky place, the nice artwork, stainless steel fridge, kitchen island . . . yet while everyone is chatting merrily in groups we get a framing shot of him silently standing alone leaning into a column in his living room. You can tell that every single individual except for him is talking with another person or two based on their body language. This is such an excellent image and it lingers just long enough before it zooms into him looking off in to the distance with a wineglass of course.

Steven has such an interesting expression here, he’s got what appears to be his usual poor posture, leaning against the wall, holding the wine glass and has a soft but almost sad smile. Wistful is the best I can think of.

The fact that his left hand is across his chest and under his right is unusual for him. He rarely displays this type of conservative closed off body language, think of how frequently he’s got at least one if not both hands in his pockets. Steven speaks rather casually and bluntly; I like to call his overall posture, noodle, which is relaxed and confident. Yet, here, he appears much more stiff and is alone at his own party as you look more closely. Something is definitely off.

He goes off to get more beer and leaves the living room when all of his guests raise their arms to reveal biological weapons and tell him to remain in place, Steven Alan Starphase of Libra. Love the use of his middle name for emphasis as well. Of course he denies any knowledge of Libra at first before turning back towards them slightly. Another great part of this scene is how when he walks the few steps up to his kitchen we get a glimpse of his shoes he’s wearing at his house party.

They aren’t some sort of relaxed shoes, the few short steps allow us to see that they are his modified shoes for Esmeralda Blood Freeze techniques. We didn’t get this when he tripped in the foyer, but this is now giving the viewers a hint that he’s prepared for a serious fight.

The first sign that things are about to go south is that when he calls out two guests for only just meeting this evening but appeared to actually know each other.

As they continue to threaten him, he concludes that they need to capture him alive; likely due to his role as the second in command at Libra. This allows him to stall for time as he teases them to give him more information, by stating their bosses are idiots for wanting to capture him alive - as it implied he was expecting them to shoot him.

The framing for this entire sequence is top notch. He never turns to face them directly while continuing the conversation with Ellen. She tries to threaten him to stop being all pretentious and that they’d have no choice but to attack him. Of course he replies mocking them by throwing the question about it back at them. The resignation in his body language that this is what is happening. I don’t think that at this point that he can even look them in the eye. He’s too upset and is keeping it calm and collected.

The shading over his eyes as he looks down, the slack shoulders, this is not how he wanted his evening to go down. Yet, here he is inside his kitchen in a tight spot. Or so it seems.

However, Steven is anal retentive when it comes to organization and details, and he faked tripping at his front door to use his Needles of Absolute Zero move on them. Obviously, he likely did this at the beginning of the party for the rest of the guests being a good host circulating himself. This also explains why he sent Mrs. Veded home, he didn’t want her to witness him doing something this ruthless. Plus, she likely doesn’t know what he does for a living anyways.

The look on his face as he freezes them is so lonely, his eyes are closed and he’s hunched forward. He may not regret his actions honestly; he had no choice but to follow through with this course of actions but that feeling of disappointment, sadness, loss, betrayal. It hurts. Only after he’s frozen them all in place does he even glance back to them as his breath is visible in the air.

Once everyone has been subdued, he gets a moment to gloat over them and their mistakes. He notes that Larry was smart to select weapons that could get into his building undetected implying that he lives in a pretty secure building and that Larry was carrying his weight funny for the past ten days. He also tells Ellen that she tried too hard to cover the scent of the weapons with her usual perfume - by adding more. However, she should have changed the scent and he wouldn’t have noticed. After telling them how he figured out things were off, he steps back and looks at the group, his entire expression tired and blank. More stress lines under those eyes.

His own personal clean-up crew is there to take them all away. And since this isn’t under the guidance of Klaus, he’ll likely let those masked individuals use questionable methods to interrogate everyone for the information he needs to know. Who or what is targeting him? Why? What do they want from him? These are the sorts of things Steven has to know, but the type of things that Klaus wouldn’t be involved with due to his stricter moral code. In this instance, Klaus is Vash, holding an almost impossible level of hope and goals while it is clear that Steven is pragmatic and realizes sometimes you gotta slog through the shit to get things done and protect others like Wolfwood. Though, Steven would have been very upset if Mrs. Veded’s roast were damaged in anyway so he clearly loves her cooking and the love she puts into it.

The likely immediate reaction for a lot of viewers at the end of this scene when he goes out for some air is; Holy shit! Steven is a total badass. He just froze his entire dinner party and turned them over to shady underlings to pump them for information. Badass indeed!

Yet, when I saw the end of that scene, I felt so sad. When it goes to him alone along the road, he’s chastising himself for his own behaviors. He’s leaning on the railing looking out into the night giving himself criticism for letting his guard down and enjoying himself too much. He tried to meet ‘normal’ people who didn’t work for Libra and look what it got him?!?!

He thinks back to how he met various individuals like Ellen and Larry. And that is when it really sinks in and all of its subtlety. You think back to his comments and realize he had to likely know these people for a few years as he met them and slowly thought about having them meet. To realize what type of perfume Ellen wore all the time. To notice that Larry started walking oddly with in the past ten days meant he saw him walk a lot more for a decent amount of time prior to the recent days.

And then it sinks in - all of those people might have went out of their way to befriend him over the period of several years - for the purpose to kidnap him for their boss. The level of deception, of effort. If that was how he met all of them, it sucks so much that it could break someone down. I almost felt like crying the more that I thought about the entire situation. Even if they’d met him first to just be friends, it still shows they were convinced to join this plot to capture him.

Thinking about that hurts; it would make him absolutely paranoid to befriend anyone who isn’t associated with Libra and socialize with them outside of work. But you don’t want to hang out with your work friends outside of work do you?

The entire mood of this image captures his feelings of sadness, isolation and loneliness. He’s the darkest figure in the image as the car headlights, apartment windows and orange construction barrels are more illuminated than he is.

The car turns out to pull over and stop as it is Mrs. Veded and she’s got her two children with her who meet him. Steven smiles at them and they have a pleasant conversation.

The icing on the cake is when he thanks her for everything - she likely thinks it is about her help prepping for the party and cleaning his place. But Steven is speaking from his heart. She’s likely one of the most normal people he knows. Oh, that smile and his smiling eyes. Steven, you’re a good guy even though you have to do some not so great things. You care about normal people, you know how to talk to normal people and you are not biased based on species.

Her daughter shows him the cat they found and he knees down to see them eye to eye and comment on how the cat is so cute. Note, he’s totally channeling Wolfwood, by talking to the children like they are normal and then comes down to their level to continue to chat with them.

The bonus is that he properly pets that cat which shows it is happy. Aaaahhhh my heart is melting. I love it when someone knows how to properly interact with cats.

The episode then ends with Leo, Sonic and Zapp riding by, Zapp having a total meltdown about his eminent loss of his most important body part. Steven laughs how his friends are having a wild night out on the town - revealing that for better or for worse - his closest friends are his colleagues at Libra and Mrs. Veded.

I’m sure that when Leo stops by to chat with Steven, they likely notice the heads of the two goons in the car and figure out that cat is the missing purebred and all’s well that ends well.

The entire episode was a wild ride as the different characters navigate challenges for the current stages of their lives. The one though that stuck with me the most was how realistic Steven’s entire situation is, besides being a key member of a secret organization who can freeze stuff with his blood. I mean more along the lines of what it is like to be a hardworking professional over the age of thirty. Trying to navigate a work-life balance and meet people outside of a school context. It is really difficult and it makes his situation in this episode sadder. He likely put a ton of effort into meeting all those people as adult friendships are bloody hard. Steven’s actions were not out of revenge nor malice; it boiled to either something bad happening to him or to them. He outsmarted them and won the contest but at the loss of likely a bunch of people he socialized with outside of work and clearly never told them who he was - with the whole working for a secret organization.

We can also guess that with his multilingual skills, like Klaus, he’s not a native of NYC originally and moved there to be a part of Libra. Which makes his story even sadder and more lonely.

We don’t have enough information if he’s a native speaker of Spanish or that he knows it for his Blood techniques. Zapp and Zed have to do theirs in Japanese (with very Buddhist undertones as opposed to Christian for Steven and Klaus) and they were taught by a mysterious ‘otherwordly’ man with a dark skin tone and wears a skull sooooo one can’t correlate Blood technique language with ones own racial/ethnic background. All that it has revealed is that between Steven and Klaus, besides English, they can speak a total of nine languages knowing that Spanish and German are two of those nine.

I’ve gone off track, but getting back to my main point. The entire episode fills in a few gaps from season one.

Steven does have a black heart - sort of. K.K. isn’t incorrect, but he isn’t doing this all for fun. He’s the guy who has to choose between two terrible options. He is the character who makes decisions - very deeply thought out decisions for the overall good of the many as opposed to the few. Unlike Wolfwood, he does not charge into situations and instead, does his research, assembles teams and will work himself to utter exhaustion to prevent disaster. He commands others with a strong presence and organizes almost all of their coordinated plans as well as making sure they are executed properly.

Though his interactions with Veded and her kids as well as his concern for protecting normal people or other staff; he cares a lot about others.

Older characters are more reserved. Steven frequently interacts with all sorts of people and is the contact point for Libra. Everyone has his number. He does not show his emotions easily and takes much effort to be convinced. Detective Daniel Law is the one who talks directly to Steven while Klaus listens silently. Though, as obvious as it is that Law is manipulating Klaus, Steven doesn’t say anything aloud and instead sighs and groans at the expected outcome. When Master Raju Jugei Shizuyoshi appears, it is Steven who quickly determines his identity, implying he’s done his research though it was still after the Blood Battle God utterly mocked both K.K. and him, the two most senior members of Libra. Yet, he holds his own and keeps his cool - interestingly, Klaus does not speak until addressed by Shizuyoshi, instead allowing Steven to carefully question him without being intrusive. A character like Steven also hits differently. The antics of say Chain or Zapp aren’t as interesting or realistic as watching Steven lose it over making sure his computers aren’t destroyed.

He’s realistic even in the context of something like B3. The burnt out vibes, the snarky comments, the confidence in regular work situations. Steven is an easy older character to connect with. And he’s got that twinge of adult isolation and loneliness where you wonder how you got to this point professionally successful, yet, somehow are still alone? What did you sacrifice to reach this point? Was it worth it? I still have a few more episodes to go, but I’m curious to see how things pan out. Annoyingly, the print version of the manga is out of print (throws serious shade at Darkhorse) AND they don’t even have it digitally for me to legally support. That’s pretty annoying there Darkhorse . . . Yet so far, hands down, I love Steven’s character and all of his banal realistic flaws. As life gets older, you have to compromise on things and his character is a great example of that along with the grind of working and being successful

#kekkai sensen #blood blockade battlefront #kekkai sensen meta #blood blockade battlefront meta #steven a starphase #character study

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