Muri

Among all the HERs in the series, in Heavenly novel Held highlights certain three of the,— Levia, Irina (who is later revealed to not be a HER tho, yet she herself believed to be one) and Seth. They all are also ones of the most important and long-acting characters, so they’re like main representation of this fictional syndrome. I thought that it’s interesting how they all have different thoughts about them having the syndrome

Levia denies being a HER up to the very end when it’s too late to do anything with it. We can see how she thinks dismissively about the “deviants” including Nemesis aka herself. She doesn’t want to be mentally unwell, she stigmatises it so much that she just ignores the problem

Irina makes her malice her entire identity. She acknowledges it, which is better than denial, but she starts to forget what she wanted outside of her identity as HER who must spread malice (like having friends or a child, she ties it to the HER topic too)

Seth has started similar to Irina, but if we look at him later in the story, he becomes more in control of his impulses while staying aware of his malice, accepting it and eventually just wanting to find someone who will understand him truly.

Iirc the drugs we know were called “Adam” and “Merry-Go-Round”, so if it was that LeviaBehemo intentionally made up this title, they’d have told about it to the first Alice queen and not Maria. With Adam — this is a common name, so I have more questions to why the drug was called so (not like “merry-go-round” is less confusing). Especially since it’s implied that in the 2ndP there were religious from our world (In Lychgate Noah was mentioned and they talked about devotion). And it’s interesting what could they think about all the in-story religious references. Actually I guess it has meaning only for narrative and not for the characters inside the story, but it’s still fun to think about

Now when I think about it I feel that Haruka is in a way very similar to Elluka (especially regarding goals, mood swings and temper, this scary apathy that changes to aggression in a second and leave you wondering how can they even handle such a state of mind for so long). Back then I could only admire that such an alive character could exist in Haruka. With Elluka/Levia I already started to dive into analysing characters way too deep. Between them was Alina

Comments under the songs with Mysterious Rin over years be like

That’s a really interesting topic! But every time I start thinking about it I came to a lot of questions about these parallel worlds. From what point they divide? Are the people on the spaceship all the same in all the worlds? Does each one of them really capable to survive and built the world? What if someone died in every world and another one survived in more than one? Does TALOS count?

I thought that the SCaP world may be Held’s or Sickle’s, since it’s so similar to Luna’s, though I doubt it as their roles wasn’t different iirc (not like I remember much from there except the fact that Nemesis can be mistaken with a little boy’s crying).

Does each world been created even? People like Levia, Lich — are they capable of not destroying it halfway? And I doubt they were the only ones. The crew included ingenious people but aside of intellect it isn’t stated each of them had right qualities to successfully create and run the world

Not really a big fan of this concept because I find it kinda late for 60 new characters to appear

1. Oh they thought everyone on other ships died when actually it was Behemo who moved avatars from the 2ndP to the 1st only of the Climb One crew members. What a stress it must’ve been for everyone especially our miss I-need-to-save-the-world and Behemo just kept silent about the truth. Or could it be only Levia’s misconceptions since she couldn’t bear the truth? I don’t even know what’s worse

2. Their genes mutated. And if I got it right it’s implied that they all couldn’t reproduce anymore. For no reason but I find the whole line quite unsettling

3. Levia was in charge of tuning the new humans’ minds and how they would develop. Maybe this is why somethimes it feels like the whole 3rdP world’s history reminds me of how Levia’s mind works??

4. Levia mentions Luna as the video game lover without even naming her. And a few paragraphs later names her as the one who opposed with no connection between two mentions <3 that one ex (friend)

5. Everything told about Seth matches so weird with the Barisol song. In the book Levia says that it was discovered that he was a HER before he’d been selected as a crew member. In the song it’s said he 1) gave his great advice to Levia => he was trusted by her; 2) he wanted to take her place on the ship, and he said the same himself in Outlaw and Lichgate. So, did he want to disguise as Levia like he did eventually with some other member (does it imply Lich?)? If he already needed to disguise, had his syndrome already been discovered? Then it makes Levia asking him even stranger than if not. Can we even believe Levia when the whole book is about her constructing lies…

6. Levia retained the spirit data of forest spirits by herself. It’s just sad💔

7. The whole “compromise” thing is very very confusing! They came to it before the ship crashed but Levia says it after saying that they needed living bodies. I miss the logic… Like they were injected before the need for using a dragon appeared. Why?

8. How the drug even works.

9. I need to count how many times Levia blamed Seth for all the problems but at the same time admired him. She was doing it in Pierrot and Heavenly too from what I remember

10. In the Barisol song it’s said that Levia’d already realised she was infected in the 2ndP. Here she says she learnt it only after being sealed in the ark. Who should I believe? Why in the world should I believe Levia Barisol?

11. It’s said she and Behemo couldn’t shift their spirit data into the dragon. It goes well with the fact they wanted to free themselves as the dragon. But what’s with that weird injection then?

I like it a lot how Levia’s struggles are not get helped by someone else. She doesn’t allow anyone to get closer to her, and. No one gets. Because that’s what she translates to others. And they don’t suddenly understand she actually wants to have connections and needs help. She doesn’t ask for help and naturally doesn’t receive help (here it’s mostly about 2nd Per Levia and Pride/early Sloth Elluka; the incident with Levia asking Seth for an advice is interesting, like yay girl asked for help but it ended up as a betrayal which probably only worsened her trust issues)

One more thing is how Levia doesn’t gets better with more and more suffering. Only worse. And her wrongdoings are not justified by the narrative at all. I think she’s a good example how the backstory can fully explain the actions, but not justify or forgive them and the person. No one comes to comfort her or asking anything about her feelings when she was being “hysterical”. Why would anyone?

The most painful scene of this for me is the dialogue between Elluka and Mariam in Green (and in the manga, tbh I mostly remember it from the manga) when Elluka announced her planning to leave Lucifenia. Mariam ofc doesn’t want her to leave because she’s their friend, but instead of telling this she starts to dance around with less personal things like Elluka’s power and its importance to the country. Because she knows Elluka. Or what Elluka presents of herself. Mariam intellectualises things because she thinks it would have more impact on Elluka and fails here. Because that’s what Elluka was translating — how aloof and rational she is. Naturally that another person agreed to play on this terms instead of trying to get more into her personal space.

Even when someone helps she tries to avert it (like when Gumillia states that Elluka was panicking during the fight in the Gift novel, or the whole Allen’s taking her out of delusion in MoN). Even when she gets help in critical situations she doesn’t accept it. Why would anyone help her before then? No, how could anyone?