haven't seen this said before, so let's hope i don't get skewered by ada fans.
the last ask about montresor got me thinkin a lot about ada, since their spectres do similar things. so I reread chapter 69 and i kinda fell down a rabbit hole;
so at this point in the series, we know ada is infatuated with prospero. however, it's gotten to the point where she's no longer shooting her shot, instead she's just forcing herself onto him. no matter how much he tells her he isn't interested, she keeps pushing. when prospero finally snaps and yells at her for this, it should be viewed as totally valid, even if his words are harsh. if they were genderswapped, I dont think as many people would be on ada's side.
and then immediately after that fight, ada manifests and gets prospero pinned to the ground all the while he is horrified and asking her to stop. she responds by asking if he loves her yet, again ignoring his boundaries for her own sake. and then she violates his mind by forcing him to live through his worst fears, which is even more disturbing in this context because the imagery seen is a bunch of hands grabbing at him. yikes. to make matters worse she says he looks cute like that? that's wrong on so many levels.
and all that happened because he got tired of her disrespecting his boundaries and finally spoke up about it? again I ask that you imagine if they were genderbent.
are we seeing the parallels here between this and montresor in ep49-51? both characters disrespect someone of the opposite sex, pin them down and take control from them, and then mess with their head via their spectres, leaving their victims on the ground in shock and/or scared. it's just weird that only one of them, montresor, is labeled an abuser.
tldr; i think male characters get called out more often for their bad actions (in this case implied/potentional sa), but when it's a girl character then nobody really notices or cares. montresor and ada are a good example of that.
I'm honestly really loving the conversations being brought to the table here.
Ada is a woman who forced herself upon Prospero, in multiple ways. The hands now have new meaning; thank you for pointing that out, Anon.
She is consistently trying to touch him throughout the earlier chapters. He pushes her away. When he finally does snap, she doesn't even consider his first words as being serious.
"You're so funny!" is what she says. "You don't mean it."
She's not taking "no," and that shouldn't be forgotten or laughed off at.
It's the way the hands are grabbing him (while Ada is the Banshee) that stand out to me more, looking now. Her hands cradle his face, while dead hands seem to touch his shoulders almost gently. Then, there's the scene where hands are halfway to removing clothing. It's grotesque and uncomfortable.
It does have strong parallels to Montresor and Lenore. But it's more obvious with Ada, in my opinion.
The gender-swap is an important conversation, too. We looked over it with Ada, and that shouldn't happen. She shouldn't be brushed off as an obsessive romatic joke ā she did wrong. She ignored a man's boundaries and when he denied consent, she forced herself to be seen.
