#complexities

thinking about how akemi, taigen, and mizu are if a coin had three sides or maybe just the two and mizu is the bridge of metal between them.

akemi being the ideal image for women, for the life they endure. she was simultaneously a princess, a prostitute, and a prisoner. her entire life was men making decisions for her, even the ones that had good intentions, and she believed her deepest desire was freedom. it still is, but she has been revealed to this heinous predicament of her gender, and she’s realized that to reach true freedom as a woman is to be the bird in the cage, to play nice and to earn the love of a man until he buys her a bigger cage and a bigger cage until he trusts her not to fly away. and it'll never be true freedom, but it will come with power. it'll come with the freedom of only one master rather than many.

taigen being the ideal image of a man. not all powerful, but not weak. he had a taste of what it'd be to succeed, and when it was taken from him, that easy success, he mistook it for his honor. he hunted mizu down to kill him, and instead he saved him. he saved him and saved him and he came closer to killing mizu when they were on the cliff's edge, and just when he gets to the point where he may actually fight mizu, he's tortured for information on him. he is tortured. Literally tortured within an inch of his life, enduring such a heinous violence, and he refuses to break. this man was a fight, was the torturer, and the victim of his torturing could've been his salvation from pain but he refused. mizu gave back taigen's honor but not by fighting him.

akemi wanted freedom and learned she would need power to have it.

taigen wanted power and learned that the violence that came with it was infinite and dishonorable.

and then there's mizu. mizu who wants revenge, wants acceptance. arguably the same things as them both. mizu wants acceptance, the freedom of living and the freedom to love and be loved. mizu wants revenge, which follows after violence and power, to get said acceptance. she thinks she must do both, have both, to live peacefully, and she's blatant about how she will not live without either.

she's given acceptance with the blacksmith, her "mother," her husband, but she sees the flecks of avoidance in it.

the blacksmith will not hear of her true gender. her "mother" will not acknowledge the crime of her birth. her husband can't find tolerance for the violence within her, the man of her.

and so she has to balance the woman and man of her, the ronin and the bride. taigen and akemi. and it's meeting mizu that they start to unravel their own identities.

mizu, who is both, and akemi and taigen who thought themselves one but turned out to be neither.

Klaus is "darkness," and Cami is "light," as if they’re two ends of a moral spectrum. And yes, on the surface, that contrast is there.

But I don't actually agree that Klaus and Cami are opposites.

If you look deeper, their connection works because they share similar traits, similar wounds, and similar internal battles.

Cami isn’t just a beacon of goodness. She has her own darkness, her own demons, and her own capacity for obsession, anger, and moral ambiguity. She just expresses it differently.

Klaus externalizes his darkness: violence, rage, control, and fear.

Cami internalizes hers: self‑doubt, guilt, grief, and the need to fix what’s broken.

They mirror each other. They are both driven by trauma.

Both lost a sibling, and both carry guilt about it.

Klaus’s childhood abuse and betrayal shaped his worldview.

The abandonment Cami faced by her parents after the St. Anne's massacre shaped her new reality.

They’re both trying to make sense of violence, loss, and injustice with clearly very different coping mechanisms.

They need control. Klaus tries to control his siblings and the world. Cami tries to control herself.

Both fear becoming the worst version of themselves.

Klaus fears becoming the monster everyone says he is. Cami fears the darkness she inherited due to Sean's madness, her crazy family legacy. The anger, the grief, and the potential for obsession. She also fears her own impulses. She knows herself, and she is not "pure." She’s someone who fights her shadows every day.

Both need to understand the human psyche. Klaus, through manipulation and observation. Cami through psychology and compassion.

If Cami is just the light. Then she is reduced to a trope: the good woman who redeems the bad man.

And Cami is not a trope.

Cami understands Klaus because she understands herself. She sees his darkness because she recognizes that darkness in her.

Complexities

I suppose you have a point. Especially about comparing trauma between characters being gross. And being honest, when I rebloged that post I took it more as the person criticising another part of the fandom. Because the thing is, (and I also mentioned this in my last reblog responding to your question about where the "Lazarus pit Madness" might have come from), the fandom does both, aka, one part seams to excuse all of Jason's actions on his trauma and "uwufies" him by blamming all of his actions on his trauma and the people that caused it, and the other side doesn't even consider Jason's trauma and paints him as someone that doesn't need/deserve help.

The fact is that discussing/writting about such a complex subject that is trauma and how it is shown in media (especially in comic books where there are an abundance of characters with trauma and how they "deal" with it, mostly through violence) always can get you in a "difficult spot" because it is difficult to do it "right" by everyone.

And then again, just because a character suffered from trauma that doesn't mean their horrible actions are completly excused or that they don't take any responsability over their actions. But still doesn't change the fact that Jason does need help to "get better" and that said help is difficult to give because of his violent actions.

So, I took OP's post more as them pointing out this part of the fandom that refuses to acknowledge that characters like Jason are people that need help, but that at the same time their trauma isn't a complete justification for their horrible actions (it's kind of a 2 way street). Like, I think this can also apply to Batman's rogues gallery as well (I mean not all of them but a lot of them) where you can acknowledge that they are somewhat right in their motives or some part justified because of how they were wronged but you also acknowledge that what they are doing is horrible and causing other people pain. Like, in a lot stories what Batman tries to do with this people (Jason included), besides stopping them by fighting, is trying to appeal to them with a promise of help.