#onashia

A novice Carmelite;

In sister cells the wedding bells

Longtime readers of protectorateandcircut dot tumblr dot com will know that I’ve long tried to avoid the interpretation that the discussion of not being able to save the dead that Yun and Onashia have represents some sort of incapacity on the dead’s part or some sort of rejection of the idea that the dead still exist in some sense. In order to avoid this interpretation I’ve resorted to somewhat abstruse theology and applied it to the plot of a show that, while it was obviously barking up similar trees, was made by people who were probably not explicitly familiar with William Stringfellow or whatever (Paul Tillich is of course another story). While I still think that it’s wrong to read these lines as any sort of repudiation of religion or mysticism or the hope for immortality and resurrection, and am grateful that the fandom in general doesn’t read them this way and that people responded positively to my previous meta on the subject, at this point I’d prefer to approach this from an angle that focuses more on the way Yun and Onashia are characterised, and the way these lines are contextualised within the rest of the scene in which they’re delivered.

First of all, Yun cannot be irreligious. She just can’t. The extent to which her faith is central to her character and the sense of absolute certainty with which she discusses the subject are not those of a throwaway ‘fanatic’ character there to be changed or brought around from the beliefs with which she is introduced like Doggett from Orange is the New Black; they are those of somebody who sees herself as, is seen as, and is meant to be seen as a compass and a pillar, whose exploration of divine realities is truthful, compelling, and, within the show’s narrative, definitive (or as definitive as that of anybody not named Aaeru or Neviril can get). Simoun is a series that otherwise presents a generally--not exclusively, but generally--positive portrayal of religious experience and belief, the series that has literally the only sympathetically portrayed suicide bomber I have ever seen in fiction that isn’t a dark comedy. It’s narratologically and thematically nonsensical for Yun to abandon her faith, similar to how it’s nonsensical for Dominura and Onashia to literally be the same person even though there are teasing hints in that direction.

Not only is it nonsensical, it demonstrably does not happen. Yun maintains her preoccupation with the idea of salvation, and goes out of her way to voluntarily take up an important and highly visible religious office. She refers to ‘the drifting spirits of her fallen comrades’ in a matter-of-fact context that makes it clear that she understands them as very much still existent, simply beyond her reach and beyond her ken and beyond her ability to save. Onashia shepherds and encourages her in all of this, and Yun shepherds and encourages Onashia in her own desires (to melt into the Spring whose keeper she has been). We actually get to see and hear the drifting spirit of one of Yun’s fallen comrades, albeit not one of the fallen comrades she was talking about.

Onashia, too, can’t lose her status of association with the divine because that has the effect of diminishing what is happening with Yun. Yun has to take a spiritual position from a spiritual figure; it can’t just default to Yun as the most devout character left standing or something. The entire process that takes place between Yun and Onashia and everything having to do with them must be drenched in spiritual significance and spiritual symbolism; they’re the lynchpins of that side of the show in the same way that Aaeru and Neviril are the lynchpins of the show’s commentary on gender (although obviously Yun and Onashia do comment on gender and Aaeru and Neviril do comment on faith).