#za analysis

Like:

Sam has his knife and he reaches for it allot, but mostly he uses it purely as a tool. IIRC(and I might NOT be), he only uses it as a weapon twice and the first time he absolutely gets his ass kicked(tbf: he's fighting a sealouse the size of an elephant at the time), and the second time, while he Murks an Aquatic Murderlemur like a Boss, he's, effectively, (and again I really cannot emphasize this enough: ***SPOILERS***) an Undead Super Soldier being driven around by a parasiteseed latched into his heart&nervous system, and it tries to take advantage of the situation to infect Ursula. So like: this historically good dude's facility with violence, while it saves Ursula from being drowned and eaten, is IMMEDIATELY followed by something deeply sinister.

In a flashback we see a rando named John using a rifle to hunt food, and he turns out to be under the influence of the same Parasiteseed Sam is, so once more we have capacity for violence being narratively near to something sinister about the character.

Ursula uses violence(I think?) a grand total of Once in the entire season, during the aforementioned Giant Sealouse Fight while it's feeding on Sam, and she totally gets lucky with it: She flings herself onto the Louse's back, manages to grab onto Sam's knife sunk there, then flips the louse on its side and guts it before it can get up again.

Azi is interesting because at the start of the story she's well-equipped, including a homemade Guandao(which: Respect u_u), and quick to use violence but she's ALSO presented at this phase of the story as Kind of a Dick, spcl to Levi, her robot companion. BUT!!! She still sucks at fighting. She tries to use the Guandao to take on some Giant Tonguecrabs and they just kind of bully her out of the way until she manages to get one of Levi's flares and deploy it(and blow her and Levi up a little). She uses it a second time to fight Hollow(a psychic monkey thing that Just Wants Some Food, Guys, he's cute and misunderstood and Did Nothing Wrong, Guys <:[ ) and she's not AS incompetent this time, even manages to get a hit in, but she still gets her ass totally handed to her, and almost dies. Later she attacks a REAL asshole named Kris, succeeds, and IMMEDIATELY gets bonked in the head with a rock for her troubles. Her most successful confrontation is near the end, confronting Kris for the final time when, in the process of threatening her with a knife, Azi chooses to stop and appeal to her better nature instead. It doesn't change what Kris is going to do, but it convinces Barry, and they both leave to save Ursula and the Passengers.

Barry loathes violence and conflict, tries to talk people out of it when it comes up, and is good at throwing rocks to stop it.

Kris is one of two(three?) characters we see being consistently competent at violence, and every single time she does it's presented as something sinister which alienates her from others and herself. She's unambiguously presented as a selfish, lying, self-damaging, manipulative villain, and she very much gets the end you'd expect from that.

Kamen is another of the two(three?), and he uses that most human of super-powers, The Ability to Throw Stuff, to kill a bunch of animals and feed them to Hollow. This Does Not Go Well. Kamen's presentation becomes more nuanced later in the series, but for most of it he's presented as a selfish, angry, corner-cutting fuckup and his use of, and facility with, violence is presented as part of this.

Hollow is the Third(?) of the Three(??) shown to be competently violent, and he is presented as an Unambiguously and Terrifying Antagonist in the later half of the story, and wildly Destructive to the "protagonists". He even "Kills" Levi; the sweetest of Robots! BUT! It's ambiguous what's really happening here. To begin with, Hollow doesn't commit violence until having watched Kamen do it Allot to feed it, and when it DOES it's first violent act is done to save Kamen's life(though even then it's a pretty sinister scene). Secondly the extent to which Hollow compels Kamen to violence is ambiguous; Kamen's initial killing spree DOES occur while his eyes are glowing(a sign of Hollow's psychic influence), but Hollow is FLABBERghasted by being presented with his kills; they still EAT them, but if Hollow was compelling him to kill, that he killed wouldn't be so surprising. It's possible Hollow compelled him to "get food"(this seems to be what Hollow's species does; compelling animals susceptible to their influence to pick berries and nuts they can't reach for them, and that's the first food-related thing Kamen does for them), and Kamen interpreted that into hunting when getting fruit was too hard for him. Third, the closer to Kamen Hollow gets, the more violent it gets, and the more protective of its connection to Kamen. Fourth, while Hollow is psychic, it's not really clear how much it understands human minds and thinking. The initial impulse is to assume psychic things are smart but I think it's important to remember this is just how these creatures eat. While WE see the visions Kamen experiences to manipulate him, for all we know Hollow is just Pushing Buttons and Pulling Levers in there. Clearly it knows the image and voice of Fiona, Kamen's ex-wife, but does it understand what those things mean to him, or what it's "saying" to him through those things, or is it just inducing emotions and impulses? A good example of this is its destruction of Levi. Levi was programmed by Fiona, and she gave it her own voice(which: they did this real cool and subtle gender thing with this which I loved :>). Kamen's motivation throughout this is his anguish over Fiona and desire to save her, so why would Hollow destroy Levi? Is this an act of jealousy, or does it only understand that this voice causes Kamen pain, and attacks it as a threat? The series never clarifies. After Avi's final confrontation with Kamen/Hollow leads to their separation, she scares Hollow away by just... throwing a rock near it like it was a raccoon or something. The question of how much of Hollow's actions are intentional vs instinctual is never clarified.

so Anyway:

Ok So: the popular perception of Caligula is as a "Mad Emperor". One of the points used in this depiction is his "War on the Sea", which is taken as obvsl absurd and empty and irrational(and possibly hubristic). Eridan chooses to call himself "caligulasAquarium" and he lives in a wrecked ship(a feature commonly put in aquariums)... on the surface.

So like: maybe the title is meant to be taken by the audience as ironic. Eridan's claim to an "Aquarium" is as absurd and empty and irrational as Caligula's claim to have warred upon the sea(in the common understanding of those events; as a matter of history this seems to be a Telephone distortion, from the sources I can find).

A few more points that have occurred to me since I started writing this:

Caligula "Made War on the Sea"; Eridan wants to "Make War on the Surface" by Killing All Landwellers, carrying forward the themes of inversion btwn Alternia and Earth.

Also: "Kill All Landwellers", "Kill All Humans": he's lampshading common evil-alien-overlord tropes

...Which in itself is sort of dunking on HIM, since Eridan is nobody's overlord he's just some GUY. Like: Yes, he's "Nobility" due to blood-caste, but he has no influence, no power, no RESPECT from anyone we meet, no friendships let alone alliances with other socially powerful individuals(other than Feferi, who seems to have foresworn all that to monastically care for G'lybgolyb) that he could USE to have influence; he's just a loner with his grand-dad's gun and allot of pretension.

...which you could argue furthers his parody of USian internet white-supremacists? Like: He is THEM: a gun-humping loner who only feels comfortable talking to the people he claims to hate, with no idea how unpleasant he makes himself to interact with, and even less interest in introspection or self-awareness, fetishizing past genocides as a way to claim for himself a "Glorious Past" he had nothing to do with.

As Feferi(and possibly other characters I'm forgetting) point out, Eridan's ambition to Kill All Landwellers is more than a little absurd. He's never really DONE anything to plan or prepare for it, and aside from Fef he exclusively hangs out with and befriends Landwellers, as well as LIVING ON LAND(well: a sandbar or reef). This could be taken as furthering the Caligula "War on the Sea" parallel.

Expanding on the last: Caligula, THE EMPEROR OF ROME and Grandest of Nepo-babies, was rather notably disdainful of and hostile towards the Roman nobility and inherited wealth/rank. This connects to Eridan in two ways I can think of: 1) his avoidance of other seadwellers, and 2) his philosophical hostility to landdwellers while Being, in practice, A Landweller. Basically: both Hate things about themselves shared by others.

Reinforcing #3: the choice of Caligula, a Troll-Emperor. Again: Eridan is Just Some Guy; he does not command armies, he does not command society, he can't even command Equius, who GETS OFF ON being ordered around. This is Pretension.

"Batman" isn't a way Bruce deals with his trauma, it's a way he AVOIDS dealing with his trauma.

Yes this is an analysis post about a fanfic |:| Obvsl, ***Spoilers*** |:| |:|

HMMMM

We've got two examples of doom characters in the story, and we really don't know THAT much about Mituna, but Sollux has some pretty strong ghost-connections. His relationship with Aradia, obvsl, his "whispers from the soon to be deceased" which are PROBABLY the ability to talk to/be talked to by atemporal ghosts, but more explicitly by BEING half-ghost after Cascade, and choosing to spend pretty much the rest of the story from that point with Aradia and the ghosts of the Furthest Ring rather than continue the story. You could also make a shakier argument about dream-selves being rather ghosty: activating only when you sleep(there was an old European folk-belief about the soul leaving the body at sleep), being able to float/fly, and generally acting on dream-logic; all of which are ghosty-traits. And there's John, our resident Ectobiologist, being the only Earthican kid(I think???) to interact with him in all of Homestuck. Then there's Sollux's romantic partners, Aradia and Feferi, who not only each have their own strong associations with ghosts but situate HIM, quite literally, between Life and Death XD XD XD BUT: we see Players pickup aspects of ppl they're close to all throughout Homestuck, so it's possible these ghostly interactions, particular to Sollux and (to our knowledge)not shared by the only other Doom player we have, are a result of his association with Aradia and not aspect-related.

BUT-BUT!!! I think there are good thematic reasons to suspect Doom has close associations with Ghosts. Obvsl there's the basic definitions and associations of Doom itself; when we say someone has "met their doom"(which tbf NOBODY SAYS), we mean they've died, and ghosts are dead ppl; Doom can mean judgement and prophecy and Ghosts are often related to judgement and prophecy(See: The Odyssey and A Christmas Carol); Ghosts are often associated with Dread, Inevitability, Stasis, Repetition, and Patterns which, in turn, are all associated with Doom. Then there's his Polycule again, and how it places Doom, as an Aspect, between life and death, which is Proper-Ghosty uwu uwu

And like: No they didn't. No they Fucking Didn't, and neither did Ambessa. Family is not the least bit important to her. Her AMBITIONS are important to her, and her family are just one way to achieve those ambitions. Two of the few things we know about her in the series are that 1)she's already risked and lost one child to her ambitions and 2)she's only in Piltover to risk and spend her second one in their pursuit. And this helped me to realize something about the real world.

We USians regularly see and hear conservatives get spoken about in the press as caring about family. Family First, Focus on the Family, Family Oriented, Think of the Children, Homemakers, Family Men, blah blah blah.

No they're fucking not, and No they Fucking Don't.

These are the same people who kick their gay kids out of the house. The same people who call their trans sons "the person who killed my daughter". The same people whose churches are rife with child sex abuse which THEY COVER UP. The same people who would rather see their children dead than guns made more difficult to purchase or legally required to be safely stored. The same people who would rather see their relatives die of sepsis caused by a fetus ROTTING INSIDE THEM than admit life doesn't begin at conception, a dogma NO EVANGELICAL ON EARTH BELIEVED IN before the 1970s. The same people who walk into school board meetings to screech about how their children BELONG to them, are their PROPERTY, and NOBODY has the right to teach them anything they dont want them to know. The same people who walk into city COUNCIL meetings to bellow about how their kids BELONG to Them, are THEIR PROPERTY, and HOW DARE Anyone try to TELL ME What I CAN and CANT Do To my Kids. The same people who read books and listen to preachers who tell them to BEAT THEIR KIDS -- Spare the Rod Spoil the Child -- by the tens of millions.

Fuck You they care about family. How Fucking Dare anybody say they care about family.

All family is to conservatives, like it is to fictional bad parents like Ambessa, is a Chit. A Chip. A Victory Point. An Achievement Marker. A Milestone marking some ~Success~ in Life. All family is to them is a way to get and display the things that ACTUALLY Matter to them; Prestige, Control over Others, Self Gratification, ~Legacy~. All it is to them is a way to say "I Win".

For reasons too nerdy to contemplate or explain(the Leagues of Votann, super-heavy warmachines, and the Imperium of Man), I found myself thinking about narratives where non-human fantasy-persons create some wondrously enchanted artifact only for some human/god(and sometimes Wizard) to steal it, and of course that led me to the awful way Rowling resolved the Griphook & the Sword of Gryffindor situation, and THAT led me to realizing something about the "magical races" in the Harry Potter books which makes said series even worse(tho: I havent read the books in ages so maybe Im misremembering).

What are Griphook's three main complaints to Harry?

Goblins, and ALL ~magical races~ for that matter, don't get a vote in the Wizengamot even tho they're subject to wizard-law

Wizards have no respect for Goblin ownership claims, and as a result are constantly stealing their shit

Goblins, and ALL ~magical races~ for that matter, are LEGALLY BARRED from owning, operating, being taught HOW to operate, or KNOWING how to operate, Wands, which drastically improve one's access to and use of magic(and thus are also symbols of membership in ~The Wizarding World~ which Goblins etc etc MUST live in or be summarily executed or imprisoned by Wizards)

As always, from the moment I first read the Griphook storyline and how Rowling "resolved" it to every time I've ever thought of it since, I was struck by how much this all Sucked Horrendously, but then it ALSO struck me that this is a BRITISH Book. That Rowling was and is Proudly British.

And then I thought, well, the Wizards in Harry Potter aren't even analogies for Brits they're just literally(according to English/British-chauvinists: the Irish, obvsl, disagree Quite Strongly on this issue) British, so who, in the real world, might the ~magical races~ -- always "complaining" about how the Wizards(British) stole their land, and stole their cultural artifacts, and won't give either back; enslaved them, forced them into certain jobs and certain places and certain ways of life no matter what THEY Themselves wanted or are qualified to do; are always being grossly, insultingly, self-satisfiedly, ignorantly condescending to them; hold them subject to Wizard(British) law but give them no say in how those laws are made, force them INTO Wizard(British) society but never ACCEPT them as fellow Wizards(British) -- analogize?