tl4456y

Don’t save him, he’s right where he wants to be

4. Princehood- Both Azdaja and Utena see themselves/idealize themselves as Princes. YES this is meant to be a Vegeta reference on the surface but looking further, I think he fits better into Utena. They both fit themselves into the roles of prince's despite the general idea that they could never actually be one. Utena is a prince amongst women, and Azdaja is a prince of Lowbloods. 5. Konnyl was described/codenamed, according to the wiki, as a duelist before her release.

Ok now we're getting into Anthy parallels For those of you not in the know, apparently one of the initial concepts was for Anthy and Utena to be the same person in RGU. Essentially, they are two halves of the same whole, and touch on an experience as a whole. Here I think this connects very well- so I'm going to bring in the parallels of both characters to Azdaja and by proxy Konnyl.

In RGU, we have our witches, and in contrast, in HS, we have psionics. A primary depiction of Anthy is strung up in swords, all through her body- in my mind, this closely resembles the way the psionic is strung up in Homestuck. And the ideas run parallel, to be in infinite punishment for a sin that's not really sin- disobedience from their place in their world. While obviously, we do not know what helming is like for the rest of the psionics, and it might not be as bad- I'm not exactly feeling confident that would be the case, and if it is, then we still know that it's PROBABLY BAD. Kuprum is into it, but that kid is a freak. To bring this all to a T- I would like to discuss a problem/thought I've had about Azdaja knelax, and briefly mention what I would like to call the Peter Nureyev Principle. Peter Nureyev, for those of you who don't know is a great rebel, mysterious archetypal character in the Penumbra. But the thing that has always stuck with me the most was in a brief glimpse of their creative discussion podcast, one of the creators mentioned something along the lines of this: "Well, he's getting all this money, but what was it for?"

That stuck with me- because they gave it such a good reason as to the WHY. So. Why the fuck does Azdaja Knelax do what he do? What does he get out of what he does? 1. Money 2. Fame 3. Combat experience. Between working as an assassin and duel strifing with Konnyl, you would think they had a lot of money, but they never seem to have like. A crazy amount (this is partially because they're lowbloods.) I raise my theory that through these three means, their goal is to get themselves out of the mediocre position Konnyl is and the probably very bad situation Azdaja is in as a powerful Psionic. While RGU says women without princes are destined to become witches, it speculates what if they could be princes? That strength and nobility to escape fate seems to be what Azdaja strives for.

In making these parallels we get an invisible reference to how oppressive alternia is, which I think works nicely for the "hey alternia sux" section of hiveswap. It's literally encapsulating the dark twisted evils of the patriarchy of RGU in its caste system. Now, on Konnyl, Konnyl being a duelist is interesting. I think I could speculate more on her role, but her being a duelist means she's at least fighting for Azdaja- to have him, and to make sure they can't get to him, as Utena wanted to protect Anthy, even if she couldn't. And their love works well within the themes of RGU- loving someone similar to you (in this case in a similar part of the caste system), who experiences your pain differently, but nonetheless has it and wants to save you from it.