Mizu, femininity, and fallen sparrows
In my last post about Mizu and Akemi, I feel like I came across as overly critical of Mizu given that Mizu is a woman who - in her own words - has to live as a man in order to go down the path of revenge.
If she is ever discovered to be female by the wrong person, she will not only be unable to complete her quest, but there's a good chance that she'll be arrested or killed.
So it makes complete sense for Mizu to distance herself as much as possible from any behavior that she feels like would make someone question her sex.
I felt so indignant toward Mizu on my first couple watchthroughs for this moment. Why couldn't Mizu bribe the woman and her child's way into the city too? If Mizu is presenting as a man, couldn't she claim to be the woman's escort?
However, this moment makes things pretty clear. Mizu knows all too well the plight of women in her society. She knows it so well that she cannot risk ever finding herself back in their position again. She helps in what little way she can - without drawing attention to herself.
Mizu is not a hero and she is not one to make of herself a martyr - she will not set herself on fire to keep others warm. There's room to argue that Mizu shouldn't prioritize her quest over people's lives, but given the collateral damage Mizu can live with in almost every episode of season 1, Mizu is simply not operating under that kind of morality at this point. ("You don't know what I've done to reach you," Mizu tells Fowler.)
And while I still feel like Mizu has an obvious and established blind spot when it comes to Akemi because of their differences in station, such that Mizu's judgment of Akemi and actions in episode 5 are the result of prejudice rather than the result of Mizu's caution, I also want to establish that Mizu is just as caged as Akemi is, despite her technically having more freedom while living as a man.
Mizu can hide her mixed race identity some of the time, and she can hide her sex almost all of the time, but being able to operate outside of her society's strict rules for women does not mean she cannot see their plight.
It does not mean she doesn't hurt for them.
Back to Mizu and collateral damage, remember that sparrow?
While Mizu is breaking into Boss Hamata's manse, she gets startled by a bird and kills it on reflex. She then cradles it in her hands - much more tenderly than we've seen Mizu treat almost anything up to this point in the season:
She then puts it in its nest, with its unhatched eggs. Almost like she's trying to make the death look natural. Or like an accident.
You see where I'm going with this.
When Mizu kills Kinuyo, Mizu lingers in the moment, holding the body tenderly:
And btw a lot of stuff about this show hit me hard, but this remains the biggest gut punch of them all for me, Mizu holding that poor girl's body close, GOD
When Mizu arranges the "scene of the crime," Kinuyo's body is delicate, birdlike. And Mizu is so shaken afterward that she gets sloppy. She's horrified at this kill to the point that she can't bring herself to take another innocent life - the boy who rats her out.
MIZU'S ONE MOMENT OF SOFTNESS AND MERCY, COMING ON THE HEELS OF HER NEEDING TO KILL A GIRL TO SPARE HER THE WORST FATE THAT THIS RIGID SOCIETY HAS TO OFFER WOMEN, AND TO SPARE A BROTHEL FULL OF INNOCENT WOMEN WHO ARE THE CASTOFFS OF SOCIETY, NEARLY RESULTS IN ALL OF THEIR DEATHS
No wonder Mizu is as stoic and cold as she is.
And no wonder Mizu has no patience for Akemi whatsoever right before the terrible reveal and the fight breaks out:
Speaking of Akemi - guess who else is compared to a bird!
The plumage is more colorful, a bit flashier. But a bird is a bird.
And, uh
Yeah.
I like to think that Mizu killing the sparrow is not only foreshadowing for what she must do to Kinuyo, but is also a representation of the choice she makes on Akemi's behalf. She decides to cage the bird because she believes the bird is "better off." Better off caged than... dead.
But because Mizu doesn't know Akemi or her situation, she of course doesn't realize that the bird is fated to die if it is caged and sent back home.
Mizu is clearly not happy, or pleased, or satisfied by allowing Akemi to be dragged back to her father:
But softness and mercy haven't gotten Mizu anywhere good, recently.
There is so much tragedy layered into Mizu's character, and it includes the things she has to witness and the choices she makes - or believes she has to make - involving women, when she herself can skirt around a lot of what her society throws at women. Although, I do believe that it comes at the cost of a part of Mizu's soul.
After all, I'm gonna be haunted for the rest of this show by Mizu's very first prayer in episode 1:
"LET" her die. Because as Ringo points out, she doesn't "know how" to die.
Kind of like another bird in this show:
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Dead Language Expert
Danny never thought that he could "major" in languages, and get a job as a translator. But apparently knowing all the dead languages by default and being able to time travel with the help of your ghost tutor was pretty useful outside of Amity.
It happened purely by chance, he was walking through a museum and started laughing because of a mistake in one of the sentences that completely changed the meaning of the text. The museum manager, of course, did not believe him, since many people had said that the piece was "impossible to translate". But he study it anyway.
Days later they were looking for him to translate all the things from that time. And he just carried on with it, in many more civilizations. In some cases he even asked for a few trips to the past to Clockwork to verify.
It got to a point where the wizards, heroes and villains over the world knew him as "the translator of dead languages" and some of them even tried to kidnap him to perform a summoning ritual. Danny rolled his eyes and easily freed himself, but the League assigned him an "escort" anyway.
Exasperated, the halfa escaped from his escorts and continued his work as normal. Superman almost fell out of his chair at the Watchtower meeting when he was informed that the boy had translated the language of Krypton and other missing planets. Besides having managed to lose both the Flash and Green Latern, what the fuck?
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DPxDC Prompt: I Got You Brother
Danny has been in Gotham for a while after things went south with his parents. But that's what happens when one's parents are convinced by the G.I.W. that Phantom killed "Real Danny" and took his place as a way to fill his sick obsession of "being alive" which - they couldn't be further from the truth - but his parents were so convinced by the evidence that they refused to listen. Vlad expected Danny to go with him and when Danny refused it made part of him snap.
Danny fled from his parents, the GIW and Vlad in the dead of the night. No family, no friends, nobody knew where he was and that was how he liked it.
He lived at the cave with the bats but refused their offer to come upstairs. He knew who they were and that they were safe but he also knew that if he took one step onto that elevator they would be his family. They would be his family and he couldn't risk losing another family.
He thought that living in the cave would prevent any of them from getting attached. So quickly his schedule turned into a cycle of patrols. Start patrols, stop in for lunch, patrol until dinner, patrol until breakfast, patrol again until lunch. Repeat day in and day out.
He told the team he didn't need to sleep and told them that he was fully a 'Ghost' from another dimension. As many details as he could keep from them the better.
Or so he thought.
Until after nearly a week of these endless patrol things changed. A fight with a particularly powerful ghost had wiped him out and while he managed to stay on his feet when he tried to continue patrol his vision blurred and his transformation dropped.
And so did Danny.
Danny wasn't even aware somebody was tailing him until a thick rope wrapped around his wrist and stopped his fall. Danny swung, hitting the side of a building with a tired grunt as he looked up.
Orphan.
"New brother! Got you!" Orphan called down to him as Danny tried to get his powers to respond, desperate to do anything to protect Orphan who was sliding closer to the edge.
Spoiler showed up within seconds, grabbing Orphan's ankles just as Orphan went over the edge and Red Robin grabbed Spoiler around her ankles. Frantic shouting echoed as Nightwing grabbed Red Robin around his ribs, the weight threatening to pull them all over before Red Hood grabbed Nightwing.
Danny reached up, trying to grab the rope when another wrapped around his free wrist from next to them. Batman was there and by his side was Robin, also there to help Danny and the others up.
He hadn't wanted a family.
He had run from who he was and the ones he loved.
But he found more people to love him.
It wasn't until Signal showed up - having been alerted to the situation and called to the scene - that Danny let the tears drip down his face.
He was home.
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