im very normal about fuuta in general but i dont think im ever going to emotionally recover from his fire motif and what it represents for his character and how he reflects the greater theme of justice so that means i must rant about it
(more under the cut because this got longer than i expected whoopsies)
so anyway fire is pretty obviously supposed to be symbolic of his passion for justice right? that fire is all over the place in bring it on. he's wielding it to take down enemies, his signature weapon is a flaming sword. it's what he uses to lead the campaign against the people he's after, the people he's deemed in the wrong.
it's a fucking flaming sword, it's badass as hell!!!! it's what a hero of justice, a knight, would use!!!! it's cool as shit, it's his symbol of justice.
that's how he sees his justice in trial 1.
he's righteous, he wants so badly to believe he was a hero, he was doing it all for a good cause, for justice. his passion for justice was a tool he used to meet those ends, to be a hero, to wave it valiantly in the face of enemies.
the fire, however, is conspicuously absent once he's noticed the blood on his hands
interestingly, despite backdraft as a song title being much more related to his fire motif than bring it on, fire is actually surprisingly absent from the mv's visuals. fire, as in actual orange burning fire, doesn't show up much at all in backdraft except for when both fuuta and his victim begin turning to ashes, and a short bit near the end right after the last chorus when the spraycan explodes in fuuta's face. you know what the mv does show a lot of though?
smoke. and ash. the byproducts of a fire, the byproducts of fuuta's passion for justice.
bringing it back to firefighting for a moment: as many people have already pointed out, backdraft as a firefighting term refers to when a fire that has consumed all available oxygen suddenly explodes when more oxygen is made available, such as when a window or door breaks. the thing about fire hazards, though, is if the fire and the heat don't do someone in, usually it's the smoke. the smoke inhalation causes breathing difficulties and suffocation, making it even more difficult for a person to escape the fire.
in backdraft, instead of fire itself, what we're shown is these byproducts of a fire. the smoke is damaging to human health, and the ash shows that the fire has burned things up and caused destruction, in this case killing someone. all we're shown is the negative results of a fire, in sharp contrast to its badass, positive portrayal in bring it on.
hell, even fuuta himself starts turning to ashes and the spraycan explodes in his face, showing how even he is experiencing the negative results of a fire that has gotten out of his control, how even he has gotten burned by his passion for justice. or, is it es' desire for justice?
translation of fuuta's t2 vd by onigiriico
Me, too! I was like that, too! I also didn't think it'd turn out that way!
You and I are exactly the same breed! The only difference between us is the clothes we're wearing.
fuuta's justice and es' justice, it's all the same in his head now, he directly tells es that they're the same, that we're the same. it's all the same hunger for justice that ends up causing harm even if that wasn't the intention.
you know that saying that fire is a good servant but a bad master? i think that's pretty applicable to fuuta's situation. his passion for the pursuit of justice was great when it was still a tool, a sword he could wield, after all he did manage to shed light on some people's wrongs and bring them to justice. but once it exploded, when it became a backdraft that even he could no longer control, it did more damage than he intended.
it burned even him, it killed a middle schooler. and he recognizes that in backdraft. he only shows us the ways fire that becomes a hazard can go wrong.
translation of fuuta's t2 vd by onigiriico
What did I do? All I did was say that what's wrong is wrong! I was just going off at a bad person online!
I didn't think they would die! I just thought that wrong things are wrong, and that a crime is a crime! You get that, don't you? See? Aren't we the same?
it's just. fire is such a good metaphor for the message of fuuta's character and his arc. it's an amazing illustration of how dangerous it is when you feed a desire for justice too much, when you forget to put a boundary on how you handle that fire. eventually the fire spreads just like how passion for justice becomes zealotry, until more and more things fall under what you consider to be 'punishable' by your standards and goes out of control to hurt people that probably didn't deserve it. it's a warning to set proper boundaries on our own definition and desire for justice and what's 'right' so the good intentions doesn't spiral into harm. it's a reflection of our attitudes towards milgram as the audience responsible for their justice and forgiveness. it's amazing i love it i love fuuta's fire symbolism i love fuuta's character arc and i love milgram's writing so so so much
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Pohatu liked the cold.
Pohatu liked the heat too, to some degree.
But he liked the cold better.
Pohatu didn't know if he liked him because he liked the cold, or if he liked the cold because he liked him.
It could have been both; he didn't know.
What Pohatu did know was that he very much did not like the dark.
It hadn't always been like that.
It hadn't always been that bad.
Pohatu could hardly remember much from before he had crashed on Okoto from the sky, but he was certain he hadn't always been so afraid of the dark. He was certain, at some point, to have liked it to some degree: to have gladly traversed it without fear or with greater purpose, and to have associated it at least in part with something friendly, someone nice.
But he could not remember that.
What he could remember was the pitch dark, and a trusted hand clamped around his own tight. Just Pohatu and him, in an endless abyss.
They had both been scared, of course. But they were together.
They would have made it through.
Then suddenly, after ages of wandering in the complete black, the hand had slipped away from Pohatu's grip, never to be found again; and he had cried out for him, over and over, telling him it wasn't the time for jokes like these, and that he thought he didn't like this kind of humor anyways. He had cried out a name he couldn't remember anymore until his voice had turned hoarse, and he had reached out everywhere in the darkness in the hopes of finding that cold palm again: nobody had ever answered.
When Pohatu had stopped calling for him, everything had been quiet.
Quiet, and not cold.
It had always been cold, while he was here.
Always a little bit cold, and it had comforted him.
But now it was only quiet.
Quiet, and not cold.
Pohatu had started being afraid that something, in the dark, had taken him.
Pohatu had started being afraid that something, in the dark, would have taken him too.
"What are you waiting for?" Tahu asked. Pohatu was standing at the entrance of the tunnel, turned towards the hole they'd fallen through instead of following Onua as he lumbered down their only way out. "Do you hear something? Someone following us?"
"Not yet. But I'm staying here," the Toa of Stone replied softly. "I'll cover your back. Keep threats from catching up to you."
"Alone?" his Earth brother's concerned question came from deeper into the darkness.
"You'd never make it like that," Gali argued: "We've managed to handle the obstacles in this city only by working together. Leaving you alone might turn into a death sentence."
"As it almost did for Lewa," Kopaka added. His piqued tone gained an indifferent shrug from the object of his disapproval.
Pohatu stood still: "I can handle it."
"You aren't scared of the dark, are you, now?" Lewa's voice creeped up on his shoulder like a Skull Spider; within it, he could hear a mischievous grin.
He turned around, growling: "Be quiet."
Had he had any less self control, the Toa of Jungle's laugh would have ended abruptly with a fist harder than stone against his teeth.
"He is!" the nimble fighter cackled, a palm over his mask's sockets as though he could not look at his brother without being overwhelmed by the hilarity of the situation: "He truly is scared! Gloomy, fearless Pohatu is scared! This is too much!"
Nowhere near as amused as him, Gali hit him over the head with the blunt end of her trident and almost sent him sprawling on the ground. When she turned towards the Toa of Stone, her eyes told him very clearly that she was not going to entertain any more arguments on whether or not he would be left to hold the defense on his own: "Come along now."
"I said-" Pohatu tried, calling upon every ounce of his stubborness.
"And I said," she stopped him immediately - eroding his futile attempt at imposing himself over her will like a raging river smooths the rocks of its bed into inoffensive pebbles - "That, just to avoid the unsavory possibility of a large swarm of who-knows-what catching you alone here and your heroic sacrifice to keep them at bay leaving us one Toa short, you'll come along now."
Her tone left no room for rebuttals.
With a sigh that sounded more like a growl, her brother turned and followed Onua into the bowels of his element.
"Don't worry," he heard the kind giant reassure him quietly: "We'll keep you safe."
Pohatu would have snarled something much more incredibly nasty at him despite being somewhat aware of his good intentions if he hadn't been so focused on how quickly the light behind them was disappearing the more they walked, and by the time he properly processed the mortifyingly gentle words they were too far along for him to think of any sort of retort amidst his building panic.
It was dark.
Very, very dark.
Almost as dark as back then.
Almost as dark as where he'd lost the hold on that hand.
Pohatu hoped he wasn't heaving loud enough for the others to hear.
If he had turned to look around he would have seen the weak lights of their eyes only barely, not even bright enough to make out anything past the sockets of their masks; but if he had, his own eyes would have given away that he'd moved his head to look somewhere that wasn't simply ahead, and the others would have had no doubts in regards to just how nervous and uneasy he felt at that moment, and he had already decided he had been humiliated enough today to last him the rest of his lifetime, however long that would have been.
So he stared forward, into the dark emptiness that could have stolen him away without a trace at any moment, trying not to breathe too hard, so tense he could have snapped in half.
He needed to think of something else.
Something, anything else.
He thought of him.
Maybe he was here.
Somewhere in the dark.
Maybe, if Pohatu remembered his name and called for him now, loud enough, he would have finally answered.
Maybe he would have rushed over and grabbed his hand, chastising him - where in the name of Jxqx Krf were you? Did you want to scare me like that time in Hl-Txef, while we were looking for your Exr? If you were trying to make me grieve you in front of Qroxdx Lkbtx again, I'm going to freeze you into a cube - taking him away from all of this, away, somewhere cold and comforting and familiar, and Pohatu would have laughed bitterly despite himself and would have screamed that he hadn't let go, you left me there, alone and scared and in the dark, and maybe he would have yelled that everything had been changing so fast and he'd been all he'd had left that was still at least a little solid to hang onto and when he'd left him there he'd been terrified, and if he had changed it had been to be more like him, because nothing used to seem to hurt him and if he'd been anything closer to how cold and steady and rigid he had been then he would have had to survive somehow, no matter what, and then they would have argued more because they had both been so scared and worried, and then they would have made up and they would have gone out in the sun and Pohatu would have seen his face again and remembered him properly.
Maybe something could have pretended to be him.
Maybek, like that, it could have lured him away into the dark.
A horrible choked sound echoed weakly through the tunnel.
By the time the Toa had grouped tighter together against the unseen threat, Pohatu realized it had come from his own mouth.
He did not mention that.
They waited a moment, each with their backs to those of the others; then somebody (he could not tell who, he was too mortified) said: "Let's go," and they all moved again, walking closer to each other. Just in case.
Maybe it was for the better, in the end, because Pohatu inexplicably felt a little more at ease.
It could not be because he was sorrounded by people who cared for his well-being: at least as far as he told himself, he would have rather they'd left him alone back there, because the thought of being coddled like this when he was meant to be a mighty warrior was shaming him all the way down to his bones.
No, he realized with genuine surprise as he wracked his brain to figure this mystery out. It was not the numbers, or the unity; it was the temperature.
It was... Cold.
A gentle cold.
Emitted like one might emit warmth.
From somewhere at his side, near his arm.
Unconsciously, he leaned further into the chill until he softly bumped into a shoulder.
He waited.
Nothing happened.
No cold palm grabbing his hand.
No cold voice chastising him for running off.
Pohatu kept walking, limb brushing against the cold arm at every step, eyes never turning towards it, breathing a little more normally, feeling a little less panicked.
Kopaka had no idea why the Toa of Stone was suddenly so close to him, and he wasn't sure if asking would have gotten himself snarled at or simply knocked out; but through their contact he felt the other's shoulders mellow slightly, heard his footsteps turn a little less stiff as he exhaled softly in what seemed to be relief; so, as he leaned slightly against him without being shoved off, he decided that if his brother needed this at the moment he would not have dreamed of taking it away from him.
His power was a shield, after all, was it not?
And a shield needs not to be asked: it simply protects.
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