Why Pavel is Important:
AKA Why Cheth and Phaedra need therapy and Phantomarine won’t leave my head--
The sheer importance of Pavel as a character and what he does hit me very hard today and I needed to share.
Cheth the Red Tide King is an ageless being who has been betrayed, mutilated, and discredited for a comparatively short 500 years out of his thousands. Everything he was, everything he had, taken away by someone who was supposed to be his equal and someone who his feelings about seem to be very... complicated. Even then, he didn’t even get to die, just watch as more as more was stripped away so not even the people’s memory of him remained unwrapped. His only company was himself... and a few fleeting moments with people who feared and hated him. If that didn’t fuck him up a bit, nothing could.
If he was to be made the villain until some nebulous future that might not even come, why not lean into it and have at least a shred of vengeance and amusement? The perfect target is right there, after all, a royal line dedicated to the church that sullies his memory with lies is right there. Why *not* torment them when they pass, why not make those ruthless bloodthirsty puppets feel despair? After all, he knows who is calling the shots. He knows she doesn’t care one bit once she can no longer use them...
The Red Tide surrounded and transported at least three sea bite victims to shore that we know of, however. Doubtless there are many more lives he has tried to save from a painful and premature death. But he can only be so many places at once... And it is rather telling that every seabite victim we have seen so far has been a child.
He thought Phaedra no better than a tyrant early in her reign when she came down to his domain. That she could not possibly know the loss that had occurred because of her people’s actions. That none of her line could, because ***she*** was pulling the strings... And of course, she would never trust him, so to get her to do anything, of course he had to lie. She had been manipulated all her life and was clearly none the wiser, even now when contradictions begin arising. And really, he has no patience for it anymore, for stubborn fools who refuse to hear him.... and Cheth is far too out of practice to do anything about this himself.
Phaedra is lugging around centuries of religious propaganda and pressure, as well as being young, inexperienced, and grieving the loss of her father. Her whole life has been surrounded by the church and it’s teachings, of her future responsibilities in relation to them, who her immortal enemy was and who her biggest inspiration should be. She was very literally tailor-raised to hate Cheth.
His actions don’t help alleviate this either. I doubt he was lying about being able to bring back only one soul, but not being clear about it broke what trust Phaedra was ever willing to put in the god. She was not nearly as hostile towards him until that little snag, and has seemed only to double down on this stance ever since, her color scheme changing from yellows to blues. She will find the most bad-faith read of his words and believe that to be the only correct answer. His penchant to not being completely clear and honest with his intentions also clearly vexes her.
Clearly though, she cares deeply about people. She took up her father’s tradition to ease the grieving. She was willing to do whatever it took to save her friends, and feels incredible guilt for ‘dooming’ them to a these last months of not-quite-life. She wants to help people, really help them... but she can only see ‘help’ in such a narrow worldview and has been taught there are some people you just shouldn’t help.
And then... there’s Pavel. And the very first thing we learn about him is that the boy has more heart than sense. Vanna raised him well, but the kind of deep empathy to care for the very beings that killed his father and basically gave him a terminal disease with heavy stigmas that forced him to leave the life he loved for ***seven years*** takes a little more than teaching.
Pavel has defended almost every single being that has harmed him.
He understood that sea ghosts just couldn’t stop themselves and that they were people once because he trusted his mother and her research. He understood that his friend Eddy was scared and alone and lashing out because of that. He questioned and pushed back against Sofia’s manipulations and the bad faith readings of the Mantaluna crew, but tried to understand that they must be having a pretty hard time. He told the Manta Princess to her face that *Cheth was hurting too* and asked a literal deity to be nicer to the biggest pain in his neck.
This little boy is a critical bridge. He can just *feel* when people are coming from a place of genuine care or hurt and tries to explain that to others who are being overly harsh in his opinion. There is a reason he is neither Cheth’s nor Phaedra’s color scheme. *This tiny boy is the one neutral party that both of these stubborn powerful people will listen to, now.*
Phaedra only turned sour when the talk got a little too close to questioning the very foundation of her beliefs, and she just went cold and tried to make Pavel change the subject. She was so relieved to know she hadn’t hurt him, wanted to do everything she could to make him comfortable and did not even question if they should help him get somewhere safe. And Cheth... Cheth loves children and hates having to welcome a single one into his collection, I think. He tried to mock Phaedra with how many *orphans* her father’s last battle created. He became *angry* and cold at even the implication that he would have lied to Pavel. And Cheth does everything he can to make sure a child survives a sea ghost attack.
Without Pavel... neither of these two have any hope of working through their shit, because neither of them are able to view the other and their reactions clearly. Cheth IS AN ASSHOLE AND VINDICTIVE. Phae IS NAIVE AND OVERZEALOUS. And Pavel is the once person who can read them both as say it like it is. And that is going to make for one hell of a boat ride.
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Arachne's reffffff i dont like this one but anyways-
Ara!!! She's part of Maeve's court, and heir to the throne if anything were to happen to her. She spends most of her days either in her study doing paperwork for the kingdom or in meetings/events with Maeve, she's a very busy lady in general and nobody ever really sees her outside the castle unless it's for something business-related. Other than that though she seems polite enough. She's easy to talk to if you do manage to find a time where she's not busy, and while she is intimidating and always remains formal she's much more sensible and just than the queen is. Never seems to directly go against Maeve's decisions though.
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Okay okay but wait: so the Todofam are trying to get through to Touya, right? Trying to make him stop fighting – stop hurting both himself and others. So what if, what if after Shouto arrives, they work together to convince both Dabi and Endeavor they are still wanted, still loved? That they, too, deserve a happy ending? And that they can, in fact, still get one?
They’d have to convince Touya his belief his family moved on without him and left him in the past is untrue, that the never forgot about him or his hurt, that they always missed him. Prove to Enji his belief his family can only be happy without him doesn’t necessarily have to be true.
Shouto would then show them both the path forward, the path towards hope and healing, exactly how Izuku did for him during the Sports Festival – Shouto’s arrival symbolizing the arrival of hope, like harsh winter giving way to spring and the new life that comes with it.
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