Martyr's Reprise[Ed Simon, Whos There?: Every Story Is A Ghost Story / Emil Cioran, Tears And Saints

martyr's reprise [Ed Simon, Who’s There?: Every Story Is a Ghost Story / Emil Cioran, Tears and Saints / Dylan Trigg, The Memory of Place: A Phenomenology of the Uncanny]

Honestly, if Yor and the Secret Police ever butted heads, Yuri wouldn't even feel betrayed like "oh no, I can't believe my sister was an assassin this whole time!" I think he's just immediately quit like "huh. I guess the secret police are evil then."

not trying to be rude at all, im a fan and a follower...but i didn't focus too much on yuri, just thought he was a background character, playing the same siscon role that almost every anime seems to have...sorry but can you give me a brief maybe? of your pov? cause most people seem to hate him

hey hey,, no my lovely it's completely okay, don't apologize :3

the central idea of yuri briar is that he's here just for comedic relief, and obviously, he's such a siscon and this and that, right?

and i don't blame people for thinking that in their minds, because of the way the animators and some of the writing board seem to set him up...

even endo, had said that, he just wanted yuri to be a sweet little brother people would adore, but the writers made him like this, and well, you know.

anyway, even with this personality, his character's backstory provides a lot of justification to his behavior,, like sure, at first he might seem like the comedic relief type of character, who's inappropriately in love with his sister, but actually, it's not like that at all...

in the anime, they've sort of butchered his character more,, from the changing of the lily bouquet for his sister to the rose one, and then obviously the little translation mistakes here and there.

now, let's just get to the point.

in the scene where yuri calls yor and talks about the party, he asks her if she wants him to introduce her to someone, and tbh he seems very genuine with it.

in the scene where he's meeting loid for the first time, he tells yor he can't just accept this marriage. which is so fair, because imagine your literal blood, someone you grew up with, the only person you've really ever known, gets married, and then doesn't tell you for an entire year. like, that's gotta make you upset and question things right?

i do agree, that his attachment and his admiration and obsession towards his sister is unhealthy, but hey, at least give him a second. understand his perspective right? he was just a boy, who lost both his parents to a war and grew up with his sister being the only one who went above and beyond to get him basic essentials.

and, obviously, you'd love your sibling if you were in this situation right?

so it's just that he's not really yet grasped how to normally love yor,, now this doesn't really mean that he loves her abnormally lol.

im sure that the writers will continue to develop his character as the manga continues. he's already developed a lot, and while the overly obsessed brother trope is quite funny and well-used, especially in this manga,, i still believe he has more of a personality then they show us.

and the only thing annoying is that people seem to judge him and then make posts about how he's just so creepy and weird,, which proves that they've obviously not paid enough attention to his character details to understand the reasons behind it yknow?

anyway.

...

I think that Yuri is against the whole marriage thing mostly because the excuse of "i'm married since a year and didn't tell you before and even LIED to you about it, sorry (lol)" that Yor told him.

After all at the beginning, when Yor tells him (lies to him), saying she may see someone, he's happy about it. So it's not the fact that she found someone who bother him but the whole mistery around the marriage and that his sister didn't tell him for a whole year.

It can be pretty suspect for anyone and even more for someone whose the job is to NOT trust people :/

It was not the best start to start to know Loid and appreciate him ^^"

Yeah. As necessary as it was for Loid to have the "we married a year ago, definitely not just for the interview!" excuse, it ended up making the marriage look super suspicious to everyone else.

Now, as far as the fandom is concerned, I think people are too used to stories being poorly written and certain characters being so creepy, that they're not prepared to see the brilliance with which Endo handled Yuri's dynamic. Yes Yuri is a little obsessed with his sister, but it's made understandable due to the circumstances under which they grew up in, and he is willing to accept her getting married. However, that very obsession is there to produce conflict for Loid and Yor, and it's handled with a very delicate balance where it enriches Yuri's personality without making him a creep.

Honestly, I think people misunderstand both his "When I grow up I'm going to marry you" and how he latched onto Yor saying she'd wait up for him. The first one is a thing a lot of little kids tell their parents, older siblings, or any form of caretaker, or even their peers. They know that "marriage" is a form of showing how much you love someone, but they don't know how romantic love works yet, so they connect marriage even with familial or platonic love. So in their minds, telling someone "I want to marry you" just means "I love you very much", and in their age, that can only be familial or platonic love.

About the second, I think Yuri had a moment of ShockTM when he saw Yor about to kiss Loid, not because he felt she was betraying her "promise" to wait up for him, but because reality was very suddenly drilled into him.

It's like when you sit and have a striking realization about real life. Things like "I'm not getting any younger" or "The world is fucked up" or even "That thing that happened to me was actually traumatic". You go by in your life hearing that stuff, and automatically understand them, but you may have a moment of actual realization when you're like oh. Shit. This is Real.

And I think this is what happened with Yuri here. He didn't actually think Yor would marry him, but it was a kind of "dream" that he subconsciously had, probably in the form of "I will always be the one she puts first". So he might have felt secure in that thought, but right then, when he saw Yor almost kiss Loid, that dream/thought was very suddenly pulled from under his feet. He had his "I'm not getting any younger" realization. But because his emotional state is... how it is, instead of taking a moment to self-reflect and just think, he lashed out and tried to protect that safe space he'd built in his mind.

Honestly, he's a very interesting character because he provides conflict while being layered on his own. He's very well written and developed, and it can be very easy for audiences to fall in the trap of calling him a "creep obsessed with his sister" if they don't look a little deeper.

(no spoilers for the manga please 😁)

About Yuri:

Funny thing is that most of us fans are expecting this arc to be the 'Yuri's redemption' arc…. And so…. was something like this…. or so. —I end up as a cry baby after being shot for saving the chihuahua girl- Honestly It's hard to expect that this arc was going to represent such an abrupt change. In SxF the characters suffer from a slow and steady process, at least the Forger's are like that…. So, Yuri will take a while to show the best (or worst) of himself.

One interesting thing about Yuri's character, —at least to me- is that you don't necessarily have to like him, in fact, it can be enjoyable to watch him squirm in frustration and pain when he fails (sabotaging Twiyor) because most of the time he's a huge jerk.

I think Yuri's purpose is to explore how negative country influences can brainwash vulnerable young people even if their intentions are genuinely noble. In the end they fill their brains with a bunch of propagandist garbage in exchange for them working for the government and helping them stay in power. That is, a person's genuine feelings about protecting a family can be severely influenced by the social and political context.

Seen that way, Yuri IS a victim of the war, and he is a rather weak prey, who instead of being seen as someone directly hurt by the government, works for them and is congratulated for his labor…. So, Yuri is not portrayed as a tragic being, with whom you feel sorry despite his bad actions (Like Billy with Red Circus), but on the contrary, you want to give him a good kicking.

However, despite all the negative things Endo exposes about Yuri (which is too much) he shows that he still has a good side to rescue: the love he feels for Yor (as twisted as it is) is a genuine love and superior to any order of the SSS. Because Yuri doesn't care about his government he cares about his sister, his only family.

The biggest problem… perhaps… is that the way Yuri sees his relationships outside of Yor, is very much influenced by the Ostanian mentality of gaining power, to supposedly protect his country (his sister)… when all he is really protecting is the stay of one group of people in control of a country

Endo always punishes Yuri for his bad actions, always looking for us to see him with a weirdo that causes heartburn because he....is very broken. But he also takes care to show us that underneath that mountain of awkward weirdness there is a good person…. even if he doesn't show it very often and so far it's only towards Yor

Yuri's head is full of garbage… governmental garbage and very wrong ideas about protecting

If we recall, a major basis for Yuri is his childhood, as he claims to "hate himself for feeling useless", for being a burden to Yor —Because, Yor doesn't work for her, he works for him— That's why he became obsessed with being an outstanding student and holding a position to repay all the work she did for him.

So Yuri's goal was to become someone important who has a lot of power to obtain the supposed power to protect his sister, (or so he wants to believe). But in Ostania the only way to be powerful is through economic and political means. Yuri and Yor were poor and orphans, therefore, being a military policeman gives him enough political and social power (from the shadows).

The lie is that the power of the SSS is not to protect its sister, not to protect its inhabitants, not even to protect a group of children imprisoned by terrorists. The SSS only protects the political leaders and their stay in power at the expense of the innocent.

Ostania's policy is repressive, violent and cruel -Violence is power, violence controls, intimidates and eliminates whoever crosses your path.. Creating the idea of the evil world outside and inside its borders, everyone is trash and that if something bad happens to them it is because they surely deserve it. The government is supposed to be the good guy, because it protects, but it only protects itself.

His intentions are genuine but his methods are going in entirely the wrong direction. Yuri wants to do what is 'necessary' to create a safer world for his sister but the power he has and is wielding does not create a more peaceful world, but a more violent, hostile and resentful one.

But he has not yet understood the difference

.

The most interesting thing in Yuri's possible evolution is to find the difference between what he actually protects and the way he does it. He can't make the world safer for his sister if he can't even make the world safer for a child...And the SSS way is definitely not!!

So Yuri is a huge idiot Yes! …. but he still has the capacity to change for the better (or worse). Knowing that he felt a shred of empathy for the slanderer because he showed he cared about his family, and especially... He genuinely went to help save Anya (for Yor), his will for his niece is very weak, but at least I think it's a little seed change for the non-favorite uncle

Much shorter post tonight because I have like 5 other essays about Akechi in the making. I often wonder what the connotations of him, as the black mask, having a helmet are, rather than just a normal mask - especially since it doesn't disappear or is removed even while summoning his persona. Personally, I always viewed it like this: his anger and hatred is there to protect him when everything else failed to. A helmet is meant for protection, and I think thats what I think this persona is for. Any vulnerability can be hidden and buried and crushed under all of that hate. Anger is easier and more efficient than sadness and self-pity. It's so much easier to lay the blame at the feet of the world then to ever admit you may be the problem, or, in Akechi's case, lay all of your problems at the feet of one man and convince yourself that dealing with him will remove all your issues. I also like the idea of him not being able to remove it - his anger is such an embedded part of him that there is no taking it from him. There is no Akechi without that hatred and spite. (Dr. Maruki take notes.)