Thinking About Faye As A Subversion Of The Fridging Trope.

Thinking about Faye as a subversion of the ‘fridging’ trope.

Usually, in a story like this (masculine man loses his wife, motivating him to go on an adventure), the story is usually invariably sexist. The wife’s death is violent, but once the man has started going on an adventure, proving his heroism, she’s basically never mentioned again. She’s a brief plot device, forgotten after the start except for a few dull flashbacks. We never learn more about her as a person. She existed to date a man and then die. That’s it.

And Faye isn’t that at all.

Her death was not violent, and does not happen onscreen. It was a quiet death, presumably from illness, and what’s more: she saw it coming. She was at peace with it.

Anger over her death isn’t the reason for the adventure. Kratos doesn’t start wandering the Nine Realms because he’s angry about his dead wife. He travels the Realms because he wants to honour his wife’s wishes. The journey only happens because of the immense respect he felt for her.

Her death isn’t the sole reason why the adventure starts. Yes, she’s the reason why her husband and son go travelling, but Baldur’s appearance is what introduces violence into the story.

Faye had a life before she met Kratos. She’s not a paper-cutout mother-and-wife. She had friends. She kept secrets. She was a warrior who led a rebellion. Her association with Brok and Sindri is the reason why they agree to help Kratos and Atreus. Kratos acknowledges her talent, and the fact that she was better than him at some things. Her life before Kratos directly affects the story after her death.

Faye is not forgotten by the narrative. The whole story is haunted by her. She knew what would happen. Kratos and Atreus talk about her with each other and with others. It’s clear how much she meant to them and how significant she is to the plot.

Meaningful flashbacks. Usually when a woman is fridged, the flashbacks are just an overly bright snippet of the woman looking pretty and saying some variation of ‘I love you, babe’. But the flashbacks in God of War: Ragnarok are plot-relevant. Kratos and Faye don’t just discuss their relationship. They talk about grief, morality, mortality, Kratos’s past, and the way to raise their son.

Genuine grief. This isn’t a man seeing his wife dead, crying a single tear, killing a bunch of people, and never reflecting on his widower status again. Kratos, Atreus, and other characters all mourn Faye’s passing. Years after her death, Kratos is still deeply moved by his memories of her. She is not forgotten by anyone.

Faye wasn’t some disposable woman. She’s the cornerstone upon which the entire plot rests.

“Why is there a pentagram on your floor” okay first of all mom, it’s not a pentagram, and second, what were you doing in my apartment

#bleach #byakuya kuchiki

fandom!Arthur: small vocabulary, leans to an ableist interpretation of himbo as mentally lacking, and not well-read

canon!Arthur: actually has a wide vocabulary (for instance referring to themselves as vagrants when antagonizing Hosea and writes eloquent prose in his journal), makes classical references like ‘would-be Icarus’ despite never having gone to school, the only 2 books he owns by his bed at the start of the game are a WORK OF NATURAL HISTORY and work on PLANTS AND FUNGI, knows how to cauterize a wound using fire, metal, and gun powder…

#bleach

Does Byakuya ever take a day off? I can imagine him taking one day off to see how Renji handles the squad while he's away lol

I guess there's no citation on this, but the Bleach wiki's descriptions for the role of captains and vice-captains rings pretty true to me, based on my reading of the source material and my own work experiences:

[Captains] function as Chief executive officers, and they determine the course, organization, tactics, and policy of their division. 

Lieutenants function as executive officers for their division, taking care of or supervising day-to-day operations. [...] In the case of a division captain's death, departure, or other circumstances making them unable to perform their duties, the lieutenant acts as the "substitute captain" until another can be assigned.

In other words, Renji better be able to handle the squad because that's literally what he's there for.

Captains have a lot of discretion in how they do things-- I suspect there are captains (in my mind, Kensei) who are really hands-on and like working with their troops directly. Hitsugaya does a lot of hands-on stuff, too, but it's some combination of the fact that he's kind of young and insecure in his own authority and has a lazy vice-captain. You also have captains like Kurotsuchi and Unohana who have a very specific subject-matter expertise related to the squad's specialization, so I think they function more like a primary investigator and a chief surgeon, respectively.

On the other hand, I feel like the CEO metaphor fits Byakuya and Renji's work relationship pretty well. Furthermore, there's an entire command structure under Renji, so even when the two of them get sent off on a mission together (which is obviously a thing that happens with some regularity), the place is designed to run itself without constant micromanagement.

To get to your question about does Byakuya ever take a day off: unquestionably yes.

I have worked with a lot of Important People in my time, let me tell you: they take their time off. People like you and me think about our lives in terms of "at work" and "not at work". Most of the big wigs I have known just have "their life" in which going to dinner with other big wigs and flying across the country and writing proposals or orbital analysis code in the middle of the night and showing up to morning meeting with the team are all just things they do.

I think that Byakuya tends to keep standard office hours when he doesn't have other pressing matters, but I feel like being Clan Head is like an entire second big wig job. If he has to go put on his extra fancy haori and schmooze in the middle of a weekday, he just does it. I think he also takes time off for his important hobbies, like the Orchid Show, or when he needs to go out to West Rukongai to buy a new banana koi or something and he literally does not think twice about it. It doesn't matter whether he works 40 hours a week or not, because he's very important and 1 hour of his time is worth 10 of Renji's. There are certain things only he can do and it's not like there's a line out the door of people who can make giant glittering domes of swords when some ancient eldritch entity shows up, needing to be lectured on their fatal flaw, arrogance, now is there?

There's some amount of stuff around the squad that requires Byakuya's attention, but it's usually approving things more than anything else. I think he is an enormous stickler for documentation and he actually reads everything Renji puts in front of him, but if he didn't fundamentally trust Renji to run things, he would simply fire him.

I think he hates going on vacation and frequently tells his relatives that he can't leave work, but this is a lie. He does not usually take time off for the purposes of relaxing, although I think in latter canon times, he will take a day to do something with Rukia if she asks him to. He took a lot of days off for Hisana, and does not regret any of them.