#anyway. yosano makes me chew on my walls etcetc

[nyxi-pixie]

yosano is so dear to me because as much as i usually dislike the trope of 'one of the only regular female characters in the show gets healing powers because what else would a woman have' i do really like when that trope is turned into an insidious distorted mess.

I'm putting a readmore bc holy fuck if i start talking about yos i DO NOT know how to stop.

Like she has healing powers but the ability ITSELF is horrendously violent (needing people to be basically dead before they do anything), and she is not the kind of person you would associate with traditional healing character traits. Most of the time, they're maternal, and friendly, and soft spoken, and reserved.

Yosano is none of these things.

Quite frankly, she's a hater. and that's not to say she's unpleasant, necessarily, because she isn't. but she's a little demanding, and a little unhinged, and a lot prone to violence.

(and the dislikes on her profile refer exclusively to men. (shes an icon))

And shes like that because she is the outcome of what an ability like that, a responsibility like that, would do to a person.

Because every time she faces someone dying, there are two options: unbelievable guilt that comes with Not saving someone, or the perversion of death that comes with bringing them back. That complete and utter refusal of the natural order.

What do you do when respect for life hinges on a person's ability to die, and you have not just the power, but the expectation, to take that away?

which leads us to her backstory.

she's eleven. ELEVEN. what eleven year old has any understanding of life and death? of the importance of endings and letting people rest?

she's basically playing god and she barely even understands what that means. Or perhaps more accurately, she's playing puppet for mori playing god.

So she's there, and it's kind of a boring task at first. Like a very cavalier 'I'm here to save you all that's my job you should congratulate me bc im sm cooler than u losers.' But then she speaks to the soldiers, grows to care about them, and suddenly this ISNT a job. Its saving them out of compassion, out of a desire to see them alive. to make sure theyre okay.

and then they keep dying. and she brings them back, and they die again, and again, and again, in an endless cycle that can never end and while she's doing it unwillingly by that point, the reason they can live to suffer again is because of her.

And in realising that, in trying to put an end to that pointless cycle and Mori preventing that by shooting someone she cares about in front of her, she cannot give them reprieve because of the very ability that got her into this position in the first place. By that ability, and, ironically, by that compassion of hers.

"You are too just."

She cares too much to do what she knows is right, what she knows is kindest for the soldiers. She hasn't grown used to losing people (partially because she's eleven, but mostly because death doesn't exist to her) so she can't accept it.

and when everything goes down hill, she still thinks of it all as her fault. (even though technically its mori's, and whomever was in charge of their unit for not surrendering)

even fourteen years later, shes still haunted by what happened. even fourteen years later, the balancing act between using her ability, and letting nature run its course, is a delicate one, and one that is only facilitared by her position in the ADA.

its incredible that with that position threatened, the very reason shes learned to live with herself being put in jeopardy, she keeps herself as stable as she does.

so. she's a little bit batshit. very violent when she wants to be. ready to beat a mfer within an inch of their life at the earliest opportunity.

her very capacity to heal is twisted and messy and terrifying. it isn't soft and delicate and sweet, or even reassuring. it's practical. it's useful. but it's deeply unsettling.

and i think thats a very realistic portrayal of what it would be like to have such an unnatural control over life and death.