#haven't been enjoying p5v12 to be perfectly honest

[ming-sik]

What are your thoughts about the romance in AOB?

Short answer: it’s bad.

Long answer: 

The main problem with the romance in AoB is that it’s yet another vector through which the ugly blue thing sucking up all the narrative oxygen in the room of the back half of AoB can use to render the protagonist of the story completely narratively inert outside of acting for his benefit or on his orders. Fermyne is a sledgehammer the story uses to make Rozemyne backslide from a deeply flawed but dynamic character with potential to Ferdinand’s submissive child bride who’s sometimes allowed out of her cage to do things that benefit him or that he personally approves.

Myne’s never been a straightforwardly good character, which is actually what I like about her. She’s a hot mess; selfish, arrogant, cowardly, ignorant, bigoted, and mean-spirited, which is great! She has a lot of jagged edges for other characters to catch on and conflict with, and her aggressive personality combined with her cowardice means that she can dish it out but can’t take it even a little which is really funny. She’s never really allowed to reach her full potential because AoB is really bad at actually creating and following through with conflicts so most of her problems are just solved by making her overpowered enough to brute force whatever problem she previously had and at some point she stops having problems that she doesn’t solve immediately, but her potential really tanks when she meets the blue thing.

Ferdinand is the worst character in AoB and it’s not close. He’s massively overpowered in such a way that he resolves most interesting conflict in the story offscreen, the story contrives itself to attribute so much sympathetic tragedy to his backstory and character that it flips right into comedy, the insistence that every character is jealous of his super awesome powers and amazing brain abilities but also he’s the most tortured social outcast ever means that he seems like a self-pitying loser, and most importantly he is NOT FUN. He’s not fun! He’s not funny, in fact he hates characters who are funny and will actively try to prevent them from doing anything funny so he is comedic poison in a story which relies heavily on comedy(he’s not an effective tsukkomi because as the strongest presence in the room he shuts down jokes rather than facilitating them, Benno’s the closest thing the story has to a good tsukkomi because he’s practical but not a killjoy). Why this is a problem with their romance is that he fucking hates Myne so much it’s unreal. He HATES her! He hates that she’s a jokester, he hates that she likes books, he hates that she likes sweets and fish, he hates that she’s not interested in embroidery, he hates that she likes red pandas and Japanese culture, he HATE HATE HATE HATE HATES that she originally has some semblance of a pre-existing worldview that doesn’t conform to his narrow view of common sense… and he never stops hating that! He constantly negs her to the point that it’s a running “joke” that he never praises her unless she’s gotten good grades, which is because outside of her ability to keep up with his “Teaching”(in quotes because he doesn’t really do anything except give her stuff to memorize which is the part you do after you teach someone) he fucking hates everything that this weird girl stands for, does, or is interested in. Fast forward to part 5 volume 12 and he WON’T EVEN LET HER WRITE HER OWN WEDDING VOWS because he’s that worried she’ll write something weird. He hates his fiance so fucking much that the idea of her saying “I like you more than books” instead of a canned generic noble vow is so distasteful to him that he can’t even let her write a draft that Roderick helps with. He doesn’t respect her, either, he deliberately manipulates the situation so that she doesn’t even know they’re engaged so she’s socially pressured to marry him, forces her to choose between him and her family(while saying that he’s going to intentionally force himself into a miserable position if she leaves him so she panics and feels like she has to prevent him from hurting himself), and then also starts crying about how she should be with Lutz after somehow managing to make HER recovering HER memories of the commoners she loves about the fact that he’s sad about his dad(Also confirming that he doesn’t care about anyone outside his dad? Imagine being Hirschur and having stood up to Veronica, losing all support from Ehrenfest for decades so you can continue supporting Ferdinand and sheltering him from his mother, only to find out that you’re so worthless to him that he doesn’t even think of you when he thinks of people who care about him) to also force her to choose him over the single other person he considers a romantic rival in another either/or rather than even entertaining the idea that she could care about both of them equally. And he has to force her because this boring, slimy little pedophile is so incredibly unappealing that the only reason Rozemyne is even really with him is that he’s put her in a position where he’s literally the only person she’s allowed to trust or confide in.

Now you may object to me calling Ferdinand a pedophile because Urano was in her 20s before she died. People who believe this are just gonna ignore anything I say here because despite pretending that they like dark fiction they don’t actually like when the dark topics in fiction are discussed, but also Urano’s age is irrelevant, we are talking about Myne, who has lived almost a decade in the body of a child(not an “””adult coded minor”” or a petite adult, literally the body of a 4-13 year old) in the social position of a child and whose lack of sexual and romantic understanding is specifically mentioned. In the fanbooks Kazuki confirms that Ferdinand does not see Myne as his elder, which makes sense because he’s never even seen what Urano looks like. The oldest he has ever seen her look is 13, the age she is when he forces her to marry him. For most of the story she was or looked, as confirmed repeatedly by the story, prepubescent. The fact that it’s confirmed that he’s sexually and romantically attracted to her in p5v12 means that he’s attracted to 13 year olds. Also in Gretia’s short story it’s revealed that he tracks when every child in Rozemyne’s employ has their sexual awakening, so it’s not just her if you want to split those hairs. Also in part 2 when he’s speaking to Benno(mid-30s) about rumors that he’s currently in a relationship with Myne(age 5) he says that relationships with this age difference are normal, so it’s not just political marriages if you want to split those hairs. The elephant in the room is that some people argue that Rozemyne’s lack of romantic/sexual feelings are indicative of her being aroace or even that Ferdinand and her are a QPR. If you HC this, pay me money. It is specifically stated that Ferdinand is romantically and sexually attracted to Rozemyne, feelings which she does not reciprocate because she doesn’t “understand” romantic love. While many aromantic people phrase their feelings this way, it’s honestly just willful ignorance to pretend like this is epic aro rep and not Rozemyne being characterized as a prepubescent child. The latter is obvious in the way her lack of romantic feelings is described, with a heavy emphasis on her not understanding them and characters repeatedly attributing this to her youth and lack of development. I get that other aro people often describe their feelings as “not understanding” romance and that aro people are often told that they will someday develop romantic feelings and never do, but like. This is a 13 year old being forced into a marriage when she admits that she’s not sure about it and doesn’t understand exactly what’s expected of her. Also, the fact that Ferdinand says she only needs to keep his name stone for two years(until she’s at the minimum age of consent) is outright stating that he does expect her to develop these feelings at some point and is just willing to wait. Also “summoning winter early”, a euphemism for CSA, is treated so lightly by the story that any argument that hinges on this particular relationship being fine because it’s an aroace QPR between a 24 year old and a mentally 22 year old is moot because the story specifically thinks that CSA generally is morally neutral and it’s only bad if a fat ugly guy does it. I’ve already discussed the way Ferdinand grooms Myne outside of a sexual context, ie he overwrites her existing worldview and forces her to conform to his common sense along with putting her in a social position where he’s her doctor, legal guardian, only confidant, and protector so she’s incapable of functioning without him, which I stand by.

I don’t like Ferdinand. I’ve never really liked Ferdinand, initially I found him boring and as the series dragged on and he got both less interesting and more central to the story I turned to actively disliking him, and now I sure fucking hate him. I’m done qualifying that because people interpret any criticism of him like an attack. I was never gonna cheer for him finally getting to fuck that thirteen year old he’s been grooming even if it was the mostly beautifully written prose of all time, so really I’m glad I’m a Ferdinand hater because it means I don’t have to get up every day and lie to people pretending that the engagement ceremony isn’t some of the worst writing in AoB. Honestly I don’t think any of you even think Ferdinand is actually queer, AoB fans are just squeamish enough about supporting canon Fermyne that they try to sanitize it by interpreting it as a queer relationship, in the process conflating aromanticism and pedophilia.