#sorry for the shitty vague answers nony aaaaa

[cathymee]

How do you think Mr. Boatman will react about El Filibusterismo?

anon friend…i spent 5 minutes staring at this ask because i wasn't sure who mr. boatman was…i'm sorry if you weren't referring to elias, but i'm going to talk about elias lmfaoo i'm so sorry i am an idiot

** spoilers for noli and fili!! but i won't go into that much detail for each and every plot points in the book

i'm very curious about that myself!! especially since rizal apparently regretted killing elias off (can't remember the specific letter but i'm sure googling it would yield the source! i am just very lazy atm) because he was sure he wouldn't be able to write a sequel. if he was in good health as he wrote the last parts of noli, what would've changed? what role would elias play in the fili? would simoun still exist? i wish jose would've gone to detail on what he originally planned

but one thing we could be sure about though is that elias would be so fucking pissed. the man he sacrificed his life for, for reason/s we aren't even sure about — is it selfless love? is it a sense of brotherhood? a sense of "you and your ignorance are a danger to my country - you need to leave and stay away before you cause more damage to this already twisted system" or of "you deserve happiness and you wouldn't achieve it here, you need to leave - you cannot rot in here like the rest of us would"? both? all of this? — just ran around doing the opposite of what elias would've wanted to achieve and had been striving to achieve before he even came along. plotted a revolution rooted in hatred and vengeance, a revolution that pays no mind to the actual people of the country, only driven for simoun to play out his revenge and hurt those who have hurt him.

and elias understands vengeance. he understands loss and fear, of having everything get taken away from him. he understands the motivations of crisostomo, why he did what he'd have done - it had always been cris who had had his eyes closed and his ears covered, who refused to understand what elias stood for from his place of privilege - but what the fuck, you know? because in the end all the suffering simoun had caused were for nothing. he didn't get to save maria, nor change something in the system like he 'wanted' to. nothing, not one positive effect. those who were in power still remained in power, but he made his people suffer even more to enforce his miserable, tyrannical beliefs.

but i also feel like he knew that it would've been inevitable. from their conversations on elias' boat, from the fact that crisostomo refused to be swayed from his ignorance. so i feel like letting himself die there under the balete feels like a loss of hope — a sense of giving up and letting crisostomo be, without any semblance of hope that crisostomo would do the right thing. instead he passes this hope to basilio instead, the figure of the youth — and it was the youth in the form of isagani that foiled simoun's plans in the end, and the opposite of vengeance - love - that motivated him to do it.

so tl;dr: he'd slap the shit out of crisostomo (but would still forgive him) and would fistbump isagani in the afterlife /hj

ETA✨: i forgot that mc&i kind of expanded on this!! & only kind of because of klay's influence!! even then i feel like the writers did well with how they wrote elfili!elias — he absolutely hates simoun's guts but his devotion for him still hasn't worn off at all. this attitude still fits on bookcanon!elias i think!