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Princess Tutu
Jan. 4th, 2013 01:10 amPrincess Tutu! I wrote my main Yuletide story for it, and man, is it a deeply weird show: a kaleidoscope of fractured fairy tales centered on a duck who becomes a girl who can become a superheroine (Princess Tutu!) who dances people through their emotional problems, in order to retrieves the heart shards of the Prince, Mytho.
Everyone is all about Mytho in this show, which is peculiar given that Mytho has neither emotions nor personality - I don’t mean that he seems kind of flat, a la Bella Swan, I mean that it is actually canon that he’s an empty husk of a person. He shattered his heart in order to imprison an evil raven and thus has no emotions. Our heroine, duck/girl/Princess Tutu Ahiru, is driven by the desire to return to him the shards of his heart.
But as much as I love Ahiru, who is all boisterous and determined and empathetic, my heart is ultimately given to Fakir. This is distressing, because Fakir is - and I say this with all love - a terrible human being, at least for the first half of Princess Tutu. I wish I could say that I liked him because of the character growth, but no, I was all about Fakir pretty much as soon as he brooded his way angrily across the screen.
In my fic, where he keeps calling Ahiru “idiot” every five seconds? That is actually a nice version of Fakir, because he undergoes some character growth over the course of the show. When he’s talking to Mytho in the first few episodes, he’s always saying things like “You’re so worthless,” “You don’t have to do anything but what I tell you,” and “I am an abusive jackass.”
Okay, he doesn’t actually say that last one. It is implied by the time that Mytho, who is in the process of regaining his heart, is all “I think I’m going to do the OPPOSITE of what you told me!” and Fakir smacks him across the face.
Fakir, incidentally, considers himself Mytho’s protector, like a knight who has sworn vassalage to his prince - Fakir and Mytho are, in fact, incarnations of two characters from a story, a knight and his prince. (This is reason #1 why I am all about Fakir. Loyalty kink all the way!) Fakir is astonishingly inept at protecting Mytho, in a “I think you are the person Mytho most needs protecting from” kind of way.
Eventually he realizes this! Having smacked Mytho, who he has sworn to protect, Fakir has a nervous breakdown about he is a terrible person who is completely failing at his self-appointed duty to protect Mytho. And then he tries to change his behavior.
This is, I think, part of the reason I like the character so much: the show knows perfectly well that Fakir has all the problems, and spends a certain amount of time smacking him in the face with the fact that he’s angry and scared and far too willing to let his (bad) behavior be dictated by that. He’s scared? Well, everyone else should be too!
Except Fakir is pretty inept at being frightening. Mytho doesn’t care about being insulted, and he doesn’t let being slapped deter him from his plan of action. Ahiru isn’t scared of Fakir either, even when he doesn’t like her. (Fakir not-liking someone looks pretty much like his “I am your sworn protector and will dedicate my life to you!”) And when he does like her, he actually makes an effort to...treat her nicely.
By Fakir standards, this means still calling her an idiot fairly regularly. It really kind of disturbs me that I like his character so very, very much.
Reason #2 I like Fakir: even though he thinks Mytho and Ahiru are both idiotic for their desire to help people, at the same time he immensely admires that quality in both of them. Contradictory characters for the win!
Everyone is all about Mytho in this show, which is peculiar given that Mytho has neither emotions nor personality - I don’t mean that he seems kind of flat, a la Bella Swan, I mean that it is actually canon that he’s an empty husk of a person. He shattered his heart in order to imprison an evil raven and thus has no emotions. Our heroine, duck/girl/Princess Tutu Ahiru, is driven by the desire to return to him the shards of his heart.
But as much as I love Ahiru, who is all boisterous and determined and empathetic, my heart is ultimately given to Fakir. This is distressing, because Fakir is - and I say this with all love - a terrible human being, at least for the first half of Princess Tutu. I wish I could say that I liked him because of the character growth, but no, I was all about Fakir pretty much as soon as he brooded his way angrily across the screen.
In my fic, where he keeps calling Ahiru “idiot” every five seconds? That is actually a nice version of Fakir, because he undergoes some character growth over the course of the show. When he’s talking to Mytho in the first few episodes, he’s always saying things like “You’re so worthless,” “You don’t have to do anything but what I tell you,” and “I am an abusive jackass.”
Okay, he doesn’t actually say that last one. It is implied by the time that Mytho, who is in the process of regaining his heart, is all “I think I’m going to do the OPPOSITE of what you told me!” and Fakir smacks him across the face.
Fakir, incidentally, considers himself Mytho’s protector, like a knight who has sworn vassalage to his prince - Fakir and Mytho are, in fact, incarnations of two characters from a story, a knight and his prince. (This is reason #1 why I am all about Fakir. Loyalty kink all the way!) Fakir is astonishingly inept at protecting Mytho, in a “I think you are the person Mytho most needs protecting from” kind of way.
Eventually he realizes this! Having smacked Mytho, who he has sworn to protect, Fakir has a nervous breakdown about he is a terrible person who is completely failing at his self-appointed duty to protect Mytho. And then he tries to change his behavior.
This is, I think, part of the reason I like the character so much: the show knows perfectly well that Fakir has all the problems, and spends a certain amount of time smacking him in the face with the fact that he’s angry and scared and far too willing to let his (bad) behavior be dictated by that. He’s scared? Well, everyone else should be too!
Except Fakir is pretty inept at being frightening. Mytho doesn’t care about being insulted, and he doesn’t let being slapped deter him from his plan of action. Ahiru isn’t scared of Fakir either, even when he doesn’t like her. (Fakir not-liking someone looks pretty much like his “I am your sworn protector and will dedicate my life to you!”) And when he does like her, he actually makes an effort to...treat her nicely.
By Fakir standards, this means still calling her an idiot fairly regularly. It really kind of disturbs me that I like his character so very, very much.
Reason #2 I like Fakir: even though he thinks Mytho and Ahiru are both idiotic for their desire to help people, at the same time he immensely admires that quality in both of them. Contradictory characters for the win!
