What do you think about Faust as a character?

Which version are we discussing lol. (It depends on the version, honestly.) I’ll go with Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus since that’s my favorite.

Faustus is a tragic character who really, truly wants power. #uwupower

But let’s break that down. Power is not by itself evil, though I think we oftentimes think it is because people who are evil often display such by asserting power of some sort over someone else. Faustus is talented and brilliant and wants to use these ambitions not just to serve himself, but also to serve others: to do important things. He doesn’t see his own soul as too much to ask for the ability to do great things over the course of the years he’s allotted.

Unfortunately, power corrupts him. He doesn’t use his power to help anyone but wastes it on trivial things to bring him more fame, acclaim, and power thereby. And in the end he realizes the value of his soul but it’s too late. His last line, which has always stuck with me, is “what art thou, Faustus, but a man condemned to die?” If he had accepted himself as just a man from the beginning, albeit a talented one, he could have not only saved his own soul but helped others. In the end he lost everything.

What do you like about Dostoyevsky’s novels?

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH this is gonna be rambly, I’m sorry.

They explore humanity in all of its elements, in its upper echelons of beauty and its gritty depths of ugliness. Many of them take place in heightened reality, which is to say everything is emphasized (like emotions, etc.) but they still reflect our reality. They explore the extremes and are still relatable to the mundane. They explore the value and beauty of life, and always affirm living while not muting the utter pain and despair living can bring. Like Raskonikov’s whole journey in Crime and Punishment is about trying to find a life worth snuffing out, and realizing there wasn’t one; Kirillov in Demons tries to find a reason to die and even though he does eventually, that scene is literally the best written scene I’ve ever read for thematic and character resonance. Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov, Myshkin in The Idiot, Grushenka in the Brothers Karamazov, Ivan, Dimitri–all of them are characters who wrestle to reconcile the beautiful and the hope in ordinary moments with the extreme depravity of the world around them. Sometimes they succeed. Sometimes they do not, but each character is allowed their journey.

Even when the novels have messy endings (The Idiot, Demons has a messy beginning), their themes and characters transcend them almost. Myshkin may not have endured his journey, but his ideals are simply so beautiful that it gives me hope despite the tragedy of the ending, and where he was flawed is also apparent. He also wrote in The Brothers Karamozov “The Grand Inquisitor” which is a
famous segment you can probably find online that includes a true story
of a rich man sending his wild dogs to hunt down children (like, Game of
Thrones is clearly drawing from that story with Ramsay). I tell that to
give an example for how Dostoyevsky wrestles with the utter evil done
in the world and still affirms beauty in a way that doesn’t seem empty
thanks to the characters’ journeys. 

Choices really matter in Dostoyevsky’s novels–there’s a reason he’s known as an existentialist. And yet at the same time, he’s not a nihilist at all. The phrase “beauty will save the world” comes from one of his novels, and it’s a phrase I think encapsulates his stories thematically, and what I personally believe as well. And it comes from a novel that ends tragically and yet still somehow affirms that message.

lol I have read you mentioning that flight before,what happened that you was 50 hours awake?!?

Soooo my issue is that I cannot sleep on flights. So I was flying to India and the flights leave late at night from my city so I’ve already been awake for like 12 hours before the flight starts even if I slept super late (it might have been even more than 12 lol) and it’s a 6 hour flight, a 5 hour layover, an 11 hour flight, and then you land early in the morning (7 am?). All in all it was like. 46-7 hours before I slept again. I’ve done it quite a few times in my life and each time I hate it. Lol.

What did you think of snk/bnha/tg/hxh/black butler when you read the first chapter?

LOL okay haha.

SnK: I saw the anime before I read the manga, so I’m going to answer this by “first episode.” I was horrified and didn’t want to continue but my sister convinced me to and I was sold. I was also sold on Armin and Eren from the very first episode and texted my sister “EREN has no concept of chill” and to this day EREN is always in caps lock when we text about him. Like my phone autocorrects “Eren” to “EREN” and honestly? It fits.

BNHA: I read the manga first. I thought it would be darker than it was and was wondering if we’d see Deku getting super powers be deconstructed into “be careful what you wish for.” We’re clearly not going there and that’s fine–I really do love what we have.

TG: Again, I watched the anime first and was hesitant. I was sold by the time the Dove Arc came around though because Touka and Mado’s confrontation gets me every time.

HxH: Don’t do what I did, which is read the first 50 chapters on a plane when you’ve been awake going on 50 hours. I’m not exaggerating. I was interested but not completely captured until I reread when, you know. Not sleep deprived. OH I was also getting over the flu during this flight. All that to say, my first impressions were severely muddled and thank Link and Sugar for convincing me to finish, because DAMN I was so wrong.

Black Butler: Ciel had my heart from the start, and I was instantly intrigued by the way it deconstructs its characters and different literary tropes. Like, Faust is one of my favorite stories, so reading about a twisted Faust wherein it asks “what if instead of being ‘uwu power,’ Faust is a traumatized child?” instantly had me hooked.

What do you think about Gakuho and Gakushu Asano from AC?

Asano was one of my favorites. My heart broke for him. I also really loved Gakuho’s story, and it broke my heart. AC did a great job of humanizing its characters and explaining how they were made into the people they were, and how there was always still hope for them. It also showed the cycle of abuse, in that Asano was just acting out what he’d seen his dad act out, and in the end, Asano changing is what prompted his dad to make some steps of his own. It goes along with a lot of the series’ themes of everyone being able to teach everyone, and the idea that compassion is contagious. Korosensei’s compassion for his students changed them, and they then affected Asano, who affected his dad, etc. A child’s demise destroyed Gakuho, but another child offered him hope again–but not through his performance.

My issue with Gakuho’s framing is my same issue with Nagisa’s mom’s and Itona’s dad’s framing: what they did was bad and the story framed it abusively, but seemed to be a bit too quick to reconcile and sweep the pain they had caused under the rug. That’s my major critique of AC as a story, actually, that it seemed to rush some of that healing. But that also isn’t unexpected in the genre and structure of the story. 

Hey, not sure if this is a right place to ask but I need a native’s opinion. In Cambridge Dictionary, it says that “look (at)” is when we pay attention, while “see” is simply noticing with eyes. But I’ve heard a saying “look, but do not see” (from the Bible, I think) – does it mean “see” implies understanding/attention? Can you clear this up for a non-native like me? I understand how to use the words grammatically, but I’m not sure about the implication. Thank you and sorry if it’s irrelevant!

No need to be sorry! Grammar is my jam. So “see” comes with a connotation of a kind of depth that “look” does not have–it implies a certain level of understanding usually, whereas “look” does not. It does to an extent depend on context, though, so keep that in mind. 

It’s hard to explain, so I’m not sure if this is helpful!!! I’m sorry if not! 

Edit: @midnight-in-town made a great comparison: “It’s like the difference between to hear and to listen.”

Damn watching the new snk episode today and rereading that chapter in the manga really makes me believe that I don’t think I’ve ever seen any other anime/manga that writes characters so humanly flawed and has this many of them! All playing their part even though none of them are particularly significant, just trying to find their place in the world and leave some form of impact and change something if they can. Keith’s story is 1 chapter long and my god is it brilliant! I love this series!

It is a great series! I love the characters as well. Shadis I do think is significant for the overall theme–his story with Carla offers I think, after Mikasa’s “the world is cruel but the world is also beautiful,” a resounding hope that again makes me doubt the story will end nihilistically. The idea that it is special enough just to be born, and the whole story is about protecting that right to live in the world.