Harleyxhoward - Harley

✨Venus Exaltation✨

Little late to the Percy Jackson fan art but I really wanted to draw the fight at the lighthouse

Analyzing The Abilities of Characters From The Boys Pt. VII (Blood Sisters Edition)

*mention of Marie’s self harm, she’s the second section*

🤯Victoria Neuman🤯

“Diva Down” was the cry I bellowed at the S4 finale. One of my favorite characters gone by the hands of a pesky man. Please pause for a moment of silence.

Victoria’s ability to manipulate blood was tethered to her vision, which is the main part I’ll be focusing on. While she can make people’s heads explode, she must see her targets clearly in order to be able to do so. This ironically stems from her general “blindness” in terms of the consequences of her actions. As I previously berated her for, her careless injection of Compound V into her daughter came at a price she could have avoided had she not been so proud.

Additionally, her murdering congressmen and ultimately threatening and killing anyone and everyone who stood in her way made her a true loose cannon, especially since The Boys now have nothing on her. With her secret out, it was only a matter of time before she popped someone’s head in that room, and Butcher still defended his team, regardless of the symbiote situation he has going on.

Vicky’s bloodlust and situational blindness prove to be the main reason why her abilities manifested the way they did.

🩸Marie Moreau🩸

Another one of my favorites who possesses a similar ability to Vicky, Marie proved that with the right cultivation, she can be far more powerful than people give her credit for.

Marie’s abilities seem to be the result of her resentment of and mourning of her own familial structure. She feels like she “lost her blood” in losing her family, so she’s now able to manipulate the blood of others, along with blood letting/self harming in order to create tendrils of blood. While she reasons that this practice is “just her power”, it’s evident she uses this as an outlet to express her perceived powerlessness in the world. Despite a kickass power, she’s been at the mercy of Red River, GodU, Vought, and every government system her whole life. Marie’s a girl who needs release, and she turns to a literal shedding of her familial tethers by releasing her blood.

Both Marie and Vicky have great durability and a wide range of abilities, but while Victoria settled on her explosive, immediate power to put an end to her opponents, Marie opts to perform more invasive and creative maneuvers, insinuating that while they could have done the same things, Vicky was “blinded” by the immediate gratification of success, while Marie willfully seeks out solutions to a wider range of issues, this cementing her as the hero in the end.

Ep. 8 Spoilers (The Boys)

Rapid fire main feeling/takeaways

- While I’m deeply upset we didn’t get to see the hostile takeover like in comics, the ending scene gives me hope for a bizarre dystopian Season 5 with all super humans having dominion over America, especially with a Gen V S2 tie in.

- I was waiting to see Ashley’s mutation, assuming it would be some Marvel’s Medusa style hair manipulation judging how her skull started moving.

- Why is no one talking about Kimiko finally having a strong enough tether to Frenchie that she SCREAMED? She wanted this at the beginning of the season, and I’m glad they didn’t just ignore it for her character arc.

- I’m not surprised Vicky got killed, but it annoyed me that it happened when she was fully surrendering and her daughter was ultimately subjected to her same tragic past at Red River.

- Grace deserved it, sorta kinda. Why was she provoking a young boy who clearly can’t control his abilities by offloading every horrible thing about him to his face like that was going to yield something positive? I liked her, but the second that scene began I knew her fate was sealed.

- I really thought Firecracker was going to fully die from some overdose/disease because of the milk pills, but now I’m thinking that pretty much every supe that takes part in this New World Order are going to get killed by Butcher/the virus. Probably (better not be) Annie, Kimiko, or Ryan, and I’m assuming the gang from Godolkin would also find an antidote or safe haven as well.

Analyzing The Abilities of Characters From The Boys Pt. VI

🐍Zoe Neuman🐍

Zoe, growing up in both a multiethnic and affluent home, is both marginalized and privileged in a myriad of ways. Her ethnicity, along with her mother’s, is never acknowledged outright on the show. For all we know, the directors could have cast white actresses for the both of them and the core of my analysis would be null and void, but I believe the fact they aren’t white provides a certain layer of tragedy to Zoe’s character in particular.

Going off of personal experience in uppity East Coast spaces, Zoe’s presumably one of few ethnic children in her social circle. While she’s debatably white passing, this would undoubtedly have led to numerous instances of her facing prejudice and most likely teasing of various kinds.

This is where her unique ability of generating snake-like tentacles from her mouth presents itself. Her being injected as a preteen means her body analyzed her current surroundings and decided what she needed most at this stage in her life was some form of aggressive defense that could come from her mouth. This most likely resulted from her being mocked, teased, harassed, or discriminated against, and wishing there was a way her “sharp tongue” could actually cut them. Now with these serpents that expel themselves from her mouth, she’s capable of holding her own against anyone who wishes to insult or berate her.

Her being subjected to Red River felt like karmic irony, Victoria injecting her in adolescence* because she decided having any ability at all would be better than being powerless. I’ve mulled over this decision from Vicky, but ultimately settled on it being near sighted and power hungry on her end. She knew full well that Compound V resulted in the death of her own parents, and could very well have given Zoe a disastrous mutation, if not killing her in a long, drawn out body horror scenario. Even Stan Edgar was repulsed and horrified at the idea that Victoria would stoop so low as to inject Zoe with V, which put the gravity of the situation into perspective.

Vicky additionally knew that, while she was getting herself tangled up in Vought and Homelander, that her life was on the chopping block, and if she died, Samir wouldn’t be able to fend off Firecracker, let alone all of Vought’s forces. This would, assuming Homelander didn’t execute her daughter, land Zoe in the same place Vicky ended up after the death of her parents, which is exactly what happened.

While this seemed unfair at first, I saw it more so as a cautionary tale of what corruption does to a person. Vicky wasn’t satisfied with what she had, and strived for absolute power at the expense of her daughter’s well being. The shift from a loving mother willing to give her child the world to a power hungry tyrant injecting her daughter with a potentially lethal drug to turn her into a #girlboss didn’t happen randomly. I can imagine every thought that went through Vicky’s head as she decided to this to Zoe, especially explaining away the consequences as trivial costs to her daughter’s safety.

My response to that, aside from it not panning out how Victoria intended, is to look no farther than Kris Jenner with Kim Kardashian. In both mother-daughter duos a power/money hungry mother mutates/exposes her child all in the name of giving her a “better life” at the cost of robbing her of her agency and ultimately her humanity. Society blames Kim for perpetuating beauty standards, all of which were thrust upon her by a mother who just wanted a bigger mansion.

*The horror of Vicky’s decision stems mostly from the fact that the older you are, the worse the mortality rates/negative mutations are with V injections. Stan and Vicky already knew this, and it’s why people were contemplating whether Ashley would die at the end of S4 or not. Babies appear to be more malleable, and while some gain adverse mutations, they’re hardly ever lethal, and may even be tailored to Vought’s liking (so it seems).*

“Why do asexuals write and draw the best porn?” They wonder.

“Artemis’s hands do not shake when she fires her bow; she will never hunt for food to fill her belly, for she does not hunger herself,” we tell them.

RIKKI CHADWICK (H20)

Starlight 🌟

Selene, the moon herself 🌕

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZPRokeMFQ/

EVERYONE WATCH THIS EDIT RN!!!!!