RIKKI

Analyzing The Abilities of Characters From The Boys Pt. XVII

💣Soldier Boy💣

Acting as a parody of Captain America, Soldier Boy exists as a manifestation of everything America needed post-WWII. Strong, durable, and dutiful, he maintained the persona of the perfect little soldier boy, who could endure both enemy fire and the passage of time without flinching or aging respectively.

However, in true The Boys fashion, he’s a charlatan. While he did serve in WWII, Stan Edgar even claiming he “killed Germans by the dozen”, the majority of his all American backstory detailing him as a war hero, barring in mind his pompous, macho persona, sounds too good to be entirely true.

While this post isn’t supposed to debate his true involvement in WWII, I find his unique reaction to V resulting in immortality to be a cruel twist of karmic irony. He appears to have little value for human life, being quick to resort to murder to settle scores with his old teammates. He’s so ruthless that when Black Noir, a seemingly apathetic and unfeeling indestructible superhuman, gets word that Soldier Boy’s been released from Russian confinement, he practically pleads for Homelander to give him a swift death so as not to die in tortured agony by Soldier Boy’s sadistic hand.

In total, I find it ironic that the soldier forced to kill and slaughter into oblivion with nothing but his PTSD and flashbacks as a testament to his body count, is condemned to an endless immortality. You almost want to mourn the man he could have been had he never been shot up with experimental V. He was a victim of verbal abuse from his father, feeling pressured into potentially dying in WWII just to prove something to him in hopes of finally making him proud. However, he did screw a nazi for years, so, meh.

Beyoncé in 2004 ｡⊹ ♡.*࿐ ｡ ₊ ·

aphrodite & venus + art

All the  Seven ( + Will Solace) from “Heroes of Olympus” saga! 

Feeling a lot of feelings about how Hadestown doesn't present the story as "Orpheus turned around and everything fell apart and there was nothing anyone could do to fix it" and instead presents a story that says "he turned around, he doubted, he failed, but if we keep telling his story maybe one day Orpheus won't" and it's not just about Orpheus as a single character, it's a bout every Orpheus, everyone who runs up against a system they can't change and fails and everyone who sees that failure and gets back up and says "maybe I can change it now" and tries again. That Orpheus failed isn't the takeaway of the story. The takeaway is that one day he might succeed.

A digital offering for Philotes, the Greek goddess of friendship! May she never stop bringing wonderful people into our lives ❤️

René Lalique's 1936 perfume bottle design for Trésor de la Mer

Analyzing The Abilities of Characters From The Boys Pt. XII

🚹Jordan🚺

Jordan is, by nature, dichotomous. Their ability is a unique form of gendered shapeshifting which is implied to be a byproduct of their bigender identity. When we first meet Jordan, they’re snippy and selfish, focused solely on getting ahead and being applauded for their good work and impeccable scores. As the story goes on, you begin to reveal layers of insecurity and frustration that the world will only ever see them for their superficial identities.

When first introduced to Jordan, they were relaxed in their female form. Interestingly enough, this was most likely due to the fact that Brink knew Jordan was assigned male at birth, and accepted them regardless as both identities they present as. This, as I mentioned earlier with Dean Shetty’s master manipulation of Cate, was most likely the byproduct of a drawn out control tactic to keep Jordan’s success tethered to GodU, and to give Brink a guard dog in the event of…well, exactly what transpired in the first episode.

As we see while Jordan fights, their female form, the result of their own vulnerability typically used when comfortable or in moments of leisure, has the ability to propel people away with some form of telekinetic blast. This may be due to their own insecurities plaguing them with feelings of inadequacy. That initial desire to push people away manifests itself as the ability to do exactly that.

In their male form, they’re seemingly indestructible and super strong, being capable of being shot at point blank and trading blows with Luke and Sam, affirming that Jordan is both strong and versatile in combat.

When the V most likely kicked in, Jordan was probably going through puberty, as many other supes were when their powers manifested. Imagine recognizing that you were bigender and feeling the need to endure the bigotry of your surroundings in hopes of a better future while simultaneously wishing to shove people away. This dual nature manifested in their ability to visibly shapeshift, and yet their parents treat this as a burden, confused as to why Jordan doesn’t just stay a boy indefinitely.

Jordan’s gendered division is most likely rooted in their feelings of men being tough while women are guarded, but I believe that as Marie shows them that it’s possible to love both sides at once, we might see them use their powers interchangeably or even simultaneously.

Analyzing The Abilities of Characters From The Boys Pt. II (Indestructiblity)

⚔️Maeve⚔️

I like to view Queen Maeve as a litmus test for The Boys fans. It’s either you’re a straight man (the target audience) and you kind of hate her, or you’re gay (the unintended yet equally sizable audience) and you adore the mommydom roleplay Dominque was doing with Jack onscreen for the world to see.

Either way, Queen Maeve is indestructible, the opening sequence (as shown above) showing that not even an armored trucked can phase her as her body is used as a shield, cutting through the vehicle without a scratch. All of this is to say that while she’s physically unable to be harmed or bested, even standing up against Homelander in S3, she’s vulnerable in her own ways. For the majority of the show, she was the only member of the Seven who experienced remorse for the things they’d done (outside of Annie of course), which frames her as being more humane than her comrades.

Her fling with Homelander’s equally interesting, implying that while her ability matched him to some degree, it’s that Teflon mentality that drew them together, before she probably understood that he hasn’t caught on that Supes are still people in the end. Ironically, she’s one of the few Supes we meet who doesn’t have a god complex, despite her referencing DC’s resident goddess, Wonder Woman

♟️Black Noir♟️

Black Noir/Erving’s a super soldier. Obedient, silent, lethal, and according to Homelander, one of the captain’s best friends. This all comes at the obvious cost of Noir being an aspiring superhero back in the 1980s who had a fateful mission down in Nicaragua. One thing led to the next and he was severely injured, left with little cognitive functioning. As “The Boys:Diabolical” revealed, it was Noir who taught Homelander the first rule of being a Supe in this world; it doesn’t matter what happened, what matters is what you tell the press.

The characters with indestructibility are jaded, being forced to view the world’s greatest hardships and atrocities only to come out unscathed and progressively unfazed. We never see them get nearly as afraid or uncomfortable as the others, mostly due to this ability. However, we do have evidence that Noir mourned the boy he was with Replacement McDreamy Noir assessing that not only did OG Noir keep files of Buster Beaver (knockoff Chucky Cheese) in his closet, but despite the vague ninja motifs in his branding, he never learned martial arts at all.

With both Maeve and Noir, the issues were seldom physical and always tied back to identity. Maeve’s sexuality being used as a bargaining chip and Noir face/ethnicity not being deemed worthy of confirmation despite Erving’s early wishes. He was trained to view his identity as a burden so that the only person who could truly hurt him outside of Homelander/Soldier Boy would be himself imagining the star he could have been if things turned out slightly differently.