Raphael (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bedsidemanners) wrote2012-01-13 11:21 pm
bedsidemanners) wrote2012-01-13 11:21 pm
Entry tags:
dim the lights if you want some action (UNFINISHED)
What: This could almost be considered part two of the Raphael-and-sex essay, albeit in a much more narrow scope: Sara. Some of these scenes aren't half as sexually-charged as the ones in the previous essay, but I found them interesting anyway. Note: for the sake of my dwindling sanity, these are not all the scenes with her, just some of the important ones (because they are in a pretty frightening amount of pages together). (I may do a quick write-up towards the end of his kiss scenes with her as a point of comparison to his foreplay scenes with other women, but that'll be the extent of it.) Standard disclaimers and warnings apply: my opinions, however much I try to back them up, are still just my opinions, so please take them with as much salt as you want and feel free to disagree.
Raphael gives the most painfully mixed signals with Sara. Sara's (generally) straightforward in both her body language and general interactions-- when there's conflict between what she says and what she feels, it's so obvious it's almost not worth analyzing. See also: her initial insistence on leaving with her mother, and later, her attempts to justify herself to Zaphikel.
Generally speaking, Raphael isn't quite as overt about it (his first line of defense against almost anything he either doesn't expect or doesn't want is an emotional shutdown), and this, along with his overall lack of ethics, makes him a better liar than her by far, but that's not exactly a difficult feat. While the fact that he's managed to keep his wings attached to his back infers a talent for worming his way out of unpleasant situations, he doesn't generally seem to have the inclination or means to plot past his bedroom liaisons. In a world full of con artists and puppetmasters, Raphael's a strictly small-time manipulator-- fortunately for him, though, he's aware of it.
Tl;dr Raphael tends to be full of crap, and he is far from the only one. The one part of his body language that almost invariably betrays him is his hands. Raphael is prone to fidgety behaviors with his hands that would look downright nervous on anyone less outwardly confident-- he pushes back his hair, plays with it, straightens his collar. Sometimes it genuinely is nerves, but more often it's an intentional display of disinterest.
This is a scene where his body language and what he says don't match at all. Get rid of the dialogue, and this looks like a sexual proposition (of the kind found in bad yaoi and Harlequin romances). Here he is fingering her face and forcing her to tilt up her chin, which is made all the more unnerving because in this scene, she's blind and he knows it.
Surprisingly, though, Raphael's not exactly coming onto her in this scene-- at least, not with any expectations of reciprocation in kind. Gigantic as his ego is, he's not under any delusion that there's anything about the way he's behaving that is going to make her want to sleep with him. He's not just dominating her for the sake of doing it, or even out of a "this is what you do to girls" notion-- because in his mind, this isn't what you do to girls. The motions are there, very clearly, but the intent is not. Raphael's accustomed to at least playing the part of a pursuing gentleman, with all the foibles and customs that entails. His targets are willing at the very least, and preferably crawling all over him.
But with Sara, it's extremely personal. He's rubbing her nose in a) the power he holds over her and b) the power Sevotharte holds over her. He is making a point of toying with her. He is telling her, to her teeth, that her existence as Sara Mudo was a political conspiracy. He is out to repulse her, and frankly, he succeeds better than he later decides he ever wanted.
As seen in the previous essay, Raphael doesn't generally mind invasions of his personal space. I'd say that up to a point, even Michael's very overtly invasive behavior is permitted, if not necessarily enjoyed. (Raphael has a pronounced, probably cultivated tendency to not only avoid making eye-contact with Michael, but avoid facing him at all, regardless of the situation. This passive-aggressiveness, of course, annoys the attention-starved Michael to a huge extent and makes him redouble his efforts by poking him and yelling at him.)
Raphael's visit during the trial. He's not avoiding eye-contact, but his body language is closed, which, well, is painfully obvious. His posture is stiff, even when he's seated, legs crossed, arms folded. Nothing about his expression says he wants to be there in the slightest and he's making absolutely no effort to conceal any of it.
This is probably one of the oddest moments. Raphael's posture is strained, strange, and not just in your typical Kaori-Yuki-I-don't-believe-in-proportions kind of way. He's stiff. His facial expression is downcast. He looks at the very least disappointed and at the most depressed, especially when you contrast it to his expression only a few panels earlier, after bringing her back.
And he keeps looking depressed.
And he keeps looking depressed. A variation of this look will be stuck on his face for nearly the duration of his time in the manga. And this, my friends, is why most people pick him up somewhere around or between chapters 89 and 97, and also possibly why there's generally some reluctance to canon-update him, because his general situation and approval rating both go obscenely downhill from here.
Raphael's seen smoking throughout the series, but he's not the only one or even the most frequent one. As opposed to Kira and Katou, whose only criteria for lighting up might as well be taking a breath, Raphael tends to smoke as a means of stress relief. He smokes right before he tries to go to bed with Sara and right after Michael discovers that Raphael's been hiding the truth from him.
And he's smoking here.
Raphael's final attempt at seducing Sara, the outcome of which stretches the series' volume count considerably. We all know how this ends up, but some of Raphael's behavior hints that at least subconsciously, part of him knew it, too.
Prior to this, Raphael has not looked directly at her for the entire stretch of the conversation. She's sitting cross-legged a couple feet from him against the wall; he's standing and looking out the window.
This is really unusual for Raphael, who tends to go out of his way to look her in the face. This is not particularly unusual for Sara, who generally tries her dead-level best to avoid facing him when she's not chiding him.
Sara does not seem to understand what Raphael's story here really entails, which at the very least is molestation and at the most is a rape. Her reaction isn't just muted, it's confused.
And it's (mild) tangent time. For most of this exchange, Raphael's thought process is spelled out pretty bluntly. But Sara's is really interesting here because the scanlation (which, despite its flaws, I tend to defer to-- everyone tends to be a little more dramatic and a little less likeable) and Viz differ so much--
Scan: "Y...you're making fun of me again! Just like... that mean trick you played during that trial! When you sealed my voice, it wasn't to hide anything! That's right... Ralphie-kun (sic.) was surrounded by so many proud and beautiful people, he didn't want to show that he was associating with a disgraceful creature like me!"
Viz: "You... you're teasing me again! Like that time at the trial... when you kissed me! You only did it to conceal that you were healing my throat! Right? There are beautiful people all around you. There is no way you'd choose someone like me!"
I tend to like the scan a little better because it's a more layered statement. She starts out talking about the kiss at the trial-- but ends up talking about him giving her the "sedative" he gave her just beforehand. This is interesting because it's the only time she ever puts the blame for this incident squarely on his shoulders (without a little "but I knew that with Sevi around you couldn't," etc. etc., "I UNDERSTAND, RAPHIE"). She's saying, basically, that he sold her out to save himself. Which he did. But her wording makes it clear that Raphael never told her the circumstances surrounding the betrayal.
End tangent.
Raphael has just gotten weirdly interesting here, even as his approval rating goes into the negative numbers. This is not just about getting rejected; this spiel is... distinctly odd because yet again, Raphael realizes his own hypocrisy and goes ahead with it anyway.
Something important here to note: as previously stated, Raphael's keenly aware of the inherent dangers in helping Sara. He knows exactly what he's sacrificed to aid her, and has never been shy about informing her about it. He's an adult, an adult who's had quite a lengthy tenure of time to experience being socially crushed. He doesn't-- and can't-- romanticize it, because it hits too close to home. He's very recently heard about Rosiel's ascendance in the wake of Sevotharte's downfall-- and even more recently heard about Lucifer being back, with a body, at Rosiel's side.
What does this mean to Raphael?
That the revolution has failed. That the Messiah has failed. That Raphael has thrown away his career and put everything on the line for absolutely nothing, politically speaking. He thinks heaven at large is about to end up under the thumb of yet another tyrant-- but one he doesn't intend to defer to. In fact, he doesn't even intend to go see the takeover (this is what he and Michael have been arguing about for hours).
Why doesn't he want to? The reason he gives Michael, basically, is that it's too dangerous ("like shaking hands with the Devil"... literally and figuratively)-- but then he drifts into a monologue about how Rosiel's so different from before.
Raphael pretty much drops the ball when he tries to pin Rosiel's obvious evil on Lucifer's influence. Rosiel's change in behavior isn't entirely new to Raphael and if he'd give it a bit of thought, he'd realize it predates Lucifer-- he's seen him in at least one prior broadcast (and should have seen him in person far earlier on, though Barbiel went in his stead and presumably briefed him on Rosiel's reappearance)-- though the fact remains that it's thrown him off. Raphael's spent the last ten chapters so thrown off by his own behavior and feelings; Rosiel's oddness is just icing on the cake.
Raphael's afraid to put in an appearance because it'll force him into a decision-- and that decision will be to support Michael (and, by extension, the Messiah-- who Raphael already sees not only as a failure, but as a sitting duck) in a stance against Rosiel. Invariably. And whether he wants to admit it or not, at this point in time, he thinks it's a losing battle. He shows almost no signs of knowing... well, much of anything pertaining to Uriel's later spiel. So he's biding his time instead, essentially waiting for the war to come knocking at his door.
In the midst of this, though, he's still got one thing that serves both as an excuse for inaction and... his entire justification for what he's done up to this point: Sara's still there with him. As long as he has her there, he can, conceivably, say that it's too dangerous to make a move, and I honestly wouldn't put it past him to use a put-on like "keeping her safe for the Messiah" as a reason to stay there himself, if it had ever come down to that. Sara's come to mean too much to him: as much as he tries to insist she's just a girl, she's become in part a sort of a symbol to him that maybe, finally, he can do better. She's the only one who's ever really caused him to step back and reevaluate his life. He's saved her, maybe she can save him, blah blah blah it's three in the morning.
And of course, she's decided to leave.
There are a lot of weird things about their time in these chapters.
This kiss is something of a reprise of the kiss he's introduced with.
--
Raphael gives the most painfully mixed signals with Sara. Sara's (generally) straightforward in both her body language and general interactions-- when there's conflict between what she says and what she feels, it's so obvious it's almost not worth analyzing. See also: her initial insistence on leaving with her mother, and later, her attempts to justify herself to Zaphikel.
Generally speaking, Raphael isn't quite as overt about it (his first line of defense against almost anything he either doesn't expect or doesn't want is an emotional shutdown), and this, along with his overall lack of ethics, makes him a better liar than her by far, but that's not exactly a difficult feat. While the fact that he's managed to keep his wings attached to his back infers a talent for worming his way out of unpleasant situations, he doesn't generally seem to have the inclination or means to plot past his bedroom liaisons. In a world full of con artists and puppetmasters, Raphael's a strictly small-time manipulator-- fortunately for him, though, he's aware of it.
Tl;dr Raphael tends to be full of crap, and he is far from the only one. The one part of his body language that almost invariably betrays him is his hands. Raphael is prone to fidgety behaviors with his hands that would look downright nervous on anyone less outwardly confident-- he pushes back his hair, plays with it, straightens his collar. Sometimes it genuinely is nerves, but more often it's an intentional display of disinterest.
This is a scene where his body language and what he says don't match at all. Get rid of the dialogue, and this looks like a sexual proposition (of the kind found in bad yaoi and Harlequin romances). Here he is fingering her face and forcing her to tilt up her chin, which is made all the more unnerving because in this scene, she's blind and he knows it.
Surprisingly, though, Raphael's not exactly coming onto her in this scene-- at least, not with any expectations of reciprocation in kind. Gigantic as his ego is, he's not under any delusion that there's anything about the way he's behaving that is going to make her want to sleep with him. He's not just dominating her for the sake of doing it, or even out of a "this is what you do to girls" notion-- because in his mind, this isn't what you do to girls. The motions are there, very clearly, but the intent is not. Raphael's accustomed to at least playing the part of a pursuing gentleman, with all the foibles and customs that entails. His targets are willing at the very least, and preferably crawling all over him.
But with Sara, it's extremely personal. He's rubbing her nose in a) the power he holds over her and b) the power Sevotharte holds over her. He is making a point of toying with her. He is telling her, to her teeth, that her existence as Sara Mudo was a political conspiracy. He is out to repulse her, and frankly, he succeeds better than he later decides he ever wanted.
As seen in the previous essay, Raphael doesn't generally mind invasions of his personal space. I'd say that up to a point, even Michael's very overtly invasive behavior is permitted, if not necessarily enjoyed. (Raphael has a pronounced, probably cultivated tendency to not only avoid making eye-contact with Michael, but avoid facing him at all, regardless of the situation. This passive-aggressiveness, of course, annoys the attention-starved Michael to a huge extent and makes him redouble his efforts by poking him and yelling at him.)
Raphael's visit during the trial. He's not avoiding eye-contact, but his body language is closed, which, well, is painfully obvious. His posture is stiff, even when he's seated, legs crossed, arms folded. Nothing about his expression says he wants to be there in the slightest and he's making absolutely no effort to conceal any of it.
This is probably one of the oddest moments. Raphael's posture is strained, strange, and not just in your typical Kaori-Yuki-I-don't-believe-in-proportions kind of way. He's stiff. His facial expression is downcast. He looks at the very least disappointed and at the most depressed, especially when you contrast it to his expression only a few panels earlier, after bringing her back.
And he keeps looking depressed.
And he keeps looking depressed. A variation of this look will be stuck on his face for nearly the duration of his time in the manga. And this, my friends, is why most people pick him up somewhere around or between chapters 89 and 97, and also possibly why there's generally some reluctance to canon-update him, because his general situation and approval rating both go obscenely downhill from here.
Raphael's seen smoking throughout the series, but he's not the only one or even the most frequent one. As opposed to Kira and Katou, whose only criteria for lighting up might as well be taking a breath, Raphael tends to smoke as a means of stress relief. He smokes right before he tries to go to bed with Sara and right after Michael discovers that Raphael's been hiding the truth from him.
And he's smoking here.
Raphael's final attempt at seducing Sara, the outcome of which stretches the series' volume count considerably. We all know how this ends up, but some of Raphael's behavior hints that at least subconsciously, part of him knew it, too.
Prior to this, Raphael has not looked directly at her for the entire stretch of the conversation. She's sitting cross-legged a couple feet from him against the wall; he's standing and looking out the window.
This is really unusual for Raphael, who tends to go out of his way to look her in the face. This is not particularly unusual for Sara, who generally tries her dead-level best to avoid facing him when she's not chiding him.
Sara does not seem to understand what Raphael's story here really entails, which at the very least is molestation and at the most is a rape. Her reaction isn't just muted, it's confused.
And it's (mild) tangent time. For most of this exchange, Raphael's thought process is spelled out pretty bluntly. But Sara's is really interesting here because the scanlation (which, despite its flaws, I tend to defer to-- everyone tends to be a little more dramatic and a little less likeable) and Viz differ so much--
Scan: "Y...you're making fun of me again! Just like... that mean trick you played during that trial! When you sealed my voice, it wasn't to hide anything! That's right... Ralphie-kun (sic.) was surrounded by so many proud and beautiful people, he didn't want to show that he was associating with a disgraceful creature like me!"
Viz: "You... you're teasing me again! Like that time at the trial... when you kissed me! You only did it to conceal that you were healing my throat! Right? There are beautiful people all around you. There is no way you'd choose someone like me!"
I tend to like the scan a little better because it's a more layered statement. She starts out talking about the kiss at the trial-- but ends up talking about him giving her the "sedative" he gave her just beforehand. This is interesting because it's the only time she ever puts the blame for this incident squarely on his shoulders (without a little "but I knew that with Sevi around you couldn't," etc. etc., "I UNDERSTAND, RAPHIE"). She's saying, basically, that he sold her out to save himself. Which he did. But her wording makes it clear that Raphael never told her the circumstances surrounding the betrayal.
End tangent.
Raphael has just gotten weirdly interesting here, even as his approval rating goes into the negative numbers. This is not just about getting rejected; this spiel is... distinctly odd because yet again, Raphael realizes his own hypocrisy and goes ahead with it anyway.
Something important here to note: as previously stated, Raphael's keenly aware of the inherent dangers in helping Sara. He knows exactly what he's sacrificed to aid her, and has never been shy about informing her about it. He's an adult, an adult who's had quite a lengthy tenure of time to experience being socially crushed. He doesn't-- and can't-- romanticize it, because it hits too close to home. He's very recently heard about Rosiel's ascendance in the wake of Sevotharte's downfall-- and even more recently heard about Lucifer being back, with a body, at Rosiel's side.
What does this mean to Raphael?
That the revolution has failed. That the Messiah has failed. That Raphael has thrown away his career and put everything on the line for absolutely nothing, politically speaking. He thinks heaven at large is about to end up under the thumb of yet another tyrant-- but one he doesn't intend to defer to. In fact, he doesn't even intend to go see the takeover (this is what he and Michael have been arguing about for hours).
Why doesn't he want to? The reason he gives Michael, basically, is that it's too dangerous ("like shaking hands with the Devil"... literally and figuratively)-- but then he drifts into a monologue about how Rosiel's so different from before.
Raphael pretty much drops the ball when he tries to pin Rosiel's obvious evil on Lucifer's influence. Rosiel's change in behavior isn't entirely new to Raphael and if he'd give it a bit of thought, he'd realize it predates Lucifer-- he's seen him in at least one prior broadcast (and should have seen him in person far earlier on, though Barbiel went in his stead and presumably briefed him on Rosiel's reappearance)-- though the fact remains that it's thrown him off. Raphael's spent the last ten chapters so thrown off by his own behavior and feelings; Rosiel's oddness is just icing on the cake.
Raphael's afraid to put in an appearance because it'll force him into a decision-- and that decision will be to support Michael (and, by extension, the Messiah-- who Raphael already sees not only as a failure, but as a sitting duck) in a stance against Rosiel. Invariably. And whether he wants to admit it or not, at this point in time, he thinks it's a losing battle. He shows almost no signs of knowing... well, much of anything pertaining to Uriel's later spiel. So he's biding his time instead, essentially waiting for the war to come knocking at his door.
In the midst of this, though, he's still got one thing that serves both as an excuse for inaction and... his entire justification for what he's done up to this point: Sara's still there with him. As long as he has her there, he can, conceivably, say that it's too dangerous to make a move, and I honestly wouldn't put it past him to use a put-on like "keeping her safe for the Messiah" as a reason to stay there himself, if it had ever come down to that. Sara's come to mean too much to him: as much as he tries to insist she's just a girl, she's become in part a sort of a symbol to him that maybe, finally, he can do better. She's the only one who's ever really caused him to step back and reevaluate his life. He's saved her, maybe she can save him, blah blah blah it's three in the morning.
And of course, she's decided to leave.
There are a lot of weird things about their time in these chapters.
This kiss is something of a reprise of the kiss he's introduced with.
--