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i think there's a lot of analysis that could be done on hbn as a whole but something i find really interesting is how his villainous actions can be directly tied back to his status as a member of the butterfly-bone clan and his experiences with consent
i think there's a lot of analysis that could be done on hbn as a whole but something i find really interesting is how his villainous actions can be directly tied back to his status as a member of the butterfly-bone clan and his experiences with consent
2ha in general goes hard with the idea of how everyone's path to "evil" reflects their experiences and the way they've been treated (i.e. txj's whole "i'll treat you well if you treat me well," showing how personal experiences have a huge impact ideology) but it's also big in hbn
like his experiences as a butterfly-bone demon taught him that his consent essentially doesn't matter because as far as society is concerned, his clan exists to be consumed without any regard for their intelligence, autonomy, or consent
so then his acts as an antagonist also show this disregard for consent, which was taught to him by the way people treated his mother and other clan members (i.e. forcing himself on cwn, implanting the flower in mr, etc--all of it ties back to his disregard for consent)
but something that i find super interesting is how he doesn't see his disregard for consent as necessarily evil? it's just normalized to him. so even though he loves cwn (or claims to, at least), he still had no qualms about implanting the flower in him or forcing himself on cwn
this also implies how he doesn't see love as something that requires proper communication OR consent, which makes him a perfect foil to ranwan's relationship development because that was something they both had to learn!! hbn doesn't think a lack of consent is evil; it just is
i find it interesting how hbn / shi mei 2.0 show a similar character arc to txj / mo ran; the biggest difference between them essentially lies in that while txj's flower of hatred was artificially made by hbn, hbn's "flower" was naturally cultivated by the way society treated him
that's why i really do love shi mei 2.0 so much, the same as i love txj!! it all ties back to meatbun's overarching theme about how experiences shape the intensity of one's anger and negativity, but how different choices and different people can alter the person you become
