Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

• I'm Jewish.
• Following from that, all of my faves are Jewish.
  • See: Star Wars, Star Trek.
  • Especially Space Faves, because as we all know, there are many Jews In Space.
• I’m also incapable of writing meta without footnotes; the sub-bullet points are the only way I’m avoiding that, so buckle up, we’re going for a ride.

Part II Subsection 1: Who Died And Made You Boss Of What’s Jewish

• Sophie Kaner is Jewish and they’re Penumbra’s parent, and we all know what that means.
• I could probably write another of these crazy bullet metas about the Jewish subtext in the history of the Second Citadel, but we’re not here to talk about Second Citadel.
• We’re here to talk about Juno Steel!
• Juno Steel is Jewish now, because I said so.
• Some sort of general things in Juno Steel which make it Jewish:
  
  • There’s an entire arc called The Promised Land.
    • This is not even subtle.
  • There are also a lot of Matrilineality Feels in Juno Steel!
    • See Appendix A: Moms Named Sarah, in Chapter 2.

Part II Subsection 2: So, If Juno Steel is Jewish…

• One of the most fun/interesting parts about making a character Jewish is that then you get to think about what their birth portion is!
• Quick lesson in Judaism for any goyim who don't know: 
  • Probably you already know that b’nei (aka bar/bat) mitzvot are a thing.
  • When a kid turns 13, blah blah.
  • Less likely but also possible is that you also know that part of this ceremony is reading a portion of the Torah!
  • What portion this is isn’t random: it’s determined by the Torah portion read in synagogues in the week of your birth; this is based on your birthday in the Hebrew calendar, because Jews read through the Torah following the Jewish year.
    • We read a prescribed section on each Shabbat over the course of the year, moving through from beginning to end (with some divergences to read certain specific sections for certain holidays).
    • Simchat Torah is the festival that celebrates the reading of the last section of the Torah and the rolling back of the scroll to start anew; it happens a few weeks after Rosh Hashanah, the new year.
  • So: your Hebrew birthday decides what your Torah portion is, and it’s pretty significant!
    • I digress again to remind people that the Hebrew calendar doesn’t sync nicely with the Gregorian calendar, so this depends on both the date and the year of your Gregorian birthday.
• Juno Steel’s birthday is (more or less canonically; I’m in denial about RM3 so we’re gonna pretend that’s canon) December 24th, in… some year.
  
  • Unfortunately, without a sensical year, we can’t know 100% for sure what his Hebrew birthday would be. However, this is fandom, which means we can make shit up.
  • Juno was, in 2018 when I wrote this, 38, which means if he were alive in The Actual Present and not some nebulous sci-fi future, he’d have been born in 1980.
  • So: December 24th, 1980.
• December 24th, 1980 was the 17th of Tevet, 5741 according to the Hebrew calendar. This means that Juno Steel’s birth portion would be Parashat Shemot.
  
  • I promise this is important.

Part III: Parashat… What?

Part III Subsection 1: Obnoxious Introduction

• I realize that this name means nothing to anyone not Jewish. Jews however (namely myself) have already started freaking out.
• Parashat Shemot is Exodus 1:1-6:1, the very beginning of the Book of Exodus (aka the Book of Shemot in Hebrew).
  • Shemot means names.
    • This is interesting but not actually relevant.
• Do you know what happens in the beginning of Exodus? Motherfucking Moses.
  • I have some feelings about this.
• Anyone who’s seen The Prince of Egypt knows the basic plot of Parashat Shemot, actually, but I’m going to summarize and also add some detail based on what’s in the Bible.
  • I’m also summarizing for people who haven’t seen the movie.
    • On second thought, if you haven’t watched The Prince of Egypt, go do that right the fuck now. It’s the best movie ever.
  • I’ll talk about stuff that’s relevant to this whole mess that’s movie-specific in Part V: Crying About The Soundtrack.

Part III Subsection 2: Julia Summarizes The Bible, But Not Very Briefly Because Jokes

• If you already know this pretty well, feel free to skip this section or refer back to it as needed.
  • Unless you wanna read the jokes. I think I'm funny.
  • This is all a bit sacrilegious, however. 
    • YMMV.
• OPEN SCENE: EGYPT, LONGASS TIME AGO.
• Pharaoh is in charge of stuff, and has noticed that there are A Lot Of Jews running around. Well, “Israelites”, or “Hebrews”. Whatever, they’re Jews.
  • We’ll go with “Israelites” though, just for accuracy.
• He’s not… particularly happy about Having Lots Of Israelites?
  • This is not an uncommon attitude.
    • See: uh, all of history.
• So he decides, well, let’s have the Israelite midwives (their names are Shifrah and Puah, which are great names; also I guess there are only two midwives for the whole hundreds of Israelite slaves? Sure, that makes sense) kill all the Israelite baby boys being born.
  • They’re pretty reluctant about this, because a) obvious reasons, and b) God’ll probably be mad about it.
  • Fair, in my opinion.
    • Unfortunately Pharaoh doesn’t agree with me, and he makes them.
• Eventually there’s a pause in the baby-killing in the form of a Levite woman (her name is Yocheved) giving birth to a son.
  • She hides him for a while! That stops working after a while though, and she's trying really hard to avoid a "smother your baby to avoid him crying and giving away his existence to the enemy and causing you both to die" situation.
  • So, she takes him down to the river and sets him afloat on a basket, and his sister sort of follows along.
  • Anyone who’s seen the movie is remembering a very vivid and beautiful and stressful as fuck visual sequence right now.
• The baby gets found by the daughter of Pharaoh, who’s objectively a much less shitty person than her father, because even though she can tell just from looking at him that he’s a Israelite child (possibly this is because he is, presumably, circumsized), she decides to not drown him in the river.
  • Thanks, tragically unnamed princess!
• The sister pokes her head up out of the reeds and is like, hey, that’s a Israelite baby, maybe you want a Israelite nurse?
• Sure, says the princess. Sounds cool, random reed child who I’ve never seen before.
• So the sister runs off and finds the baby’s actual mother and is like, hey mom, found a job for you.
  • I’m not fucking with you: this is actually what happens.
• So Pharaoh’s daughter names the baby Moses, and he’s raised by his own damn mother.
  • We’re going to come back to the name Moses. See Part IV: What the Fuck Does Any of This Have to Do with Juno Steel.
• Moses grows up! There’s a massive time-skip in the Bible, which is fine. There’s some fun stuff in Prince of Egypt that partially fills the gap and also leads to Hella Feels, but it’s not like, plot, so we’re gonna skip over it for now.
• Eventually Moses is done growing up, and we get some Important Character Details.
  
  • Namely: he’s always felt a lot of empathy toward the Israelites, who he recognizes as his own people.
  • We’re never explicitly told that Moses was told that he’s a Israelite, but given who his nurse was in the Biblical version, it sort of makes sense that he’d feel a kinship even if he was never made aware of the blood relationship, and it’s also very possible that Yocheved might have revealed his status to him at some point.
  • The Prince of Egypt version is a lot more Fun and Dramatic, but both things work!
• Moses sees a Israelite slave getting beat on by an Egyptian, kills the Egyptian, and hides him in the sand.
  • “Cool,” says Moses. “Definitely gonna get off scot free for that one.”
• Shortly after, he sees two Israelites fighting, and is like, “Don’t do that.”
• One of the guys says, “Fuck you, man, who’re you to judge us and order us around? Gonna kill us like you killed that Egyptian guy?”
  • Not in so many words.
• “Oh shit,” says Moses.
  • It’s at this point that the Bible blithely informs us that Moses did not, in fact, get off scot free, and Pharaoh’s after his head.
• So Moses runs off into the desert so that he doesn’t, y’know, die.
• Eventually he gets thirsty and stops off by a convenient well!
• Some girls are trying to water their sheep (possibly goats? Neither the Bible nor Prince of Egypt do a great job of making it clear what these animals are), but some robbers show up! And try to hassle them!
  • Fortunately, Moses is a Certified Good Dude, and he drives off the robbers and helps them water their sheep.
• The girls go home to their dad, whose name is possibly Reuel and possibly Jethro, depending on what part of the Bible you ask.
  • We’re gonna go with Jethro because it’s more commonly known, I think. Also: cooler.
• Jethro is pretty pleased with the story his daughters tell him about this nice "Egyptian" guy that they met at the well, and he gives Moses a job and also lets him marry his daughter.
  • This is not the first time a Jewish dude has gotten a wife out of hanging out at a well. Wells are great places to be for Jewish dudes all around.
• Anyway, so Moses is a shepherd for a while (this is important because Shepherd of the People), and then one day he’s out in the field and he wanders up onto a mountain and stumbles across a bush, and the bush is on fire.
  • You’d think brush fires would be pretty common in the desert? Shit is hot.
  • But this bush is not actually burning up, even though it’s burning.
• “What the fuck,” says Moses.
• “TAKE OFF YOUR SANDALS,” says God.
• “Oh… my God,” says Moses.
• “YEAH, THAT’S ME,” says God. “I’M HERE TO TELL YOU THAT THE HEBREWS IN EGYPT ARE SAD AND IT’S YOUR JOB TO GO BACK THERE AND TELL PHARAOH TO STOP WITH THE OPPRESSION STUFF, AND TAKE THE ISRAELITES OUT OF EGYPT TO THE LAND FILLED WITH MILK AND HONEY.”
  • I would like to briefly digress to point out that the Israelites have been sad for a while, and have been crying out to God, and it took God this long to remember that, oh yeah, God has a covenant with them. God, please.
• At this point, I imagine Moses gesturing at his sheep, which are theoretically also filled with milk.
• “BETTER MILK,” says God. “ANYWAY THE IMPORTANT PART OF THAT WAS THE OPPRESSION. PLEASE GO SHOUT AT PHARAOH ON MY BEHALF.”
• “I really feel like I’m the wrong choice for this job,” Moses says, probably stuttering.
  
  • This is an important moment to note that Moses has a speech impediment, which would explain in part why he’s so hesitant to deliver the Word of God.
    • The other reason would be, y’know, the obvious.
• “I’M PRETTY CONFIDENT,” God says. 
• “I’m not,” says Moses.
  • There’s an interlude with a snake right around here. Moses is semi-convinced.
• “FINE,” says God. “IF YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST, YOU CAN HAVE AARON, YOUR BROTHER, TO SPEAK FOR YOU, JUST LIKE YOU’RE GOING TO BE SPEAKING FOR ME. BUT SERIOUSLY: THIS IS YOUR JOB, YOU DON’T GET TO PAWN IT OFF ON SOMEONE ELSE. NOW GO.”
• So Moses goes back to Egypt.
  • God had explicitly told him that everyone who wanted to kill him was dead, so that was a relief.
  • He meets up with Aaron on his way into town! They have a big tearful brotherly reunion, even though they’ve never met!
• Moses goes to Pharaoh and makes the very reasonable request of a few days off for the Israelites. They have to go celebrate a festival! God said!
• Pharaoh is not convinced by this, and in fact decides to be a jerk about it: he makes the Israelites do even more work.
  
  • The Israelites blame Moses and Aaron for this.
    • I can see why, but it’s pretty unfair. Anyhow.
• God promises deliverance, and that’s the end of the Parashat.
• Obviously there’s more to the story, like plagues and stuff, but this is all of the Immediately Relevant Plot.
  • Updated to say: All the other stuff is actually also semi-relevant to Juno, but is not within the scope of this specific meta.

Part III Subsection 3: Obnoxious Transition Material

• If you’ve been following along, you will already be seeing some of the parallels and you will surely be eagerly anticipating my analysis. Or maybe you just want me to shut up, in which case, uh, feel free to stop reading any time and come tell me this is boring.
• In any case, time for…

Part IV Subsection 1: Oldtown

• So, tell me if you’ve heard this one before: there’s a town, and it’s run by a person who really doesn’t care about oppressing people if they’re people they think are below them.
  • It’s Pilot. I’m talking about Pilot.
  • But it’s also Pharaoh!
• Oldtown is the slave quarter now, I guess? Anyway: it’s full of oppressed people and whoever’s in charge doesn’t seem to care much about pushing those people around to further their own aims, is what I’m saying.
• Juno has this sort of… dual setting to his childhood. He spent his early days in wealth and comfort, and ended up living in the slums, pretty much.
  • It’s also important, I think, that Juno no longer lives in Oldtown--he’s ‘gotten out’, as it were.
  • This is a reversal of Moses’s situation, but there's still a fairly clear parallel.
• Juno, like Moses, feels this connection to the rougher parts of town, and a certain responsibility for the welfare of the people who otherwise don’t have much recourse.
  • Moses tried to deal with this by intervening in his role as a prince, killing the Egyptian and stopping the fight between the two Israelite men.
    • This doesn’t work, obviously, because it was an inappropriate mode of intervention.
  • Similarly, Juno originally intended to try to help Hyperion City by joining the police force.
  • However, just like Moses, Juno learned that the way to help his people was not by continuing to act in compliance with a corrupt system of authority; instead, he had to strike out on his own.
    • So Juno leaves the HCPD and then later Ramses’s service, and Moses leaves Egypt.
• However, they’re also both in positions of relative power over the groups to which they ultimately belong at this point in the narrative.
  • Moses, obviously, is a prince of Egypt; he’s identified by the Israelites he prevents from fighting as a judge and an overseer.
    • They assume he’ll look down on them, pretty much.
  • Juno, on the other hand, doesn’t have as much of a material leg up on the people of Oldtown. However, his attitude is telling: consider the way he talks to and about his friend Mick.
    • Juno can be very condescending and harsh towards Mick.
  • It’s clear that he feels that he’s ‘escaped’ the sort of… muck of Oldtown, to some degree, and while that doesn’t exactly make him better than those who still live there, he views their situation with more pity than empathy.
• It’s not until Juno and Moses both make their way out into the Desert that they gain a little more perspective on their own relationships to their peoples of origin and the systems of power which oppress those peoples.

Part IV Subsection 2: The Desert

• The Desert is a big significant setting in both the Exodus story and in Juno Steel.
• Both Moses and Juno end up walking away from their homes and the people who need them out into the literal desert, both with little chance for survival but the knowledge that if they stay, they might end up killed (or, in Juno’s case, unwillingly martyred).
  • I think it’s very interesting that they also both literally leave bodies of oppressors/perpetrators of systems of violence buried in the sands behind them: Moses the Egyptian, and Juno both Piranha and Pilot.
  • Essentially: they both flee while feeling persecuted and unsure of their place in relation to the systems of power under which they’d been working, and with the knowledge that in fact they might have been doing more harm than good in trying to work within those systems due to their inherent corruption.
• What happens in the Desert is also important!
  • Namely, both of them get jobs.
    • Good job boys, you’re productive members of society.
• Juno ends up in the employ (er, sort of) of Buddy Aurinko, similar to the way Moses is taken under the wing of Jethro. 
  • These figures are both authorities of semi-mystical power (Buddy’s got reputation; Jethro is a priest) in their remote desert lands, removed from the dominant civilization.
  • Updated to say: So, obviously Buddy's role evolves significantly at the end of S2 and into S3, but at the time she functioned really well as a parallel for Jethro, and I stand by this one.
• I think it’s also important to note that there’s a romantic dimension to both Juno and Moses’s associations with their Desert patrons.
  • Moses ends up married to Jethro’s daughter.
  • Juno’s connection is a little more roundabout - stick with me for a second.
    • Buddy and Vespa’s romance is central to Time Gone By, of course, but Juno isn’t directly involved in it.
    • However, this romance does call back to Juno’s own romantic entanglements.
      • Buddy and Vespa are criminals, a pair of galaxy-trotting thieves and con-artists.
        • We know another one of those.
      • I’ll leave it at that; I’m sure all of us had Feelings about a certain thief during this arc and I don’t want to reach too far.
      • The connection is definitely there, though!
      • Updated to say: That Buddy's connection with Juno is what ultimately reunites him and Peter solidifies this point, I think.
• Lastly, both Moses and Juno come to important realizations about themselves while in the desert working for their new patrons.
  • Moses’s realization is very much to do with his own identity: that he was also a stranger in a strange land in Egypt, and his people are not who he considered them to be.
  • Juno’s, too, is about his identity, but more obliquely: that right at his own core, what he wants is to be able to help people, and that he can.

Part IV Subsection 3: Characterization Stuff

• Since we’re sort of on the topic, let’s talk characterization for a second.
• I’d like to point out that the name “Moses” is given a Hebrew etymology of “to draw out” in the Bible, but it’s apparently also an Egyptian name meaning “give birth”.
  • Juno is, among other things, a goddess of childbirth.
    • Just sayin’. This means literally nothing but I thought it was fun.
  • (Thank you to the footnotes in the New Oxford Annotated Bible, Fourth ed., for that tidbit of information.)
• Both Moses and Juno end up in prophet roles.
  
  • I know Juno hasn’t yet, but given the knowledge he has and the trajectory the story is taking, I’ve got reason to believe that that’s where it’s going.
    • Updated to say: well, it did and it didn’t. I could write Whole Other Meta about this and maybe eventually I will. See Part VII: Season 3 and Onward.
• However, both of them are also both of the belief that they’re not the best person for the job.
  • Moses has a speech impediment; Juno has depression.
  • For the purposes of this narrative, that’s a rough equivalency.
    • I do realize that these are very different things, just let me make a parallel, shh.
• Ultimately these difficulties are overcome and Moses and Juno return to their homes to do the job they’re meant to do, rather than the one they picked up in the interim.
  • Moses goes on God’s command.
  • Juno goes on… Brown Jacket’s bike. We’ll come back to this.

Part IV Subsection 4: The Return Home

• So, Brown Jacket is God.
  • I know, I know, just bear with me.
  • Brown Jacket has been watching over Juno this entire time, and he rescues Juno in the desert.
  • He’s the one who reveals the exact sort of yoke that Juno wears, in the form of the THEIA Spectrum, just as God reminds Moses of the yoke that the Israelites suffer under in Egypt.
  • Brown Jacket brings Juno home more literally than God brings Moses home, but he still does it.
    • Brown Jacket can’t enter Hyperion City, however, because he doesn’t belong there.
      • God is the God of the Israelites, who hail from elsewhere, and this is, in that way, not God’s place.
  • Basically Monster’s Reflection is the whole Burning Bush episode, actually.
    • Juno becomes able to answer the oppression of his people directly via removal of the THEIA Spectrum, just as Moses does with the granting of the Staff of God.
      • There’s a bunch of stuff about lineage, too.
  • Brown Jacket also offers a large amount of sage advice in a cryptic way that somehow still proves to be useful.
    • • • “We may look backward only to ensure that we have not walked this path before.”
        • Sounds pretty fucking Biblical to me, man.
  • And he comments on free will! Thanks, God.
  • It’s also extremely important that God’s name cannot be spoken aloud in Jewish tradition, and who else do we know whose name we don’t get to know.
    • Updated to say: we know his name now, but Juno still doesn’t get to use it, at least not right away. I stand by this one, too.
• So, by way of God’s orders/hoverbike, Moses/Juno returns home to confront his enemy.
  • His name is Ramses.
    • His name is Ramses.
      • His name is Ramses.
        • I FUCKING CAN’T.
• Juno returns to Hyperion to find that, uh, everything has gone to shit in his absence.
  • This is not precisely the same as Moses’s situation, however.
  • I’d argue that there’s a slightly atemporal parallel. 
    • Moses and Aaron make a plea to Pharaoh for the freedom of their people, and in return, Pharaoh only makes the Israelites’ burdens heavier.
    • In the same way, Juno removes his own THEIA Spectrum, granting some measure of freedom… and subsequently, the THEIA Spectrum-bots are unleashed on the populace of Oldtown.
• Juno also reunites with Rita! Beloved Rita. My favourite.
  • Rita is almost definitely Aaron.
    • Aaron is Moses’s peer and spokesperson when he’s unable to advocate for himself, and supports him.
    • Sibling relationship, that one’s always good.
    • In Prince of Egypt, Aaron helps to hold Moses accountable, which is definitely something Rita does for Juno.
  • We also get the same lovely tearful reunion that Moses and Aaron have with Rita and Juno.
• The return is, of course, somewhat incomplete: the story of Exodus really only begins with Moses’s return from Midian and the beginning of his campaign for the freedom of his people, which is the place where Long Way Home leaves off, essentially.
• Also, conveniently, where Parashat Shemot leaves off.

Part IV Subsection 5: More to Come

• Oh man, the plagues.
• I have no idea what Juno’s campaign against Ramses is going to look like, but I’m really fucking excited to find out.
• Updated to say: So... yes and no. This would be an interesting extension of this meta but frankly I do not have the brain for it, so... maybe watch this space to see if I decide to get into it, but for now I have no plans to do so. 
• I would like to assert now that if the narrative does continue to follow and Rita is Aaron, it follows that Mick is going to play the role of Miriam, and may I just say: I’m supremely pleased with that.
• There’s even the parallel of Mick having been around during Juno’s childhood, like Miriam was during Moses’s!
• Look, Miriam is my Hebrew namesake and I love Mick Mercury, I want this parallel to continue just so that I have an excuse to talk about this.
• Updated to say: I actually do stand by this one; Mick is definitely Miriam.

• Gonna talk about Prince of Egypt specific stuff real quick.
• So, Ramses as the name of Pharaoh (Pharaoh v.2, that is, the one of an age of Moses who deals with the plagues and such) comes from the movie.
  • I do like this detail a lot.
  • May I reiterate: HIS NAME IS FUCKING RAMSES.
    • I’m never going to be over how direct that is.
• I absolutely order every single person to go listen to “Through Heaven’s Eyes” and try not to cry about Juno Steel.
  • Have you done it yet?
    • Are you crying?
      • I bet you’re crying.
      • Because I sure am.
• “All I Ever Wanted” is also an interesting song with relation to Juno.
  
  • Obviously the status issue is reversed: Moses sees himself as belonging in the palace at that point, and it shakes him to think he was born to other circumstances; Juno believes that he belongs among the dust and struggle of Hyperion City and doesn’t deserve anything better.
  • However, the meaning of the song still essentially applies.
  • Because we get a reversal from Moses, who realizes that where he belongs isn’t about the circumstances he grew up, I sort of dream of Juno realizing the same.
  • Someone has come to him already and offered to show him a different life, and Juno, over the course of season 2, has also grown enough that he might now be able to claim something better for himself.
  • There’s a reprise of this song in the middle of The Plagues, and I wonder if we’ll get a similar reprise of themes of belonging and history during the Juno/Ramses confrontation.
    • Updated to say: yeah. Yup. Yes. See: Man of the Future pt.1 in particular.

• So, I can’t predict what the next few Juno Steel arcs are going to look like exactly.
• However, I can definitely say that if the coming confrontation is anywhere near as cool as that Ralph Fiennes/Val Kilmer duet, it’s going to be fucking sick.
  • Updated to say: it was indeed extremely fucking sick. The end of S2 is just... so very good.

Part VII: Season 3 and Onward Update

• In hindsight, as of November 2020, I got a number of things right and a number of things... not wrong, but like, I didn't know where they were going and I'm genuinely terrible at speculation, so. There's definitely a lot to be said about Juno-as-Moses in Season 3, especially the introduction of more characters as leaders of the people, the whole "wandering nomads in search of a utopian ideal" thing, just... yeah, there's plenty.
• That said, Season 3 isn't finished yet (and also I haven't listened to Heart of It All), and I'd sort of like to hear the last of it before I do any additional meta on this same theme, and even if I do, I might only tackle MotF and SotP. That said... well, we'll see.
• Perhaps one day this meta will get fleshed out further! Click subscribe, I guess, if you want to see any more of this bullshit.
• Thanks for reading!

Chapter Text

Appendix A: Moms Named Sarah

• Sarah happens to be the name of the wife of Abraham.
• I think it should go pretty much without saying that Sarah the Matriarch is a significantly less shitty mom than Sarah Steel, but there are some interesting literary parallels, specifically with regard to the dynamic of both Sarahs toward the two male children in their households.
• Ishmael is the older son, and not actually hers - he’s the son of Hagar, Sarah’s handmaiden.
  • Sarah was responsible for Ishmael’s birth, because she was the one who arranged for Abraham to get a child on Hagar when she herself proved to be barren.
• Y’all know who Isaac is.
  • Her actual, biological son this time.
• Sarah arranges for the older, less desired son to be sent away.
  • There’s two potential parallels here: both Sarah Steel’s distaste for one of her children (that being Juno), and her eventual killing of Benzaiten, thinking him to be Juno.
    • There’s a comment to be made here that for a long time it was assumed that Juno was the older sibling, until we learned they were twins.
• Eventually, Sarah’s death is caused by her distress at the news that her beloved son Isaac was almost killed.
  • This could again parallel Benzaiten’s death. Sarah Steel either went to prison and then died, or died before reaching prison after her murder of Benzaiten; either way, she did not survive the death of her favoured son, and was survived by the less-favoured child.