listened to juno steel and the long way home yesterday and i have some thoughts on cycles and fiction vs. reality.
i am so obsessed with how andromeda mirrors juno! jack/ramses describes andromeda as someone who "goes it alone", when canonically she actually fought alongside others, and that is so juno coded. some characters think he's a lone wolf (and he sometimes thinks of himself that way too), but where would he be without people like rita, alessandra, mick, buddy, etc? it parallels how in this episode he vocally appreciates rita for all she's done for him.
juno grew up surrounded by turbo and wanting to be as happy-go-lucky and resilient as him, whereas he grew up without andromeda at all. however, his mum created andromeda and his mum created him too and somewhere down the line juno started mirroring andromeda. juno has his mother in him, so of course he can't escape her, but here we see that there are some wonderful things about having parts of her. the magic of andromeda is inadvertently the magic of juno. andromeda's audience see her as a figure of hope, and so do juno's audience.
and ramses, the guy who doesn't understand andromeda, doesn't understand juno either. he tried to mould him into his own personal weapon and he failed, even when juno himself didn't believe he could win. the lack of authenticity in favour of a desperate grapple for power and and the realisation of an ultimately selfish dream means that ramses perpetuates the cycle of harm and guilt that juno struggles so much with.
while juno grapples with the negative parts of this cycle he's survived through his whole life, this episode also sees some positive continuity, as well as some change. he takes care of a bunny(!) and fixes his comm, thinking of rita along the way. in the beginning of the episode he moves forward with jacket, in the end he moves forward with rita, towards a new (and hopefully better) future. juno is our andromeda.
