#I don't know why I'm posting this thought

[thepersonperson]

Why the hell is JJK 270 called Dream's End?

JJK 270 being titled Dream’s End is so fudging ominous. That’s some Umineko type beat. I’m not sure if I should even judge this chapter as presented because of this. In fact, I'm holding off on posting the other analysis I had for today since I no longer am certain of what JJK 268–270 are.

There's two lines of thought I have:

1) Gege suffering from burnout and bad working conditions plus rushing has caused the writing to decline.

2) Gege still has a hidden ace saved for the final chapter and the weird writing is deliberate.

I'm going to humor Option 2, but only because the title of this chapter is called Dream's End.

(The most 'hear me out' discussion under the cut. Using TCB scans and leaks. Click images for captions/citations.)

[Small Update: Follow-up Discussion]

Preface

"Without love it cannot be seen."

This is a phrase and philosophy I have borrowed from Umineko since I've started these JJK yapfests. It essentially boils down to 'discard your negative biases and try to examine things in good faith.'

JJK 268 & 269 have fudging tested that for me. I've been giving Gege and the characters a pretty hard time with the caveat of knowing how exploitative the manga industry is. I initially rejected the idea that these chapters were to be taken at anything other than face-value because of this. In fact, I cited the JJK 268 chapter title of Finale as a reason I've accepted things as is.

And with that same logic, I'm now doing the opposite... So hear me out! I've got some pretty good reasons to be doing this.

What's wrong with JJK 268–270?

There's a lot of things in these chapters that are fundamentally inconsistent with what's been established in throughout the manga. If we use Option 1 to explain these contradictions, these are last second retcons because Gege forgor.

Option 2? We're about to have the rug pulled the hell out from under us because the last 3 chapters have been delusions.

What first tipped me off to something possibly being wrong on purpose was the fate of the incarnated culling game players in JJK 270. Not too long ago it was established that the souls of non-sorcerers in vessels were unsavable.

The souls are suppressed in a way that distorts them permanently or their consciousness is outright destroyed. They were gambling on Megumi's survival due to him being a sorcerer and Sukuna's incarnation method being unique. 99% of them will die and those who survive will likely be vegetables, so why is there a sudden gamble on their survival in JJK 270?

It's such a neat and fine bow to tie this mess up that goes directly against existing lore. It's so ideal that it has me suspicious.

Brain damage from sorcery on non-sorcerers has been established as extremely taxing. I think about Gojo's Unlimited Void (UV) the most when it comes to this. Non-sorcerers were hit by it for 0.2 seconds and required medical intervention for 2 months to fully heal from it. Sukuna, the absolute strongest, tanked some of it and it affected him for the rest of the battle. ...And then we have Megumi who was under it for about 6 minutes and seems to have very little problems from it.

This is bizarre. Someone who underwent the month long bath and UV without Reverse Curse Technique (RCT) should be struggling to even stand after waking up. Sukuna had RCT and the Gojo brain damage still took him out. This screams of inconsistent writing unless...this is a deliberate hint that something is amiss.

I want to draw attention to the panel Megumi's UV damage is addressed. Just about everyone has been seemingly waiting around in the same spot for him to wake up. It's a bit weird given that sorcerers don't usually do that. They usually get a move on asap. And after the destruction of Shinjuku and the Culling Game Players still running about, why would they take a breather to discuss their plans that worked?

But that's not what started bothering me about that panel after reading JJK 270. It's that characters who aren't in the room, start appearing without warning. Look who is behind Maki and to the left. It's Kusakabe. And to her and Yuta's right? Inumaki. So why is it that Hakari, Kiara, and Ino are in Kusakabe's place while Todo spawns where Inumaki is? (And Yuta is facing the wrong direction too.)

That's pretty fudging weird right? You can chalk it up to Gege forgor but it doesn't stop there. Higuruma enters the discussion in a way that causes Yuji to pause.

Why is Yuji surprised to see him? (And where the fudge did he come from?) Shouldn't he know of his survival by now? And why is he in a cast? Higuruma had learned RCT and fully restored his arms before leaving the battlefield. If he's conscious, then he should be able to heal himself fully no problems.

And that got me thinking... Why is Yuji still missing his fingers?

It was established that he kept his fingers unhealed to help with Yuta's plan. This means that if he won, he has no need to keep them missing. Yuji has fully regenerated missing chunks of his face, including his eye, and stomach. He has RCT just like Higuruma. But it doesn't end there either. Yuji's number of fingers on his left hand keeps changing.

4 fingers, 3 fingers, dubious amount of fingers, 5 fingers. Once again, you can chalk it up to Gege forgor, but JJK 270 came out and the same problem started happening with Megumi's scars.

The same mistake is made within the same set of panels and very big page. That's weird.

ONCE AGAIN, you can chalk it up to Gege forgor, but when these errors occur, like with Yuta mistakenly having his ring on in JJK 251, Gege will note the mistake outright. Gege has made no such comments for Yuji's fingers or the scars. This many “errors” in row when Gege has otherwise been careful with these features could indicate it really is on purpose. (Kind of like Sukuna's everchanging mask. The thing was just moving around and pulsing. That was deliberate not inconsistency.)

What does this mean?

I think it means what we are seeing isn't reality. After all, the most common way to tell if you're dreaming is being unable to count the number of fingers on your hands. Another way to tell is the distortion of faces.

Readers have noticed that something is wrong. The weird timeskips, the lack of lasting consequences, design inconsistencies, characters behaving like similes of themselves, death and pain being glossed over like it's nothing. It all feels so off. But it's still close enough to the original to be somewhat believable. ...Is that not what it's like to dream and not know you are dreaming?

Why is it that the chapter titled Dream's End ends with the hunt for a curse user whose ability is to distort the perception of reality?

Dreams and Delusions in JJK

We already know Gege weaves Buddhist symbolism and ideas heavily into JJK. I'm not an expert in Buddhism at all, so there's a lot of it that goes over my head. I decided to look into if dreams are significant in Buddhism and boy howdy are they. Quoted directly from the source:

"Dreams can be a message from a Bodhisattva, an ancestor, or a god, The intent of the dream may be to test the dreamer’s resolve: is he non-retreating (avaivartika) from Bodhi (enlightenment) even when sleeping? The purpose of the dream visit may be to communicate information vital to the dreamer’s well-being. The Buddha himself had five dreams of catastrophes, falling stars and worlds in collision just before his enlightenment. The dreams were sent to him not by a benevolent Dharma-protector, but by an malevolent sorcerer, intent on disrupting the Buddha’s samadhi and preventing his awakening."

In summary, (correct me if I'm wrong) dreams appear to be seen as another state of being just as valuable and impermanent as reality.

There's also this other bit I'll quote directly.

"The most common use of dreams in the literature of the Mahayana, or “Northern School” of Buddhism in China, Tibet, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam is to see dreams as a simile for sunyata, (emptiness) the hollow core at the heart of all component dharmas (things). For example, in the well-known Vajra (Diamond) Sutra, the Buddha taught that:

“All conditioned dharmas, are like a dream, like an illusion, like a bubble, like a shadow, like a dewdrop, like a lightening flash; you should contemplate them thus.”"

That's starting to sound like what Yuji's Domain does, right? He projects memories that did happen and mixes them with delusions and dreams. Sukuna and Megumi both experience this in full.

It's incredibly suspicious that it hasn't been named yet. Yuji is the son of Kenjaku who has a domain based on the Womb Sutra/Realm...which is paired with the aforementioned Diamond Realm to encompass the entire Dharma. It's very likely this is what Yuji's domain is—a realm of dreams and reality combined as one.

Unreality Runs in the Family

When Sasaki Setsuko "wakes up" as the Culling Games begin, Kenjaku explains her situation with this:

What follows is a sequence that cannot be described as a dream. It seems to be a blend of reality and hallucinations. But that's not anything strange, Sukuna does it too with Kashimo in reverse.

As you can see, both the positions of the characters and even the backgrounds change suddenly from reality to ??? and from sequence to sequence. It's all incredibly dream like.

Another strange thing about this space is Kenjaku creating it as a part of an escape route Binding Vow. You know, the kind Sukuna uses for Malevolent Shrine.

What I want to draw attention to here is this reality-dream state somewhat requires consent (in the loosest possible definition) to appear. The person entering this state has to desire it themself. We see this with Jogo and Gojo who are mutually interested in having a relationship of somekind with Sukuna. (Same with Kashimo.)

(It's also very hard to tell if they are dead or still in the process of dying during this.)

This is where the delusions Yuji projects differ. They are forced onto others when he is near death or severely injured, seemingly as a defense mechanism.

And would you look at that...the syntax is identical for Todo and Choso's Brother Yuji Delusions. "At that moment, a memory was born inside X's brain...of a past event that never happened." It's kind of like how Yuji replaces Gojo in Megumi's memory to reach him. It's also very strange that Sukuna, Choso, and Jogo go "What is this?" to this in-between space.

My point here is that Yuji having access to this space has been hinted at since the start of this manga and that it was inherited it by blood. (Totally Not Kenjaku showing up with Takaba Mr. Reality Warping CT in JJK 270 supports my case too I think.)

What does this mean for JJK 268–270?

The battle ended in JJK 268. Of that I'm certain. What I no longer know is if anyone survived.

A common complaint about Sukuna's death is his lack of an afterlife scene. Everything ended so abruptly. And then Megumi wakes up.

It's so jarring in out of place. ...But that's how all scenes involving the space between dreams and reality begin. Sasaki Setsuko "wakes up" once and then again. Most of us have experienced those kind of dreams right? (They made a whole movie about it called Inception which is based on the movie Paprika.)

There's one other thing I need to draw attention to. Yuji's Domain shattered after Sukuna cast Domain Expansion (DE).

When a sorcerer withdraws their domain voluntarily, it does not shatter. Gojo has demonstrated this for us in quite clearly.

When a domain is broken by force, it will shatter and shards will scatter. When a domain is withdrawn, no shards are left behind. Yuta uses these facts as a part of his plan. In JJK 252, it's revealed by Kusakabe that Yuta shatters his own domain on purpose to trick Sukuna into thinking he won.

What this means is that some kind of violent action needs to be taken to shatter a domain. Yuji's domain is massive and his attacks only targeted Sukuna. What could've shattered his domain all at once? He's not had the time to practice shattering parts of it like Yuta.

Gojo has shown us what a uniform domain shattering looks like—it happens when Malevolent Shrine activates. (Please note that the sfx used for Sukuna breaking Gojo's domain is カシャア. It's the same one used for Yuji's domain shattering.)

I'm proposing that we've been in unreality since the end of JJK 266. Sukuna and Yuji are both severely injured, on the verge of death, and have a connection with each other. These are all conditions that trigger the space between dreams and reality.

And I must remind you that Yuji first triggers this event with Todo after a severe head injury. Right before Sukuna casts his domain, they do this to each other.

Everything that has come after has been perfect for Yuji to a unbelievable degree. Everyone whose death was uncertain is alive and the living are getting exactly what they wanted. The effort behind it and the logistics are all missing. And yes a rushed ending can explain that, but that too can be part of the ruse.

Another massive complaint is that mourning has not occurred. Not for Gojo or Choso despite how much Yuji cherished them. It's like they're being willfully forgotten by the cast despite being crucial to their success in Shinjuku. It feels out of character, especially since Yuji is of the few that showed concern for them no matter what.

But if this is a delusion on the brink of death designed to bring happiness, why would Yuji think of the dead? He's always been so avoidant with it. When his grandpa is dying and trying to talk about his parents, Yuji tells him to shut up. When Nanami dies, he thinks of him then and then never again directly leading up to his talk with Sukuna. When Megumi tries to discuss Nobara's fate, Yuji ends the conversation as quickly as possible.

The only people in this world are the ones who may or may not be dead. He saw Yuta in Gojo's corpse. The only way that can happen is if Gojo is dead. Yuji has no choice but to believe it. Choso burned away before his eyes. Yuji has no choice but to believe it. He went through some of Megumi's memories and saw Tsumiki's corpse. Yuji has no choice but to believe it.

And since Tsumiki is the only person Yuji wasn't close with, she's the only death that has been outright acknowledged. But not for too long! That would make Megumi sad.

Another complaint is that Sukuna really didn't kill anyone in the final battle outside of those two and Kashimo. The dudebros call it Disney Kaisen. But the fairytale-like idea that everyone is ok? Todo was the one who put that idea in Yuji's head.

And Yuji has always been one to fall to story-like logic when things look like they're finally wrapping up.

"And then everything will be just fine." (Yuji before the worst possible outcome for both him and Megumi happens.)

This is similar to the line Gakuganji uses in JJK 270. "Everything is fine." This line is the whole reason I sat down and wrote this all out without stopping. I know Gakuganji. He'd never say that. This man has been in a state of worry over Jujutsu Society since his first appearance. He doesn't even fully believe in Gojo's cause as someone who values tradition. He's a stickler for details and will do everything in his power to ensure stability. For him to toss Sukuna and Tengen's remains in a shrine and call it a day? Who is that? He's changed but not that much.

And so I compared the raws.

It is very much the same 大丈夫 (Daijoubu). These are Yuji's words.

What I'm proposing is that JJK 267–270 are Yuji's delusions of the happiest possible ending. It's a picture perfect little end where all the trauma and death has no effect on the living and people move on like nothing happened. I don't know if this means he's dead or if Megumi's dead or if they're all dead. But what I'm seeing now? I don't think it's real.

Reexamining JJK 269

CW: Brief discussion of suicide.

Even if this turns out to be a part of the smokescreen, I'm always going to hate JJK 269. But I do want to give it some grace under the assumption this chapter titled Examination (which can also be translated as Reflection) is about Yuji's guilt. Both him and Megumi's tbh. I think their feelings for each other and their situations are driving these delusions. That's one thing about this space that's real—the feelings behind them.

Yuji has a lot of guilt surrounding his existence after ingesting Sukuna, Megumi does too. Straight up Yuji has been seeking death over it since JJK 9.

He struggles to forgive himself for being the centerpiece to violence he had little to no control over. The only thing that upsets him more than that is knowing that his death will break Megumi's heart. He doesn't want Megumi to feel any guilt for it whatsoever.

The kicker is, Megumi already knows Yuji is planning to die. And he wants to do everything to rid him of that guilt. Up until they connect inside of Yuji's domain, they were unaware they shared the same goal for each other.

And that's what JJK 269 is. It's a very cold and harsh breakdown that allows them to forgive themselves. Blame is passed around and ultimately pinned on a combination of Gojo and Kenjaku. (It's really weird Sukuna isn't blamed either, but that's not the point of this for now.)

Kusakabe's comment is especially harsh. Telling Yuji point blank he should've died and that both sides on the issue were valid? He may have believed that to an extent, but he made a point of not telling it to his face. Why have a whole chapter discussing how kind he is only to turn around and do this?

If this is all a delusion, a manifestation of Yuji's guilt and trying to absolve himself of it for Megumi's sake, that makes sense. This version of Kusakabe is what Yuji feels guilt over the most—Everyone's lives being better if he died.

In the same breath Kusakabe tells them to solely blame the adults. It's very reminiscent of Nanami telling Yuji that being a child is not a sin.

It should also be noted that every single time Megumi tries to apologize for being possessed, he's stopped. Maki tears into Yuta without checking in on him, but she asks if Megumi is ok and tells him to not blame himself. JJK 270 is full of this too. He tries to apologize to Tsumiki at her grave and Shoko tells him not to sweat it. He tries to apologize to Hana and she hits on him instead.

This delusion is crafted out of love. It allows Megumi to live in a world where he can move on from the guilt surrounding his possession and saving Yuji. It's all Yuji has ever wanted for him. And now that Yuji knows Megumi wants him to forgive himself, he has no choice but to do that too.

It's a perfect ending for Megumi that's too good to be true.

It must be a dream...

There's another thing I can't reconcile about JJK 269 unless it's a delusion—Todo's explanation for Yuta's plan. It's another one of those glaring contradictions.

In JJK 269 Todo claims Boogie Woogie can't target Maki. But in JJK 259? Todo makes plans with Mei Mei knowing that it works with her.

Either Todo lied...or Yuji never fully knew the plan and that Boogie Woogie could target Maki. Otherwise she would be dead. Her surviving Sukuna's flames would be impossible.

I've already talked about how Yuji believing those who may or may not be dead are alive is Todo's doing. He's always been the one to save Yuji from his breakdowns. But let's talk about his speech in Shibuya.

"Looking for meaning or logic in death...can at times defile the memories of those we've lost!"

Everyone who has read these past 3 chapters has really felt the defiling of Gojo's memory. And it was all in service to a strange logic that helped them cope with all this death. Acknowledging how massive Gojo's sacrifice was would riddle both Yuji and Megumi with immense guilt, so it's best to ignore it for Megumi's sake. (And perhaps that's why Yuji replaces Gojo in that memory.)

"What have you been entrusted with? You don't need to answer right now. However... Until you find your answer, never stop moving."

In a way, JJK 269 is an answer to the question Todo proposed. Yuji was entrusted with saving Megumi. Saving Megumi requires Megumi and Yuji forgiving themselves. And Yuji won't stop moving until it's done. All these time jumps and rushed developments are Yuji moving Megumi forward. He's getting that happy ending even if it's to the detriment of everything else.

What about Sukuna?

When Sukuna respects his opponents and they have a connection, he gives others these dreams before they pass. He's been very impressed by Megumi since JJK 9. It's not out of the ballpark for him to allow Megumi to die satisfied in the way Gojo did. Yuji also seems to understand that Sukuna was manipulated by others just as much as he was. I think that's why Sukuna is spared of the blame for the most part.

I don't think Sukuna won. He's probably dead. But he did warn Yuji not to underestimate him. I think the worst absolute last fudge you to Yuji he could give is this happy ending dream before ripping it all away as he dies.

In Conclusion...

I'm not sure that we're going to get that happy ending. Reggie Star warned us not too long ago.

"...it all comes down to a sorcerer's lies."

Reggie is a lot like Sukuna here, outwitted by modern sorcerers and dying to someone he loathes. Sukuna is good at tricking people. He let Gojo think he won before tearing it all away. Yuta did the exact same thing to him. Or did he?

"Can you do me a favor? After all, you've killed me. Let fate toy with you, become a clown, then die."

If the last 3 chapters are delusions...Megumi will be playing the part of a clown.

Gege said the manga would end with either 1/4 or 3/4 of Yuji, Megumi, Nobara, and Gojo surviving. This of course, could be changed throughout its development, but Gege said the manga is ending in its original vision. There's a real chance that it's only Yuji or Nobara surviving.

Remember, Gege is a troll first and foremost. Somehow Gojo was revived, but in the worst way possible (Yujo). Somehow Gojo did tell Megumi about Toji, but in the worst way possible (dead man's final letter).

Gege also said this about the final chapter:

"I am working hard to create a final chapter that will (hopefully) satisfy as many people as possible who have supported Jujutsu Kaisen. So everyone, please bear with me!"

I can't think of a better way to appease everyone than by making the last 3 chapters nothing more than dream.

[starlight-library]

Paddock Throuple | OP81 & LN4 (sm!au)

pairing: oscar piastri x reader x lando norris

summary: an insight to the paddocks favorite throuple outside of f1 before a race weekend

warning: none!

fc: none!

oscarpiastri tagged yourusername and landonorris

liked by yourusername, landonorris, yourbestfriend, carlossainz55, arthur_leclerc, and 1.6m others

oscarpiastri this is why lando and y/n need to be supervised when they're together

view all 982,403 comments

user025 LANDOSCARY/N NATION WAKE UP!!!

user842 what are they doing in the first photo?? 😭

user5936 THE PURPLE HOODIE IS SOOO CUTE WHERE IS IT FROM???

↳ user382 i think it's lando's hoodie on his store! ↳ user5936 runNING RN I NEED IT

carlossainz55 is lando trying to...crawl into the game?

↳ oscarpiastri yes but not to shoot since he's bad, the balls got stuck ↳ landonorris RUDE OMG??? ↳ yourusername don't cry cause he's right ↳ carlossainz55 they're right you are not...the best ↳ landonorris THE SLANDER IS--WILD

logansargeant y/n! grab me a coke while you're up there 🙏

↳ yourusername i got you bestie! 💕

user8739 YES OFF TRACK PHOTOS WE'RE SO BACK!!!

yourusername YOU LOVE US AND YOU KNOW IT!!!

↳ landonorris YEAH, WHAT Y/N SAID!! ↳ oscarpiastri just because I love you both, doesn't mean my statement isn't wrong. ↳ landonorris BOOOOOOOO ↳ yourusername 🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅

yourusername tagged oscarpiastri, landonorris, logansargeant and alex_albon

liked by oscarpiastri, landonorris, logansargeant, alex_albon, arthur_leclerc, and 1.1m others

yourusername someone say mclaren & williams double date? 👀

comments on this post has been limited

logansargeant did someone say adventure?

landonorris we should run it back like NOW

alex_albon best night ever!!

arthur_leclerc what is happening in the second photo?

↳ alex_albon lando and oscar trying to hold logan up but it back fired so i came to his rescue ↳ landonorris alex failed at his rescue mission ↳ alex_albon SHUT UP 😫 ↳ logansargeant i think alex did a great job at saving me 🥰 ↳ oscarpiastri well if someone didn't scare us, it would've been a perfect photo ↳ yourusername oops?

charles_leclerc you are all menaces together i love it

↳ landonorris i was about to say we weren't better when streaming 😂

lewishamilton44 did someone win me something?

↳ yourusername yes king 💪💪

oscarpiastri okay i'll admit it, the amusement park was fun

↳ yourusername YES I WIN!!!

landonorris tagged yourusername and oscarpiastri

liked by yourusername, oscarpiastri, alex_albon, arthur_leclerc, carlossainz55, maxverstappen, and 1.6m others

landonorris pre-race date night ft. spiderman 🥵🫢

view all 1.1m comments

user9473 stop y'all are so CUTE 🥹🥹

user34 omg omg I WAS AT THE SAME AQUARIUM AND THOUGHT I WAS INSANE ↳ yourusername not insane! ↳ user34 OMG YOU RESPOND!!!

alex_albon IS THAT SPIDERMAN?!

↳ oscarpiastri yes, yes it is ↳ landonorris met a REAL celebrity today ↳ yourusername ugh soooo upset i missed spidey 😫

user406 THE SPIDERMAN ONE AHAHAHA

user3857 please tell me y/n is coming with y'all to Singapore!! PLEASE!!!

↳ yourusername 🤭

yourusername tagged landonorris and oscarpiastri

liked by landonorris, oscarpiastri, charles_leclerc, alex_albon, arthur_leclerc, maxverstappen, logansargeant and 1.3m others

yourusername pretty boyfriends and prettier helmets 😮‍💨😮‍💨

comments on this post has been limited

maxverstappen i swear they never can agree on the weather

↳ yourusername of course not! one is always too hot and one is always too cold

landonorris i feel like you're only dating us for the helmets

↳ oscarpiastri and the paddock passes ↳ yourusername 😮...what?

logansargeant y/n i got our drinks ready

↳ yourusername LETS GOOOO!!!

landonorris you know i didn't get a good luck kiss

↳ oscarpiastri i second this. how are we suppose to do good without our good luck kiss to start the race weekend? ↳ landonorris we can't ↳ yourusername oh you big babies, i'm coming!!

[animentality]

as some of you know, I was recently banned from a subreddit for 2 full weeks.

and I don't really care because I never ever post on reddit anyway, but I was curious because my response from the mod team was more of an emotional outburst than someone telling me the rules.

so I appealed the ban and very, very politely agreed with their reasoning but asked them if they can explain to me why the ban was so long, since their policy is usually 72 hours.

and they sent me a snarky response.

but you know me. I'm an instigator.

I replied back but in the way I thought would most aggravate a perpetually online reddit dudebro moderator who spends all their time arguing on anime subreddits.

how'd I do?

[fiamat12]

https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGeEEE7Hw/

If every song is an easter egg about L, then explain this ☝️

You asked for it you got it. It's more powerful when you listen to the song and the version Anon provided is great because it has the song playing w/ the lyrics scrolling...

Ok now on to the bones of it:

#1 - This could have no deeper mean. Perhaps N just likes it because she's a CR stan, it mentions Gucci and she was at the Gucci show. I do, however, think N communicates in song and tends to be strategic which leads me to...

#2- N could be giving us another crumb. She keep tracks of sm, and knows that fans suspect L dumped A and is back w/her. The song reflects this sentiment. It talks about someone who is having a meltdown because they're kicked out, has to move back in w/ their parents, is getting called out because they're running their mouth and who is comical w/ the way they've burned bridges. I believe that is about A. But, there's more...

#3- In my previous posts, I talked about no evidence of A living w/ L. I still think she wasn't in the sense of being a live in gf, and I'll tell you why. These lines in particular:

"Wishing you the best in the worst way

Using your distress as foreplay

Six months since April and I'm doing better

No need to be hateful in your fake Gucci sweater"

I believe L friendzoned A back in late March/ early April (I have several previous posts on this) and A didn't take it well. We could see L & N getting closer and A getting more desperate. By papgate, things took a nasty turn; we can only speculate why L had to let A stick around, but it was likely to protect his & N's reputations, w/ A having an expiration date.

#4 - Now, six months later, A has expired and L & N are the ones doing better after whatever she put them through has come to end. Karma has come back to bite A as she tries to get back on her feet and her public image suffers. Thank goodness BTON folk are good ppl and wish her well on her way out... don't we now?!?

#5 - I could be totally wrong! This could be about someone else entirely or no one at all, which one may consider 🤔

Note: I do see there is a lyric about dating 18 yr olds. I don't think it applies as no song perfectly parallels. A is 23 so that would be more her age but I don't think it refers to L or anyone else N has dated since none of the other lyrics align.

Let's hear your thoughts... !!!

Lyrics below ⏬️

https://g.co/kgs/j1CzoDw

We broke up on a Tuesday

Kicked me out with the rent paid

Ruined my credit, stole my cute aesthetic

Who knew that we'd let it get this bad when it ended

It's comical, bridges you burn

If karma's real, hope it's your turn

I heard from Katie you're losing it lately

Moved back with your parents and date girls who are 18

It's hot when you have a meltdown

In the front of your house and you're getting kicked out

It's hot when you're drinking downtown

And you're getting called out 'cause you're running your mouth

Oh, God

And it's coming around, yeah, it's coming around

Yeah, it's coming around, oh, God

Oh, God

People say I'm jealous, but my kink is watching

You ruin your life, you losing your mind, you dyeing your hair

People say I'm jealous, but my kink is watching

You crashing your car, you breaking your heart, you thinking I care

People say I'm jealous, but my kink is karma

Wishing you the best in the worst way

Using your distress as foreplay

Six months since April and I'm doing better

No need to be hateful in your fake Gucci sweater

But it's hot when you have a meltdown

In the front of your house and you're getting kicked out

It's hot when you're drinking downtown

And you're getting called out 'cause you're running your mouth

Oh, God

And it's coming around, yeah, it's coming around

Yeah, it's coming around, oh, God

Oh, God

People say I'm jealous, but my kink is watching

You ruin your life, you losing your mind, you dyeing your hair

People say I'm jealous, but my kink is watching

You crashing your car, you breaking your heart, you thinking I care

People say I'm jealous, but my kink is karma

It's hot when you're going through hell

And you're hating yourself, I'm feeling myself

It's hot when you know that you're caught

And you're getting pissed off, it's getting me off

It's hot, it's hot, oh god, oh god, oh god

People say I'm jealous, but my kink is watching

You ruin your life, you losing your mind, you dyeing your hair (your hair)

People say I'm jealous, but my kink is watching

You crashing your car, you breaking your heart, you thinking I care

People say I'm jealous, but my kink is karma

[leviathan-supersystem]

i know this is quite an open-ended question, so apologies in advance, but as a marxist-leninist what are your main issues with post-modernism/post-structuralism as a school of thought? from libs to anarchists, lots of (so-called) progressives/leftists seem to really enjoy it, but its reception is a far less positive among communists/marxists from what i gather. what are your thoughts on it, and on the work of people like foucault, deleuze, guattari, or even more recent ones like judith butler etc? once again sorry if this is too open-ended, but i really value your insight on politics and philosophy etc etc.

well, to be clear i do think there are some good critiques which have come out of the post-modernist camps, and consequently i would consider myself more of a neo-modernist than a classical modernist, as i do think mdernism as a concept needs to be updated in response to post-modernist critiques.

at it's best, post-modernism offers genuinely useful critiques of the limits of our ability to know things, genuine good points about the inherently fuzzy and indefinable boundaries of any system of categories that human beings could ever create.

at it's worst, post-modernism rejects the very notion that there's a material world that we can understand, and rejects the very notion of categories as a whole. once it crosses the boundary into this sort of solipsism is utterly useless to me.

ultimately once post-modernism crosses the boundary into this sort of solipsism- which it often does- it becomes completely incompatible with marxism, which is fundamentally based on the notion that there is a material world and we can learn things about it. no, we can never know things with 100% certainty, but we can know with better than 0% certainty

i really love deleuze and guattari's Capitalism and Schizophrenia, but ultimately i think it's more of a piece of poetry than a piece of real scientific theory. and i do believe, fundamentally, that the approach to analyzing capitalism must be a scientific one.

i'm not very fond of foucault at all, because frankly i'm a bit of a panopticon apologist. these sorts of "panopticons" are just part of living in a group with other people, and while i certainly think there are points to be made about how these sort of systems of sousveilance need to be regulated in order for them to not be excessive and harmful, but ultimately these sorts of regulations on those systems are themselves enforced by social systems of sousveilance. so for example, the idea of taking pictures of people in public and posting them online, i agree that there should be social conventions discouraging that behavior- but inevitably these social conventions are enforced through similar "panopticon" style social systems- that when someone sees someone posting a creepshot online, the observers collectively disincentivize that behavior, tell them "dude don't take pictures of random people in public and post them online to talk shit about them you dick" etc. anyways, that's why i don't think the foucaultian persective on "panopticons" is particularly useful though i agree that obviously those social systems exist.

[shiroxichigo]

Ichigo gets a lot of shit (typically from outside of the Bleach fandom) for being a character whose wants/goals never change from beginning to end of his series. He always wants to protect people (and even though I could argue that he went from only wanting to protect those close to him to wanting to protect everyone he can, that's not the point I'm making with this post).

I think a lot of people who only give Bleach a passing glance fail to see Ichigo's true character growth. It's not about what his goals are or who he's trying to protect, but rather, it's about how he achieves it.

Ichigo is very self-sacrificing in the first third of Bleach. He believes that if the mission is successful, then it doesn't matter how broken or close to death he gets. The mission, saving Rukia (and hurting/killing as few people in the process), is all that matters.

Then, when a part of himself (his inner hollow) emerges, and says "hey yeah no, I'm not letting you get yourself killed and I'm also not letting you hold back against your enemy", Ichigo immediately rejects it.

It's not until he defeats his inner Hollow that we see Ichigo really dive into a fight with the intent to kill. The problem is, once his Hollow is defeated, he thinks that's it. He's freed himself of that part of him and he can go back to being self-sacrificing.

We see this throughout the Hueco Mundo arc. It's why saving Orihime parallels saving Rukia. Ichigo naively thinks he can suppress a part of himself. He bottles it up until it explodes, coming back to haunt him in his fight with Ulquiorra, etc. He learns that side of himself isn't so easily tucked away, and if he recklessly endangers himself, he could end up endangering his friends too. At his own hand, no less.

Then Ichigo discovers he can commit the ultimate sacrifice. Final Getsuga Tenshou. He can throw away these powers and the parts of himself that he doesn't like, and he can get rid of Aizen all in one go. He's lucky that it worked, but only because Kisuke was there.

Then, once Ichigo is powerless, he learns that's not what he really wants. Life doesn't "go back to normal". The can is open, and there's danger out there beyond just Aizen. And Ichigo can't do anything to stop it unless he gets his powers back.

So he does. Then he cuts down the threat to his friends and family. And he doesn't hesitate this time. Yes, he still has compassion for his enemies (he even goes to the Soul Society to ask for Ginjo's body so he can give him a proper burial), but he's learned not to hold back and he's learned that new threats will appear and he'd rather have the power to face them head on.

So then comes TYBW, and Ichigo is facing battles head-on without hesitation. He goes straight to the "bad guys" with the intention of cutting them down. He learns the truth about who his Inner Hollow is, and he accepts it. He's even willing to accept whatever consequences may come from training in the Royal Palace and becoming stronger. He accepts his power and potential fully, and learns that he has what it takes to protect his loved ones with his strength, and not with a sacrifice.

Ultimately, he heals the part of himself that thinks his life is worth less than other people's. He heals the part of himself that blames himself for not protecting his mother (when he was 9!! Like come on Isshin, put the kid in therapy!! Anyway...) He grows into someone who knows his self worth. And I think, for me at least, that makes him one of my favourite protagonists of all time. Because can't most of us relate to feeling worthless at times? And don't we also wanna overcome that?

Thanks for reading my ramble lmao, I'm sure this could have been more elegantly written but I'm very sleepy and just wanted to get my thoughts out there.

[kopfkino-o]

it's been a minute since i did some theory rambling and i've got a long train ride ahead of me so let's get at it! this is more of a general elain post but there is some pro elriel thinking sprinkled in. thanks for reading!!

was Elain blessed by the Mother so she might cure the corrupted Cauldron? are there two primordial forces warring within it? does Elain have the power of Life? bear with me while i ramble about all this.

warning: the following thoughts probably aren't cohesive lol.

okay but does anyone else think that there's a small part of the Mother, the original creator, left within the Cauldron and that's what recognized and loved Elain? Like a part of me thinks that some aspect of the Mother remains locked away or maybe weakened by what the Asteri did to the Cauldron that recognized the inherent goodness in Elain and that's why she was "blessed."

What if the last lingering ember of the Mother's will recognized Elain's gentle heart, her brave soul, and gifted her with the power to break the corruption and restore the order of things?

"Her gaze shifted to the carved wooden rose she’d placed upon the mantel, half-hidden in the shadows beside a figurine of a supple-bodied female, her upraised arms clasping a full moon between them. Some sort of primal goddess—perhaps even the Mother herself. Nesta hadn’t let herself dwell on why she’d felt the need to set the rose there." - ACOSF, as told from Nesta's point of view.

SARAH, GIRL I SEE YOU!!!

We know that Elain is associated with roses from the description of her drawer, her love of gardening, from Feyre telling us that Elain would trim the roses without gloves and get thorns in her hands, amongst other associations. Nesta placing a symbol associated with Elain next to this primordial goddess figurine, PERHAPS EVEN THE MOTHER HERSELF, feels just so...prophetic. It's like Nesta is almost passing the mantle of being the storyteller or the FMC on to Elain. And maybe even hinting at what's to come.

BLESSID. BELOVED. BENEVOLENT.

Okay. So back to the Cauldron, the Mother, all that. We know Nesta took something from the Cauldron (but this is a post for another day) and that Elain was given something. We know that Elain is a seer, blessed with the gift of foresight and clairvoyance, though we don't exactly know what the innerworkings of this sort of magic are.

But what if Sight wasn't the only gift Elain was given?

My theory is that Elain was given the gift of Life by the remaining aspect of the Mother to counter/compliment the power of Death Nesta stole from the corrupted aspect of the Cauldron--or the power of the Asteri, which I think might also be the power of Deanna from the Throne of Glass World (but again, that's a post for another day). And I can't help but think that, for the gentler grower of things, this theorized "Life magic" would manifest in the form of earth/soil/plant manipulation. We saw this in HOFAS with the official introduction of earth based magic and it has me thinking!!

And with that thinking, I'm wondering if the lingering essence of the Mother might have blessed Elain with these powers in the hopes that she would be able to master them, in the same way the Nesta mastered the power she claimed, and help finally banish the corruption from the force of the Cauldron. I've got a little headcanon that all three sisters will have some role in this but it needs to stew a bit more lol. And what if Elain's bond has some roll in all of this?

A THREAD TIDED TO A RIB

I don't want to speak for everyone, but to me there's something off about Lucien and Elain's bond. He is able to live far away from her with seemingly no issue. She shrinks into herself when he's around. Lucien just seems...sad whenever the bond is mentioned. Could this be the result of the same awkward/push-pull tension that we saw between Nessian and Feysand? Maybe.

But what if it's because SJM Is using them to show us what a "Cauldron-given bond" looks like? Rhys theorizes about the bonds in ACOWAR and brings up a very interesting comment:

"There is choice. And sometimes, yes—the bond picks poorly. Sometimes, the bond is nothing more than some … preordained guesswork at who will provide the strongest offspring. At its basest level, it’s perhaps only that. Some natural function, not an indication of true, paired souls.” A smile at me—at the rareness, perhaps, of what we had. “Even so,” Rhys went on, “there will always be a … tug. For the females, it is usually easier to ignore, but the males … It can drive them mad. It is their burden to fight through, but some believe they are entitled to the female. Even after the bond is rejected, they see her as belonging to them. Sometimes they return to challenge the male she chooses for herself. Sometimes it ends in death. It is savage, and it is ugly, and it mercifully does not happen often, but … Many mated pairs will try to make it work, believing the Cauldron selected them for a reason. Only years later will they realize that perhaps the pairing was not ideal in spirit.”

IM SORRY BUT IS THAT NOT SARAH SCREAMING AT US?

Sometimes the bond picks poorly! She gives us TWO examples of this with Rhys's and Tam's parents. Two bonds that I think were CAULDRON GIVEN bonds. Then, as a foil to this, she gives us Nessian and Feysand. Vivienne and Kallias. Three bonds gifted by the Mother--the primordial being, the gentle creator of things. Could this be Silba from the TOG world? Kythona from Crescent City? Is she Wyrd? And could the Mother have given both Elain and Lucien other bonds--blessed bonds--that are currently being surpressed by the corrupted bonds bestowed on them by the Cauldron?

Personally (and especially after HOFAS) I think the Cauldron's corruption needs to be addressed. And I think Elain is the one to do it. Her entire character is steeped in themes of choice, fate vs freewill, destiny vs self-actualization, and gods, the set up for an AMAZING story is right there.

TO CLOSE THIS MADNESS OUT

I can't say what SJM will do in the end. But I can theorize based on the last few books and the foreshadowing she's lain. And for me, I see the angsty, unprecedented chosen love story she's building between Elain and Azriel with a rejected mating bond incorporated into the heart of their love story. Could she change the direction of her books and abandon this? Absolutely. But I think the story would be so much worse for it. The crumbs for something amazing are there. The crumbs for something that has the potential to be genre-defying is there. And based on what Sarah commented to the Times, I can't help but she's knows this and can't help but write it.

ok bye thanks for reading!! i'd love to talk more about this to anyone else who is down to yap! dms are always open.

[polarisjisung]

LOVE ON THE COURT | 20 ... WITH BENEFITS??

SYNOPSIS | every college student has their struggles, but raising her younger brother has Y/N top of the list, struggling her way through college whilst balancing her academics and basketball captaincy is difficult no doubt and with Jaemin, her ex best friend and captain of the guys basketball team, and his growing one sided hatred towards her, it doesn't seem to be getting any easier

WARNINGS | swearing, sexual innuendos, kys/kms jokes, y/n has daddy issues for the sake of the plot

NOTES | I have no idea why this update took me so long to post I'm so sorry 😭 I don't like making chapters like this too sad (don't worry there's still gonna be some angsty chapters) but I don't want the written stuff on its own bcs that feels too espresso depresso or wtv the phrase is so this is a bit of a longer chap than usual.. anyways if ever you feel bad for y/n, don't worry you're gonna feel worse

19:21, dinner the night before

Y/n shuffles in her seat.

Jaemin greets her with a smile, and though she offers one back, that sinking feeling in her stomach doesn't seem to settle.

Suddenly now that she finds herself face to face with her once best friend, no menus in hand since they'd already given their orders, no way to avoid conversation for just a couple seconds longer, Y/n finds herself at a loss for words.

What was anyone supposed to say in this situation?

Sure a thank you would be ideal, considering Jaemin had somehow managed the impossible, but the words escaped her. Like they rested at the tip of her tongue but she lacked the drive to speak them.

It's not that y/n wasn't grateful, no, she wouldn't be here if she wasn't, in fact she didn't know what it was, what confused her so deeply that she sat there silently. Her thumbs twiddling against one another, as she stared down at the table in front of her.

There was a nagging whisper in her mind, one that cast shadows over her once clear thoughts, leaving her in that haze of uncertainty that she recognised all too well. Recently it was all she could feel around the captain.

Something about this situation in particular makes her palms sweaty and the hairs stand on her neck, every glance at Jaemin feeling like a shadow of what had once been, a reminder of how it had all been lost.

Even just sitting opposite Jaemin isn't simple.

Not at all.

It's like sitting across from a mirror that once reflected shared laughter and secrets, now distorted by fractures of lost trust and unspoken words. She supposed that was the thing about mirrors and shattering. No matter how hard you tried to glue the pieces back together, it would never quite be the same.

Perhaps that's why y/n is lousy in her attempts, grateful to Jaemin but unbothered to express it. The thought that no matter how desperately she hoped, this couldn't be restored. That there was no point in pouring energy into a friendship that would never be resolved.

"So" it's undoubtedly jaemin who breaks the silence, a soft tone to his voice, not quite as gentle as the other night but still warm "are you feeling better? like really okay?"

For a moment she wonders whether she'll break at the sound of his voice like she always had. Would she go back to that point in life where it was so easy to lie, so easy to say she was okay, so easy to pretend, in front of everyone else but never in front of him.

"I'm fine, honestly." She lies.

There's a shy sheepish smile that creeps across her lips and slightly accents her words

Jaemin hasn't seen much of her positivity be directed his way, and seeing this ignites the little hope in him that they could move on from this, from everything.

"You didn't have to work on it without me you know, it was just as much my project as it was yours and you putting in all the effort isn't fair on you."

"You did most of the preliminary stuff anyways, and I really didn't want to ask you because of the other night" Jaemin finally admits, though not willingly, his words extracted more so by her sharp stare and the cold atmosphere.

"Right..." Her attempts at changing the subject, clearly in vain— he really needed to stop asking about the other night. Y/n wasn't sure how much h longer she could hold back the tears, the looming feeling of inadequacy as a guardian still strong. She should have been more careful.

She knows its her turn to speak, opening her mouth to do so.

But again, y/n struggles.

The words play hide and seek in her mind, leaving her to grasp at empty. The atmosphere grows heavy with the weight of unspoken words. Her mind races, a jumble of what to say, thoughts of how easy conversation once was, how effortless it had been, all such a stark contrast to now.

Jaemin watches, a mix of intrigue and concern in his eyes as she contemplates in front of him, quiet but with an expression that spoke volumes.

The silence between them seems to bite louder than any conversation they once held, each dish in front, a reminder of the bitter aftertaste of a friendship turned cold.

"It's just Minjun and I" she breathes out, voice shaky, and Jaemin realises that those nervous cues in her slumped posture and shaking hands had never changed "It's just been the two of us for a while" she whispered. "That's why I was so scared"

Jaemin's hand hovers uncertainly beneath the table, unsure if the gesture would be welcomed or misunderstood, caught in the delicate balance of care and concern.

Admittedly, Jaemin catches himself slightly intrigued, still confused what could have lead to her practically perfectly family turning into this.

But he knows better than to let his curiosity get the best of him.

He wants to stop her, tell her that whatever it is that causes her brows to knit together and her pretty eyes to gloss over isn't something she needs to force herself to talk about, but he doesn't know how.

For a moment he's kicking himself under the table— how had he ever let go of the person who meant so much to him?

Even now, knowing everything she had done, he couldnt help but question why hadn't he tried to get past it then?

At the sight of her downcast features suddenly everything that he once despised her for seemed so trivial.

Jaemin sees himself, a younger, less mature version that stands on the court, hair matted to his forehead from the rain, a ball long forgotten somewhere behind him, cold, betrayed, and so painfully alone. Those burning tear stained cheeks, the harsh whistles of wind, the bitter feeling of failure still clinging to his skin, he remembers it all.

But every feeling he recalls so well, so vividly, is so easily dismissed when her eyes shine with a painful tint, red from the piercing tears that she holds in them.

"My dad" she cuts him off, gaze now avoidant as he grabbed her cold hands in his, "he walked out on us not long after ...whatever hapenned between you and me. He never came back, didn't answer a single call, not even a text, no form of communication except the papers he sent in the mail so I could become Junnie's legal guardian."

I missed you, she wanted to say. I needed you she'd liked to add.

"That's why it's just the two of us now" she said instead, trying to find more words to stop the tears from flowing, like her words were the only thing that could hold them back.

Back then, Y/n remembers vividly the feeling of wanting to fall, to sink, to drown but still somehow keeping her head above the surface to hold on and stay strong for her younger brother. She wondered if Jaemin had been there, would it have been easier? Would she have let herself fall, would she have someone to give her a hand, to pick her back up again and hold her hand through it all? Would things have ended differently?

"I'm sorry" his words weren't new, they weren't special, they were the same as what everybody else would say but the fact that they came from him, Na Jaemin who now stood by her side with his arms wrapped around her, was enough to dissolve the feeling of emptiness.

08:25 present time

Y/n looks over at Minjun, still deep in slumber, smiling before she steps out of the room.

There's way too many toys sprawled out across the living room floor, a blanket she finds herself folding as she subconsciously begins to clean up. Her eyes land on the kitchen counter, wondering what to make for breakfast. She was never particularly good at cooking, but she'd been learning for her brothers sake.

When she gets to the black jacket resting over the couch, it hits her. She catches sight of her puffy eyes in the mirror, and a hand runs through her hair hurriedly.

"Why the fuck did I tell him all of that" she let's out a frustrated sigh, running her hands across her face, "I'm supposed to hate him" she reminds herself, though her tone isn't convincing in the slightest.

"You don't hate him though" Heeseung's voice comes out muffled, the toothbrush between his lips making it difficult to understand his words.

He had been the one to stay over last night, her friends still taking turns to accompany Minjun and her every night since he'd walked out of the apartment, a gesture that made her heart swell. Although up until now she was pretty certain he was still asleep. Clearly not.

"I can't hate him" she sighs, falling back into the couch "is it bad I want to be friends with him again?" she asks, even though Heeseung had retreated to the bathroom to finish brushing his teeth.

Regardless he pokes his head out into the hallway, a sly smirk across his lips "with benefits?"

Y/n rolls her eyes.

He emerges again not long after, smiling from ear to ear "no y/n it's not bad if you want to be friends again" he takes a seat beside her "you can only fight your feelings for so long, let yourself be vulnerable, take the risk and try again" he says, hands resting on both his knees.

"and if you're feeling really risky, you can always—"

"shut up Heeseung" she smiles, lightly pushing against his arm "I guess it is worth a shot though"

"he's right next door anyways so sneaking around won't be hard at all"

"I meant being friends. Just friends." she stands up, walking over to the kitchen "you down for pancakes?"

He nods.

"You know it could be good though, he's hot, you're hot, there's enough tension to make things interesting and it ticks your not ready for a relationship box pretty well too"

Despite the pointed look the captain offers him, Heeseung doesn't let up, and secretly, she wouldn't have it any other way.

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[zayne-li]

Frozen Blood

Cross posted on ao3

Rating: Mature (for violence and blood)

Length: 3.3k

Pairing: Zayne/MC (not explicitly, but it's implied)

Warnings: Angst, hurt/little comfort, blood, violence, MC goes into shock, character death

Anyway what if dawnbreaker turned into an abomination and we had to do a boss fight against him by ourselves

--

His hand is nearly frozen in your own, and it feels different than the way it normally does when his Evol is acting up. It's not cold like ice, it's cold like death, though he's still breathing, albeit shallowly.

“Zayne,” you're almost desperate as you squeeze his fingers. He may not be your Zayne, but that thought is the furthest thing from your mind right now, because he's right here in front of you, and you have never, never seen him in this much pain. The black crystals spreading from his palm, to wrist, to surely his arms and possibly more beneath the black coat looks almost like frostbite, painful and bleeding because you know that the ice is not external. It's internal. Its source is his heart, and it seemingly can no longer be contained within, trying to scrape and tear its way out of his body. “Zayne listen to me.”

Thus far his eyes have been unable to meet yours, fixed on the ground like he's afraid to look at you. But at your insistence, they flicker up towards you, dark and almost lifeless, with none of the spark you're used to seeing. He says nothing, and instead tries to pull his hand from yours. You don't allow it, tightening your grip, trying to have enough faith and determination for the both of you, because this Zayne… since you found him just a few days ago, seems like he's given up far before he ever met you.

“I'm going to resonate with you–”

“No.” He is firm as he says it, and tries once again to pull his hand from yours.

“It's going to–”

”No.” This time it's more broken, and he sets his jaw, physically moving further away, as much as he can from his seated position. “It's too late. I don’t want to hurt you.”

The blackened crystals beneath his clothes are spreading, faster than before, you can tell by the way he whimpers and looks back away. His breath is visible in the unnatural frigid air around the two of you.

And then… a sharp cry from his lips at the same time as you watch one of the crystals shoot out from somewhere between his ribs. The crack is sickening, wet, and the crystal brings with it a torrent of blood. Zayne doubles over, and in your own shock, is finally able to yank his hand from you own as he curls it around his abdomen, face contorting into a grimace.

Panic wells up in your chest, sticking to your throat as your eyes go wide, and you see another shard burst from his hunched back, the angle making it almost look at though he’s been impaled all the way through. Crimson red drips from the jagged tip, staining his clothes an even darker black, and plopping far too loudly onto the pavement. It echoes in your ears as his breath shudders, crackling in his lungs with every inhale. Labored. It’s like he can’t seem to get enough air.

“Zayne, let me–”

”Get away from me. Now.” It’s almost a snarl, weakened only by the shaking of his voice. His eyes find yours only long enough for him to try and get his point across, like some kind of wounded animal.

Your own breath is growing faster, terror like you’ve never felt tightening in your chest, your vision narrowing down only into this moment, and it’s like you’re frozen. A pit settles in your stomach as your mind races.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t. I don’t know what to do. What do I do? My Zayne would know. He would be calm. Why can’t I…?

You blink hard a few times, trying to calm your breathing, your ears swimming with the sound of dripping blood and another sharp, agonized cry as Zayne lurches away from you, onto all fours, his arms shaking as another crystal tears its way out of his body, this time right from the center of his chest. His breathing starts to sound wet. Did it puncture a lung?

And then, a different kind of horror grips your heart as you hear the oh so familiar sound of his evol, like a bright burst in your vision, though the makeshift dagger of ice looks more like the black shards piercing his body than the brilliant, clear blue you know so well. Zayne sets his jaw, teeth grinding together as he twists it in his grip. He’s holding it so tightly you see a drop of blood squeeze from between his fingers.

He’s pointing it at himself.

“Don’t–Zayne!” You lunge for him as you realize what he’s about to do, grabbing his wrist with both of your hands in an attempt to stop him, which he hadn’t seemed to have expected, and as a result the two of you come crashing down onto your sides on the pavement, his eyes wide with shock and likely more pain from the impact. Almost immediately they squeeze shut as his brows pull together, and the ice in his hand fades away in a puff of frost. “What the hell do you think you’re doing!?” You want to shake him, you feel sick, this has to be a nightmare, this can’t– this can’t be real.

“I–nnnh– I told you,” His voice still holds that growl that you’re entirely unused to, having never heard the Zayne you know speak in such a tone, “It’s too late, you need…” He sucks in a wet, gurgling breath, and you instinctively move back up onto your knees as his back arches, the sickening crack of bone making you flinch as you watch another crystal force its way through his stomach and ribs. Your vision is starting to blur with tears you didn’t know you were crying, and angrily, you wipe them away. Now is not the time. You need to be calm. Collected. You need to fucking do something.

Anything.

He’s weaker now, and so distracted by the pain in his body that he is incapable of resisting the way he had before when you place a hand on his shoulder and try to resonate with him. Below you, he’s almost seizing, his muscles contracting and releasing as he curls in on himself, like an animal trying to protect its wound. The fingernails on his other hand scrape against the road and start to bleed, though it’s hard to tell with the pool already spreading beneath him.

Where you can normally feel the rising tide of energy from him, raging and at times almost overwhelming as you siphon some of the backlash from his evol, now…

You feel nothing.

Why can’t you feel anything?

Is it… What is this? What’s happening?

“Get away.... Please.” Zayne’s voice has grown weaker. He’s begging you.

“I’m not leaving you, Zayne, why can’t I resonate with you?!” Your fear starts to morph into rage. Anger at him, for not explaining what the hell is going on, anger at yourself, for being too useless to help him before it got to this point, and anger at fate itself, for bringing you both here, to this point in time.

“Because I’m not–”

He never gets to finish that sentence. Instead, his words morph into an unbearable scream of pure agony, the sort of sound you’ve only heard from the dying. It chills you to your very core in a way that snow and ice never could.

Later, you’ll realize that those were the last words you ever heard from him.

As a human.

But as the sound of his scream starts to warp, you realize his body is changing too. More black shards of the horrific crystals pierce through his skin, one after another, blood pooling around his twitching body until his clothes are torn to shreds, and you realize that the very shape of him is being distorted, twisted into something alien. Something you recognize all too well.

Pure shock keeps you rooted there, on your knees beside him as you watch it happen right before your eyes.

The look on his face in that moment is something that will haunt you for an eternity, you think, half covered in the shimmering, rocklike material that is indicative of… Your brain can hardly process what it is you’re seeing.

And then the screaming stops, though it continues to echo in your ears for seconds afterwards still. He starts to stand. First with one heavy hand on the ground, clunking onto the pavement. Then up onto a knee. The crack of bones and the sound of his shallow breath can no longer be heard. The only thing left of him is one side of his face as his form continues to twist minutely. It’s contorted in blank, empty rage.

You scramble back, rolling over to avoid a shard of ice the Wanderer tosses at you as it comes up to its full height. Even taller than Zayne had been. Using the momentum, you push yourself up onto your own feet and run a few steps away, though you don’t want to leave your back exposed for too long. The sound of its heavy feet sound behind you as it takes slow steps forward, and without thinking, you grab for the sword at your side, bouncing against your thigh.

Your mind becomes utterly blank, every thought erased as shock and adrenaline has your limbs taking over without any conscious thought. It’s entirely muscle memory. You’ve done this a thousand times. You know exactly what to do.

“Because I’m not–”

You drop into your stance, legs shoulder length apart, knees bent, sword held in front of you, and duck as the Wanderer aims another ice spike at your head. Okay. For now, its movements are sluggish. Is that because it’s not finished transforming yet?

“Get away.... Please.”

It puts both hands out in front of itself, rocky and grey, glowing blue light showing through the cracks, claws long and sharp, and a torrent of small icicles fly towards you, forcing you to step to the side, and slowly, it continues to advance. The one hazel eye you can still see does not blink, staring at you with an unseeing gaze, the human half of its mouth twisting almost like it's trying to say something. What could it possibly have to say?

“It's too late. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Your heart pounds in your chest, banging against your ribcage. You force yourself to take deeper breaths, realizing that you’re nearly hyperventilating. Underneath your feet is the pool of his blood, splashing as you twist to the side to avoid another attack, forced to bat away one of the shards with the flat of your blade.

What am I supposed to do?

You can’t keep asking yourself that question. You need to act. You know what you have to do.

He’s–it’s getting closer, inexorable, immovable. Its attacks are coming faster now, ice forming beneath your feet as if to trip you, or possibly to trap you, distracting you from the icicles that speed past you as you dance away. The blood on the pavement is frozen. There’s something meaningful in that you realize, but before you can pursue that thought any further, your brain shoves it out of sight.

Right now you need to survive.

One grazes your thigh, tearing your clothes and leaving a razor thin cut that stings more from the cold than the pain. The Wanderer starts to form a blizzard around the both of you, obscuring your vision, and you’ve kept so much distance between you and him–it, that in the swirling snowflakes whipping past, you can barely see it anymore. Is it using the blizzard to camouflage itself? How?

You twist around, trying to remain alert, to catch sight of it, and though you hear it coming, you fail to react in time as one of its freezing daggers embeds itself into your side. You roar. Not from pain, but from frustration.

“If… If I end up doing something that hurts you… Don’t go easy on me.”

There.

You see it, in the artificial storm, a vague shadow, the rocky form covered entirely in snow, helping it blend in. It seems to realize that it's been found, because it roars, an ugly sound, and you match it, holding your sword up near your face, over your shoulder as both of you charge towards one another. Your blow is sweeping, from above your head and down to your opposite hip, catching on its arm as it forms a barrier of ice to protect itself, though your strength is enough to have it cracking off.

There’s no more hesitation. You immediately strike again, stepping back with one leg and then forward again to put more force behind the stab you aim right at its chest, pulsing with a glowing blue light that acts almost as a bullseye. The Wanderer roars in pain and stumbles, And without thinking, you pull back, easily stowing your sword back in your sheath as you realize you’ve been given an opening. Your feet find their stance with ease as you reach for the energy you’re so used to drawing from, familiar as breathing while one arm stretches out in front of you, and the other pulls back as if to shoot a bow. Too late, you realize you’ve made a grave mistake. There’s no one here to resonate with. The Wanderer takes advantage of your lapse in judgment and shoots another volley of tiny, piercing icicles at you, forcing you to roll to the side, but it's also spread a thin layer of ice at your feet, and you slip to the ground, the icicle in your side lodging deeper and causing you to scream.

Frost bursts from the Wanderers palm shoots forward and starts to trap your foot onto the ground, in its ice. The other hand shoots more spikes at you, which you narrowly manage to throw off with the flat of your blade once more. You can’t avoid all of them though, and your skin stings where they manage to graze you, a few embedding themselves into your arms.

It looms over you. Terrifying and beautiful. You can’t get your foot free. Your evol is useless when you’re alone.

And you’ve never felt that more than at this moment.

”Zayne–” You don’t know what to do. His eye flashes with brief recognition, and then it’s gone again. You can’t recognize him. You just wish–

Something whizzes past your head, making your hair flutter with the wind it causes.

The Wanderer is forced back.

There’s another blow.

You’re not sure what you’re seeing, but after a second it registers.

Embedded in the glow of its chest is an icicle.

Blue.

Clear.

Your breath catches in your throat.

There are footsteps behind you. Like someone running. All the while more and more shards of ice are flung almost haphazardly at the Wanderer, and it continues to grow weaker, unable to fight back much with the force of the barrage being forced upon it.

It drops to a knee.

One of the icicles hits it in the head. And then another.

It makes a sound almost like pain, and it’s close enough to you as it starts to sag down further that you’re almost making eye contact with that single hazel eye, though it still seems as if it’s more… Looking past you than at you.

You swallow thickly and reach for your sword with nearly trembling hands, sticky with blood, and before you can falter, you pull it out and scream as you slice through its neck.

The Wanderer lists forward, like it's about to fall on top of you, but disappears in a burst of sparks before it actually does. The only thing left behind are the particles in the air that float like tiny stars, and the brilliant cerulean Protocore at your feet, dropping onto the road right on top of a puddle of frozen blood.

There’s bile in your throat. You can almost taste it.

The footsteps come to a stop, and you don’t realize anyone is in front of you until he’s right in your field of vision, kneeling down and taking your shoulders in large, warm palms.

“Hey, hey can you hear me?” The voice is so familiar…

Your vision blurs and you blink away the tears as you look at Zayne. Intact. Right in front of you.

You must be hallucinating.

You’re too exhausted to care, the strength in your limbs failing you as you almost go limp. He quickly adjusts to hold you securely in his arms, and were you more aware of your surroundings, you might notice him examining you for injuries, his lips thinning as he takes the state of you in.

“... I just need you to nod if you can hear my voice.” He sounds faraway, like he’s speaking to you through water, or a wall maybe.

Though you’re not sure what the point is, you nod weakly, and that at least seems to lessen some of the tension in his shoulders. The hallucination of Zayne moves into a squat beside you and hooks one arm around your shoulders, and the other beneath your knees, lifting you with ease, his expression determined and certainly worried.

He feels warm. You clutch at the fabric of his coat, and curl into his chest, barely aware of wherever it is that he’s taking you. He doesn’t ask what happened, though he’d like to. His first and foremost priority is making sure you’re okay.

“... The Protocore…” You manage, your voice rasping as you blink and realize it's still back there, on the road. Zayne’s mouth twists, you see a muscle twitch in his jaw.

“That doesn’t matter right now. Let’s get you patched up first.”

“Zayne, please.” Your voice is small, and pleading, and it causes him to pause for a moment, looking down at you with a concerned, puzzled expression. He doesn’t know why something that insignificant would matter to you right now.

His arms tighten their hold on you, and he stops in his tracks, taking in the distressed look on your face. He seems to be fighting his need to ensure your safety, and his natural obedience to your whims. You must not have gone far yet, because he turns and only takes a few steps before it comes back into your field of vision. You start to squirm in his arms, and reluctantly, he sets you down. Yes, you’re injured, and in a severe state of shock, but you’re not incapable of standing. Your brain is still blocking any pain that you should be feeling.

Zayne watches on in confusion, brows furrowed as you bend down to pick up the blue Protocore, looking at it like it’s something delicate and precious, held carefully in both of your palms.

“Okay… We can go.” There’s not much emotion in your voice, but you refuse to relinquish it as you lean into Zayne’s side, one of his large palms wrapped around your waist in case you need his support as you both head towards his car, parked not far away.

He doesn’t ask… Not yet… But the eerie sight of that Wanderer has the question lingering on the tip of his tongue as he gently settles you into the passenger seat and then reaches into his backseat for a first aid kit. Zayne efficiently and tenderly cleans and dresses your wounds for you, the Protocore glowing ominously between the two of you, and more than once he finds himself glancing at it.

... Who was that?

He’s afraid he doesn’t even need to ask to know the answer.

[thoughtsonkm]

Goodbye, for now

BABY? HONEY? BOYFRIEND SHOT? Jikook you're too much!

This episode was truly the best way to end the show, maybe even the best episode of the series. (Neck in neck with episode 2 of course) The way they enjoyed it so much but were also so sad it was over. The hot tension all around, the soft boyfriends mood who can't stop flirting and name calling each other with the most low-key couple-like sweet names. They could not stop laughing, they could not stop touching and they couldn't stop being hilarious without even trying.

~

SK Spotify daily chart end of November 2023 :

Jimin Jungkook Jimin Jungkook Jimin Jimin

~

It would be such a full circle moment if Jimin posted the boyfriend photo (which won't happen). Would almost be like a soft launch of some sort.

Not the underwear too?? Gosh I love my little gay freaks!! (didn't understand why Jimin would quote their 'yet another inner joke meme' right at that moment but I've learned to not question their inner workings)

~

Sorry but i have to be pretty one last time and say that I kinda had enough of seeing so much from the crew around or even in Jikook's shots and angles. It breaks the fourth wall a little too much and ruins the whole bubble idea. Ok I'm done lol

~

Returning to the issue at hand, the "seeing the beds for the first time" scene keeps getting funnier and funnier. As if they don't already have designated sides of the bed 😏

~

Ah the never ending bickering gives me life. Peep the half korean half english talk when they playfully get on each others nerves 👀😂

I better not speak on the scuzzi jacuzzi shenanigans cause otherwise.. Let's just say the photo speaks for itself..

NO YOU KNOW WHAT IMMA SPEAK. We all know that jacuzzi time is always intimate, relaxing and personal for people that's why I wish Jikook had enjoyed it fully without cameras. Yes I'm pissed on their behalf, that they had to film the whole thing with 382929 different angles. lol

His face is literally saying "oh so you're really gonna make me do it huh? if I was in your place I would've folded immediately and would've never let you go through with it!!" 😂

~

No one ever:

Jikook every 2sec : HONEY OH HONEY

(I was actually listening to the song while writing this and idk why it's so funny to me even tho it's a sad love ballad)

~

They must've loved getting the chance to at least see one episode of the show, plus the idea of watching it together..

Jungkook being so entertained by it meanwhile Jimin being mortified about half of the things that happened. HILARIOUS

HAHAHHAHAHA all parties were concerned if they'd be able to pull it off, I can't

BEST BELIEVE they're always gonna find a way to touch. Consciously or unconsciously.

~

This show made me realize that my favourite thing ever is Jk making food for Jimin, then making him hysterically laugh and therefore getting to hear Jimin's adorable giggles.

~

"Hello it is I the one and only, the only one who can touch Jimin's head ble ble ble ble" - JK

Jk was like: How can you imagine Jimin without me in your dream? Are you crazy? What is this delusional dream world you live in Jin hyung??

~

Tbh it's so meaningful and a huge thing saying that these trips were literally the best trips of your life. I think the statement almost went over people's heads.

I can't get enough of Jimin looking pretty and cuddly and Jungkook's immediate thought being: I HAVE TO FILM YOU

Them saying they can do a reboot when they come back gave me some hope that maybe just maybe this is not the end of AYS 😭

The ending bonus clip left me fulfilled but also sad and with goosebumps all over.

Thank you Jimin & Jungkook for letting us peek into this trip and getting to witness some of your precious moments.

Signing off, J&J 🥹

Ps. So I'm guessing the 52 minute video that comes with the photobook is probably the 3 bts videos combined that they've been reviewing for 48392 months right?

[stormblessed95]

Watching Are You Sure?! EP 7

A reminder of how I do these reaction posts as I watch things. I just write my reactions and thoughts down literally they happen. Think more of a bullet point format. I'll include links when I can to videos, thanks to the people who twt who upload clips. And at the end, I'll do a better wrap up of all my opinions. I hope everyone enjoyed the show so far!!

Not this show starting off with a mistaken identity trip!! Lol Jimin saying that he only went snowboarding once before and it was with JK. And JK was so confused. You could see him searching the files in his brain lmfao. Jimin's oh wait! I went with your friends 😂😂 okay, just hanging out with JKs friends on your own? It's giving couple. I can't lie. I'm sorry. What in the best friend?! 😂😂 I loved the facial expressions and the way Jimin buried his face into Jungkookie there too

Jimin listening to hate you. And JKs why are you listening to that? Jimin: because I like it 😳 lmao I agree Jimin, it was abrupt 😂😂

Their appreciation for their crew is 😍😍

Jk dozing off to Jimin's softly singing. It's giving the same vibes as that one run episode that he dozed off to Jimin's ASMR. Idk what that's giving exactly.... But it's giving *something* and you know what it is

"this is our last moment of relaxation. I love it" 😭

Not JK just chopping at his hair like that. Oh baby lol don't look at me like this is my fault!! It's okay, fucking up your hair and needing to make it much shorter than originally planned is a life right of passage lol

Not JKs haircut transporting Jimin back in time 10 years 😂😂😂

The staff giggling and immediately taking photos 😂 BTS are their babies lol

Jimin hurting himself and shouting oh shit 😂😂 the subtitles trying to sensor him without bleeping his actual words 😂🤣 subtitles should be accurate above all else people! Cmon! Lol

Jimin moaning and groaning while transferring tubs, sitting on the edge, etc and JK just looks like he is enjoying the show the whole time. There is so much ass on display in the shorts they are wearing in this whole scene. Where is the decorum?! Lol!

Turning off the cameras to shower together before the Jacuzzi. Very innocent, but sounds like it could be so not 🤣😂

JKs faces when trying to handle to cold tub 😂😂

"feel how cold I am" better translated to "just hug me once" and the immediate hug and the hand placement to feel the cold? Yeah okay 🤣

Anyone remember the emojis over the barest slips of tummy during anything? Now they are showing them wash themselves and rub their own muscles in a cold tub and show off flexing to the camera. What the fuck Hybe 🤣🤣🤣

Soundproof Sauna to their matching PJs and eating a whole feast 🥰

The way they giggle together is my favorite thing

JK watching Jimin making his this crab is so good video so endeared 🥰😂😍

Jimin insisted on JK trying the shrimp too because it was so amazing instead of eating the last of the shrimp even though he loved it so much. And JK sharing half his urchin with Jimin because it was so yummy. Cute. They are so precious to each other

Jimin wants seconds, JK says it's a bad idea. They order seconds 😂😂😂

I both love and hate watching them eat. Because I think watching people eat is gross and I stand by that. Lol but they love it so much and look so happy, I also just enjoy seeing them enjoy themselves. It's a complicated mix of emotions I experience 😂

The trend continues of brushing their teeth together. Jimin, the mischief maker, kicks JK during their teeth brushing?? Lol and takes a selfie of them too. Share it please?

"I'm going to pass out after this, especially if we get massages" JK " we are getting massages?!" No lmfao you silly goose, that was 100% Jimin hinting at wanting a massage 😂🤣😂🤣

Not them being super sleepy, yet still annoying each other on purpose by flashing lights at each other 😂

Jimin asking JK if he is too hot, probably knowing already he gets too hot at night. But instead of changing the temperature when he did wake up too hot, knowing Jimin was comfy with how it was, JK just moved to the living room. And Jimin waking him up by so softly petting his head 🥺🥺🥺

Are they advertising sunscreen? Lol it worked. I wanted to go get some 😂😂

Jimin fighting for his LIFE in the shower. Wtf was happening?!! Lmao and JK finishing up his breakfast before going into the bathroom to shower while Jimin was still in the shower it sounded like. Lol ALRIGHT. Hope you both enjoyed said shower I guess 😅😂🤣

Why are we play fighting while getting dressed boys?! Lmao

Jimin starting a pretend photoshoot with the ski jacket and gear. Absolutely, yes please

Jimin is such a good boyfriend bringing JKs jacket back out to him

Jimin just enjoying sitting in the car while JK goes in to order 😂😂 good for him! JK telling him he only ordered food for himself and none for Jimin, only to say "here is our food" when it arrived 😂 what a jokester lol

Jimin feeding Jungkook while he is driving 🥺

Jimin joking about an AYS OST. Please please please give it to us though for real

Singing random love songs for a game! Where JK interrupted Jimin singing the line "the person I love is gone" to sing "I love you" three times lol okay got it

The way JK always stops to just stare at Jimin until he gets his reaction to whatever he is doing or wearing is always so cute. Especially because he always smiles so cutely after Jimin gives him his desired compliment 💜❤️

JK adjusting Jimin's googles for him 🥺

The way that JK checks in on Jimin first to make sure he is actually okay before teasing him about being scared lol it's sweet and cute

The hysterical cut of JK shredding down the slope to Jimin laying in the snow 😂😂😂😂 Jimin and his staff member literally falling over each other 🤣🤣🤣 I'm dying lmao!

Jimin ditching his helmet with how often he falls is stressing me out lmfao he looks gorgeous though!

Skiing would be fun too he says, turning to Jimin with a hopefully sparkle in his eyes that he knows Jimin can't say no to. Camera cuts to them on skis 😂 JK, I love and adore you. Never change

Wrap up thoughts:

They showered/bathed together 3 times in one episode and thats insane. Lmao whatever guys 😂 this was just an excellent episode showcasing their closeness, their intimacy, their silliness, their individuality and their soft spoken nature with each other. It showed the way they consistently consider each other, what the other wants and needs. I don't think I have anything to expand on from what I've already said above. I really loved this episode. Fully plan on the last episode making me cry.

All purple links in my post go back to @dstdes with video clips of the moment being talked about. I did use a few twitter clips as well, sorry. Thanks for reading!

[ringsreforged]

Natalie's *deep* Haladriel thoughts - BEWARE

Pau - When you read this later, let me know if you want me to move it to my personal account, yeah? If it even still exists...

I’m not really sure what this post is going to end up being. A defence of the show and the separation? In part! A critique of the show based off leak spoilers and my own gut feeling? For sure! A desperate ramble in an attempt to get my head in order? Absolutely!

I will say before we dive in that I’m absolutely a Haladriel shipper, but the way I ship isn’t always in line with fandom. I ship what I see as part of the narrative because it’s the narrative, and everything else is a bonus. I make this distinction because I think this is why I’m so okay with a lack of scenes when some others are not, and I don’t want to come across preachy. I don't think I'm in any way superior for this by the way. In fact, I wish I could be more *normal*!!!!

If you came to this show for Haladriel alone, and simply want to see them share scenes week to week – that’s your prerogative. I’m not trying to say you shouldn’t feel that way. What I might try to say is that I don’t think that makes the shows bad or suggests that the writers have baited with this relationship. I think that’s ultimately what I find frustrating…

But anyway, let’s get into whatever this is. A reflection on expectations, a five-season arc, and those STUPID spoiler leaks…

AND THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. STAY AWAY. HISS.

Alright, so this post is mostly brought to you by a sinking feeling I have that the leak spoilers are real. Because everything in that episode 7 promo matches up.

STOP READING if you don’t want to know the spoilers. And honestly? STOP READING IF YOU THINK YOU WANT TO KNOW because living with this knowledge has truly made this season less enjoyable for me (credit to it, then, because I still think it’s incredible). IF I’M MAKING YOU PANIC, STILL STOP READING because there very much is a world where these spoilers aren’t that bad in context…but I prefer to keep my expectations low…

Have you gone???

HAVE YOU GONE?????

SPOILER TALK

Okay.

So, the leak spoilers say that there is no kiss between Sauron and Galadriel (which, honestly, I have no great issue with – more to come on that later). Instead, the kiss is ELROND AND GALADRIEL, and I absolutely do take issue with this.

I can only hope and PRAY that it works in context, but I can’t get my head around it. And yet, the promo…it’s all falling into place. Elrond will be sent to discuss terms with the orcs before the battle. He’ll see Galadriel in chains, and he’ll ask for a moment to say goodbye. Adar will allow it because he’s a gent like that. This is where we get the chin touch with the thumb everyone speculated over and then…HE LEANS IN AND KISSES HER TO PUT A NEEDLE IN HER MOUTH? SO SHE CAN RELEASE HERSELF LATER??

To clarify, most of this is my spec, but THE KISS TO PASS HER A NEEDLE IS A REAL LEAKED SPOILER THAT NO LONGER SEEMS FAKE.

It's just…so convoluted and weird??? Does he store needles in his mouth like a squirrel? Why couldn’t he have slipped the needle into her hand??? WHY ARE YOU PUTTING ELROND’S LIPS ON GALADRIEL’S?

And look, maybe this spoiler IS still fake! But the details were so specific, and everything about the context seems to be accurate, so that feels like it would be a bonkers coincidence to me. Maybe when we actually see it play out, it will be fine.

But that does bring me back to the Haladriel of it all, just briefly. With my whole heart, I do not need them to kiss. After season 1, I didn’t think it would be possible, and I’m okay with that. But if you’re willing to let ELROND’S lips touch her, then MY GOD, you could have let Haladriel have ONE kiss where she’s trying to distract him or some shit. OOF.

My only relief is that it happens next week, so we can hopefully get it out of our systems and enjoy the finale.

That said, if these leaks are true then that also means the finale leaks are true. Now, I actually never wanted to see any of these spoilers (hence me making it VERY CLEAR what this post is about, because I wouldn’t inflict this stress on anyone unwillingly), so once I got the Elrond kiss details, I tried to get away without seeing much else. But there was some information on the big Haladriel scene.

I’m actually not going to detail it here, because – overall – I think we’ll still super enjoy it (just…lower those kiss expectations) AND because I don’t think all of it was spoiled. At the end of the day, there will be plenty to unpack, they’ll be back on our screens, it will be meaty, it will be layered. I’m really looking forward to it, in general.

My one fear is that it’s a season 1 finale repeat. And again, that won’t necessarily be bad per se, but it will feel a little bit underwhelming. Now, I’m not somebody that wants a true corruption arc for Galadriel. Normally, I love that shit, but not in this IP and not with this character. I want to see her explore her darkness, I want to see her face it and accept it, and I certainly want to see her be tempted…but I don’t expect or believe we'll ever actually get the whole ‘dark queen of Mordor’ vibe. Prisoner? Maybe. But not an actual dark queen.

That said…surely this scene doesn’t play out the EXACT same way as season 1? Sauron shows her a vision, she’s tempted, but ultimately resists and tells him she’ll never be at his side. I just don’t get why we’d repeat that, when there are so many other options that still keep Gal on the side of light.

I keep coming back to Galadriel’s line to Elrond in episode 4 – when it comes down to it, he has to choose to defeat Sauron and sacrifice her. I feel like if I hadn’t seen the leaks, then I would be 1000% expecting this to be the outcome. Especially with how Elrond’s theme comes in at the end of The Last Temptation track. He comes upon the confrontation but chooses to do the thing that will harm Sauron in the long run, rather than the thing that will save Galadriel.

I hope so badly for this, but I do worry that it will go the other way. What if it parallels Gandalfanger’s destiny/friend choice, and Elrond chooses her because THAT is how light wins or some shit? Not that this will be a bad scene by any stretch – I love their relationship and want to see their FRIENDSHIP (grrrr) reforged…but, again, the S1 finale! Sauron left her in the water, and Elrond was there to save her.

There’s also Galadriel’s conversation with Adar in the most recent episode – you succumbed, I resisted – but I guess this could go either way? He succumbed, so she resists. She insists she’s able to resist, so she succumbs. URGH. MY HEAD.

There MUST be a difference. SURELY??? Like, this season has been so well written…I just can’t comprehend the copy and paste.

Again, this isn’t anything close to a deal breaker for me. I firmly believe the showrunners when they say this relationship will remain the core of the show, but…hmmm. Okay, on that note…

DAMAGE CONTROL – MOVING ONTO THE DEFENCE OF THE SHOW

So, this is where I want to get into some stuff that I just…don’t agree with that I’ve seen being thrown at the show by shippers. And I’ll reiterate here that I’m truly not telling anybody what to feel. You can hate the show for its choices and feel how you feel. You can express yourself in your social media spaces, and if anybody doesn’t like it they can mute/block/unfollow. This chunk isn’t really aimed at you guys.

This is more for other people like me, because I’m cursed to be somebody that generally wants to just…enjoy things for what they are, while also being susceptible to the mood of others. I want to scroll tags and have a good time, rather than see negativity because it lowers my mood (this isn’t just ship related by the way, I really love this show overall…it’s just this tag that has been impacting my mood most this season). Regardless of the nonsense that might be in episode 7, and even if the finale scene is a repeat of S1, I’m still going to want to focus on enjoying what we get, enjoying the narrative being told etc. So, for those of you that have a little sinking feeling in your gut after the first half of this post, hopefully this second half will help.

This isn’t a ‘typical’ ship. This is a true ENEMIES ARE ENEMIES dynamic where the bad boy is ultimately going to be (is already) pure evil, and where our heroine is the embodiment of light. There are certain things that we just have to accept when it comes to loving this dynamic as part of the show – there will never be another season like season 1. Nor should there be?

Do I wish for s3 to have them in close proximity for at least a few episodes? Of course! Do I think it’s possible with or without finale spoilers? Absolutely (given how quickly characters travel from place to place on this show, they could end the season at opposite ends of Middle Earth and this would still be on the cards…). I’m also anticipating Season 4 as a good time for them to be in full MIND PALACE mode – where the rings are all ringing, but Galadriel hasn’t yet worked out how to shut him out yet. By season 5, there might just be one final scene before the final battle. But, again, I really do think there needs to be a little bit of acceptance of that. Or, at least, expectation of it.

Something I really want to push back against is this idea that Haladriel was baited or teased, but the writers don’t actually care for it. Honestly, that’s nonsense to me on a couple of levels.

First of all, almost EVERY dynamic this season has been reduced to a handful of scenes here and there. The most consistent relationships have probably been Annatar and Celebrimbor, and Durin+Durin+Disa (off the top of my head). Elrond and Durin (probably the other most popular dynamic of S1) have been apart all season, Elrond and Galadriel have too. Isildur popped up to say hello and we might not see him again.

When you actually stop and look at this season…Sauron and Galadriel had to be separated. She could not be anywhere near him while he’s working Celebrimbor, and there’s no world in which they were ever going to change that narrative. And yet, the Sauron and Galadriel dynamic has been consistent across the season. With Galadriel predominantly (and depending on how the finale goes, I may have thoughts on this), but it has also been easier with her because people have talked with her openly about Sauron. It’s been harder on his side, but the fact that Mirdania seems to have been cast to look like Galadriel honestly – right now – feels like it was done with the express purpose of giving Sauron a Galadriel reference.

Again, I’m not saying you have to like the lack of scenes, but it’s not bad writing to respect the overarching narrative of an ensemble show. Galadriel’s season has been all about him, and we’ve had countless insights to make that clear – building up to their final confrontation. If Sauron was running around mentioning Galadriel every five seconds with Celebrimbor or with the dwarves, it would be horrendously out of character.

This next comment is…somewhat dependent on the finale…but as somebody that loves Elendil and Miriel, everything in Numenor has been somewhat crammed in. I would firmly argue that the Galadriel/Sauron dynamic across this season has been treated with care and reverence, all building to a climax designed as the high point of the season. Will we be 100% satisfied? Who can say! But it IS what the season is building to.

I think this brings me around to a particular gripe I have, and maybe the people that believe this came to the show after S1 had fully aired or something…but there’s this idea floating around that the showrunners don’t like this dynamic and are just giving it crumbs to bait people into watching. This makes me want to scream.

These showrunners literally took a few lines about Galadriel being tempted by Sauron and PITCHED THE ENTIRE SHOW OFF OF THAT. The Tolkien estate wasn’t only pitched by Amazon BUT CHOSE THIS PITCH OVER ANYTHING ELSE. Season 1 was written pretty much like a prologue centred around GALADRIEL AND SAURON HAVING A PERSONAL CONNECTION WITH ROMANTIC UNDERTONES…and guess what?

They wrote all that…they filmed ALL THAT…before knowing anything about the audience reaction! That was ALL the showrunners, the writers, the directors, the actors. They ARE the narrative. They are not bait.

Does that mean the fundamentals of their dynamic will always please you, individually? No, of course not. Some people want outright romance, some people want soft Sauron, some people want Dark Galadriel. Will they kiss? I doubt it. Do I wish they would? Sure! Will they be separated again next season? Probably! Will I also wish that they could at least be stuck together for a run of episodes again? Absolutely!

But the idea that any of this is bait, or unimportant to the show drives me a little bit bonkers.

I guess my personal feeling of frustration comes from the fact that I feel so lucky they are exploring this show from the perspective of this dynamic, regardless of specific details/scenes. I’d bet my house (I don’t own a house) that every other pitch hinged on Elendil or Isildur as the protagonists of the show. Now, I love those dudes, but just IMAGINE? The fact that we’re on this path at all is still WILD to me.

ANYWAY, this is what happens when Paulina goes on holiday and I have nobody to ramble too. Sorry for the explosion, but I’ve been dreading the stupid kiss spoiler since I stumbled on it after EPISODE BLOODY 3 and so I needed to vent somewhere.

TL;DR: You are welcome to feel the way you feel, and if you hate everything you go right ahead, but maybe this makes sense to somebody. IDK. IDK.

[triangle-dog]

TW pet death

(Not one of mine, don't worry. You won't miss anything if you skip this post.)

I will always and forever be a collar and tags person (or, look, if you are really concerned about strangulation then a harness & tags person or a breakaway collar or whatever). Microchips are great, all my beasts are microchiped, but if one of them gets out I want to be able to find them and bring them home no matter what has happened to them.

Two years ago, almost exactly I think, friends and I were three miles into a beautiful autumn hike with the dogs. The leaves were turning, the wildlife was active, and there was a crisp breeze. We rounded a corner and immediately saw a body floating out on the lake, a dog, its long black fur drifting back and forth in the small waves. After some deliberation on what to do, and if it was safe, I waded out to the dog while the others in the party held our dogs way back from the lake in case the water was bad. He wasn't that far out really, but it felt like it took forever to get there because I was fervently hoping he'd have tags. I could actually feel the relief wash over me when I got there and saw patches of blue collar peeking out between the drifting fur.

I towed him into the shallows by the collar. I'm the most familiar with bodies, which is why I was the one who went out to him, and I know that they age differently in the water but by my judgment he'd died farily recently - less than a day ago. When he's in close enough to shore that I don't think he'll drift away any time soon, I unclip his collar and return to the group. We sit down and strategize for a few minutes. How do you make a call like that without raising their hopes? (Answer: you can't - just the phone ringing will be enough).

"I'm very sorry," I say, "but I found a dog in the lake and I thought you would want to know." She tells me she was half expecting a call like this, that the gate didn't latch correctly and both dogs got out but only one came home. She tells me that they were so worried he wouldn't be able to find his way home in the storm last night. She tells me he was very old, that his mind had been going for awhile now. She tells me that most of his life, until the last few years as his body became less able to manage the walk, they would come down to a beach near here and that he loved to swim. She tells me she hopes he at least got to relive those memories for a bit before he went.

I give her the coordinates, it's not too far from a road if you bushwhack - certainly less than the 3mi we did, and tell her we'll bring him to shore. I pick him up out of the shallows, he feels frail, yet he's so so heavy from the weight of the water in his fur. He's much smaller than Nova, yet lifting Nova has never felt like that. I lay him gently on the rocky beach in what I hope is a natural looking, less-traumatizing-to-the-kids position. I clip his collar back on, with the fur no longer drifting around in the water obscuring it, you can now see the little tag saying "Poochie" on the front. We head back the way we came. That was walk enough for all of us, it would feel wrong to seek a different ending, and it was an out and back trail anyway.

Ever since then, every dead cat or dog I see reminds me of those lakeside discussions. We are all overly dedicated animal people, we're fully aware of microchips and all of our own pets are microchiped, but carrying a waterlogged body 3mi to the car to drive it to the vet's office was just not feasible - I don't think it would occur to most people that that was even an option. Even if they did think of it, most people would be opposed to putting a dead animal in their vehicle. I'm just gonna make it easy on people and put my phone number on my animals.

(Sorry, that post was so much longer than it needed to be, but my brain must have recorded that experience in a different kind of memory than usual because it is so so clear and comes all as a set like that so that's what you got too)

TLDR: OP found a dead dog once and has big feelings about it. Put collars/etc. on your pets

[mixelation]

*devil on your shoulder voice* what if you went into a really detailed rant about why you hate the earth is space australia posts

>:(

common themes i don't like:

"oooh humans scawwy because PREDATORS" - shut the fuck up. you're being childish. are you aware that YOU are also prey in the right circumstances? predator-prey dynamics are diverse and often shifting (look up "intraguild predation"). you are literally making interspecific interactions less interesting by doing this

"pack bonding" - this isn't a thing. this isn't a term i can find used outside of this specific genre of post and a couple of dog training books. it has no biological or sociological basis. i asked a psychologist about it and they said y'all are wrong

why are we making posts hyping up humans, only to write those posts as terrified of interacting with the incredible diversity of human behaviors and attitudes and cultures. like in these posts humans are all universally "bonding" with strange creatures and acting like physical tanks in pressing situations. if the point was a love letter to humanity you'd think you'd get actual characters representing different facets of humanity instead of a single caricature

speaking of which, why are we romanticizing human traits which are not universal. yes, some humans can [physical feat] but many cannot. why do so many posts seem to be gloating over a "feat" i'm like 93% sure the OP cannot do

i hatehatehate the format of them as an alien having a conversation with a human, where the human calmly explains something about earth (almost always poorly/inaccurately) while the alien freaks out. i hate how 50% of the sentences either begin or end with the phrase "but yeah" because the writer doesn't know how to conclude a thought when they're waxing poetic about a topic they have a very shallow knowledge on

posts often don't seem to realize they're implying absurd things about how aliens work. like i just read one about how earth is ultra diverse, implying aliens have very low biodiversity, and earth is shocking for the aliens. however, if true, without the ongoing coevolutionary arms race provided by a diverse environment, how did the aliens evolve to the point where they have space travel? i want to know about how THAT planet works, not read someone on tumblr recite a bunch of lukewarm biology facts they only kind of half know

also why are there so many scenarios where the aliens meet their downfall because they just.... didn't do any observations/research before doing something? and it's never a clever thing like "they observed for years but missed X for Y reason." it's always just like "....and then they were dumb and we were so clever and smartbrained!!!"

idk why tumblr is obsessed with taxonomy but they get especially bad at it when aliens come up. guys. the aliens would use different systems because they have a separate evolutionary history. or if they used the same system--- why?! how did THAT happen???? see my point about implying absurd things about aliens

"isn't science terrifying" - NO IT'S NOT, THAT'S JUST HOW THINGS ARE???? i hate this attitude and i find it boring. also no offense but i don't get the appeal of writing aliens shaking in their boots at the idea of [earth thing] instead of being excited to find a cool knew thing. like why go into space if you're not enthused by finding out new things and getting to learn about how the universe works. why is the interest in otherworldly biology never mutual. why is it so important to you that aliens be afraid of us and humans be the most specialest darlings in the universe

back to the "conversation" format. i know most people are not scientists so there's no reason to know this, but. most biologists know a lot about one thing and not a lot about everything else. your intro bio professor seems like they know a lot because they know intro bio and you do not. if you started asking in depth questions about, idk, the wrong type of fungus or something, they'd tap out. so it drives me batty when "scientist" characters are written like they're genuinely trying to explain something where most biologists would be like "uh, well, that's not my area of expertise--" like yes I understand part of the appeal of those posts is that some people just like listing things that they know. however one thing that i know is how biologists tend to talk and you're hurting me

[iz-star]

My thoughts and guesses / theories about Zayne's upcoming main story branch.

Like I've said in previous posts, I've been hella busy with work and most of all, exhausted so I haven't been able to come here and scream about the game updates (let alone draw something) but I still want to summarize my reactions from the past few days.

About the main story update, I'm really excited to see what's going to happen! I love the Dawnbreaker references but I have to be honest, I don't really think this is Dawnbreaker, he's still Dr Zayne (they both are part of each other somehow, but you understand what I mean).

Here's why:

At first, I genuinely thought this time we really would get the chance to interact with Dawnbreaker since Zayne is wearing DB's outfit and not a jumpscare outfit like in Snowy Serenity but the more I watched the trailer, the more I realized that this is still Dr Zayne which both makes me feel alleviated (cause if it were to be Dawnbreaker, it would leave us wondering where Dr Zayne is) and scared cause if he gets to suffer/ sacrifice himself in this time line like he did as Foreseer and MoF, I don't know well how I'll handle it.

He's a male lead so I don't think they will kill him off (? but somehow with Zayne one never knows, he's honestly always surprising us. In any case, my wildest theory is that if something happens to Dr Zayne, then we'll continue his branch with Dawnbreaker... idk? Anyway, don't really pay too much attention to this since it's most unlikely that something like this happens.

The impression I got after watching the trailer so many times is that this is actually Dr Zayne in the process of becoming 'Dawnbreaker' (maybe not exactly his other self but the concept) which has been one of his biggest fears; the reason? Because the Xander Sciences experiments, the severe cases of Protocore Syndrome and Metaflux anomalies are probably speeding the process of humanity to get doomed since in Dawnbreaker's world, humans turning into wanderers is something pretty recurrent and the very reason Zayne is a killer and his world is apocalyptic. Dr Zayne knows of this, he knows using protocores in human hearts is dangerous (the very reason he gave up his research in university), he also knows that to be exposed to big quantities of metaflux is what turns humans into Wanderers, he knows it because when he and William fought side by side in Mt Eternal, it was in order to destroy a Protofield that got out of hand and the Metaflux anomalies there were bringing to land more Wanderers. It was until they destroyed the protofield when William started to turn into an Abomination and then, a Wanderer.

In the trailer, Dr Zayne says something like 'We have no choice but to destroy this place" so my guess is that there is another big Metaflux anomaly like in Mt Eternal but this time in a place where there is a lot of ppl and due to being exposed to it, they're turning into Wanderers, something that Zayne as a Doctor can't cure: "Aren't you a Doctor. You should've save me!"

In fact, this is something he can only cure as Dawnbreaker:

I'm really interested to know who was the guy who asked Zayne to kill him. My guesses are:

William (and this probably a flashback).

Carter

Greyson (most unlikely since the voice didn't mach but goshh could you imagine the angst if it was him??)

So if there is another Metaflux anomaly it means that there's a Protofield that got out of hand and it probably was in either Akso Hospital or Xander Sciences company cause they had a special patient that accoring to what they say in the trailer, had a fragil heart that would've stopped long ago.

If I'm not mistaken (and since I'm currently sleepy and feeling lazy) in the World Underneath anecdotes Carter and Xander Sciences tried to keep some patients alive or to revive them using protocores and keeping him in pods but it didn't work? However, long before these anecdotes were released, we knew that there were already organizations doing research about immortality:

It seems that 'A special energy field' is necesary in order to reach better conditions to regenerate the human heart. What if this 'special energy field' is something similar to a Protofield? If we remember correctly, in both Rafayel and Xavier's myths MC's heart was necessary for them to live immortal lifes? In Rafayel's case, she seemed to give ppl some kind of energy? But at the same time she couldn't leave their city neither. In Xavier's case, her heart was like an unending source of energy for Philos core and they wanted to feed Philos core with her so they would stop to sending humans and then Philos core would stop crearing wanderers.

In both cases, it seems that MC is the source of energy of a Protofield that both gives it enough quantities of energy to keep it balanced and making ppl within this field to be immortal (like her) without the risk of becoming wanderers. In Rafayel's myth, she was already the source of this field, so there are actually no wanderers in this myth. In Xavier's myth, she wasn't the source of it so they were creating wanderers bc of it.

What if in this case, Xander Sciences discovers that the key to reach immortality lies in creating a Protofield with enough energy to create the needed conditions to regenerate human hearts for indefinite amount of time and that the KEY to achieve this lies in MC's aether core??

What if what Zayne is trying to protect here is MC's heart so they won't use her to reach immortality, EVEN if he knows that this most likely will avoid tons of deaths and will stop the creation of wanderers and ALSO will avoid his future as Dawnbreaker but even so he chooses to save her, just like he did as Foreseer and Master of Fate.

And lastly, he mentions "When that day comes... When I can't wake up" my only guesses are:

His nightmare of becoming "The Grim Reaper" will become true.

By destroying the Protofield that is creating the anomaly, he also freezes himself?

Maybe he steals part of MC's power or even he takes the creatio protocore he gave to her as Foreseer and uses it on himself so instead of using her as the source of energy for this Protofield, he offers himself as this unending source of energy? (This one is quite wild and seems unlikely to happen but I still wanted to mention it ahaha).

Anyway these are all my thoughts for now. Please take this with a grain of salt, since these are only silly theories and nothing official. We'll have to wait some days more to discover the truth.

[spockandawe]

Oh, this is interesting. To me. I'm not sure it's interesting to anyone else! But I'm on my computer for once and FULL of words again, and I'm delighted to talk to myself given half an excuse.

So, I made a post about Long Live Evil! Because I cracked open the book and was absolutely taken aback by how transparently it seemed to be an SVSSS reskin. I wrote up a goodreads thing (it's whatever, I'm going to rehash the main points here too), because I was also full of words and beans after finishing the book yesterday, and after polling online friends, I was surprised to see that the comparison didn't seem to have organically occurred to anyone else, when it was so naked to me. I know there’s a TON of transmigration and isekai stories out in the universe, and pointing at one single book was a big claim, so I just had to assemble all my thoughts! I find this so interesting! And I reblogged my initial one-off post with a little more elaboration about some of the things that jumped out at me, then got on with live and went back to chipping at ORV and GHG, and shotgunned MADK this afternoon.

This is a subtle nod and a wink to my passionate love for these kind of... morally grey main characters! Calling them villains might be a bit much, I don't think there are many true villain protagonists out there (LLE included), and even Devil Venerable has a demonic cultivator who's doing demonic shit and killing loads of people... but with the ultimate balance of the heavens and earth as his priority. This kind of story is my jam. I was recced this book on the basis of transmigration and sketchy protagonists being my thing. I can't rightfully call SVSSS the best cnovel I've ever read, but it is my favorite. And I've probably reread it more times than any other cnovel.

So, that SRB post, huh? I put Long Live Evil behind me, and honestly even following up on the sequel is mmmmmdoubtful, but THIS snagged my attention again. First, the comparisons she's calling out as incorrect are wild to me. Draco and Harry? What? Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian?? (I had to ponder that one for a hot minute, but I bet you anything it's about 'the golden cobra' and 'the last hope' and that's just silly, they're not wangxian, they're MOSHANG)

I was recced LLE in one friend group, but I had an anti-rec from my book club friend group. My book club friend hadn't been at all impressed by it! And she's cool, and I talk up svsss and mxtx to that crowd every so often, without really expecting them to read it. I talk about transmigration as a plot device that I love, and the things that can be done with it! But with that connection in mind between the books, as I started LLE, I was jokingly defending the honor of SVSSS to this crowd, so I admit I was primed to recognize similarities.

I really truly did not make it far in the book before locking it down. I was getting vibes basically from the moment Rae started gushing about her problematic fictional fave, I referenced 95% certainty shortly after she makes the jump to the fictional universe, the golden cobra was 98%, Lia Mingyan's, I mean Liu Mingyan's lack of sex scenes was 99%, and the first pov section for Marius-jun was where I gave up and called it as a sure thing.

It'll be very funny if I'm wrong! I don't think I'm wrong.

Plenty of spoilers to follow, because I identified this inspiration early, I guessed basically every plot twist early, I don't have the patience to dance around spoilers while explaining how it all lines up.

Now, I said this elsewhere, but it bears repeating: I don't think this is plagiarism. I think it's tasteless to accuse an author of stealing and repurposing characters to her face. But I think it's also tasteless to repurpose characters as nakedly as happened here! Again? If I'm wrong? That's why I'm talking to myself on my blog and not messaging her directly (?????? who even does that). What are the stakes for me being wrong here? I look like a clown online? That would be terrible, I've never done that before! It's not a crime to write in ways I find distasteful. It's not a crime to write a book I think is not good, even apart from the use of fictional influences. But I like talking about my feelings online, and I can't be stopped!

But there's two aspects of this that make me somewhat uncomfortable in a less fun way. Both are contingent on the big IF. If this is inspired by svsss, I think it's not a classy move to take a Chinese story in a Chinese setting, inspired by the modern Chinese literary scene and classical Chinese fantasy, and just dump the characters into a generic western setting. Fanfic? Have fun and try to be respectful. Profic, making money off it? Ehhhhh. The question of how much change is necessary is a tricky one! It's not one I'm equipped to answer, this is not my wheelhouse or my place to speak. But it doesn't make me feel good!

However, here's where I have more personal stake:

Again, if this is inspired by svsss. It really doesn't feel great to see a queer story (a smash hit in more than one country!) stripped down for parts and made into a heterosexual story. It's not all heterosexual, we get side lesbians, we get men with homoerotic tension. But the central ship is now a guy and a girl. And it... stings a little extra, because in the story of svsss, the idea of assumptions about default (hetero)sexuality are such a central theme. A queer man has written a trashy, oversexed stallion novel where the hottest guy in the universe collects the hottest women like pokemon, and it sells so much better than the more personal stories he tried to write. He has to write this pandering trash to make money to live, he can't live on the more authentic stories he tried to tell before. The protagonist is the projection of his own insecurities and self-hate, and the protagonist's right hand man is his projection of his own ideal man. Another man transmigrates into the book, assuming that he himself is straight, assuming the protagonist is straight, and the force of their love changes the course of the entire narrative. In retrospect, it's upsetting to see those load-bearing themes casually carved out of the story and the hollowed-out remains used like this.

Anyways, in their place, now we've got running gags about how the heroine's tits are BIGHUGE now and she can't keep her balance because her GIANT HONKERS keep tipping her over.

I'm a little more bothered than I was yesterday! On the other hand, since I saw SRB's post, I've been chewing on that central ship. Full disclosure, it was one of my favorite aspects of the novel! My other favorite aspect is the dynamic between the golden cobra and the last hope (the moshang, which I think some people misdiagnosed as wangxian).

I know that the central ship here is the thing that's LEAST comparable to svsss, and the biggest roadblock in the way of my theory. On the other hand, I think it was the thing that HAD to change if this story was going to repurpose svsss without getting called out for being a classic 'bro can i copy your homework' adventure.

For this section, let's assume that I'm right and let's roleplay an author trying to figure out how to change Bingqiu into something not-obviously-Bingqiu. How do we need to differentiate Rae and Key from Shen Qingqiu and Luo Binghe.

First, we eliminate the martial sect thing. Easy peasy! That's a wuxia concept, and this book goes full nondescript western fantasy. She's not his teacher, he's not her student. And if she's not his teacher and he's not her student, why does this woman have power over this man, to build up the resentment that inspires him to turn the tables on her later? Well, in nondescript western fantasy, she's a noblewoman of some kind, and he's a servant of some kind. Noble lady treats servant like garbage, servant resents her. Doing great.

And to loop back around to the beginning of this a little, I think it really is key to this reskinning that Rae is a SHE. If the central ship remained queer, it would be so, so hard to pull away from the most identifiable thematic aspects of svsss. And pieces of what remain are... kind of bizarre for a normie heterosexual ship where our protagonist is aware that she's transmigrated into an impossibly desirable sexpot character!

Shen Qingqiu never considers that Luo Binghe might be interested in him because Luo Binghe is about to have a HAREM of beautiful women, he's the most heterosexual man of all time, and Shen Qingqiu is straight too! Besides, Shen Qingqiu is his teacher! He half-raised Luo Binghe! Even if Luo Binghe was bent, he wouldn't be interested in an old man like Shen Qingqiu!

Rae is 20, occupying a 24-year-old body. Her character's sexiness is relentlessly remarked upon from start to finish. Key is 18. Why is Rae so sure that he looks up to her as... a mentor, as an older woman? He almost goes down on her! He makes out with her! And she's like 'ah yes, it means nothing. lol. so funny how these things happen.' Bruh, at least after Luo Binghe kissed Shen Qingqiu, Shen Qingqiu finally got hit with the clue stick. Binghe didn't try to blow him only for Shen Qingqiu to keep noodling on about how Binghe definitely isn't into him in any sense, even the most oblivious man in the universe managed to catch on.

Why doesn’t Rae think there’s any chance of genuine attraction here? Yeah, I get that she's coming back from terminal cancer. She's doing great. She knows that the fictional character she occupies is one of the most desirable ladies in the land. He’s a teenager. He’s not expressing disinterest. A lack of horny for sexy lady ought to be more surprising for her. But I guess she’s slightly older than him and that small age gap has been magnified by the transmigration, so she conceptualizes herself only as his teacher, I mean mentor.

I’m not even mad at this dynamic. I love their chemistry, the ‘boss’ thing is cute, but lordt, I have to wonder if it’s meant to substitute for ‘shizun.’ But you know where this comparison really falls apart? Key isn’t really THAT much Luo Binghe.

At least, he isn’t in terms of personality. I mean, we’ve got the mysterious magical heritage, the healing factor, the unbeatable fighting skills, being beaten repeatedly because of the protagonist (tbh it’s sexier when she’s responsible, rather than just being a bystander), being yeeted into the abyss, I mean the ravine, to rise again and assume power as the merciless ruler of all the land. Oh, and he comes back from the dead still bearing the scar that represents her betrayal. In the original novel, he turned on her the moment he got his opening and was responsible for coming up with her gruesome torment.

(Also, Shen Qingqiu being terminally ill isn’t canon, but it’s very popular fanon, and it’s hard to ignore that with how hard the narrative lingers over Rae’s terminal illness as her gateway into this fictional world)

But! But the things that are different! Luo Binghe is a smart and sweet teenager, who had a rough start on the streets and has a tragically deceased single adoptive parent, but that’s their only backstory parallel, he doesn’t blacken until he’s thrown into the abyss. Not like Key, Key is a murder-happy sociopath, a former street kid who fought the odds and made good, and who’s a lot sharper and cleverer than the upper classes think someone like him should be. He utterly destroyed a righteous cultivator clan, I mean glassblowing guild, for the sake of revenge. Once our heroine scores a number of trust points with him, we unlock secret backstory about how as a small child, he experienced deeply formative hand trauma.

He’s Xue Yang.

It took me a moment to process the wangxian allegations SRB mentions in her post, because I was trying to figure out how someone would be aware of wangxian, and read that backstory, and somehow miss it. But it’s fine, I’m pretty sure they were actually talking about the golden cobra and the last hope! So LET’S TALK MOSHANG.

It was so funny. I was liveblogging the book to friends, because honestly, I do not jive with the buffy-esque joss whedon relentless quip-quip-quip writing style. I was struggling to stay engaged when the narrative never took a moment to breathe. And I perked up at the introduction of this new character! He seemed kind of fun, kind of meta, Key came over to share Secret Info with him, and I messaged the friend who recced this to me (also an svsss appreciator) ‘lol, what if he’s shang qinghua. just straight from svsss shang qinghua.'

Reader, a second transmigrator has hit the narrative.

Now, in some ways, he’s a disappointment to me. He’s not nearly as interesting as Shang Qinghua. Adding the author to their own narrative is way more fascinating to me than just dropping a rando into the story. But I’ll take what I can get, I think multiple transmigrators are almost always a fun decision. And for the queer reasons I mentioned above, I think Shang Qinghua ties into the themes of his novel a lot more strongly than Eric does here. I don’t want to call him ‘the golden cobra’ every time, I get more self-conscious every time I write it. And honestly, the reveal of Eric’s full Eric Whatever name feels a little awkward and… pointed compared to the sheer opacity of Shang Qinghua’s existence. Never mind what his name was in the real world, we don’t even know his name before he was a Peak Lord. I’m not upset we got a name or anything, it would make certain fannish activities a lot easier if Shang Qinghua had additional canon names, but it was an interesting detail in light of how parallel the characters are.

Okay! He’s not the author! He’s still a super-fan. He transmigrated into the book years before the LLE main character, and has settled in pretty well. According to canon as Rae knows it, he’s fated to be killed by his own favorite character. He’s fast-thinking and fast-talking, and scattered and all over the place, but dangerous when cornered and more competent than he looks. He deals in information and manages a network of spies. He’s a creative! He and the main character banter relentlessly and get along like a house on fire. He and the king’s trusted ice-cold right hand man share a weird codependent dynamic that’s part hostile, part homoerotic.

Marius has complicated feelings about not-shang-qinghua. Eric is a coward, he’d rather talk fast and lie than stand up for anything, he cowers and cringes and isn’t honorable. He and Mobei-jun also shared a deeply formative experience in their youth, where as a teenager in distress, Eric/Shang Qinghua appeared before them and announced their devotion. In Shang Qinghua’s case, it was offering to serve him (and saving him from huan hua injuries), and in Eric’s case, it was declaring him to be his favorite character (and saving him from sad teenaged isolation), but man. And in the end, after a long, fraught relationship, Marius/Mobei-jun is furious and strangely distraught when Eric/Shang Qinghua abandons him.

Guys, it’s not wangxian.

I think it hits less hard when Marius’s themes of family violence aren’t allowed to sit directly in the narrative, and when it seems like some vague berserker rage thing rather than Linguang-jun just bluntly wanting to murder him for practical reasons, but hey! This was still, genuinely, one of my favorite parts of the story. I wanted more more more of them, I would read this moshang au any day.

After that, the parallels get a little more nebulous! The comparisons between the abyss and the ravine are pretty obvious. I’m not sure why we decided to build our city and palace right on top of the pit of people-eating ghouls rather than literally anywhere else, but it means we don’t need to take a special field trip to Jue Di Gorge, which means we can do the bait and switch where it turns out Key was a heavenly demon all along. The temperamental King Octavian, the young master of the palace, one might even say the xiao gongzhu if they were feeling spicy, jealously tries to romantically monopolize half our main ship and has the other half flogged with a magic whip.

I already mentioned that Rae brings up that Liu Mingyan — wait, I said I’d change some answers so it wasn’t obvious I copied — Lia doesn’t get a sex scene in the books even though loads of other people did, just like Shen Qingqiu praises Liu Mingyan for her untouchable image in such an oversexed, gratuitous book. I don’t think it would be right to call Liu Mingyan a white lotus heroine in either SVSSS or PIDW, but her archetype is in that wheelhouse, and Lia is just a white lotus rival played straight (and played deliberately, another touch I liked). We don’t have made up animals like black moon rhinoceros pythons in LLE, but we do have leucrotas, which are like a lion and a hyena and serve no narrative purpose.

Oh, you know what else I forgot to mention? Rae gives Key one of her red ruby earrings, and he refuses to sell it, and stubbornly holds onto it until the bitter end. Is this Xue Yang holding onto the last piece of candy Xiao Xingchen gave him, or is it Hua Cheng determinedly keeping Xie Lian’s red coral earring with him even through his own death? Por que no los dos?

There are things that are original in here. I know that this presentation undersells how much of the book is original. The trouble is, almost everything I thought was good is something that either was lifted from another person’s creative endeavors, or is being tainted by association with all the other naked lifts. Some of the noble ladies have an archery contest! That’s pretty new and fresh, huh? We didn’t have any archery contests in SVSSS!

Yeah, but we sure did in MDZS. And MDZS is already in play, because we’ve already got one character who’s just copy and paste Xue Yang.

There’s a thermocline of trust in this book that fell off for me sharply, and it turned a lot of this into a guessing game of ‘wait NOW what the refrance? owo'

I’m probably on a hair trigger by now, but I’ve also probably missed some things. And I’m sure this is a synthesis of multiple influences, because most stories are. But this feels like cooking and trying to season your dish with a little salt and then the container lid just falls off.

Emer isn’t a clear parallel to an existing character! Love that for her! Love a lady with an axe, especially if she gets a nice girlfriend! On the other hand, in terms of backstory? Wow, she’s been raised with our protagonist since early childhood, as not-quite-foster-siblings, but she was always the clear unfavorite and harbors a lot of resentment over that. Oh, and once Rae entered the story, Rae started trying to speedrun an enemies to 'hello hiiii we should bestiessss' arc with her. I think she had to have an axe, because a whip or a sword would make the Jiang Cheng and/or Liu Qingge vibes a little uncomfortably strong. She doesn’t follow their character arcs! But the disappointing thing is that it felt like she was just there to facilitate pasting the frankenstein patchwork of the narrative together rather than having an arc of her own.

(why did Marius stop to give her a sword lesson? Why did she immediately sneak onto the roof to eavesdrop on the king?? It’s hard to give her credit for being an original character when none of her original actions make sense in the greater universe)

Oh, I almost forgot, we’ve even got magic plot macguffin plants. While Binghe is in the abyss, Shen Qingqiu needs to get the Sun And Moon Dew Flower Seed so he can build an escape hatch for himself before Binghe wrecks his shit. Rae, on the other hand, needs to secure the Flower of Life and Death by an arbitrary deadline as an escape hatch so she can go back to her original life rather than being trapped here forever. Very different! There’s even little side tangents about how these plants can be so beneficial to others, Zhuzhi-lang is desperately trying to secure a seed to build a new body for Tianlang-jun (which Shen Qingqiu enables him to do, despite not knowing what he wants it for), and Rae thinks about how the flower could “save someone on the very doorstep of death,” and gives it away for that exact purpose. So different!

I need to cut myself off, otherwise I’ll keep going. Truly, there is original content in here. It was just all the stuff I didn’t like. The character quipping was. God. There sure was a lot of it! By sheer volume, that’s a lot of original content. Some of the extended cast was interesting, I enjoyed the Horrors and their brothers, I liked Valencia. Now, I didn’t like how basically every girl ADULT WOMAN in this cast was in shitty teen mean girl mode. I didn’t like how immature every character interaction period was. I lost track of how many times Rae was going around in sexy clothes and rando servants were like “HARLOT,” out loud about a favored noblewoman, you know, as you do. Especially when her bodyguard is pulling against his choke chain just waiting for an excuse to do a murder. I don’t need Rae to be the picture of flawless maturity. But nobody is mature, full stop, not even the set dressing servants.

For a less loaded example, the cumplane friendship dynamic is here, practically intact. Shen Qingqiu can't snipe about authorial choices, because Eric isn't the author, so instead Rae and Eric squabble about favorite scenes and favorite ships and such. But it isn't nearly as charming when we don't see these two characters dropping their dignified Peak Lord cultivator roleplay to talk shit with each other. Rae and Eric never have a filter once in this book. They are always Like This, it isn't a secret face that gets unlocked when they're bouncing off each other, they are never circumspect, never have a filter, never have any idea they shouldn't be speaking their full thoughts at full volume 24/7. Even after this starts to have material consequences when they're inevitably overheard! It's an immersion-breaking level of immaturity, which is terribly frustrating when the original dynamic that I loved is only changed in such minor ways.

And another thing that actually tastes way more sour than it did on first reading – Valencia is probably the least mean girl of all the women in the cast. She’s delightful. Too bad that in every scene but her last one, Rae, who repeatedly references her own experiences having her body and appearance ravaged by cancer, cannot for love or money stop talking about how uggo Valencia is.

I know this is an adult novel. The characters are, by age, adults. There’s almost an oral scene. God, I wish we’d gotten the oral scene. But by every other metric, the characters are all high schoolers and I’m an exhausted adult muttering to myself ‘they’ll grow out of it, please GOD let them grow out of it.’

Again, none of this is a crime! Nobody forced me to finish the book! And I did enjoy the book. Parts of it! But that very distinct partial enjoyment experience almost forced me to dissect my own emotional response. And truly, other than a few flashes like Valencia, almost everything I enjoyed about the book was something I could trace directly back to one author, and mostly to one book by that one author. I… enjoyed half of the book. And if I can track most of that half back to mxtx and svsss, I really think that says something about how much wasn’t done to make the inspiration behind this book the author’s own.

It's disappointing! I read this book because I like svsss, I read it because I want more books like svsss, I read it because I trawl the novelupdates tags looking for more books that will hit me the way svsss did. It doesn’t taste good to be served reheated svsss with expired buffy sauce drizzled on top. It tastes even less good once I have a minute to think about what turning an m/m meditation on sexuality and self-image and assumptions about others into a m/f snooze does to the themes I loved so much. It stings to see an author rehash a book that was/is so important to me, and see what they kept and what they threw out, and be like ‘oh, so… these were the elements that mattered to you?’

Again, I hate to be redundant with this, but. I think calling this book plagiarism would be overdoing it. I think it’s tasteless. I don’t think being tasteless is a crime. It remains wild to me that she’s getting messages calling out her supposed inspiration, even if I’m simultaneously criticizing the judgment of the people making those specific comparisons. And I ABSOLUTELY understand why she’s reluctant to own up to the specific inspirations behind this book, because good lord. If it was me, I’d be professionally embarrassed too.

It’s not my job to be the book quality police, but I think someone as experienced as this should be able to do a better job of synthesizing inspirations into something original. I dropped ‘can’t afford to offend my scheming disciple’ earlier this year, because that narrative couldn’t shake the taste of stale svsss fanfic, and it was much more subtle than this is. Once again, if I’m wrong, this post will be retroactively VERY funny and I’ll be all ears to see what her inspirations actually were. I don’t think I’m wrong.