#and yet i think he genuinely cares for LQ in a way
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Thinking about how the Narrator doesn't really know if the world stays saved when we die, and yet in some cases He tries to reassure/console us during our 'last moments'.
"You've paid a terrible price, but you've saved us all." He doesn't know that. Maybe He's just trying to describe it into existence, hoping that if you die with the thought, it'll become true? But in other times, He's sure that our death means doom for whatever world we've left behind. "The world doesn't stay saved if you die." Then why tell us that we've saved it?
I also think it's interesting how emotional Narrator gets by the end of each chapter 1. He treats us differently based on our actions and how we approach the situation.
If we try and save the Princess, he purposely makes our death as long and painful as he possibly can, presumably, out of pure spite. "It is agony. But you aren't dead yet." "She sinks the blade into your chest again, and again, and again... and you feel every inch of burning pain that slices itself into your body."
If we resist his instructions at first, but give in later, he seems genuinely apologetic. "This can't actually be how everything ends..!" "I'm sorry, but it is." or "As much as I'd preferred for things to have gone differently, I can't deny the reality of what has happened." He wants this to work, and he wants us to come out happy and content by the end of it.
He seems caught off guard in the Spectre route if we try to kill her while she's in our body. "Slay her would slay you. Are you sure you're willing to do that?" One would expect Him to immedietly be on board with whatever plan gets rid of Her, but the "heroic"(in His eyes) gesture immedietly makes Narrator develop a soft spot and start to worry for our well being. He doesn't like the idea of the hero being denied their happy ending.
He genuinely believes the Princess to be a manifestation of everything evil in the world and constantly denies her any personhood. It's not an active choice either, as Narrator is an Echo with a set amount of beliefs that cannot be changed. He never changes His mind about anything and one of His core beliefs is that He is right. He has to be, otherwise everything he'd done, everything he went through, it would all be for nothing.
That which was once a defensive thought, shaped by his own hurt and unwillingness to see another perspective, becomes a universal truth.
#slay the princess#the narrator stp#this isn't a narrator apologist post but it kinda is at the same time#mf is kinda evil but also doesn't really have a choice#but also not having a choice was his choice but also also his choice was shaped by the hurt he had endured during his lifetime but also-#and yet i think he genuinely cares for LQ in a way#we're his hero <3#talk about a favorite child#this is all my interpretation ofc ofc
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(1/3) It always amuses me how stans try to justify JC actions by his abusive upbringing while there were 3 children in that family and both others turned very kind and/or very moral and not at all like JC (and frankly, he didn't even have the hardest position in the dysfunctional dynamic). Or LXC and LWJ whose upbringing was even more screwed up with a LQ who was certainly playing favorites and wanting perfection, and yet this never draw a wedge between them or created any jealousy.
(2/3)LXC loves for LWJ to excel! Same with "but JC had it so hard rebuilding Lotus Pier, WWX was goofing off with the Wens"...JC was paying people to do that for him, yes, while WWX was trying to start from scratch a settlement over a mountain of corpses with a bunch of weak or old people and not to die of hunger comes winter. While separated from all his friends and hated as a monster by the cultivation world. "But JC was so lonely during the 13/16y, so that justifies him lashing out" And WWX
(3/3) was dead, killed by his brother and thinking that there was not a person left on his side in the end, and yet, that didn't make him act like a dick? Or athg else really, because everything that JC went through in the past, WWX did also, but in a worse way because he lost his parents young, lived in the streets, didn't have JC societal privilege or money and has to harness an unstable necromancy practice on top of that. And yet no one uses it as arguments to explain his actions, only for JCÂ
Honestly? While none of the Jiang kids were in a good position, out of the three of them... JC did have it the easiest. It was still awful for him, donât get me wrong, Iâm not suggesting his childhood didnât suck, but given it was made very clear to JYL that her only purpose was to be married off to JZX so her mother could tie her bloodline to her best friendâs and WWX was treated like a servant at best... Yeah. If I had to pick, Iâd choose having a distant father and dealing with a mother whoâs constantly emotionally abusive over having a distant father and dealing with a mother whoâs constantly emotionally abusive and being treated like a bargaining chip/treated like a servant and/or bastard and being whipped for actions that would get the rest of the clan a lecture at worst. Again, Iâm not saying JC didnât have it bad, but his siblings having it worse is... interesting, given neither of them decided to be dicks to Literally Everyone over it.
I do have to say, even though this is about JC, thereâs nothing suggesting LQR was playing favourites with LXC and LWJ. He was strict, yes, probably stricter than he shouldâve been, and LXC probably did get more one-on-one interaction with him, but given LXC was going to be sect leader/became sect leader at a young age that makes sense. This is not super important to the point of this post, but I do find it odd how often people make LQR out to be this horrible person whoâs always awful to his nephews because heâs Strict when we... donât actually know anything about how he raised them. I donât like him all that much, and he probably didnât do a fantastic job of raising them, but the man did try, and he clearly wants his nephews to be safe and happy (even though he has inaccurate views of what that entails...), and given how the parents/parental figures of the cast generally act he deserves some credit for that. Also the Twin Jades ended up considerably better-adjusted than most of their age group, which... isnât saying much all things considered but it does say something. If nothing else neither of them seem to feel actively unsafe around him, so heâs definitely not the worst parental figure in this novel.
...I had a surprising number of thoughts on LQR there. Whoops, sorry about the tangent. Maybe Iâll make a post about him at some point. Anyway, yeah, LXC and LWJ clearly adore each other! LXC would be delighted if LWJ surpassed him at something! Same with Nie bros; they argue a lot, but thereâs no denying that they love each other. Thatâs what insults and threats out of love look like; NMJ threatens NHS all the time, but NHS clearly isnât all that bothered by it until JGY starts fucking with NMJâs mind and the threats become more serious, which really isnât NMJâs fault. Itâs because in the other sibling relationships both parties are invested in staying close. They love each other and want to be close for the rest of their lives! Meanwhile JC is obsessed with WWX outperforming him at Literally Everything, and WWX genuinely believes that JC is allowed to treat him the way he does and itâs fine and healthy.
And yeah, JC wasnât exactly rebuilding Lotus Pier all by his lonesome with his own two hands. In fact, going by what we see all the rebuilding was done well before WWX left! And I donât doubt for a second that WWX was involved in that process; I have very mixed feelings about the scene in CQL where he blows off his duties to go and get drunk, because on the one hand it does do a good job of showing just how bad his mental state is getting (and how JC refuses to acknowledge it despite WWX obviously being Not Okay), but on the other hand... I just canât see WWX not throwing himself into helping JC with everything heâs got even while his mental state is coming crashing down around him. I mean, this is the guy who created an incredibly powerful weapon that even he couldnât fully control, not knowing what using it would do to him, to help his brother win a war. Iâm pretty much certain that WWX ran himself into the ground helping JC rebuild and run the sect... then when he found himself in charge of a small group of desperate people, scrambling to keep them fed and clothed and healthy, JC just abandoned him to deal with it on his own.
And the whole âOh, but JC was so lonely, donât you feel bad for him?â shtick. I hate it so much. If he didnât want to be lonely, he shouldâve considered that before alienating everyone in his age group and leading an army to murder his brother, the only person left who was willing to put up with him! Itâs... really hard to feel bad for someone whoâs brought most of their suffering on themselves through a series of generally shitty and frequently downright cruel actions with easily foreseeable consequences. If he got sick of being alone, he shouldâve apologized to his peers for being a dick to... literally all of them and tried to make amends and strike up some sort of relationship. Or, if that didnât work, go out! Meet new people! Try not to be as awful to them! Also, heâs a sect leader. If he couldnât even maintain a positive relationship with other sect leaders, people who, let me remind you, he has to work with on a regular basis and several of whom are actually nice and friendly people, that is on him. If you are awful to people you will end up alone. And then JC decided to respond to learning that the people he was a dick to every time he saw them (and, in LWJ and NHSâs cases, caused the death of someone they cared about) wanted nothing to do with him... by whining about how lonely he was as if that wasnât largely his fault. Like, he lost his family and thatâs awful, but he could have had friends to help him through his grief, and itâs his own damn fault that he doesnât.
WWXâs life was miserable. He had plenty of friends, yeah, but he spent years on the streets after his parents died brutal deaths; was raised in a family where he was treated like a servant and a scapegoat; lost everything in an event he was blamed for despite having nothing to do with the attack; had to sacrifice his incredibly powerful golden core (thereby losing his primary means of defending himself while on the run and drastically shortening his lifespan) to keep his brother from letting himself die; was thrown into a corpse pit for three months where he had to create an entirely new and experimental (and as such incredibly dangerous) form of cultivation and probably resort to cannibalism just to survive; had to fight a war almost immediately after escaping; spent a... good portion of time (not sure how long exactly because the MDZS timeline is more a suggestion than an actual coherent timeline) being treated alternately as a tame pet or a rabid animal and having to pretend everything was just fine while everyone tried to either control him or remove him and his brother very obviously got increasingly resentful of his skill and power; had to abandon his home, his family, and everything he had left of his old life to save a bunch of innocent people while everyone, including his brother, acted like heâd gone mad for not wanting to let them die horribly; had to go back to the corpse pit he spent three months in because it was the only place where they might be safe; accidentally killed his brother-in-law due to losing control after being ambushed on the way to a celebration for his nephew that he was invited to by people he trusted, almost certainly making him wonder on at least some level if that was why he was invited; lost two members of his new family who he clearly loved because of said accidental murdering; learned their deaths were for nothing and, when he retaliated against the planned attack that shouldnât have happened because thatâs what WQ and WN gave their lives to prevent, saw his beloved sister die to save him; and, after all that, lost the rest of his new family to a siege on a civilian population led by his brother. And after all that, his response was... to destroy the incredibly dangerous weapon heâd made because he didnât trust the sects to not destroy each other and themselves with it and kill himself rather than risk losing control again and hurting anyone else. In the novel too; I donât doubt for a second that WWX planned on dying in that siege, even if he didnât expect destroying the seal to do it.
Take a look at that paragraph. All those things that happened to WWX. And in the end, he was kind. He was so, so kind, and remains kind even after thirteen years of being dead. He would have been well within his rights to go all âThen let me be evilâ on the sects, but every time he attacked them they struck first, and most of the serious damage he did happened as a direct result of losing control of his experimental and mostly unknown new cultivation, which is a real risk even with spiritual cultivation; NMJ probably would have happily killed everyone in Qinghe if the qi deviation hadnât gotten to him first, given how easy it was for him to attack even his beloved little brother. Everything bad that happened to JC is on that list, pretty much. Everything that JC suffered WWX did too, with some variations in the details (and of course dead versus alone for the same period of time). JC had the advantage of a sect at his back and a high rank by virtue of his birth, while WWXâs position was entirely reliant on JFM and, later, JC. And yet some people insist that WWXâs trauma doesnât excuse his actions but JCâs somehow does. Now, some people argue itâs different because WWX was a mass murderer. Yeah, well, JCâs a fucking serial killer, and he doesnât have the excuse of losing control due to using resentful energy to cultivate and being attacked by everyone heâd ever known and trusted.
...Iâve kind of lost track of where Iâm going with this. Short version: I very strongly disagree with anyone who insists WWXâs trauma doesnât excuse his actions while bending over backwards to argue that JCâs trauma excuses his.
#well that got... long#and probably not super fun#i have Thoughts about this particular subject it seems#grapehate#asks#anon
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A, B, Q
Thank you, sweet anon. I really went off, huh? But I guess thatâs to expected if you get me started on Sungjin...
A: Something really attractive that your bias does?
I thought about this and I have to say, I think it, in some ways, has been him being himself via his expressions, from the start. Even in my very early My Day phase, I kept watching his face change and reflect his thoughts to point I shouldâve realized my bias way earlier than I did. (And even that admission was prompted by his expression, so!)
At first, it was attractive in emotional sense, to find someone else who is an open book via expressions (I realize I have been feeling quite starved for this because Lucas of NCT being facially expressive and dorky is how I briefly skirted edges of NCT fandom and he is still my precious son), and then it just got attractive.
I just love the way his face shows what he is like as a person and how likeable, to me, this person is. Though it would seem his popularity suffers from it, he canât hide behind a pleasant default expression mask, his brief âwhat?â or annoyance that flashes through his mind, or amusement and any silly thought he decides to act on just shines right there on his face. I would like to think this means he is truly a honest person and one I can put my faith into, especially considering recent events.
Generally, he is just sturdily, if a little shyly, himself which makes my heart swell with affection and for me, thatâs basically attraction.
B: A favorite physical feature of your bias?
For me, itâs really hard to pick a favorite. I appreciate him visually as a whole and always have, through the nuances of how/why I appreciate that entire expression he wears or how that one hairstyle highlights his handsomeness, etc.
But, for sake of this answer, and to actually encompass this concept, I will have to pick his mouth (as hard as it is for me to separate it from rest of his face).
First of all, he has beautiful lip shape. Itâs just aesthetically pleasing, like drawn with a lot of care, and really goes well with rest of his features. The bow of his upper lip is really something.
I like how his upper jaw is seemingly slightly more over his lower jaw than it âshouldâ be, it makes for the lil bunny teef weâre so fond of and itâs truly adorable and yet also the small changes it brings to his face really ads to his handsomeness, imo. (And makes me feel valid because I, too, have a deep bite.)
And then we come to the main draw, to me, about his mouth: the expressions. No matter if he is singing, making little oho noises, speaking, enjoying food, listening intently or smiling, his mouth (along with his whole face) is always so involved and lovely. You can feel the words on his lips, the way he lives through them, when he talks and especially when he sings.
Oh, his smile. For that alone, I had to speak about it. I am genuinely weak for his smiles and smirks. Theyâre both so vibrant and gorgeous and soft and gradual, but always full with emotion.
(First gif mine, 2nd is made by haecnan)
And just look at this!!!
(Picture cred lq-sungjin and lqdaysix)
And, frankly, I think we as fandom, donât appreciate his mouth enough, both in soft and not so soft ways. Like... where are people speaking about he absolutely canât keep his tongue in when on stage. Because thatâs a thing and itâs unfair.
Some proofs I giffed:
Of course, rest of his face really brings all of this home, but even on its own, his mouth is fascinating and lovely to watch.
Q: A quality your bias shows that you absolutely love?
The way he stays true to himself.
It shows in everything he does and talks about - he does the silly thing that came to his mind, or he talks about his struggles in simple but earnest ways, he works hard but does not make big (or small) deal out of it, he shows affection in ways HE does instead of expected, typical ways. The way he shows his love for food. The way he sings and plays instruments, sincerely and unfiltered in his expressions. When he says heâs shy and we can see it, but he still does what his heart wants to. How much courage he has, in spite of everything. He acknowledges his mistakes and shows his exhaustion and always, always you can look at him and think Sungjin is being himself, with comparing us to stars or silly questions of âwhat if you woke up as JYPâ right as theyâre being filmed, with scruffing Dowoon and wearing shorts over diving suit because heâs shy, with mouthing along lyrics and just... Always, he is himself yet always working on to be a better person. And I think that is inspiration and goals, and what I utterly love about him. A runner up would have to be his gentleness.
Send me kpop ask?
#I won't even put this under read muahaha#ask games answered#me: im ace#also me: writes essay on sungjin's mouth#but hey it's pretty much aesthetical appreciation#pretty much#Anonymous
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