#one more post incoming

[summershouto]

good morning starshine (it is no longer morning)

[fried-manto]

Me and who

[pandorem]

Me every time I check out the dead boy detectives tag: *rolls up sleeves* welp. Looks like it’s time for another Crystal Palace defence post

[kenobihater]

of all the star wars movies, which of them do y'all 1) enjoy the most 2) consider the best quality and 3) think you've rewatched the most. add your answers in the reblogs or replies, i'm genuinely curious how much of an overlap there is within everyone's three answers. mine don't overlap at all! they're revenge of the sith, empire strikes back, and the force awakens :^)

[gunk-ice-tea]

Soulmates ♡

[amanedachi]

iron / heart

Part of LoL Esports Elemental Series.

[qilingxiong]

[zhuoyichenpretty]

Ep 22-23 Commentary

Ha...I was inexplicably nervous for eps 22-23 and it looks like I was right to be (-: What a rollercoaster. Spoilers below!

I've just come out of ep 23 and uh????? holy shit????? ZYC????

Ok ok but to backtrack, let's do my comments semi-chronologically:

Ep 22:

A carry-over from ep 21 that I have to mention—heck yeah PSJ give WZY hell. She doesn't have all that many lines but she sure knows how to make them count. Also seeing PSJ and WX get screen time just the two of them makes my brain go "yay <3"

Back to ep 22, loved the fake-out sundial ayeee that was a nice Chekhov's gun that also brings the real sundial back into relevance for later. Also me eating up the PSJ and ZYC crumb of an interaction has brought to my attention how starved I am of their screen time together.

This whole ep was a great lament towards the feared inevitable. Every sad downcast look from ZYC, every complicated glance WX gives him. A wonderful, terrible crossroads for these characters. I love that for ZYC especially, it's such an incredible mess of emotion coming to a head. Bad enough that he's come to care about the demon who killed his family and ruined his life, bad enough that he's sworn a blood oath he regrets and tied himself to punishing someone he no longer finds culpable, bad enough that ZYZ's life or death depends solely on his choice and ZYZ is constantly practically begging for death when ZYC wants him to live. How much immensely worse it makes the whole situation that WX is literally ZYZ's soulmate. And obviously the whole team has only grown more and more attached to ZYZ, too. ZYC's personal turmoil aside, how heavy must that responsibility and guilt be? For the finishing blow that only he can deliver to also deeply threaten every other person he cares about? Everyone understands in the abstract what must happen and why, but just like seeing ZYZ lose control firsthand, the gulf between understanding and experiencing is so unimaginably wide. If he kills ZYZ, can there really be no resentment from his friends? From WX?

Also it seems ZYC only wears cloaks so that he can give them to other people lmao

Ah fuck, the farewell drinks. I didn't even factor in how ZYC might not survive the encounter (''': The drama truly was like hm can we possibly give ZYC a worse day than that night his whole fam died? Maybe give him a bunch of new family members and also the blade and the fate and the sole responsibility to potentially irrevocably scar said family members with? And he might die in the process too? (-: haha maybe? (((-:

Oh. Oh. Addendum. I forgot this til I saw it mentioned in another post—ZYC recounting his oath as he watched WX smile when they discussed reviving the tree...I could feel him weighing those words against his own life, against ZYZ's life, against WX's happiness. One way out of this impossible situation is indeed to doom himself. I'm in pieces.

Damn if WX isn't dedicated heart and soul, going into the sundial like that. I'm sad no one could keep her company for those 300 years but also I guess that's kind of an impossible ask (and maybe not survivable for the other non-goddess mortals? I'm admittedly very unclear on sundial time loophole logistics). It would have been nice to see someone offer though, even just to be turned down.

Ooh I like the soul needle fake-out, given this show's penchant for retroactive "actually we had a plan all along" moments. A good subversion of the narrative's own style.

Also I saved this for the end because it doesn't really fit the linearity of my comments but what the fuuuuuuuck oh my god I absolutely flipped out at this scene:

I am at once rabidly intrigued and at the same time not sure if I'll be satisfied with whatever payoff will come for this so I don't want to overindulge in theorizing and setting my own expectations too high. Maybe this is just a fevered hallucination, maybe it means nothing (I hope it means something). But damn!!! What a gorgeous man crazy scene.

In conclusion, ep 22 had some good stuff for me. Plot development and reflection and tension enough that I may have been satisfied with just that one episode. But they gave us two, so onward to ep 23 comments!

Ep 23:

I like how many solid reasons the team has to suspect ZYC being possessed. Even though I withheld judgment during my watch given how quickly the show usually confirms that kind of stuff with a possession mark, just simply casting that doubt made the whole build up that much more intense.

ZYC slowly walking down the corridor with the whole grounds lit a somber and haunting gold—*chef's kiss*

ZYC's monologue to a catatonic ZYZ is so important to me. The closest we'll get to his internal monologue about this whole situation. The kinds of things said when we think there's no conscious listener.

Okay so, having finished this episode and looking back, Li Lun's hands coming up from behind ZYC was not to denote possession (at least in this episode), potentially is a visual from ZYZ's POV, and seems related to the above screencap. I am so, so curious. Once again, I'm stopping myself from further speculation because I want to be surprised but ahhhhhhhhh

PSJ shooting at Ao Yin is so gorgeous. Her action scenes seriously never disappoint—the creativity of her fight choreos!! Also very cool that the whole team is getting to take part in the action, not just the two male leads.

Bai Jiu possession was not on my bingo card but I sure do love that we literally saw the possession take place and I still didn't connect the dots. Good shitttt. Also oh no ): ZYC was telling the truth about the soul needle, he was just tricked ):

Seriously from the Ao Yin case to getting PSJ released to reviving the Divine Wood to getting tricked by possessed!Bai Jiu to making pear soup to fighting ZYZ to fighting Li Lun—when will ZYC get a single goddamn vacation day holy shit.

Also when will WX tear up that contract so ZYZ can stop having a mild heart attack every time he wants to kiss her ): &I love that they saved the 300-year montage for this moment. While their ship doesn't give me brainrot personally, who could be unmoved by that incredible and undisclosed sacrifice? That's soulmatism.

Okay, I'd seen clips of them filming the ZYC and Li Lun fight but damn I did not expect it'd be happening right now!! Right after already taking damage from ZYZ? And my god is Li Lun brutal. The two actors did such an impressive job on this entire fight, what with Li Lun's ease and ZYC's suffering. I really appreciated the extensive hand-to-hand combat after Li Lun literally obliterated ZYC's sword. (Also though, given the origin of that sword, I kept hoping for a flashback to ZYC's brother once it broke, but alas, no dice.) Anyway, the show does not play around about ZYC whump it seems. I was very very shook by that throat punch; that shit legitimately looked like it hurt.

Honestly, I had a hard time with the extended ZYZ and Li Lun conversation at the very end because oh my god someone please heal ZYC lmao. But of course, that's the end of the episode~~

Y'all...check on your local ZYC stans because I was not okay after all that (': I need a heaping dose of comfort after all that hurt, but as always I'm cautious of hoping for much from canon itself. So yeah! Ep 23 was solid, but I would probably be in better shape if today's release just ended on ep 22 ((':

Time to go wait for the cast's Hi6 episode to drop so I can heal my battered heart ;-;

[needle-noggins]

Time for Vol. 5: Meryl's very bad no good horrible day

Even though she saved the day by shooting Legato, breaking the craziest stand-off while also scared shitless. I love my wife. She can hold so much complexity in her. Now let's get into it:

First, a moment from Vash:

Our boy is in utter agony here, and the thought of Meryl is what keeps him going. Obviously she's in danger and needs rescuing, but come on. He's enduring this pain for her. He can't quit, for her. Yeah, this is par for the course for our anime jesus figure, but come on. Let me have this.

Quick moment of Meryl seeing Vash's feathers for the first time and she's terrified. It's interesting how Wolfwood and Meryl are both so deeply terrified of Vash, but Wolfwood saw a lot more up front at Jeunora Rock and from a distance. Meryl, on the other hand, is trapped. I also think Wolfwood processes it completely differently because he also sees himself as a monster, so to him it's recognition of the self through the other (deragatory). For Meryl, it's just all traumatic. She's just a 23 year old woman and she didn't ask for this.

I think these panels above explain my question from earlier - Meryl is definitely seeing Vash's flashbacks to July here. She sees the black hole gate, the destruction, and the angel arm; I'm not sure if she knows about the part with Knives, but based on some really helpful people on my earlier post today, I think she reveals that she saw that too (oof). I'm not sure what she's seeing in the bottom panel of page 95, though. If someone could explain, I would be super appreciative.

Like I said, she's just a normal person. What was it that someone said to Vash earlier, that he's endured more pain than any person possibly could live with? And now Meryl feels some of that - a lot of it, perhaps, considering that July was so traumatic to Vash that he lost his memory of it. Someone else pointed it out wonderfully that while Fifth Moon was Knives controlling Vash, July was 100% Vash aiming to kill Knives and everyone else was an unlucky casualty of Vash's fear and anger. Meryl sees what Vash is capable of - and that he has killed scores of people - not just second-hand through circumstance, but in actuality.

ANGEL MODE GO CRAZY GO STUPID! GORE GORE GORE!

I mean, Vash doesn't have great control of his power anyway, between hardly ever using it and feeling intense emotion that affects it. Thank god he doesn't use the angel arm here, but holy shit? Meryl just saw what that thing is capable of, and Wolfwood saw it in real time, and he's yelling at Meryl to escape but she's trapped underneath him. After she was also trapped in an elevator, and the elevator fell, and holy shit if i were her I would need extensive therapy to go into an elevator ever again, never mind all of Vash. And then as Vash's angel arm powers down it morphs again into this ungodly homunculus of body parts like it's fucking Envy from Fullmetal Alchemist (*Trigun predates FMA, to be clear) and he is apologizing profusely, knowing how terrifying it is and he has no control over what's happening with his body.

Huh. Between that and how Knives keeps assaulting him, that's a pretty painful running theme.

Thankfully, as Elendira takes the spotlight (my other wife) (she can do no wrong, I love her dearly), I think it gives Vash some time to cool down long enough to go back to "normal". And then he holds a dying Hoppered's hand, showing compassion to a man who tried to kill him but then re-experienced the horrors of July with him, showing that Vash still cares that despite how terrifying and destructive he can be when he loses it. And Meryl watches on.

[p1x1x]

[intertexts]

in the back of the car, vyncent's just sitting there quietly, with a little smile on his face. / i think during this whole... interaction, you see ashe crack a little smile and, like... realize that he's finally woken up.

s2ep11 1:05:05 / s2ep40 0:22:20

[fearandhatred]

part 1 // part 2 // part 3 // part 4 // part 5 // part 6 // part 7 // part 8 // part 9 // part 10

[idkwhatimdoingbutslay]

HASHTAG CAITLYN KIRAMMAN SHUT THE HELL UP CHALLEN-

Oh… oh, nvm

[zsbrainrot]

Buddy Daddies Art Dump Part 1/?: Redraws

[skepticalfrogcat]

I need to bite him. just once. I feel like that would fix me

[motivation-ga-shinderu]

the price of recognition