#so many character arcs left unresolved

[helga-grinduil]

actually feeling flabbergasted and depressed by how bad and hollow this ending is

[diamondcitydarlin]

----LOTS OF SPOILERS FOR THE FILM BELOW BE AWARE---

The thing that's driving me kinda CRAZY about the sequel though is how perfectly it sets up a personal arc for Lydia to be intertwined with Beej's. Like I said in my reaction post after seeing the film last night, I feel like Lydia as a character doesn't really get much of an arc or a resolution by the end of the story, as most of the plot is focused on repairing her relationship with her daughter, with Delia, maybe even her ex-husband to a certain extent, and for as much as she's rid of someone actually preying on her (Rory) we have no reason to believe she's found inner peace or really discovered herself or isn't still constantly popping pills to help with the 'gift' of sight she still has to deal with. There's so much about her left unresolved that Tim is either going to have to make another film about or I will have to fanfic about. But again, what's also fascinating is the way the beats of Lydia's story become tangled up with Beej's by the end of this, and also the ambiguous suggestion that there might be some kind of red string of fate linking them together across life and death and centuries (my kingdom for Beej saying "I've crossed oceans of time to find you" in a deep sexy Dracula voice and Lydia being like "plz shut the fuck up" LMAO)

Like, the 'psychic connection'. The thing that makes Lydia able to see and interact with Beej in places other than the house/model in Winter River. At first I think we're led to believe these are genuine hallucinations she's having, but ofc that's debunked when Beej reveals he's aware of these sightings and has been participating in them on purpose. Does this suggest that their first marriage may have been binding in some way that didn't release him from death, but allowed him more range to manifest so long as he was attached to her? That's not really addressed or explained, but I feel like it opens the possibility of being a thing (as so many fanfics have had happen before, I LOVE it tbh)

Also, the parallel of them both having had predatory exes that tricked them into 'selling their souls' (one in a figurative sense, the other literally lmao). I'm honestly shocked more conclusions weren't drawn from that conspicuous parallel in the film itself, because it's VERY interesting. It seems almost to suggest they're both meant to safeguard each other's souls (which is why I'm still bitter we didn't get Lydia defending him from Delores, I think that would've been a nice follow up to Beej saving her from Rory, even if she was just doing it out of a sense of obligation).

And idk, on the whole I feel a lot of Lydia's personal struggle at this point in her life is defined by a need to feel 'normal'. I get how that can seem odd coming from the teen girl that confidently described herself as 'strange and unusual', but this is 30 years later, after several failed relationships, after becoming a mom and struggling with a strained relationship with her daughter because of her oddity, idk, I think it's a good case study on how society forces women to conform lest they be a bad daughter or a bad mom or a bad wife, etc, but I think it's obvious she's just fighting her 'strange and unusual' nature and the more she does that, the more difficult her life will be.

To me, that suggests her path to happiness has actually a lot to do with Beej, or very well could. Who else is going to understand her true nature the way he does? Who else is going to unashamedly encourage her to be balls to the wall weirdo like she REALLY is??? Who else can truly set her free that way??? Like I'm gnawing on wires here yall, if nothing else Tim gave us SO much fanfic material to work with on this one.

[lurkingshan]

Love Sea Final Thoughts

I have been trying to wrap my head around my overall feelings about Love Sea, a show that is undeniably flawed but somehow charming anyway, that drops so many threads but does such a good job with a few of its core points that it's hard to be mad. I can't really say that this is a great drama, but I can say that I enjoyed it a lot and I think it's a good watch if you go in understanding some caveats.

Let's start with a few things I really loved about this show:

Mahasamut. A great character, he will be going on my shortlist of Thai bl favorites. He's smart, honest, patient, giving and forgiving but he also knows himself, his limits, and his worth. On top of all that, he actually looks like a normal person, with a healthy body weight and beautiful imperfect skin. So rare in dramas.

Smart class dynamics. I appreciated how much this show grounded Mut and Rak's relationship in their class disparity, how wealth and lack of same was a constant issue between them that was never forgotten, and how its effect on their power dynamic shifted over time as their relationship grew.

Very well-executed sex scenes. The sex in this show is tied to character development and relationship arcs, and every sex scene mattered to the story. We watched the shifting power dynamics between Mut and Rak play out via the sex they had together and by watching their intimacy we learned more about them.

Ridiculous chemistry. The main love story was supported by truly excellent emotional and sexual chemistry. I always believed in the attraction and the feelings between these two, and that helped a lot when the story didn't quite take me where it needed to.

Rak and Vie's friendship. I really loved that we spent time with these two as besties, and that they were genuinely so supportive of each other. Vie was a real MVP in kicking Rak's ass when he needed it.

Meena, the best child ever. What a delightful character who brought a lot of fun and lightness to the story. Her scenes with Mut were a true highlight.

And here are some things that didn't quite work for me:

Uneven focus for the main characters. Once we left the island to go to Bangkok, the entire show was about Rak, his backstory, his issues, his ongoing problems, and his needs, and Mut was kind of subsumed in his story instead of having one of his own. I was glad we got back to Mut's life at the end, but they really should have kept it present throughout so everything didn't feel so one-sided.

Shallow engagement with family trauma. And despite the fact that the story was so much about Rak's issues, the story never actually went deep on them. I still don't really understand a lot about his family dynamics. The show used his dad and cousin as villains and then his mom as an easy out to solve everything at the end, but we never dug into how all these people ended up this way in the first place. It was a real missed opportunity.

Rak's emotional journey. I was on board for much of it, but other parts felt a bit haphazard and all over the place. Sometimes it felt like he was suddenly progressing out of nowhere, and others it felt like he was backsliding just because the plot demanded it. I liked where the story took him a lot but the path to get there was pretty bumpy.

The side couple. WOOF. I have no idea what happened here, but that was a fail on just about every front. Mook was a hard character to love from the start, Vie felt like a completely different person with Mook than in all her other scenes, there was so much lying and manipulation for no good reason, and in the end they were left completely unresolved. If you are on the lookout for great gl pairings, you will not find that here.

So there you have it. This show is absolutely a mixed bag on its execution, so how much you end up liking it will probably depend on how strongly you connect with what it did well and where it dropped the ball. For me, it was a good experience and one I'll remember fondly. I'll definitely be watching the special when it's released and I hope to see this cast again.

[genericpuff]

Seeing how there only 10 episodes left do you think Rachel will rush the ending?

The way I see she needs to somehow resign Apollo reign, reawaken the God's, have Persophone defeat Kronos, have Persophone create Elysian, stop the entered winner/killing of nymphs and humans, hell we don't even know what is Leto end goal and what is her whole role in this series other than manipulating Apollo to be king. We don't even know what exactly she did with Zeus (but knowing Rachel she made Leto the other woman despite the fact she was another respectable goddess)

Imo I think Rachel is officially done done with her series and know her viewers are fed up with her constant milking of the series. You can even see it in some of her work where you know she just gave up (unless it's her self insert scenes)

On a side note another thing I should point out is the anti climax of Leuce and Thetis. Besides the fact she made Leuce another other woman the way she made Leuce expression during Persophone home Invasion made it look like she wasn't going to back down. Only for her to make be forgotten 3/4 of the final arc and is never mention again. Persophone didnt even ask Hades how does he even know Leuce. So unless Rachel has plans for her again that was the last time we saw her making that whole plot unless.

While Thetis plot.........

I'll be honest she just got a slap on a wrist and Rachel just insert Achilles as a way to bait her audience/trying to make a cultural reference. Tbh I thought Thetis would have a bigger story like fast-forward she believes she gotten everything she wanted and is now Queen only for the Trojan war occur and she only lost her status bur her son. Thus making the scene a poetic justic/tragedy.

I'll finish this off since I don't want to run my mouth about this series so here's my 2 cent. Rachel is putting to many Greek mythologies in her series that a) she has forgotten about characters b) everyone is now expecting her to have this series be all wrapped up in a nice bow when it actually be worse c) and because she has so many subplots they are left unresolved or unsatisfied

Oh, Persephone created Elysium already. It was literally just this LMAO

Okay in all honesty I don't know if that was actually meant to be Elysium, but I remember seeing people comment on the S2 finale when she was bee-burping at Kronos that she was creating Elysium at the same time as fighting Kronos and I just... yeah okay? But they literally haven't even name-dropped it since the trial. This is what I mean when I criticize Rachel's writing for depending WAY too much on reader headcanon, because not only will she just roll with whatever her fans theorize, she'll do so without actually writing it into the comic so unless you're in the FB groups and Discord, you're probably not gonna pick up on every little decision Rachel made because she's making them with half a thought and a quarter of the effort needed to express it. It means people can say whatever and she'll just take credit for it like "yeah! that was Elysium! totally! you get it! okay moving on-"

As for the Leuce thing, Hades deadass met Leuce when Zeus offered her up as a bride, which Zeus explained to Persephone during the S2 finale arc-

-but again it suffers from a lot of the same issues of Rachel not expanding on her ideas and just resolving them with some other random plot convenience. Why would Leuce be so obsessed with getting with Hades that she'd make up fake text messages? Rachel just really didn't want Hades to be interacting with other women in the 10 years that Persephone was gone, so she had to make Leuce delusional for it to work ?? Why would she go so far as to tell Hades about the text messages if they weren't real the whole time?

-but then of course before Hades can respond to this, Persephone interrupts, meaning the plotline can be put on the backburner until Rachel comes up with a solution to it-

-and then we got to see Persephone 'resolve' the issue by harassing Leuce in her home, and it was only until after THEN that Rachel finally went "no it's fine that Persephone vandalized her home, the text messages weren't real!!! see??? Leuce is just a delusional nimwit! She deserves it!"

And yeah the Thetis and Achilles thing is yet another 'plotline' that Rachel only introduced to try and legitimize her comic as a Greek myth retelling. Just about every myth she tries to portray is done vaguely and without any thought for the world they're inhabiting, it's all just lip service.

At the end of the day, a lot of the writing in LO is 1.) trying to make up for the lack of plot development in the first two seasons (hence why we're now getting sudden lore dumping about how the seasons work) and 2.) trying to make up for its lack of Greek myth set pieces because Rachel has now been openly called out for being arrogant in her 'knowledge' of Greek myth and it has people analyzing just how little Greek there is in this Greek myth "retelling". It's especially apparent in the second season when the whole thing is just self-insert fantasies about Hades and Persephone living together until the plot finally has to get moving again. Every now and then Rachel remembers that this is supposed to be a retelling, so she'll throw in some random Greek myth reference like the Colchian dragon or Aphrodite marrying Hephaestus or Thetis and Achilles.

It's very evident that Rachel never learned how to write a longform story or planned to make LO as long as it is and the story has suffered all the more for it. And it sucks because that's not the story I got onboard with back in 2019-2020, but that's where we are. Ironically, as much as I criticize LO for not having enough Greek myth influence in it, I do think the story would have been far better off if it just stayed as a cheesy office romance fluff fic. It's clearly what Rachel wanted to write but either she or WT (or both) got ahead of themselves and took on more than what LO - and Rachel - were equipped to follow through on.

[sokkas-therapist]

Ok so I decided I am going to post that “atla live action hot take” I mentioned

Click below the cut if you’re interested in hearing my take on the whole “taking away sokka’s sexism” thing

1) nobody is glorifying sokka’s sexism by saying it should be kept in the show. It’s quite literally the opposite. The original series did a great job using his sexism as a lesson; any time sokka made a sexist remark in the first 4 episodes it was made abundantly clear that he was wrong, and as soon as Sokka was proven wrong he admitted that he was misguided, apologized, quite literally bowed down on his knees to ask for forgiveness, and even asked to learn from the kiyoshi warriors, and excepted wearing their traditional uniforms, further surrendering his flawed perspective of societal gender roles. A wonderfully executed example of writers using their characters to teach viewers a lesson: which was, in this case, that sexism is wrong. Sokka’s sexism was not left unresolved, so why take away a valuable lesson in the show??

2) if you take away a character’s flaws…then they don’t have development. A character can’t learn and grow from their mistakes if they never make mistakes.

If a charecter starts off perfect and unflawed then they are surface level and lack depth or the ability for an arc.

And no, this is not saying that Sokka didn’t have many other admirable qualities like his intelligence and adaptability etc.. He 100% had those qualities. But one of the coolest things about the original atla series was their ability to flesh out side charecters and give them depth. A charecter who is simply smart then becomes smarter, or adaptable then becomes even more adaptable, lacks depth and internal conflict.

Sokka’s sexism was the starting point for his internal conflict. Sokka wasn’t just sexist to be sexist, or because the entire southern water tribe was misogynistic (and we know for a fact they weren’t, because if they were misogynistic, then Katara wouldn’t have been shocked when the North denied her waterbending training). He was misogynistic because being seen/accepted as a “man” and a strong warrior was all Sokka wanted after his father left him behind. In reality, we know his father was only trying to protect his son from the horrors of war. But to a young and impressionable child, Sokka internalized this as him not being “man” enough, so he dedicated himself to becoming the person he thought would make his father proud. He was always reaching for this unattainable standard he set for himself, which lead to him having a skewed and toxic view of masculinity that he took out on the women around him. He associated being a worthy warrior with being a traditionally masculine man, and leaned way too far into fulfilling the gender roles men and women are told to play in society in hopes of gaining his father’s approval. We see him do this by suppressing his feelings of inferiority as a nonbender, along with all the aspects of himself that he thought could be seen as “weak” or “feminine” (ex: his love for shopping and poetry and art that we see develop up until the literal end of the series).

So clearly, the vast majority of sokka’s charecter development that deals with internal conflict stems from the toxic view of masculinity and gender roles that he adopted after being left behind by his father, which caused him to outwardly lash out toward katara and Suki with misogynist comments. So taking away the sexism we see in the first few episodes eliminates important context that makes sokka’s character development throughout the entire series significant, not just an “iffy unnecessarily bigoted message”, because it was quite literally used to show that sexism was wrong.

I wasn’t going to say anything about this at first but seeing so many people display a fundamental lack of understanding for the premise of character development and the usage of charecter flaws to promote positive messages in media set me off. Just…WTF????

(Also I know I wrote a summarized version of this in the tags for another post but I wanted to expand upon it more and make this a separate post)

[mononijikayu]

X01=LOVESONG (I Know I Love You) — Geto Suguru.

When clarity finally pierced through the fog of your shock and grief, you found yourself standing amidst the remnants of his life, which was intricately intertwined with yours. The room, now a hollow echo of what once was, was filled with objects that each told a story—a story that had been both of yours. There were books you had discussed late into the night, mugs from which you had sipped coffee on lazy mission–less mornings, polaroids that captured moments of sheer, unadulterated happiness. Every item seemed imbued with a fragment of Suguru's presence, his smile, his warmth, and even the distinct trace of his scent that seemed to linger stubbornly in the air.

Genre: Post - Hidden Inventory Arc, 2007-2010s;

Warning/s: First Love, First Heartbreak, Betrayal, Grief, Emotional Trauma, Character Death, Angst, Romance, Kissing, Tragedy, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Purging, Unresolved Tension, Inner Turmoil, Flashbacks, Love and Loss, Slow Burn, Closure, Depiction of Depression, Depiction of Grief, Depiction of Physical Touch, Mention of Death, Mention of Killing, Mention of Harm, Reader's Discretion Is Advised;

masterlist

listen: X01=LOVESONG (I Know I Love You) by TXT

note: this is gonna be sad, so i hope you buckle up. this is like, one of the angstiest thoughts i've had in a while and i just had to write it down. anyway, enjoy it!!! i love you~

THIS IS THE CLOSEST YOU’D EVER GET TO CLOSURE, YOU THINK. It was profoundly difficult, cleaning up a room that was saturated with so many memories. Yet, Yaga-sensei found himself tasked with this heart-wrenching duty, a directive passed down from the higher-ups. Every item associated with Geto Suguru, now labeled a fugitive and a traitor, was to be removed. 

From the mundane—a simple pen—to the intimately personal, like his favorite sweater, nothing could remain. It was a stark and painful erasure of his existence within these walls. There was to be no trace of the man who had once been a part of their lives, no remnants of a traitor among them.

Satoru, overwhelmed by the situation, flatly refused to participate. He wouldn't entertain the idea of following through with the order, his actions—or lack thereof—speaking volumes of his inner turmoil and silent protest. Shoko initially tried to cope, sitting quietly in the room, surrounded by the echoes of a past that clung to every object Suguru had touched. However, the weight of the task proved too much, and eventually, she had to leave, unable to bear the stripping away of memories tied so deeply to someone they had all cared for.

Yaga-sensei couldn't find it within himself to blame them. How could he? The task he was performing was not just a physical clearing of objects; it was an emotional purging that none of them had been prepared for. It posed the torturous question: how does one manage to hold so much grief? How can anyone be expected to hold onto so much, only to have to let it go, to act as if it was never there?

In that room, every item removed felt like a denial of what had been, a negation of the times they had shared. Each piece carried a story, a laugh, a moment of brilliance, a trace of the life they once knew with Suguru. But beyond the physical act of cleaning, there was an unspoken mourning, a quiet acknowledgment of the loss not just of a friend and colleague but of the innocence and camaraderie they had all shared before his descent.

Yaga-sensei understood the necessity of the orders from a rational standpoint, but rationality often fell short of providing comfort in times of emotional strife. The job had to be done, but the emotional residue, the sense of betrayal mixed with fond memories, the stark pain of loss—these were not things that could be cleaned away with the physical removal of objects. They lingered, pervasive and deep, in the hearts of those left behind.

Still, you persevered. You took up the task, gathering boxes and those heavy, dark trash bags, and stood before the once tidy room, now a symbol of chaos and abandonment—a place he could no longer return to. The mess was overwhelming; where to begin was not immediately clear, but you started nonetheless. You felt the tears prick at the corners of your eyes as you picked up each item, but you pushed on, item after item.

As you sorted through his belongings, a mix of mundane and intimate objects, the reality of the situation began to truly weigh on you. You had to admit, though it gnawed at your insides, part of you still couldn’t fully accept that the contents of the report were true. It seemed impossible that the person who had owned these books, worn these clothes, and laughed in these very walls could have done the atrocities he was accused of. He hadn’t really destroyed that village, had he? He couldn’t have actually killed his own beloved parents, could he?

The dissonance between the Suguru you knew and the one described in the cold, factual report created a storm of confusion and denial inside you. Each item you placed into the boxes felt like you were discarding pieces of the Suguru you remembered. And it broke your heart over and over again.

You felt nauseated, you felt like you were going to lose it. Every piece felt like shredding the memories of someone you love—loved. Your Suguru, he was not a monster. The process was not just physical cleaning; it was an emotional battleground, where memories conflicted with hard, unforgiving reality.

As you were about to leave the room, Yaga-sensei approached you, his expression somber and his eyes avoiding yours. He extended a folder towards you—thick with papers, the topmost branded with the official seals of their institution. You hesitated but took it, feeling the weight of the documents in your hands.

“Why?” You whispered under your breath, looking at the older man. “Why’d he do it?”

"You need to read these," Yaga-sensei said quietly, his voice barely above a whisper. "It's important you understand everything."

Your hands trembled as you opened the folder. The papers rattled loudly in your grasp, a stark contrast to the eerie silence that filled the room. Each page you turned revealed more details, more horrors, more undeniable evidence of the acts Suguru had committed. The descriptions were clinical, detached, yet they cut through you with a visceral sharpness. And at the end, those words —’All sorcerers are advised to when in contact with the cursed user Geto Suguru, to execute him, on sight.’

You felt like you were going to be sick. This couldn’t be real. How is this real? As you absorbed the contents, a specific memory flashed through your mind, unbidden and piercingly vivid. 

It was of Suguru, on a day much like any other, yet now impossibly distant. He had kissed you goodbye, his lips brief against yours, his eyes warm with affection. "I'll come back from this mission," he had promised with a smile that couldn't even reach his eyes, full of a light that you now realized was extinguished. “I swear. We’ll eat soba together when I come back.”

The contrast between that memory and the black-and-white text in front of you was jarring. How could the man who had looked at you with such tenderness, who had promised to return, be the same person described in these reports? How could he have carried such darkness within him while offering you nothing but warmth and love?

The room spun slightly as you stood there, the papers shaking in your hands, each word another weight added to what felt like an unbearable load. You wanted to drop the folder, to let it fall to the ground and scatter, as if by dispersing these papers you could disperse the truth they contained. But you couldn't. You had to face this.

“I understand.” You whisper under your breath, as you slowly let go of the folder. Tears pricking at the edge of your eyes. “I’ll….I’ll tell Shoko—”

“She already knows.”

You look at him, blinking your eyes. “And Satoru?”

“Locked himself away.”

“I see.”

Handling his possessions, you couldn’t help but recall the person he had been—the very center of your whole world. In this world full of zeros, he seemed to be the only one that ever made sense. This world of violence, this suffering, this jujutsu sorcery—he was the only one that ever made sense. The warmth in his smile, the tenderness in his voice, the grace in his touch.

With each object that landed in the trash bag, it felt as if you were trying to erase those memories, deny the reality of what had been, and maybe, in some small way, absolve the pain and betrayal you felt. With everything he was in that trash bag, it was as though life was zeros again. Nothing made sense anymore.

You stopped for a moment.

You turned your head away.

The pictures on this white board.

You smiled as you kissed him.

New Year’s Day at the temple.

That bittersweet summer in Okinawa.

When clarity finally pierced through the fog of your shock and grief, you found yourself standing amidst the remnants of his life, which was intricately intertwined with yours. The room, now a hollow echo of what once was, was filled with objects that each told a story—a story that had been both of yours. There were books you had discussed late into the night, mugs from which you had sipped coffee on lazy mission–less mornings, polaroids that captured moments of sheer, unadulterated happiness. Every item seemed imbued with a fragment of Suguru's presence, his smile, his warmth, and even the distinct trace of his scent that seemed to linger stubbornly in the air.

How had you managed to get this far, you wondered. Only a few neatly packed bags now contained the physical remnants of what had been a shared existence, yet there was too much left that wasn't tangible, too much that you couldn't pack away or discard.

Memories clung to you relentlessly, each one a poignant reminder of what had been lost. How could you possibly begin to untangle yourself from a past so rich in love and now so poisoned with betrayal?

The challenge before you was immense. You needed to find a way to preserve the memories that still brought warmth, those uncontaminated by the later revelations of his actions, without allowing them to anchor you to a past that could no longer exist in the way it once had.

It wasn't just about moving on physically—clearing out his belongings and possibly even moving out of the space you shared—it was also about emotional survival. How could you reconcile the love you had felt with the pain of betrayal? How could you hold onto the good without it being tainted by the bad?

As you stood there, surrounded by the echoes of a life you once loved, you realized that this process would not be swift. It would be painful and slow, a journey of sorting through not just physical objects, but also through the layers of your heart. You would need to learn how to cherish the joy without it being overshadowed by the sense of loss, to acknowledge the pain without letting it consume you.

The task of moving forward was daunting. Yet, it was necessary. You understood that to heal, you must allow yourself to feel both the grief and the fondness, the betrayal and the love. You must learn to live with the memories in a way that they inform your future without chaining you to a narrative that could no longer be your reality.

With each memory you chose to pack away or leave out, with each item you decided to keep or discard, you were not just deciding on what physically remained in your life; you were also making decisions about how you would let your past influence your future.

This process, as heart-wrenching as it was, was your path to finding peace—a peace that acknowledged all that had been, the good and the bad, and still allowed you to look forward to what might come next.

You fell to your knees.

You felt your body shake.

Tears overwhelmed you.

You know you loved him.

But why wasn’t he here?

Why wasn’t he here to love you?

SUGURU MADE A MARK IN YOUR LIFE YOU CAN NEVER ERASE. When you think about it, you never truly fell in love with anyone before Suguru. He was your first in everything. In the world full of winters, in the world full of suffering, in the world full of zeros — he was the person that made the frigid air thaw, he healed the world of suffering. 

He made the world feel like there was someone. There was someone that could love you. He was the epitome of all you desired, of all you needed; every trait you ever hoped for in a person shone brightly in his eyes, which met yours with such warmth. Had you made a list of ten qualities you sought in a soulmate, Suguru would have scored eleven, perhaps even more.

Your personalities magnetically attracted each other, an inevitable pull that felt as if no force in the universe could sever. From the moment you met, you knew you were caught in a perpetual cycle with him—a cycle you never wanted to escape. To you, he was the one; no one else could evoke the feelings he did. 

Suguru was your other half, a wondrous being who filled your life with such joy that it seemed lifted straight from a fairy tale. At times, you questioned if he were real, or just a figment of your daydreams.

It was a bright, crisp afternoon at Jujutsu High when you first crossed paths with Geto Suguru. You’d just come from getting all your stuff in the dorm, as Yaga–sensei instructed.

When you finished, you decided to take a walk. And it was then, when you had spotted a distressed cat, its cries pitiful as it clung precariously to a branch high up in one of the campus's many sprawling trees. Moved by a mix of concern and impulsiveness, you decided to rescue the feline, despite having little experience in arboreal rescues.

With cautious steps, you climbed, reaching from branch to branch, ascending higher with each careful maneuver. Below, the ground seemed to grow increasingly distant, a patchwork of grass and the scattered shadows of leaves that danced in the gentle wind. Your heart pounded not just from the climb but from the fear of the cat jumping or falling.

Just as you were almost close enough to coax the cat to safety, a misstep caused your foot to slip. In a heart-stopping instant, your balance faltered, and you found yourself tumbling backward, a startled cry escaping your lips.

Out of seemingly nowhere, strong arms caught you. Your descent halted abruptly, and as you dangled in mid-air for a moment, time seemed to pause. You were gently set back onto the ground, and as you steadied yourself, your eyes met Suguru for the first time.

He was a fellow student, previously just another face in the crowd somewhere at one point. But now, he was the person who had caught you in a literal free fall — he was your savior. And you couldn’t stop staring at him. He was so beautiful, almost like an angel fallen to earth. The thought of his gentleness towards you, his tender stare. It was all too much for you. It made your heart beat over and over.

Suguru's expression was one of mild amusement mixed with concern. "You should be more careful," he chided lightly, his eyes scanning you quickly to ensure you were unhurt. "Trees aren't the safest places to be if you’re not a cat—or a trained climber."

Embarrassment flushed your cheeks, but you managed a grateful smile. "Thanks for catching me. And, uh, sorry for the trouble," you stammered, still trying to calm your racing heart.

"No trouble at all," Suguru replied, his tone easy and friendly. He then turned his attention to the cat still perched in the tree, looking down at you both with wide, curious eyes. "Let’s get your little friend down safely, shall we?" he suggested, already assessing the tree for the best way to climb.

Together, you watched as Suguru skillfully ascended the tree. Unlike your attempt, he moved with confidence and grace, reaching the cat quickly and coaxing it into his arms with gentle whispers. The descent was smooth, and soon, he was back on the ground, the cat safe in his arms.

"You're pretty good at this," you remarked, impressed by his calm demeanor and skill.

He just shrugged, handing the cat to you. "I like climbing. And helping," he added with a smile that reached his eyes, warming them with a spark that you would come to know very well in the times to follow.

That afternoon, after the cat had scampered off, presumably to find less precarious places to explore, you and Suguru ended up walking together, talking about school, interests, and trivial things that slowly wove the initial threads of your connection.

From that unexpected meeting sprung a relationship built on shared moments, laughter, and eventually, deeper feelings. Each look back at that day reminded you of the fateful fall that had brought Suguru into your life, not just as a savior from a physical fall, but as a pivotal presence in the most significant chapters of your life. From that on, you think you could never think of him anything other than someone you loved. 

Suguru and your relationship blossomed with an intensity that seemed almost surreal, like something out of those fairy tales designed to instill hope and belief in magic. The rapid progression from friends to soulmates caught you both by surprise but neither of you hesitated. It felt right, like a multitude of moments had aligned just to bring you together. 

You marveled at how natural it felt to be with him. For once, love did not come with reservations or the fear of not being enough. No one had ever affirmed you deserved happiness the way he did. His embrace liberated you from any previous doubts about your worthiness of love. His touch seemed almost celestial, as if you were being given a second life—one filled with an abundance of love and joy.

Whenever life seemed intent on throwing its worst challenges at you, Suguru stood as your unwavering pillar of support. His adoration was a universe of its own, vast and filled with warmth that saw through your insecurities and embraced your imperfections. He loved you wholly, celebrating your quirks and flaws as parts of the intricate mosaic that made you unique.

Suguru had a profound effect on your very being. With him, you learned the essence of true love—how it felt to be completely understood and appreciated. He had the extraordinary ability to see you, the real you, and in his eyes, you were enough.

This recognition and acceptance kindled a deep, passionate love within you, a love so fierce and consuming that it seemed to defy the mundane limitations of everyday life. He inspired dreams of a future so luminous and perfect that it appeared unbreakable.

You treasured every aspect of his soul, from his vibrant laughter to the thoughtful furrow of his brow. Each trait painted a color on the once bland walls you had built around your heart.

Geto Suguru didn't just break down these walls; he integrated himself into them, weaving his essence into the very fabric of your existence, becoming an inseparable part of the infinite you once believed was yours alone.

This love was a sanctuary, a space where you both existed in a harmonious bubble seemingly impervious to the external world. In this shared infinity, every moment was a vivid stroke on the canvas of your lives together, creating a masterpiece of vibrant hues and heartfelt emotions. Each day spent with him reinforced the belief that nothing could ever pull you apart—a belief so strong that it bordered on invincibility.

But as with all tales, whether of magic or reality, challenges loomed. Yet, in those moments of pure connection and love, such concerns seemed distant. You lived in the breaths shared between whispers of affection and the quiet understanding that passed in glances—those slices of eternity where the world outside faded to a mere backdrop to the vivid reality you shared with Suguru.

But as Suguru descended into madness and grief, the perfect image began to fracture. Amanai Riko died. And then your kouhai, Haibara, died. At one point, you nearly died. And he hated it. He hated feeling this powerless. He hated having to swallow up curses. He wanted to burn it all.

He hated how you all have to die, forced to die young, brutal deaths – for the sake of people who couldn’t care less. He would never tell you these things. You only find out in that letter he left to the three of you — The one that he wrote a year ago, when he planned to disappear. He couldn’t keep living this lie anymore. And you couldn't take it. It drove you mad. It drove you insane. At one point, you wonder, if you would end up like him.

But you just couldn't stop crying.

You couldn't stop mourning him.

Mourning the life you could have had.

It wasn't fair, it alll wasn't fair at all.

You were robbed of happiness together.

In all those moments, you wished you could have done more for him. You wished you could have wrapped your arms around his. Kissed him enough to make the taste disappear. But somehow you couldn’t do anything. No matter if you asked if he was alright, he would rebuff you. No matter how much you ask him if he slept, he would tell you the opposite. No matter how much you wanted to embrace him, he would say nothing.

He was already too far gone. His once hopeful demeanor was overshadowed by a deep, engulfing sorrow. The lively discussions you once shared, filled with love and reverence, turned into debates tainted by his despair.

And perhaps you had known it. Perhaps refused to acknowledge that it was all over. But you kept trying. You kept wishing that you could keep him with you, trapped in this own world that belonged to the both of you. And he tried, he tried to keep up with you. But he knew, as you probably did too, that it would never have worked out.

Amidst a storm of emotional turmoil and unseen pressures that seemed to suffocate the very air around you, there came a breaking point—a moment when the despair felt so overwhelming that you could see no other way through but to anchor yourself to Suguru, the one constant in the chaotic whirlwind of your life.

It was late, the world outside wrapped in the silence of an unforgiving night, when you found Suguru in the dim light of his dorm table, his features etched with lines of stress and shadow. He looked up, his eyes reflecting a turmoil that mirrored your own. In that shared gaze, the weight of unspoken fears and pent-up frustrations hung heavily between you.

Driven by a desperate need to break through the barriers of pain and disconnect, you approached him with a resolve borne of raw emotion. "Use me," you pleaded, voice cracking with the intensity of your plea. "If it makes you feel better, use me. I can't stand seeing you like this. Please, Suguru. Please."

There was a palpable tension in the air as he absorbed your words. For a heart-stopping moment, he just stared, the depth of his gaze searching yours. Then, with a sudden movement, he closed the distance between you, his hands framing your face as he pulled you into a kiss.

At first, the kiss was a desperate melding of lips, a search for solace in the familiar. You responded instinctively, your arms winding around his neck, pulling him closer, trying to meld into him completely. The kiss deepened, driven by a cocktail of raw emotions, each of you seeking comfort, assurance, and a momentary escape from the burdens weighing you down.

As your initial desperation melded into a fervent need, the kiss grew harsher, more intense. Suguru's hands moved from your face, gripping your shoulders, then sliding down with a possessive urgency that conveyed both his need and his surrender to the moment. You felt a surge of something more than just passion—there was also a poignant ache, a recognition of the pain that had driven you to this moment of reckless abandon.

The kiss was no gentle query but a demanding, consuming force, as if through this physical connection, you both could momentarily forget the harshness of reality. Your response was equally fervent, a mix of giving and taking, a physical expression of your plea for him to use this connection, to draw from it whatever solace he could find.

In this intense exchange, there was no room for hesitation or doubt—only the raw, unfiltered need to be each other's solace, even if just for the fleeting moments as your lips clashed and your bodies pressed together in the quiet shadows of the night. Perhaps as you moaned underneath him, you wondered that maybe this would be enough. You had hope that it would.

Yet, as he battled with himself, with his demons, it was in the aftermath of it all that you realized your love could not sustain him. You can never force a flower to bloom when you want it to. You can never ask the sun to shine for you. And in the end, you can never ask Suguru to stay. You can never ask Suguru to explain.

Geto Suguru's grief became a chasm too vast to bridge. The more he unraveled, the more you felt compelled to hold you together, but it was like grasping at dissipating smoke. And you hated it. You hated all of it. But somehow, you could never hate him. Never him.

When you saw him again, you had already moved out of Jujutsu High. The only person who knew where you lived was Shoko and Satoru. You opted for a quiet life, in the countryside.

It was truly hard, you have to admit. Your life felt like a barren moonscape, cold and isolated. You were left to navigate a landscape of loss and self-discovery, all of it alone once again. Your love, once a vibrant song, had quieted to a somber melody. 

You still regularly did Jujutsu work, but those missions were silently forwarded to you to deal with. That night, it was a mission that you wished you’d never taken. The weight of your cursed weapon felt heavier than ever, as if it were absorbing the gravity of the moment.

The victim's room was too dimly lit, shadows playing across the walls, casting elongated shapes that seemed to flicker with your unsteady heartbeat. Geto Suguru stood there, a few feet away, his purple gaze fixed on you with an intensity that made the room shrink.

You wondered why he was here. But you were scared to ask. You were scared to confront the idea that he had anything to do with this. Like all those years ago. You wanted to pretend. You wanted to pretend that he was just here, as he used to be, without the grief nor the pain, that comes with it.

The strands of his hair, longer than you remembered, brushed his eyelashes and occasionally obscured his gaze as he spoke to you. Those eyes, the same eyes that had once implored you with an intensity that had drawn you in, years ago, still seemed to reach out, asking for understanding, for connection. It was as if no time had passed in the way he looked at you, yet everything about him suggested the weight of the years he had carried.

He wore a gojo-kesa, the traditional layered robes that marked his new status in that cult, 'his family', as those reports from spies do say nowadays. The colors made you take a step back. Those colors were those you had once expressed fondness for—a deep, rich blend that seemed to capture the essence of his serious yet profound nature. It was striking how these colors, ones you had offhandedly mentioned liking during one of your many long conversations, now draped his form, as if clinging to a part of your shared past.

"You know, those blues." You pondered to him, almost like a little child. You were too burned out from the exams to stay sane. "The navy blue? Is that what it was?"

"What are you talking about?" Suguru's laugh resounded so beautifully as he laid against your lap. "The navy blue jeans you liked at the store?"

"Yeah, yeah, those!" You confirmed, grinning at him, lowering your head. "Then there were these bright yellow tops I saw—"

"Oh my god, you're creating a worse fit than Satoru—"

"Will you let me finish?" You pouted at him, causing him to laugh again.

"Alright, alright. What's the hat?"

"Pastel green."

"I can see it now."

You grinned again at him. "So, would I look pretty?"

"No, sorry but the color combination—"

"Why don't you just tell me you hate me at this point?" You stood up, pouting and stomped away as he laughed, standing up and catching up with you.

"Baby, wait!"

As you stomped away, the frustration feigned but the playful challenge in your tone unmistakable, Suguru quickly got up, his laughter still lingering in the air between you. The lightness of the moment was a welcome break from the intense studying and the stress that exams always brought into your life.

He caught up to you with a few quick strides, his hand gently grabbing your arm to turn you back toward him. His eyes were alight with amusement and a touch of affection that always seemed to deepen when you both shared these light-hearted moments. "Hey, come on, I was just teasing," he said, his voice softening as he pulled you into a loose embrace.

"You know I could never hate you," Suguru continued, his smile broadening. "And honestly, you’d look pretty in anything. Even in that outrageous outfit you just described."

You couldn't help but soften at his words, the sincerity in his tone melting any mock indignation you had felt. His ability to switch from teasing to tender in a heartbeat was one of the many things you cherished about him.

"You really think so?" You asked, a playful glint in your eye, wanting to draw out the moment a little longer.

"Absolutely," he replied, his hand gently brushing a stray lock of hair from your face. "Although, maybe not the pastel green hat. Let’s save that for Satoru, shall we?" His tease was gentle, and it brought a genuine laugh from you.

"Yeah, let's," you agreed, your laughter mingling with his as the tension from the exams seemed to dissolve away in the comfort of your interaction.

Suguru’s hand slid down to yours, fingers intertwining as he pulled you slightly closer. "How about tomorrow we go and check out those jeans, though? Make a day of it. Just you and me." His suggestion was casual, but you knew it was his way of giving you something to look forward to, a small oasis of normalcy amid the chaos of academic pressures.

"That sounds perfect," you said, your spirits lifted by the plan and the prospect of spending a day together outside the confines of study sessions and lecture halls.

As you both started walking back towards your apartment, hand in hand, the campus around you bathed in the soft light of the evening, you felt a profound sense of gratitude.

It pained you, how he remembered. How easily he just knew which colors to choose. All because they reminded him of you. You hated too, how easily those memories of better days, of days where he smiled so genuinely to the world, were still in your mind.

You fall in love, over and over again. And you wished you can't. You wished you wouldn't. You felt like you were going to be sick, you felt like tears would flow all over again. It struck you just how much he looked like the Suguru you had fallen in love with—the same, yet irrevocably different. How he was still there, after all this time. Even though, you wish he wasn't.

"You still look the same," you said, your voice steady despite the turmoil inside you. The grip on your weapon tightened, a reflex against the vulnerability you felt.

Suguru's lips twitched into a semblance of a smile, sad and knowing. "Looks can be deceiving," he replied, his voice low and rough with emotion. "I'm far from the boy….the man you knew."

The air between you was thick with history and unsaid words, a testament to the journey both of you had traveled—apart yet forever linked by the past.

"Why are you here, Suguru?" Your question cut through the silence, direct and laden with a myriad of emotions.

"I needed to see you," he said simply, stepping forward, reducing the distance between you. "To know if... if there's anything left of us….strangers, to have.”

His forwardness made you tense, the cursed weapon in your hand a reminder of the dangers his presence posed. Yet, his vulnerability, the raw need in his eyes, tugged at something deep within you.

"Suguru, too much has happened. Too much has changed," you replied, your voice faltering slightly as memories of better days flashed through your mind. “And all this time….how could you only now….”

He nodded slowly, the acknowledgment painful but necessary. "I know. I know I've made unforgivable choices. But standing here before you, I can't help but hope for a moment of madness where everything is as it once was."

"You and I know, more than anyone, that some curses can't be undone," you said softly, the weight of your own words anchoring the pain firmly in your chest.

He took another step closer, his presence so familiar yet so foreign. "I suppose you're right. But at least allow me this—," he paused, his voice catching, "—this moment to remember us not as we are, but as we were."

The desperation in his voice, the longing for something irretrievably lost, made your resolve waver. But the reality of the situation, the danger, and the betrayal, fortified your next words.

"Suguru, please don't ask that of me. It's too painful to pretend, even for a moment," you said, meeting his gaze steadily. The cursed weapon remained in your hand, a silent witness to the chasm that lay between you.

His shoulders slumped, the fight going out of him as he stepped back, putting space between your shared pain and his acceptance of the situation.

As Suguru's admission hung in the air, so did the weight of countless memories and unshed tears. "I love you. I will always love you," he whispered, each word laden with regret and a tender hope that seemed almost out of place in the cold reality of the present.

You felt a tightness in your chest, the kind that comes from holding back too much for too long. You pursed your lips, battling the tears threatening to breach your resolve. "It will pass," you managed to say, your voice a whisper almost lost in the distance that had grown between you.

Suguru paused, his back still turned, his shoulders tense as if absorbing the finality of your words. "I know," he said, his voice barely audible, a resignation to his fate—and perhaps yours as well. "I suppose it has to."

The silence that followed was thick, filled with all the things left unsaid, all the apologies that could never undo the past, all the love that could no longer bridge the gap of betrayal and hurt. It was a silence filled with the end of things, the quiet closing of a book whose pages had once fluttered with vibrant life and passionate mistakes.

"You should go," you finally said, firm yet not unkind. "It's better this way."

He nodded without turning to face you, his agreement silent but understood. As he walked away, each step seemed to echo in the empty space, a solemn drumbeat marking the end of an era. You watched him disappear, the figure you once knew now just a shadow merging with the shadows of the night.

Once he was gone, the floodgates opened, and tears streamed down your face. Not just for him, or for what you once had, but for yourself—for the peace you hoped would come, for the healing that was yet to begin, for the strength you would need to rebuild from the ruins of a love lost.

In the quiet aftermath, you realized that this was not just a farewell to Suguru, but a necessary step towards reclaiming yourself. The love might linger, as deep-seated emotions often do, but your acknowledgment that "it will pass" was not just a hope; it was a promise to yourself.

It will be hard, you know that.

You’ll always be in love with him.

You will always want to love him.

But you need to live your life too.

“No more one in the world of zeros.”

You felt tears fall over and over again.

"But I wanted one of you. I wanted you."

[my-mt-heart]

TBOC 201 Review

Two and a half years ago, Carol fans were terrified that they'd never see her again, that her story would end with so many things left unsaid and unresolved, and now she's finally back. That's a victory I do not take lightly. Carol is a vital part of the show and Melissa McBride deserves to tell her story, but after watching the premiere and having an inkling of what’s ahead, it’s still very clear to me that she deserves a hell of a lot more than what she’s getting.

I never had any expectations for the external plot and in that way I was not disappointed. There really isn’t much of one first of all. The action sequences are hokey and nothing we haven’t seen before—Daryl waiting to shoot Genet a few feet away from him while she monologues and then escapes gives me All Out War flashbacks—and the walkers continue to be a minor nuisance with zero stakes. The editing is really strange, making the movement from one beat to another feel inorganic. There’s also some pretty cringey dialogue and I’m sorry to say that it’s mostly coming from Ash. If they’re only allowed to drop one f-bomb per episode or whatever it is, why don’t they use them more meaningfully? I do like his character and his dynamic with Carol though. I'm not sure how I feel about her lying to him. On one hand, I know she's doing it because she's desperate to get to Daryl and I would never fault her for that. I guess I worry about audience reception because female characters tend to be judged far more harshly for their decisions than male characters.

What I really wanted to get out of this season was a strong emotional arc. That’s what matters to me—honoring the characters’ history and allowing them to grow from it. There isn’t a doubt in my mind that the effort I see on Carol’s side is thanks to Melissa’s wonderful story instincts and devotion to her character. Carol’s line to Ash, “I couldn’t keep waiting, feeling stuck. I had to move forward,” tells us what Melissa has also echoed in interviews. Her quiet life at the Commonwealth is giving her time to reflect on her past, particularly Sophia’s death, and it’s terrifying for her in itself, but also because the only person to share that trauma with her, the only person who makes her feel safe isn’t there. She needs Daryl. It’s such an exciting arc because it puts her on the path to healing from her survivor’s guilt as well as confronting what Daryl means to her.

The problem is that Zabel keeps falling back on the TV book of tricks he swears he doesn’t use and he acts as if he’s allergic to connective tissue. I already talked about some of these issues in my review of the opening minutes available here, so I won’t repeat myself. I’m just frustrated because gimmicks like the cassette tapes take away from Melissa’s performance. She has perfect comedic timing, but I want to see her sit with her feelings every now and again because Melissa knows how to communicate that all on her own. She doesn’t need bells and whistles. To be clear, I despise ambiguity with a burning passion, but I also don’t like gimmicks that treat me like I’m an idiot. The Cherokee rose scene is sweet and I absolutely love seeing Carol recall the speech that started her relationship with the most important person in her life and I love the reminder of why this mission is so important to her. But then it occurs to me that Cherokee roses don’t grow in Maine. The only reason it’s on Ash’s table at all is to make me notice it and I think to myself, there had to be a more organic way to make this callback, right? It takes me out of the story. I'm also still angry that the scene where Carol finds a walker that looks like Daryl got cut, angrier actually, since we’re stuck with a forced and wildly OOC kiss between Daryl and a fucking nun. Carol/Caryl fans always seem to draw the short straw.

When Ash asks Carol if she thinks she'll even recognize Sophia, it's a warning that the person Carol is really searching for might not be the same when she finds him, which is by far the most infuriating part of the story and the most difficult to believe. Nevermind the fact that it's only been a few months according to Zabel and Daryl doesn't build connections that quickly. He's loyal. He wouldn't trade in his family for another, at least not the Daryl that I know and love. Not the Daryl that Carol would take her first flight and cross an entire ocean for.

The point of parallel stories is that they should, well, parallel each other. The point of soulmates is that they stay spiritually connected to each other. If Carol is determined to get to Daryl, Daryl should be determined to get to Carol. If Carol is manipulating someone to do that, then maybe we should see Daryl do the same, which would also reduce the harsh criticism that lands on Carol simply for being a woman. Instead though, Carol seems to embody both hers and Daryl's history, while on Daryl's side, he isn't shown to have any except for the quick mention of "people" back home. Other fans said they see Daryl trying to get back, but I don't. I just see him hovering in between and it makes me so sad. I feel like I'm saying goodbye to this character I thought I knew, who helped me overcome some very dark experiences in my childhood, because I know he's about to change in ways that I can't get past.

It makes me wish the entire episode had been given to Melissa. Maybe the entire season should've been given to her and left just enough space for the reunion at the end, picking up close to where Daryl left off in S1. Maybe that would've saved many of us, Carol especially, a lot of pain. Regardless, Melissa demonstrates over and over that she can carry a show, so the fact that she's not equally billed with Norman is just a crime. The fact that Carol's name isn't right next to Daryl's in the title is so offensive, I have no words left. I've been saying it for a year now and I'll keep bringing it up until it changes. This is Melissa's fucking show too. Act like it, AMC.

I know that the rest of the season has already leaked, so I will take a look at what I can. I still have no intention of watching the two episodes that destroy Daryl's integrity and I'm terrified of how it'll impact Caryl's story going forward. This is not how fans should be made to feel about a show they waited years for...

[heyclickadee]

A couple things:

1. The thing is, I actually don’t really think we’re done with the bad batch, for a variety of reasons. There’s too much unresolved, for one thing, and “end of this chapter with these characters” is not how anyone says, “We’re never touching this again.” I really do think we’re getting an immediate follow up with more of a focus on Rex and Echo, but that the rest of the bad batch will still pop in from time to time, giving all of them a chance to round out the last little bit of their stories and character arcs—because they are all just a little bit undercooked. (For example: Crosshair doesn’t even get lines after Tantiss, and the last thing he says about himself takes him from implicitly to explicitly suicidal. The hug is beautiful and cements his place as part of the family, but we never get a moment where he forgives himself or no longer believes that he deserves to die. His redemption arc is magnificent, but it needs that last little push to feel fully resolved).

And, for another variety of reasons, I actually do still think we’ll be getting Tech back in one way or another. So much of what is left unresolved in TBB forms a chalk outline around a Tech-shaped void, for one. The writers aren’t committed enough to have come up with a decent reason for why he had to go in the first place—stakes does not cut it and is actively undermined by never treating it like a character death—for another. They were, at the very least, not committed enough to actually kill him. Tech is the only character in a show that loves making us watch who doesn’t die on screen, and the only one who’s “death” moves nothing forward and is never treated like an actual death. And we have no definitive proof he actually died, for another. (Even if he was CX-2—CX-2 got “killed” two other times on screen and popped up five minutes later each time like a daisy. If you do that you’re going to have to burn the body and scatter the ashes for me to think he’s dead, impalement or no. Besides, you can’t definitively kill a main character via subtext. You still have to be clear and direct.) And Tech has too many callback lines and potential survival foreshadowing for someone to never tug on them at some point, for another. You’d have to kill me to keep me from doing something with, “Better late than dead.” Basically, tl:dr, I think Tech will come back someday, whether they have plans or not.

Because I can’t really get on board with the idea that The Bad Batch was just always badly written. I can’t agree with that. It was never perfect, of course, but it was always remarkably well written and thematically consistent for 46 straight episodes and then tripped on the chalk of the finish line. Besides, I’ve never seen bad writing that was perfectly set up amazing writing if all they did was one simple thing—ie, follow through with what they set up. It’s not that the ending is bad, it’s that it’s bad in this particularly insane way. If it was just normal bad, I’d have dropped The Bad Batch like a rock by now and done my best to forget I’d ever watched it. But because it’s bad like this—basically, a non-ending that resolves nothing but Hunter’s Cut Lawquane arc, Rampart (which was good, actually), and the problem of Hemlock continuing to draw breath (which was just the last major obstacle in Hunter’s Cut Lawquane arc, so it’s not even a separate thing) and answers NO questions—I’m obsessed.

And I can’t get behind the idea that The Bad Batch ending is like this and that we got shorted a Tech return because they got shorted a season. I’ve seen many serialized animated shows that got shorted a season or more, and what every one of them did was cut out everything they could in the middle so that they could get to the resolution they wanted, squash the originally planned last season’s arcs into the actual last season—not leave those arcs undone and the resolution out. The only way them being shorter a season works as an explanation for all of this is if the creative team found out season three was the last at the same time we did. And even then, the solution there would have been to take out five minutes of fight scene and replace it with five minutes of resolving everything in the short and stupid but still THERE way.

For example: Give Wrecker and Crosshair one line each after Tantiss that tells us what they’re going to do. Unmask CX-2 as Tech after spearing him (or don’t spear him) and add one line where Hunter says he’s recovering and that it’ll be a long road, but they won’t give up on him. Or! If you don’t want to bring Tech back in the short and stupid but there way, add a line to the epilogue where Hunter tells Omega, “I see Tech when I look at you sometimes. I don’t want to lose you the way we lost him,” which seems like a no brainer, or, “Tech would have been so proud of you,” which is absolutely a no-brainer if you actually want to close things out for Tech. Tech would still be gone, but at least it’d be resolved, and that’s all short, simple stuff you could add to the very last episode to make it feel finished. If you’re shorted a season or even a few episodes, you cut everything that doesn’t matter, you do whatever you can to get your story resolved—unless you have somewhere else to put it. Which, given how open Star Wars canon is and how heavily it relies on recontextualization, is a very real possibility here.

What I think may have happened here is that The Bad Batch ended up being the first part of a longer story that had to be artificially cut in half. Whether it was always planned that way, whether it was something that unexpectedly happened partway through the production of season three, or a secret third option (the creative team set things up to to be resolved in three seasons but always wanted to do a longer version, but the longer version (in the form of another show) didn’t get greenlit until they’d already written most of season three, so all the payoff got schlorped over to that follow up show while the payoff stayed in this one, leaving us, the audience, with this incredibly unsatisfying mess of a finale in the meantime while whoever is in charge of announcing shit at Lucasfilm doesn’t see the problem). Put a pin in CX-2, slap something that looks like a happy ending on the rest, resolve nothing, do it all in the next thing.

(Slight sidebar: If it turns out that the reason we didn’t get Tech back is because something went horrifically wrong during the writer’s strike—basically, the finale got hit with extreme budget cuts and the script patched by AI—I think we’d still get Tech back. Tech in the first two seasons was something of a writer blorbo, and no one is leaving their blorbo dead over that. That’s a good way for them to bring back their blorbo and have that blorbo murder the hell out of a thinly disguised CEO insert.)

And if that’s what we’re looking at��well, okay. I can see wanting to give certain things (especially a Tech return) more time. If this is what’s happening I actually think it will be more satisfying in the long run, from a story perspective, anyway. I’ll be able to live with that.

That said….

2. If that’s the case—if what we’re looking at is a story artificially split in half one way or another and we are getting a Tech return and the rest of the resolution eventually in an immediate follow up, something that will ultimately work really well in the long run—that doesn’t mean I think it works now. Right now, it’s awful, from every angle. We don’t know for sure that anything else is coming, it makes for a deeply unsatisfying story right now because the “ending” we have is all we have to go on, and it’s unnecessarily stressful for most everyone but especially the autistic fans who relate to Tech.

And the thing is, if Tech were neurotypical? I don’t think we’d really be question the idea that he could still come back eventually. He’s a clear writer favorite to the point that they basically gave him the entirety of season two, except the two Crosshair episodes, great lines and moments in other character’s episodes, and they apparently liked using him so much that either CX-2 was Tech or they physically couldn’t stop themselves from writing and animating Tech in a season he wasn’t in. Killing off one of the writer faves and the fan favorite in order to bring them back later is something that happens. But it’s something that hits differently when that writer and fan favorite is also the only canonically autistic character in the franchise.

Which. Is I think where we run into a problem. You see, I never really got the impression that the creative team ever thought of Tech as The Autistic One. Does that mean I think the didn’t write him as autistic? Of course not—they absolutely did, and did so intentionally. What I mean is that that wasn’t the sum total or even the primary way in which they thought of him, otherwise I think we would have ended up with a terrible Sheldon-Cooper-esque. Instead, the Tech they wrote, and the Tech we got, is just a guy. A really amazing guy who’s noticeably different and autistic AF, but treated like any other character. And on the one hand, great! I know people have a lot of different ideas about this, but I personally want writers to deal with autistic characters that way—to just write us like we’re people. And if what they’re doing is bringing Tech back later and on a longer timeframe than what we expected—also great. It means that all the ambiguity, hinting, and complete and total lack of processing or closure makes sense, because that’s how you write a fakeout death. That’s textbook how you write a fakeout death. But—but—

The flip-side of just treating Tech like any other character and, perhaps, playing a long game with “killing” him off and bringing him back later like someone would do with a fan favorite, if that’s what they’re doing, is that you end up in the situation that we’re in right now. The interim situation where it feels like Tech’s sacrifice was never given the weight it needed to feel final or meaningful, where we’re given no closure and no opportunity to let go, where we DON’T know if anything is coming next even if we do get hints, where Tech got dropped, where nothing makes sense, and where the autistic fans in the audience who relate to Tech feel like Star Wars kicked them in the face and told them that they don’t belong here.

So.

I want this to be a long game, and I do think this could, one, be a situation where they team is having to work around some kind of corporate shenanigans to play that long game, and; two, could end up being a fantastic story that I love even more than the version I wanted.

But even if I’m right and that is the case, I also hate that this is where we’re at in the here and now, that it’s hurt people as badly as it has, and think that they should never do anything like this again, because the game stopped being fun a long time ago.

tl;dr: I don’t think we’re done yet, I think this is part of a longer story, I think we’ll get Tech back at some point whether it was planned or not, but I also hhhaaaaaatte the current situation and think it’s been mishandled.

[sorcerersandskillusers]

This probably isn't the final arc of BSD

A lot of people seem to think that the Decay of Angels are the final antagonists of bsd and that the series is gonna end after their defeated.

But I highly doubt that, there is way too much that has been left unexplored, and so many important plot lines to resolve.

I think this arc if more of a precursor arc to establish the effects of The Book and introduce more key players into the story, as well and round off many characters arcs.

I have a few reasons for thinking this:

1: This arc is about the page not the book.

2: Agatha Christy, Despite being hyped up through out the whole series we haven't seen her properly yet

3: The currently unresolved plot lines

1. The number one thing that makes me sure this isn't the final arc is the fact that this conflict isn't over The Book. The Page which is the centre of the DOA's plan's is just a tiny fragment of the real prize and the end goal of this arc is just for the Agency to undo everything the DOA did with the page.

This mad dash for the book hasn't even started yet, but I think I know what will start it-

Ranpo announced the existence of the page to the entire world, and the DOA are currently proving just how powerful it is. Once the current vampire crisis is over, there's no way loads of dangerous and powerful skill users aren't going to come storming into Yokohama to try and get it. Setting the stage to move into the final arc.

2. Through out bsd we hear about how Europe is the centre of gifted power in the world. Ability users like Fyodor, Gogol, Bram, Verlain... all come from Europe and they also produced the only Skill weapons we've seen so far in the series. Despite this we've only seen brief glimpses of The Order Clock Tower, who seem to be the main gifted organisation in Europe.

She appears in the same sequence as Fyodor and Fitzgerald, and if you go in reverse order you get the order of the antagonists:

Fitzgerald, Fyodor and maybe Agatha?

All this makes me sure that she will lead Europe in its attempt to seize the Book and will probably be the final antagonist of the series or at least one of them.

3. We still have tons of unresolved plotlines in bsd, so heres a list of the ones I think will be important.

Tanizaki's character arc and history .

What are abilities really?

Who wrote Sigma?

We need to meet the Transcendents ?

What the fuck is Steinbeck up to?

Adam and Shirase, they were clearly both sent to london for a reason and it was teased in Stormbringer that Shirase was going to make a return.

What is the Storm that Verlaine is waiting for?

The transfer of a detective to the Mafia.

Who were the seven traitors?

And of course Dazai's full history.

I'm sure I missed loads, and maybe some of these will get resolved in this arc.

Anyway I defiantly think there is at least one more arc to come, and I have some theories about Fyodor's involvement in it that Ill post later.

[akane-kurokawa]

Chapter 143 thoughts!

Alright so I skipped my thoughts on the last chapter, but I wanted to say that I don’t have especially negative feelings about it. It’s nice to see Ruby’s character taken seriously again after so long, and the framing of the chapter with the specific language and horror-esque directing was very pointed. It’s just frustrating that this matter seems to keep getting pushed off and unresolved after so many chapters whereas other major plot points (such as Ruby learning the identity of her father) are being off screened entirely.

Enough about two weeks ago, my thoughts on THIS chapter

We open where we left off, Aqua is clearly brushing Ruby off and she is being insistent. She tells him (as Gorou) that he listens to her selfishness

Aqua, having some of Gorou in his nature, calls for a compromise. Unfortunately that just fuels her on more.

It’s interesting how he “becomes” Gorou in this way for her. It’s very performative, an act he’s doing to appease her. It reminds me of how different Taiki seems when he’s acting vs when he’s not.

Small note, but does he just carry those glasses on him? Like Ruby’s popsicle that disappeared last chapter.

This is what I wanted all this time! There is a significant difference in how these two view their past lives that is finally getting addressed here. Ruby feels like Sarina, she sees her second life as an extension of the first, a New Game+ where she gets to do everything she always wanted.

But Aqua isn’t Gorou, he hasn’t been for a long time. He’s an 18 year old boy who has been shaped by the (mostly traumatic) experiences he’s had in this life already. Gorou appears to him as a manifestation of guilt, and unfinished business when he tried to move on with his life, but that’s no longer his identity.

Also ow this panel

I also think the feeling guilty about being alive comment hits so much with Ruby because that’s how she felt in chapter 121 after seeing Marina Tendouji.

To her, Aqua revealing his previous identity saved her, gave her what she needed to carry on. Which is why she does the same for him here.

Ruby right now is very “I can fix him” which makes sense for her character and experiences. It’s naive and selfish, but very in character for her. Considering she’s also avoiding her own hardships in life with love it makes perfect sense for that to be her advice to him, and forcing a kiss on him -while not a cool thing to do to someone- also lined up with that.

My biggest complaint comes afterwards, or rather the lack of afterwards. Aqua’s expression in the kiss panel is of shock, but it’s hard to gauge exactly what he’s feeling after that without the following scene. It leaves it up to interpretation in an arc rife with “all subtext no text” writing already, prolonging this arc even further.

That said, it’s an interesting transition. Ruby, the initiator of the first kiss parallels the placing of Aqua/Hikaru in the second. Outside of the movie Aqua is the one in Ai’s position.

With that in mind, Ai’s “I can’t love you” set up at the beginning of this arc holds much more weight.

[invested-in-your-future]

Would you do anything about Yang & Blake's "conflict" after v3, or would you remove it entirely?

I think the issue with the show is that the show did remove it.

The show basically completely forgot that those two characters have their own story arcs AND that there's unresolved issues between them. After the show reunites RWBY team, all that the narrative does is lip-service. Be it with the issues between Blake and Yang OR even just overall Yang's own abandonement issues and trauma (Raven story arc was laughably bad and the narrative feels outright ashamed to actually acknowledge that Yang lost an arm.)

One of the many things that I was in disbelief about when the team reunion happened was how it literally did not address any of the issues the team members would now have with each other. It's like Team RWBY split up to go shopping or something. How could and would the team just be back together without addressing ANY of elephants in the room?

I think its crucial to address the situation at the end of V3 because its basically the only way to properly delve into Yang's bigger abandonement issues, why she is the way she is and so on. Abandonement and self-doubt has been core of Yang since, well, ever.

Its also crucial for Yang and Blake's relationship. The foundation IS there but without actually parsing their emotional grievances and issues and developing them, you can't build any sort of relationship or bond there. Blake running away is something that is CRUCIAL to BOTH characters and should affect both of them. They are bound by a traumatic and horrifying event and neither character should be able to truly move forward in the story, both as people and yeah even as a pairing, without addressing those issues.

Yang was unable to protect someone she wanted to protect, she was unable to protect her sister from getting traumatized, the entire world might be thinking of her as this random unstable weirdo who broke some guy's leg on live tv. And now Blake just left without saying a word. And then Ruby went off on her big journey without a single warning either. She is left there alone, her life in pieces, to deal with both physical and psychological trauma. What does all of that make Yang feel about herself? She is absolutely the kind of person who would go "What did I do wrong? Why am I not good enough?".

Its a PERFECT moment for some good ol' soul-searching and you just can't do that without addressing the issues between characters along the way.

I am of firm belief that the show should have NEVER moved forward with all the Gods and Relics nonsense without doing that first. Then again, the show preferably should have never had the nonsensical gods subplot in the first place.

There's enough going on in the world of Remnant as is.

[bestworstcase]

@alullinchaos here

on this topic, do you think Summer will follow the pattern tai and qrow have laid out and show favoritism towards Ruby between the two sisters or that she'll do something else when she's introduced (versus Raven trying really hard to not show that she cares about Yang and as far as I know truly not being that concerned w/ Ruby)

it's tricky because on the one hand, narratively summer is inextricable from ruby's character and she is a much more central figure in ruby's character arc, with clear disparities in how present she is narratively (there is no yang equivalent of RLR2 for example). plus the lopsided "leave ruby alive" versus crickets for yang. but on the other, yang was parentified and her grief is complicated and to some degree suppressed by the reality that she had to be ruby's mom after summer left. plus she remembers summer as a fantastic mom. plus salem lets--not just yang, but all of yang's friends including oscar--go after yang identifies herself as summer's daughter, so while she's never said in so many words that yang is not to be killed, actions speak louder than words.

the only other factor we have to go on is what very, very little we've seen of who summer actually was, and how that compares to how she's remembered, and this i find very interesting because literally everybody who knew summer compares her to ruby, ruby's just like her, you sound just like your mother, summer would have pressed on, like you--and then. we get this fleeting glimpse of summer herself and she's so much like yang it hurts.

like the way she talks to raven. the snap in her tone. the resentment of raven for leaving. the shoulder check. that is exactly yang. even going rogue on a secret mission to do what she felt was right--is that not exactly the same sort of judgment call that yang made when she decided that blake was right and they should tell robyn the truth instead of trying to arrest her?

her loved ones had her on this pedestal, the heroic paragon, the best huntress ever, that's the comparison cast onto ruby when people tell her she's like summer. but the truth, the real person, was (at least in this small glimpse) quite a lot more like yang.

there is also the factor of ruby's silver eyes and summer's silver eyes, and the fact that we know nothing about summer's past. i think realistically she must have felt some special concern for ruby because of her silver eyes (whether it's true or not the inner circle believes that salem systematically picks them off and ozpin seems to actively recruit them when he can find them) and that this concern must have partly motivated her to go rogue (she doesn't want this life for ruby).

but at the same time i wonder if maybe that made it easier for summer to develop just a normal bond with yang (no baggage) versus ruby (all the baggage)--similar to how tai's unresolved and complicated feelings about raven color his perception of yang. like, i think if she hadn't left she might have tended to be more protective of ruby but closer to yang and more emotionally in tune with yang bc their basic personalities more similar

[pitroig]

A Few Kind Words About Gege Akutami, the Fate of Gojo Satoru, and the Redemption within the Fandom.

Now that Jujutsu Kaisen has come to an end, everyone seems to have their own opinions about the final chapters and the progression of the manga over its last arcs. There’s a general consensus that there are obvious plot holes, unresolved matters, some rushed and out-of-character interactions, and overall dissatisfaction with how the story was wrapped up. Many have already broken these points down better than I could, both here and on X, so I won’t try to add anything to that conversation.

In fact, I’m here to say something a little more controversial.

I don't think, at all, that Gege Akutami is a bad writer. I think the issue is something else: Gege Akutami thinks he’s much smarter than he actually is.

Up until the Shibuya Incident or even Itadori’s Extermination Arc, we were reading an incredibly well-written manga. Loose ends tied up neatly, references intertwined, and the narrative structure was solid. So we know Gege can write well. Those chapters had excellent world-building and storytelling. However, Gege is too obsessed with proving he's the smartest in the room. He's too focused on his dark physics theories about cursed techniques, his pseudo-Buddhist references, and when the time came for the Culling Games, he created a ridiculously complex game, convinced he’d have time to develop everything in his head.

But he couldn’t. And he failed. I don’t just think that only the grueling manga publication system in Japan impacted his mental health—it's just incredibly hard to maintain a vision and quality in something as long and complex as what he was proposing. From the Culling Games onward, he relies on after-the-fact explanations to patch up plot holes. Time skips are used to jump over gaps, and he makes the same mistake he did with Gojo: creating a character who can seemingly fix everything—Shoko. We never really get an explanation of how Shoko’s cursed technique works, its limits, or expansions. Why Nobara, yes; why Gojo, no. How does it work, does it get exhausted, where does it come from, how long does it take to work? You can't measure cursed technique input so precisely, then skip over basic rules like medical limitations, and you can’t always rely on a deus ex machina to fix narrative messes when you’re overwhelmed.

It’s not a lack of skill on Gege's part. It’s hubris.

But I said I’d be kind. So, onto part two: Gojo.

Gojo Satoru:

I’ve ranted before about Gojo Satoru’s fate—how introducing him, keeping him locked away, then giving him a completely anticlimactic liberation just to kill him off feels like a massive waste. I stand by that, but I also have to admit part of that perspective is my inner Gojo fan expressing frustration. The truth is, after the last chapter, I finally understood the deeper meaning of his character, though it left me heartbroken.

I can’t shake the idea that Gojo knew, more or less, while training before facing Sukuna, that he would die in that battle. He writes his farewell letters, establishes what to do with his body, and dies in peace, satisfied. I once wrote that both Gojo and Nanami lived on borrowed time. Their development and lives froze sometime between Riko Amanai’s death and Geto’s betrayal. It’s them people talk about when they say their youth was stolen: from that moment on, everything was an escape towards a future that only made sense with death.

I really can’t hate such a tragic twist to his character.

Okay, that was gentler but definitely sadder. Let’s wrap this up with something more positive.

Smile, you're free now.

If you’ve followed a series for years, it’s normal to feel a little empty when it ends. It’s happened to all of us. It will happen to you again in the future, don’t worry. Being a fan is something that’s in your blood, so you’ll find something else to latch onto. But if you still feel like Jujutsu Kaisen is a huge part of your life, don’t worry—you’ve got the fandom.

Sure, the JJK fandom is a little toxic, but it’s also the best gift Gege gave us. Now, without the pressure of canon, you can play however you like to fill in those unanswered gaps. You can write theories, read that fanfiction about your favorite ship, draw that scene you’re sure happened, jump into that forum to explain your stance on a character, write your own fix-it, commission a comic, rewatch the series, or even decide your favorite character isn’t your favorite anymore. You’re now free to enjoy the series at your own pace because the author has set you free from the path they were carving out.

Someone might come along and tell you that what you're saying is impossible because of “canon.” Nonsense. The JJK fandom, like almost every fandom, will be fleeting for some and rock solid for others. Do what makes you happy. Enjoy the upcoming anime. Expand the world-building. Play with everything like it’s made of clay.

And if someone gives you a hard time, think about this: Gege had a raw diamond, and he chose to smash it rather than shape it. Now, it’s your turn to take a piece and make a ring that fits your finger just right.

[ultfreakme]

The age-up and the reason for the split opinions

I think a big reason why people are so split about Jon's age-up comes from how Jon fans view his character; side character or protagonist?

A large argument for why Jon should be de-aged is that it'd allow him to experience a good childhood, with many people emphasizing how this would allow for Lois and Clark to truly experience being his parents again, and give Damian back the lost years of friendship.

This is, honestly a valid feeling to have. His introduction and two years of his comic-existence was him as a child, with content largely focused on Clois raising him and his adventures with Damian. All of this contributes to Jon being a really good side character.

Conversations surrounding Jon being aged down, as far I've seen are rarely about Jon alone. It's always about the effects it will have on others. This is...not the greatest thing but since Jon's initial role on his introduction was being Clois's kid to showcase their parenting and them moving forward in their life, he works well for that.

But you can't make a main character from this.

A main character needs conflict, internal and external. Kid!Jon does not have that. Worse, he cannot have that. As a side character to Clois, if Jon exhibits any sign of conflict, Superman and Lois are gonna deal with it and if they don't, they are failing at parenting which the narrative will never allow. Superman and Lois are the best parents they can be, and they will help Jon however they can.

If all of a character's problems can be solved with calling Superman, what story can you tell? Even in Super Sons, Jon has the safety net of Damian, Superman and Batman to fall back on. There emerges a lot of external conflict through villains, but next to no genuine internal conflict because it will be dealt with by everyone else around Jon. Savior arc ends with Damian saying "I'll help you", we don't delve into Jon's perception of himself thereafter. Being in a duo book or with Clois will always take away the conflict from kid!Jon. He isn't allowed to be independent of them. You could not have told a Jon Kent solo story when he was a child because you, the reader, will constantly be wondering where Lois, Clark, Damian, Batman, and a dozen other heroes are to help him.

The age-up though? It happens out of an accident, an inevitable not even Superman could have predicted to stop. The reason why Jon leaves is to learn more about himself. Bendis directly addresses the internal conflicts Jon has been given, but went unresolved or unexplored in the two-years prior. Eg: Manchester Black and Eradicator- they put Jon in a crisis but who actually solved the problem? Clark. The emotional consequences of that on Jon were not dealt with, nor did they have long-lasting consequences until Bendis brought it back up.

Now you have an emotional conflict to get invested in. He puts Jon in a place of peril that incites action and independence. Jon is alone, he has to deal with this without the help he's always had for all his life. It's clear that Jon thought he could get out of trouble because he has never really had a mission as Superboy that didn't involve a safety net.

What will Jon Kent do, when left alone?

And that's what the age-up does. It keeps Clois as good parents but leaves enough space to create an independent inciting event for Jon. During the space trip, Jon isn't JUST getting tortured in the volcano. He actually escapes at some point and lives in hiding on Earth-3 helping people for a while.

Superman (2018) #9

Even prior to the entrapment, he saw the impact the House of El symbol had in the universe and was mostly helping people resolve conflicts with Jor-El. This is where the start of his motive for Superboy/Superman came to be separate from Clark. It's all good to want to be like your dad but that's not enough to carry you through being a hero- look at Nia. Nia wanted to be Dreamer like her mom but she didn't tackle with what that'd mean to her as being a superhero. It's not just costume and adoration. It's horrible work where you have to make awful decisions. Superman makes it look easy. But it never is.

I am not saying trauma is necessary in the making of a main character, far from it. But what a protagonist does need is to be placed in an alien situation that tests them. All protagonists of every story are going through a situation highly unfamiliar to them. This makes for interesting story because conflict generates themes, ideas, conversations about the status quo of the character and their world. Frodo needs to travel across Middle Earth from the home he's always known. Eren needs to leave his home and his walls to give him the full push into joining the Survey Corps. Gon needs to leave his home to find his dad. Even Clark needs to leave his parents to go to Metropolis to truly become Superman. Etcetera.

Jon who aged normally would never, ever have his status quo shaken because Clark and Lois won't let it happen, ergo he would not make a good or compelling protagonist.

You could argue his bisexuality is a source of shifting the status quo and giving Jon and independent conflict- but mandating a crisis on his sexuality is odd. Not all queer people have the crisis. His parents are Clois. You think they'd raise him in a way where he'd be insecure about being bi? Not a chance. And you can't make a character's central conflict their sexuality, that's just boiling down a character to nothing but their sexuality.

I have not yet seen a single idea for a de-aged Jon Kent, which is entirely about Jon. I can come up with a million internal and external problems for current Jon, alone (his insecurities about being an 'abomination' or half-human and kryptonian, his fears of his powers, the frustration he feels from being unable to express his upset on being apart from his family, his more methodical take on hero-ing and giving everyone a chance without jumping to conclusions, being undermined by the hero community as superman, etc).

Again, this is fine if you want the de-aging to return Jon to a status quo where he is aiding someone else's plot. But if you want to make a compelling Superman out of Jon, you need a jarring shift of the norm, and that's what the age-up does.

[bookishbethanyerin]

• ARC Review: Check & Mate •

If you watched The Queen’s Gambit and thought, “wow, I like so many things about this but really wish we could have a story where a woman’s genius isn’t tied to her being clinically insane and incapable of receiving a happily ever after” then, Ali Hazelwood has written the book for you!

Check & Mate follows Mallory, an 18yo who gave up chess at 14 despite her talent for it, and is now supporting her mother – who has rheumatoid arthritis – and two younger sisters. But when her best friend begs her to play in a chess tournament for charity, Mallory ends up casually beating Nolan, the number one chess player in the world. Who is 20. And very hot, naturally. And then she goes viral, and the chess world and all its money comes knocking.

As Mallory re-enters the world of chess, the story navigates a plethora of coming-of-age growing pains (friendships, family, keeping secrets, unresolved emotional trauma, trying to be an adult when you don’t feel like one) while also tackling the privilege, misogyny and sexism of professional chess. It’s a lot of ground to cover, but Ali Hazelwood does it well, expertly balancing the sports and Big, Dramatic Feelings aspects.

And of course, there’s also the slow-burn romance between Mallory and Nolan as they move from opponents to something more. Though this is technically YA, it is very sex positive – Mallory is bi and very experienced, and the topic is not taboo in her family. So if you’re looking for Ali’s specific brand of spice, you’ll still get it here – even with a fade-to-black scene, little is left to the imagination.

It’s a very fun read, full of delightfully brainy characters, lightning-quick banter (fair warning, there are *lots* of pop culture references, which I don’t mind but I know a lot of people do!), a satisfying love story, and, of course, a ton of chess.

And don’t worry if you can’t tell the different between a rook and a knight – you’ll still love this.

4.5🌟

1.75🌶️

♟️An enormous thank you to Penguin Books for Young Readers for the opportunity to read and review an advanced copy of Check & Mate!💕

[weakherodiaries]

SPOILERS ALERT - Last Episode Reaction (Rant Part 2)

Tw: DEPRESSION, SUICIDE

Nah.. it turns out that for the sake of my blood pressure, I had to make two rant posts in a row.

Thank you, Seopass-jakkanim for writing and creating this wonderful work with Kim Jinseok-nim, but I'm sorry that I can't be lenient about the less pleasing parts. So here is my reaction and long rant part 2 (not that you two writers or anyone would care, but I had to vent). I also included the pleasing parts at the end of the post.

First, you developed the characters' backgrounds in such a meticulous and detailed way and now you've abandoned them, or so I heard, to move on to another work. I mean gosh GOSH. Thank you for creating them BUT NO, THANK YOU for abandoning their proper arc resolutions. What would Sehan / Forrest and the others do? What would Jihoon / Jimmy do? Why are you left them stranded? Who exactly is Seongje / Wolf?

I appreciate that you tried to highlight the issues on young males' mental health problems by writing one character as suicidal (YES IT WAS HINTED THAT BAEKJIN / DONALD WAS SUICIDAL THAT NIGHT, WELL GUESS WHAT, IT WASN'T WRITTEN REALLY CLEARLY, WAS IT? Hmph) and another as depressed (SIEUN /GRAY, WHO ELSE) BUT you don't do that in a swoosh kind of way. No matter if they're suddenly reunited with their crush or best friend or whoever. What the hell was that? Show them being encouraged, show them opening up.

You introduced juvenile crimes and adult crimes into the plot and it's good, but now it's come to nothing. Why were they inserted into the story in the first place? To emphasize Baekjin's cruelty? As if school violence cases alone isn't enough? You could've just highlighted the school violence aspect. Now that part of the plot is left unresolved.

I understand why you make Seokhyeon / Kingsley so obsessed and that he has now dragged Dongha and Seongmok into this, who didn't look very happy or pleased about it. I MEAN PLEASE LET THEM GO? I know that they did wrong but they were minors and this is fiction, fgs.

You make sure that friendship is one of the key themes of the story but after that death, everything comes to a standstill. Is that it? Is that the point? But why, when your characters are minors with their future ahead of them? Why deny Seokhyeon, Dongha and Seongmok future too, when this is fiction and you're in a hurry to wrap things up for Sieun, Suho and the others?

Well I must be fair that there are good things in the last episode, though. These are them.

Hakho / Jake who found closure with himself and moving on to take care of Gwangseok /Kenny

Suho being okay although it doesn't seem that he's gone back to school (again, a reality with many bullying survivors).

The kids went to meet Suho / Stephen together with Sieun to Donghae area. No school trip scene, though. Everything is cut.

Jihwan (Sieun's old friend) being surprised that the monster Baku/Big Ben is Humin and is all smiley.

And he was so shocked that the famous White Mamba a.k.a Baeksa (the White Snake of Legend) is none other than Sieun. BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Well there you go. It's been a wild ride and I still have some more stuff to post (lighter, happier ones). For now, ciao.