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cr4yolaas · 1 month ago

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WHIPLASH — THAT'S THE INDUSTRY, BABY!

she knows what the journalism industry entails — false rules, odd etiquette, perfect structures and guidelines enforced by those at the top rung of the ladder. she also knows that if she's going to get what she wants, she needs to abide by all of it. even if it means throwing herself away.

001. armageddon / masterlist / 003. look back

The condensation collecting on her glass creates a little ring on the wooden table, an indication of how long she's spent waiting and her dissipating patience. Her shirt — the one Nobara picked out for her a year ago, in the midst of a Black Friday sale — pricks at her skin, the fabric much too irritating for everyday wear even despite its cutesy style, and even with the indecency and the scandals it would spark, she wants nothing more than to rip it off right there and then, forgoing the time it took for her to steam and iron it alongside her dress pants.

She glances at the clock. 9:28.

Almost thirty minutes late.

Just as she all-but-gracefully swings her leg around the ledge of her chair in preparation to leave, the door creaks open and the little bell above it jingles a cheery tune. A tinge of heat rushes to her face when she sees his attire — sweatpants that practically engulf him and a Sweat Oversized Pullover Hoodie from Uniqlo, of all places (she only remembers this from her last article, in which the basketball player she interviewed went on and on about his extensive, multi-colored collection of Uniqlo basics, which he wore to every meeting). Far more casual than her.

But that detail is immediately cast aside when she takes a glance at the jewelry donning his hand and the baseball cap he dons. It's familiar. Too familiar.

When it clicks, he smiles at her — no, he smirks. As if he'd won some internal battle that she wasn't informed of.

"You didn't realize? You talk a lot of shit for—"

"Please don't." Her head falls into the valley she's created between her hands, even more heat rising to the surface of her skin. He's holding it above her head, his words clearly mocking her but sliding into one ear and falling out of the other. He doesn't admit that he'd looked up her profile when she first reached out, her picture pristine and on display on the first page of section editors for SM News. She can't quite hear him over the loud pounding in her head. "That was one time. I don't do that frequently— or at all, really."

He makes a noise that falls between a laugh and a scoff. "Sure didn't seem like it."

If not for the circumstances, she would've reached over and gouged his eyes out.

She slides her hands down her face, a heavy breath escaping her lips. She can't quite afford to slip up this early, not with how important this exclusive is for her company. Something about a competition with the two other largest publishers in Tokyo, all of which are rushing to get their grimy hands on the city's most prized baseball team and their secrets. So, with the last bit of composure she can muster, she offers a deal — in exchange for the exclusive, she'll promise to give him a good rep in the industry and keep anything important away from her competing journalists, the ones who would fight tooth and nail for even a smidge of controversy to stir up anything in the (only recently) all-too-peaceful sports scene.

He looks at her as if to question her sanity, his eyes boring into hers.

They both know it's beyond unequal. That any normal, sane person would decline such a ridiculous offer. But, unfortunately for both of them, they have things to protect — and neither can risk exposure.

He grits his teeth before agreeing with a rushed, "Sure." Her coffee is far too watered down now, and as soon as the word slips from his mouth, his own drink arrives at the pick-up counter. She tries not to watch as he leaves to get it, but it's hard, especially when there's so much — too much — to lose here.

She wants to laugh. All because of one night, and a supposedly random man who offered an ear.

When he returns, the air clears ever so slightly, as if reaching a telepathic agreement to brush aside whatever history, however minimal, they shared prior to this moment, despite how significantly it could impact both of their careers. He slides her his phone all too trustingly, and on screen is everything she needs — schedules, details, dates. Immediately, she gets to work, the cover of her MacBook (company provided, thankfully) almost flying open and her notepad already resting to her right. He pretends not to notice the Asahi Dry design on her pen, the details akin to something randomly handed out at a festival or convention. On the other hand, he does notice how crazed and frantic she looks, and makes a point to comment on it.

"Just so you know, you look insane," he mutters while leaning back in his seat, a juxtaposition to her hunched posture as she jots something down.

She scoffs under her breath, her hand still writing rapidly while the other hovers over the mousepad. "How else do you think I got here?"

He's pushed into silence with that, leaving him to observe more than he should. He catches on quickly to how often she brushes stray hands hair away from her face, sometimes snappily, and other times carefully. The collar of her shirt isn't centered, the result of her feverish efforts. Her foot keeps tapping against the bottom ring of her tall chair. Too much to notice. He tries not to, but it proves difficult when all he can do is quietly watch.

It takes ten minutes before she straightens up, excitedly packing her bag before explaining that she'll message him regarding their next interview and the information she'll need, a perfect script she'd memorized within her first year of writing. On the contrary, he's sluggish, almost as if he doesn't want to leave the comfort of the seat. Megumi glances at their drinks — hers isn't even halfway finished, and the ring at the bottom of her glass is more of a puddle now, whereas his is a sip away from meeting the trash can. "I'll pay," he mutters while just barely noticing that she got his order down to a tee prior to even meeting him. He can't mention it before she retorts almost instantly, her tongue laced with sass and minimal patience.

"Did you think you weren't paying at the start?" She's smiling at him.

"Dunno."

"Yikes," she laughs, and it's not forced or professional or scripted or any of the sort. He feigns annoyance at the noise.

The door jingles with the same joyous melody from before when they exit together, his hand holding the door open for her albeit begrudgingly. Something that sounds like a goodbye slips from her lips, and before they split paths, she waves (customarily). He ignores it for a moment — it irks him, her behavior and how desperate she is for this exclusive. But beneath the ire bubbling up, there's a hint of guilt, pushing him to wave back.

By the time he turns around, she's already gone.

★ nobara is the source of like 40% of yn's wardrobe

★ sometimes she'll come home with three bags of clothes and ask yn to try them all on and keep the ones she likes

★ its the golf course tips from old men that funds this behavior

★ the asahi dry pen is a real thing bc i have one that i got from the oc japan fair LOL. it's actually pretty cute and writes well

★ yn almost cried tears of joy when they gave her a new macbook once she got promoted to section editor ... hers was falling apart and had the nasty screen protector marks from when she peeled it off

★ megs was in a bad mood the rest of the day. like a little ipad kid throwing a silent tantrum

★ also sorry not sorry i’m projecting my social ineptitude onto yuuji for the rest of this fic </3

TAGLIST: @kameyyy @s777athv @solecitoszn @1l-ynn @valvoria @standcom @kissunday @hqnge @applepi25 @fushiguruuzzzz @reveurdoll @anotherwriternamedclara @sh0ot1ngst4r @starrysho @lizbix @diearama @cherryredribbons @asuritam @tiramizuloz @saltypuffin1040 @burnishingbagels @beepbopzlorp @reezerdotcom @tibibibi123 @carneries @gumims @chososcamgirl @anngelllla @fefesooli @anngelllla @tiramizuloz @reezerdotcom @vrxouei @s3ns4ti0n4l

divider creds @/animatedglittergraphics-n-more

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ruanbaijie · 10 months ago

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I’ve been thinking a lot about KoD/ The Spirealm lately (no surprises there), and I think, after having watched the show two times and read the novel a couple of times, I have an inkling of a theory of what really happened in The Spirealm. And I don’t mean just the ending. I mean what was really going on throughout the entire show. Because when I was doing my rewatch, I noticed that beyond the obvious lines, this show is rife with foreshadowing.

So here’s my theory, with evidence picked out here and there from the show. Beware: this will get very long, and a lot of it might be overthinking on my part (as an INTJ, overthinking is my middle name). There will be spoilers for BOTH the novel and the show, so if you don’t want to be spoiled for either or for both, perhaps you might want to scroll on or save this post for another day.

But, if you’re absolutely curious and totally okay with spoilers… We shall press on.

When I finished the show for the first time, I went “oh god yet another open-ended cdrama ending”, and only had two theories for what that ending meant.

1. Everything had really happened, everyone that had been involved had really gone into the doors. When RNZ managed to cleanse the game, ~somehow~ time got rewound and events got rewritten, and everyone (including those who had died) went back to how they had been before encountering the games, memories wiped clean and all, except for LQS.

2. LQS had dreamed everything up in those few seconds between getting hit by the car and regaining consciousness. The games did not happen in reality at all.

The first one didn’t sit well with me, just because it seemed too damn unlikely. Even if we were to consider advanced technology and all, it just seemed too… far-fetched (for lack of a better word) for such a technology to completely rewind time and rewrite things, including the minds of everyone except LQS.

So I thought well okay maybe it’s Theory 2 which seemed more likely, LQS dreamed up everything and none of it had actually happened, and he spent the next 50 years remaking and rebuilding the entire Spirit Realm. And this theory pained me. Because it meant that after it all, LQS was still alone, and was a RNZ made up with data that LQS had input, who had never “experienced” what they had experienced together, really RNZ at all? Besides, how did LQS manage to dream the names and personalities of so many different people so accurately?

Which leads me to Theory 3, which is actually pretty close to what had really happened in the novel, and also kind of an offshoot of Theory 1, but with a but.

Now, circling back to Theory 1, it’s a chilling thought that something like this could happen in reality. But what if, what if, what we thought was reality reality is not actually reality? Could there be a technology that’s so great it could rewind time and rewrite events and minds… à la The Matrix?

And so, Theory 3, which is the one I strongly believe (with >95% conviction) is what really happened:

THE WHOLE SHOW IS DOOR 12.

My supporting evidence, split into a few sections:

The Forum Scene

More Individual Instances

Common Motifs

What Happened Outside the 12th Door? + Unanswered Questions

A Simple Chronological Diagram

Tidbits

EXHIBIT A: THE FORUM SCENE

This was a very quick cameo of Wu Qi scrolling on the forum and then proceeding to still impersonate as a college-going girl (after the crying baby arc). There was absolutely no reason for this scene to be there, which highlights just how important this little cameo discussing the 12th door is and what it could entail.

A summary of what this says (bolded parts added by myself for emphasis), as far as I can since some parts are blocked:

A Quick Deduction: The Rules of the 12th Door

Everyone says that the higher the level of the door, the closer to reality it gets. That means that the 12th door is extremely close to reality. In the 12th door, your entire world is exactly the same as the real world, and there might even be doors within doors.

The people who enter the 12th door will lose all memories, including those of their relationships, and will exist in the 12th door with the identity of “if they had lived till then without entering the doors”. An NPC will replace the “personality” of the person who enter the doors, and other than their appearance, their personality and identity will be very similar, and the progress rate will be very high. (This sentence is quite blocked out so I don’t really get it.)

Then, the two will meet. Because after waking in the 12th door, one will find themselves in the “1st door”, then meeting place will naturally be in the world of the doors.

After that, the condition to clear the game would be to, under such circumstances, go through the eleven doors all over again.

I know, it’s a forum post, and it was titled “deduction”, but this is exactly what the novel was revealed to be about, and it also explains a lot of the foreshadowing that I started seeing throughout the show.

EXHIBIT B: VARIOUS INDIVIDUAL INSTANCES

Right at the start of the show, even before entering his supposed 1st door, LQS is shown to already have very sharp hearing. If these additional abilities are gifted by the doors to selected people, then why does LQS already have it not just outside the doors, but also even before setting foot into one? Unless, he is not outside the doors, and he has already set foot into not just one, but in fact, several.

RNZ says this line when he is directing LQS to run from the wolf. This is not just a foreshadowing for RNZ’s identity as an NPC, but also hints that the people that RNZ has been “directing” till that point (think all those people in the villa, including the twins, Chen Fei, etc.) were also not “live people”, but NPCs.

After the 1st door, LQS returns to the real world, while still wearing the jacket he had put on in the door. It is later mentioned that only selected props from the doors can be brought out and back in for special uses to be figured out by the players themselves. So how can LQS return to the real world with the jacket, which is never mentioned to be one such prop?

Ah yes, the lovely RNZ fake death scene. It’s a huge piece of foreshadowing for RNZ’s identity, but it might be foreshadowing something more. I’ve wondered, since RNZ is an NPC, if he “died” in one of the doors, would he respawn somewhere else? This quote might be referring to that. But it also sounds very much like he’s hinting to LQS that what he thought was reality was also not reality at all.

In the penultimate episode, LQS, out and about after his accident, running first to the villa to see if RNZ and co. are still there, and then proceeding to question himself if his reality is really reality at all. I think it's at this point he starts to suspect that he's really still in the world of the doors.

The final pre-time leap scene: notice how LQS says find (寻找) the point where reality and virtual world meet, and not create (创造)? Which means that here, LQS has already realised that this reality is not reality at all, but he’s still in the world of the doors. Now, he has to find the point where reality and virtual world meet, i.e. the physical 12th door.

Post-time leap: “including the 12th door”. After spending 50 more years in the 12th door, LQS has finally found the physical 12th door, at the point where reality and virtual world meet.

And when he touches RNZ’s hand, he gets restored to his younger self, because he has solved and unlocked the 12th door and the 50 years that had passed have not really passed at all.

EXHIBIT C: COMMON MOTIFS

1. Kaleidoscopes

Of course, kaleidoscopes. The original intention was definitely as nod to the name of the novel, but they’ve been written into the plot in a different way. Also a clue to RNZ’s identity as an NPC, since the only other ones that have been shown to have kaleidoscopes are the NPCs/ door gods. But, the kaleidoscopes only appeared in the doors, but RNZ has been shown to have them outside the doors. Unless… you know the drill by now.

2. Corridors

In the first episode alone, not one, not two, but four hallways of doors are shown. The first is a straight corridor that starts off the entire show (with credits and all), the second is another straight corridor and is shown to be rotating clockwise, and the third and fourth are the one we’re most familiar with: the one with the doors facing one another like a cross-section of a kaleidoscope. Here’s my theory for each: the first one is the “real” one, the one that LQS walks to get to the 12th door. It starts off the entire show and hints that the entire show is the 12th door. The second one that rotates (see next point on this motif) is the one in the bootleg game that LQS plays in the PC bang. The fourth one is when LQS enters the door world within the 12th door.

Also, this could very well just be an artistic choice, but note how in the poster of the show, the doors are also shown not in the cross-sectional kaleidoscope format, but in a straight corridor.

3. Circularity

I don’t know how to summarise this motif because it’s a combination of a few, but this show has a lot of circles, things in rotation, clock imageries, and the idea of things being in reverse.

The clue that Gao Dawei gives LQS through the kid NPC, “Flower in the water, moon in the mirror” (水中花，镜中月) is actually a reversal of an actual Chinese idiom “Flower in the mirror, moon in the water” (镜中花，水中月), which means a mirage, something that is an illusion. While this is a huge analogy for the whole real world vs. door world theme, it’s also another instance of reversal or something flipped in the show.

Some other examples are the flipped clock in the 11th door, RNZ’s quote in the 11th door about ending at the beginning, and even in the lyrics of that painful song that plays whenever someone dies: “Please don’t rewind time again, for I’m afraid I will do anything regardless of the cost” (请别再倒数时间，我怕我会不顾一切). Now… this idea of circularity, of rewinding time, of going back to the beginning to end… sounds a lot like everything restarting again after LQS emerges from the “11th door” and finding himself in a car accident. Or maybe, just maybe, it also sounds a lot like going back to the first 11 doors to finish the 12th door, doesn’t it?

4. Repeated Phrases

Now these might REALLY just be me overthinking. But Wu Qi mentioned a couple of things in his monologue (side note: this show has some SERIOUSLY GOOD angsty monologues) that made me go… hang on a second. These mentions of “light”, “the meaning of friendship”, and “path” - they were all also brought up in previous conversations between LQS and RNZ. “Light” - so many times (another side note: I find it hilarious that Xia Zhiguang also has the same “light” character in his name, so whenever RNZ says that LQS “has light on him” I get sad at the foreshadowing but I also snicker a bit for Reasons). “The meaning of friendship” - when RNZ and LQS argue over accompanying TZZ into her 6th door.

“Path” - when RNZ and LQS walk under the umbrella in the rain doll arc and RNZ mentions (also foreshadowing) that “legs are longer than paths, and paths will always have an end”. Again, these might jolly well just be coincidences, but my overthinking brain says I think not. Because, if LQS is really still in the door world, then Wu Qi and everyone else around him are really NPCs, and then it makes sense for the system to throw these words that had popped up before, in situations where Wu Qi was never present, right back at him.

5. Premonitions

There are so many of these.

In episode 1, LQS already briefly “hears” the blades of the air vent of the room he had been trapped in with Gao Dawei, even though he’s still in the PC bang and the memory of that kidnapping is not at the forefront of his mind… unless it had already been triggered at some time shortly before that (i.e. in the “real” door whatever number it was when he had met the NPC that revealed the nature of the doors to him).

Just before LQS is hit by the car, he sees a door on the road, that is the same door as one of the two in the 11th door - the one that represents “illusory life”. How did LQS manage to conjure up the image of a door that only appears in his future? Unless, he has already seen the door before in the real 11th door.

BUT that being said, in the same flashes, he does also see the kaleidoscope cross-section style (seriously, I need a better name for this) of doors - the third hallway he sees in the first episode. This one, admittedly, I’m still trying to figure out, since technically, based on the theory I’m working out, at that point, he should not have yet actually stepped into the hallway.

LQS also encounters Li Dongyuan and Xiong Qi in the “real world” before he enters his “1st door”.

And also explains why he could dream the names and personalities of so many different people so accurately before actually meeting them “in real life” (that asshole in the hospital arc - I forgot his name -, Xiao Ke, Chen Fei, the twins, TZZ, Lu Yanxue), including the “real” owner of the villa.

This might also be me overthinking and just be the cast trolling, but the “actual” Spirit Realm game in the “real world” also seems to draw upon elements of what LQS had experienced in his 11 doors in the show, albeit in a more chibi form: from the door and Nanqiu and Toast and Chestnut on the front page, to the kaleidoscope and entering the door on the loading page, and the woman in the rain, Xiao Jiu, rain doll, nurse, and Zuozi characters on the game grid. If this was really the real world, was it really a coincidence that LQS had “dreamed” or “experienced” doors that had these very same elements? Or do we have cause and effect the other way round here, where the “reality” is actually drawing on what LQS had “dreamed” or “experienced” in the doors? I say, it’s no coincidence at all.

EXHIBIT D: WHAT HAPPENED OUTSIDE THE 12TH DOOR? + UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

Now, if the entire show is about the 12th door, then what happened in the real world? In doors 1-11? Well, it could be anything at this point.

Perhaps it’s something closer to the novel, where there’s nothing game-related about it at all, and people get pulled into the doors because they're about to die a sudden death, and the world of the doors is a "gift" for them to fight for that chance to continue living. The whole business is really just a supernatural thing, and the 12th door just happened to take on the setting of a virtual reality game.

Or, perhaps it’s really more like the show, where doors 1-11 happened exactly as they did (or close to) in the show, where LQS had to save the world from the nasty game that had been sullied by the capitalists in Piao Liang Guo (an analogy for the USA, if you haven’t yet realised), but he had to sacrifice his closest friend (read: bosom buddy) for the sake of the greater good.

Again, it could be anything. But I’d like to believe that it’s the latter. Because it goes exactly with the idea of circularity (see Common Motifs), of starting from the beginning again.

But, post that, after everything is said and done, does RNZ end up going to the real world? I really hope so, because I need my happy ending damn it. It was possible in the novel which was more supernatural-coded, so the idea of a door god stepping out of this supernatural door world and into the real one to live with his husband seems a bit more… probable. (I know we��re talking about fiction here but please hear me out it’s like the walrus vs. fairy thing.) But if RNZ is really just made up of data, how the heck does data step out from the virtual world and into the real one? Maybe LQS really does end up making a “body” for him in the real world and takes a few years (or decades) to code him from scratch? But that just kinda goes back to my 意难平 with Theory 2 - is this RNZ really RNZ? Not to mention, the pain of LQS being alone for decades and trying to make RNZ from scratch.

Another unanswered question: what the heck is with LQS’s evolving hairstyle and fashion throughout the show? Is it an analogy for LQS’s changing personality, that even TZZ’s director “friend” mentions in episode 62? Or does it symbolise something else? I really don’t know, at this point.

EXHIBIT E: A SIMPLE CHRONOLOGICAL DIAGRAM

If you’ve managed to read till here, MASSIVE kudos to you. And here’s a simple diagram that I drew on PPT just to illustrate this entire theory, because I was also confusing the heck out of myself and I needed to see it visually to make sense of it.

EXHIBIT F: TIDBITS

These don’t really support Theory 3, but I’m including them anyway because I find them… interesting.

There’s a Yuyu Hakusho book in LQS and Wu Qi’s apartment. Now I’m in no way familiar with that series (I only watched that one live action adaptation of it), but in that series, there also exists a Spirit World (霊界, Reikai), which (ahem Wiki copy and paste) is the world where sentient beings (humans and demons) go after they die; not the equivalent of heaven or hell, but a station in between worlds where a soul's fate is decided. Which sounds… a lot like the premise of the doors in the actual novel.

I also find it extremely punny that the drama changed LQS’s name to Ling Jiushi (凌久时). For one, the characters for Jiushi are the exact ones that mean “long time” - which reminds me of the final exchange that RNZ and LQS have in the show. Also, the fact that his surname is now Ling instead of Lin? Absolutely hilarious… once you realise that the Chinese slang for bottoms in a MLM pair is 0 (零)… pronounced exactly the same way as show!LQS’s surname. And, if you haven’t yet figured out the running thread through this entire damn long ass post by now: coincidence? I think not.

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moongothic · 3 months ago

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So for a while I had wanted to make a knitted sweater or a cardigan with thick, vertical stripes. Needless to say though I was having a hard time brainstorming HOW to make that such a thing. Colorwork would be doable if I wanted to do thin stripes, but I wanted the stripes to be like a good 5-8 cm wide. That would result in a lot of extremely long floats, which would make knitting it a pain in the ass and far beyond my skill level (if not straight up impossible?), but also it'd be such a waste of yarn. But, I figured... people make granny square sweaters and cardigans where they sew the individual pieces together. Hell, knitters make sweaters and cardigans in pieces too. So, if I wanted to knit something with vertical stripes, what'd stop me from knitting each stripe as an individual piece and then sewing them together?

Now, a lot of this project was me figuring things out as I went along (partially because for a while I wasn't sure if this project would work out, and if I'd be able to make a cardigan at all or if I'd have to make a sweater instead), knitting pieces and sewing them together as I went instead of making all the pieces first and then putting them all together in a grand finale. So I don't have photos of the individual stripes I knit up pre-sewing. Each stripe ended up being about 7 cm wide but their lenghts vary depending on where they're placed (sides are shorter to make room for the arms etc), and two stripes on the front I knit into a sharp point to shape the neck opening. In total I knit 13 pieces to make the body of the cardigan

Now I did originally intend to just sew the pieces together using mattress stitch, but as I was sewing, I just... Did not like how it was turning out. It wasn't quite as seamless as I had hoped it would be, but more importantly, if you pulled on the sewn pieces at all you'd end up with a gaping hole between the pieces (not pictured) that just felt really unsecure. So I tried just crocheting the pieces and, honestly, I did prefer it quite a bit. It felt stronger than the mattress stitch and it blended into the knit way better, so that's what I ended up going with

I did however mattress stitch the tops together (I don't understand why it felt better/stronger up there than on the sides but whatever, if it works it works)

I did originally make arm holes waaay too big by accident. Fortunately it was easy to fix though, since I had made sure all the pieces were attached the same way- starting row at the bottom edge and bind-off at the top. I just had to undo the bind off on the side pieces of the cardigan and knit a few more rows before binding off again (and crocheting the extended sections together), aka I didn't have to rip the cardigan apart or anything to redo these sections (Yellow stripe on the left has already been extended (black marker shows where I picked up from), about to start knitting the black stripe on the right)

With all of that done, the body of the cardigan was mostly done! I was maybe a liiittle bit concerned about the fit, but I knew I wanted the ribbing to be as wide as the stripes were, so the ribbing was going to "complete" the fit; I had taken that into considderation when I was originally mathing out the size of the cardigan (how many stripes I'd have to make and how wide they'd have to be etc (though I did have to adjust that math a few times during the process lmao)) (Also; the reason I wanted to make a cardigan instead of a sweater is because I prefer clothes I can wear open. Like I don't really like hoodies without zippers because I can't open them, where as hoodies that do have zippers I wear all the time and I pretty much always leave them open. So even if this cardigan had turned out a little snug, it'd be fine, because I know I wouldn't button it up anyways lmao)

I figured doing the ribbing in crochet would be easier, but man. It took me fucking forever to figure out how to do the ribbing. For starters, the yellow yarn I've been using I've actually been holding double this whole time (while knitting), and so I was unsure if I wanted to hold it double for the ribbing as well or hold it single. I was also unsure if I wanted to do the ribbing in slip stitch, single crochet or double, not to mention figuring out the right hook size. I really did try like 5-10 different combinations before I landed on doing double crochet ribbing with the yarn held single. Like I had wanted to try other methods because I feel like double crochet is too hole-y and loose, but all the other methods made a really thick fabric, much thicker than the knit. And I just didn't like that. The double crochet/held single was the only way to get a fabric that was the same thickness as the knit, so that's what I ended up going with. On the plus side, it was also faster to work up lmao

Once I figured out what technique I wanted to use I just had to crochet the damn thing. Which was fine, though I felt like the ribbing was making the cardigan flare out weirdly (in hindsight I think I was just slightly loosing it at this point lmao I can't see what was wrong with the ribbing looking at that photo again fjdghksdf), so I also did a round around the edge of the ribbing to help secure it into a tighter shape. Once the front of the ribbing was done, I did the bottom ribbing and cleaned that edge up too

And then I ran out of yarn

More specifically, I had been using scrap black yarn I already had in my stash. And after I started knitting the sleeves with the remaining balls, having successfully turned the vest into a button-up t-shirt, yeah, ran out of black. So I had to go and order some more black yarn, one or two balls would probably be enough, just need some cheap wool But I don't want to pay 5 bucks in shipping for 5 bucks of wool, man. If I'm gonna order something I might as well make it worth the shipping (or even better, get the free shipping). Now the plot twist is that I originally began working on this cardigan back in September, and when I ran out of yarn it was October. And I knew in a few weeks I'd be going to a Spooky Convention, and I wanted to wear something Halloween-y to said Spooky Convention. So I put this cardigan on hold for like three weeks (in total) so I could crochet a Spooky Cardigan for the convention.

So yeah this cardigan I did start before I made that other one. Lmao.

Anyway, once that other project was done I finally got back to working on This Fucking Thing and finishing it with the yarn I had gotten. Hilariously the yarn I had bought was actually too thin so I had to hold it double to finish the sleeves, but it's fiiine, I've used all sorts of scrap black yarns for this project and could not tell the difference on what yarn has been used where, it's all wool (or wool alpaca mix) And once the knitting was done, I crochet'd some simple cuffs on the sleeves so it'd match the ribbing. I blocked the cardigan, weaved in all the bajillion ends and sewed on some buttons.

I'm deeply upset blocking ruined the shaping of the collar/ribbing. Like I should've seen it coming, I know crochet is stiff innitially but becomes loose and wavey when blocked. But I somehow forgot, and now the collar looks dumb as hell. Also, because the ribbing is quite thin, it can't actually support the buttons I had picked out for the cardigan, so they just kinda. Flop around and sit there, looking sad and flaccid. Of course, the buttons would be very easy to switch out (esp since I haven't weaved them in yet) but there's a part of me that feels like I should undo the whole ribbing and redo it to fix the collar. But. I've already weaved in everything. Undoing the weaving would be a massive pain in the ass, there's so many yarn ends in there... And I'm not sure I care enough to put in that effort into this.

Another minor thing is that I feel like the neck opening is a bit too open for my personal taste- like the cardigan fits on me perfectly, I did my math just fine on that front, but I prefer something that hugs my neck more and this is really open (especially after blocking ruined my perfect, fitted collar). So I should've left the front black stripes normal instead of doing the shaping on them, or something like that

All of that aside though, I am happy with how this cardigan turned out (especially it's technically my first one, even if I didn't finish it first), it fits perfectly and I'll absolutely wear it around home, it's nice and comfy and warm and that's all I wanted and needed

#Moon posting #Yarncraft Diary #Yarnblr #Knitblr #Knitting

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nino-rox · 4 months ago

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Jake | library + fascįnation

It started off as nothing. In fact, you’d barely noticed him at first. He was just another face in the background, another guy claiming his spot at the far corner of the library. Jake wasn’t the type to be buried in books, that much was obvious. The way he slouched in his chair, feet kicked up, the worn leather jacket slung over the back—he stood out. His blonde hair, messy and effortlessly styled, gleamed faintly under the library's low lighting, adding to his bad-boy allure. But still, the two of you had silently coexisted in the same space for what felt like ages.

You’d both been going to the library since freshman year, coincidentally at the same time, almost every day. You had your favorite spot, two tables away from the large window that overlooked the campus courtyard. It was quiet but not too isolated. You liked the soft natural light that streamed through in the afternoons, and the way you could glance out at the people passing by if you ever needed a break from your textbooks.

Jake, on the other hand, sat further back, near the older sections with the dark wooden shelves that cast deep shadows. It wasn’t a place most people sat, probably because it felt cut off from the rest of the room. Maybe that’s why he liked it. Or maybe it was because no one would dare bother him there. He radiated a sort of intimidating presence that you couldn’t quite pin down at first. The kind of guy who looked like he’d seen it all and didn’t have time for anyone’s shit. But you had a feeling that wasn’t entirely true.

Over the past year, you’d found yourself noticing the details. He wasn’t just some random guy in the corner anymore; he was Jake, the hot bad boy everyone knew of, but no one really knew. Rumors floated around campus about his late-night hookups, his devil-may-care attitude, and the trail of people he left in his wake. You didn’t need to hear the whispers to know he had a reputation. You’d seen him—late at night, in the dorms, more times than you could count. Usually when he was sneaking out after hooking up with someone, his hood pulled low over his face, trying to blend into the shadows of the hallways.

And then, somehow, your paths kept crossing. Maybe it was fate, or maybe just bad timing, but it seemed like you were always walking in and out of the library at the same time. You’d step inside, and there he’d be, sliding into his regular spot just minutes after you. Or you’d pack up your things, and Jake would be right behind you, leaving like it had been some sort of unspoken agreement all along. The more it happened, the less it felt like a coincidence.

That’s when the glances started.

It wasn’t intentional at first. You’d look up from your laptop, your gaze drifting across the room, and there he’d be, leaning back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, his eyes already on you. Sharp, dark, intense. The kind of gaze that made your skin prickle with awareness. You told yourself it was nothing—just a random look. But the days passed, and every time you caught his eye, it lingered a little longer. Each glance seemed to say more than the last, a silent conversation neither of you dared to speak aloud.

There was something unspoken between you, something that went beyond mere attraction — a raw, unfiltered yearning, as though each of you were waiting for the other to break the silence.

His eyes did all the talking. And every time they settled on you, dark and heated, you could feel his intent, like he was daring you to do something about the fire sparking between you.

The tension was undeniable. You could feel it every time you stepped into the library, a slow burn that simmered under the surface. It wasn’t just the glances; it was the way the air felt heavier when he was around, the way you could feel him even when you weren’t looking directly at him. And as much as you tried to ignore it, that tension only grew.

The faint musk of old books and worn paper blended with the faint scent of Jake’s cologne, something woodsy and dark, with just enough bite to keep you aware of his presence even when you weren’t looking at him.

It had been months now, and still, neither of you had spoken a word to the other. Yet, somehow, it felt like you knew each other, like you were connected by something unspoken. The library wasn’t the only place your paths crossed. You’d seen him late at night in the dorms, usually after one of his infamous hookups. He’d slip out of someone’s room, his hair disheveled, his hoodie pulled up, eyes catching yours in the dim light of the hallway. He never spoke then either, just offered you a knowing smirk before disappearing into the night.

The first time you ran into him in the dorms had been late, just past midnight. You were heading back to your room after a long evening of studying, mind heavy with fatigue. The hallway was dark, the only light coming from the dim glow of the vending machine near the end. That’s when you saw him. He stepped out of someone’s room, the door closing softly behind him. His hood was up, but you’d recognize that figure anywhere. He walked with a casual swagger, like he owned the night, and as he approached, his eyes flicked up, meeting yours.

There was a beat of silence, the hallway thick with unspoken tension. You could hear the soft hum of the vending machine, the distant sound of someone laughing from down the hall, but none of it mattered. All that existed was him. Jake, standing a few feet away, his gaze locking onto yours in that same way he always did—like he was daring you to say something, to break the fragile quiet between you. But you didn’t. Neither did he.

Instead, he walked past you, his shoulder brushing against yours as he moved down the hall, the scent of his cologne lingering in the air long after he was gone. You stood there, your heart racing, the weight of his presence pressing down on you, even after the sound of his footsteps faded into nothing.

You’d always felt an odd mix of curiosity and confusion whenever you crossed paths with Jake. As much as you tried to deny it, there was something about him that pulled you in. Was it the way his gaze made your heart race? Or maybe it was the mystery—the fact that you couldn’t quite figure him out. But there was also a part of you that wondered: why did it matter so much? Why did *he* matter so much?

And then there was that one night. The night everything shifted.

You’d had a shit day. Classes had dragged on longer than they should have, and you were exhausted by the time you stepped out of the library that evening. It was late, the sky painted in shades of pink and orange as the sun dipped below the horizon. You pulled out a cigarette, needing the nicotine to take the edge off, but your lighter had died.

Frustrated, you stared at the unlit cigarette, your mind too tired to even care. That’s when you noticed him. Jake, leaning against the railing at the edge of the bluff, watching you with that same amused look he always had. You hadn’t even known he smoked. Without a word, he reached into his pocket, tossed you his lighter, and just like that, you shared a moment.

You lit your cigarette, the flame flickering between you, and after a moment, you handed it to him. Jake took it without a word, his fingers brushing against yours as he took a slow drag, the smoke curling between his lips before he handed it back. The silence between you wasn’t uncomfortable—it was charged, like there was something waiting to be said, but neither of you would be the first to say it.

When the cigarette was done, he tossed the butt to the ground, gave you a small glance, and walked away, leaving you standing there in the fading light, the weight of that shared moment hanging heavy in the air.

That was the last time you’d seen him outside the library, but the memory stayed with you, much like the way his eyes seemed to follow you every time you walked through those library doors.

It wasn’t until late one night, well after the library had emptied out, that things finally came to a head. The dim lights cast long shadows across the rows of bookshelves, the stillness of the room heavy with anticipation. You hadn’t expected to see him there. But as soon as you stepped inside, Jake was already leaning against one of the shelves, his eyes locking onto yours with an intensity that made your heart skip a beat.

You felt the heat rise in your chest. For a second, you hesitated, your pulse quickening as you stood frozen by the door. Was this it? Was this the moment you had been waiting for, the moment where the silence finally broke? You didn’t know if you were ready, but you couldn’t deny the pull between you. Something in the air was too thick to ignore.

Jake’s expression was unreadable, but the hunger in his eyes was unmistakable. And yet, for the briefest second, he paused. Maybe it was hesitation, maybe it was curiosity, but there was something in his gaze that told you he was waiting—waiting for you to make the next move.

You stepped forward, your body moving on instinct, drawn to the tension between you like a moth to a flame. The rest of the world fell away. The only thing you could focus on was the heat in his gaze, the way your pulse quickened as you closed the distance between you. His expression was unreadable, but the hunger in his eyes was unmistakable.

You followed him, the pull between you undeniable, each step feeling heavier with the weight of everything unsaid. The small study room at the back of the library offered no escape from the tension, the door clicking shut behind you like a final, irreversible decision.

Thank you for reading Chapter 1

If you liked the story and want a part 2, Please Request!

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bengiyo · 3 months ago

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Love in the Big City Eps 7-8: Always Forward

Writing about the end of Love in the Big City is hard for me because it’s hard to seem to happy about a show going so dour for this long, but I mostly feel relieved that the show didn’t completely pull back on Yeong’s bleak existence after Gyu-ho. Overall, I really loved this adaptation, and especially enjoyed Sang Young Park’s opportunity to revisit this story after a few years away from it.

Starting with the way Gyu-ho haunted this section, I absolutely loved how they were able to flash back to the previous part and allow us to see how much closer Yeong got to Gyu-ho. I thought the looks at their trip to Thailand outside of the Yeong depressive haze of Part 3 played out really well here now that he’s mourning the relationship. It’s always so sad to me with Yeong how he will choose to isolate rather than subject his bullshit on others.

I find myself thinking a lot about the pills they got for Gyu-ho, how they were able to have one night of lovemaking without Kylie hanging over them, how the side effects of those drugs were pretty rough at the time, and how Yeong probably hated the idea of Gyu-ho taking pills forever because of him. It’s ironic that the idea that they could build a relationship around Kylie scared him more than anything because he knew it would be less than what he envisioned Gyu-ho could have for himself.

I wrote last week about how the apartment was too small, and I’m so glad that we got to see Yeong move out of that apartment in the finale. It felt so appropriate that he moved to a new place that literally looked like a blank slate for him to start over. I’m glad he took so little of the old apartment with him. He kept his mother’s nicest liquor cabinet and her trophies, a few personal items, and otherwise gave himself a new start. Like many of us, he had a big love in his 20s and it didn’t work out. He’s had some success as an author, and now can try to move forward. I like that the only things he takes with him to the new apartment beyond a few personal items are his friends. That feels like the right place to end a story like this.

Speaking of the T-aras, I really loved including them in this show. I hope that for SYP, there really was a group of friends like this for him during his 20s when he was experiencing the events that inspired some of this story. It feels like a not-so-quiet love letter to those friends that he made sure we saw how they grew and supported Yeong over the course of the story.

I loved that we saw Yeong grow closer to Eun Su in this section over the broken engagement. Gay relationships can be hard because we don’t have the structures of heteronormativity to help keep us together, like child rearing. So much of it comes down to whether we want to be with this person in and of itself, and for many of us marriage just isn’t the right solution to affirm that. I like that Eun Su realized this about himself before they committed to far, and it was Yeong who he knew would understand him on this.

I am so glad they went with different directors for each section. I think Hur Jin-ho might be my favorite with the way he used a lot of still shots to capture the stifling nature of Yeong’s time in the hospital and his broken relationship with Yeong Su. I loved the way Kim Se-in shot the follow up look at the trip to Thailand in Part 4, after the beautiful work Hong Ji-young gave us in the small details of the relationship with Gyu-ho that Hong Ji-young captured in Part 3. I would also like to applaud Song Tae-gyum for getting so much energy out of the cast and the shots in Part 1, because the long toll of events on Yeong does not land without coming down from the energy of Part 1. Absolutely phenomenal work from all four directors and the crews.

As a single story instead of four connected vignettes, I respect the choices the adaptation made to soften some of the heaviest parts of this story, and in particular give us a more hopeful look at Yeong’s future. I love that I feel like I can love the book and drama together and separately. It’s rare that I find a drama adaptation does a good job or elevates the original work, and I’m really glad that I can say that about this show. Everyone put they whole foot in this drama, and it shows.

Finally, I would like to give a huge thanks to Nam Yoon Su, Jim Ho Eun, Lee So Kyung, Kown Hyuk, Na Hyun Woo, Lee Hyun So, Byun Jun Seo, Jung Chan Yeong, and Oh Hyun Kyung, and the rest of the cast for all their work on this show. This feels like a once-in-a-generation show, not unlike Moonlight (2016), where we may never see the direct impacts of it. Someday, I hope we see the spiritual successor to this show, and can point back at it and thank it for getting us to that future. It’s rare that we get this much experienced talent in dramas playing queer life this frankly, and I will carry Go Young with me for the rest of my life, and will reflect on him and myself in his relationships with his mom, the T-aras, Gyu-ho, Yeong Su, Mi Ae, Nam Gyu, and even Habibi. What I am thankful for with the drama is that we leave Yeong looking forward and not back.

It has been an honor reacting to this show with all of you in the Love in the Big City Book Club. Thank you all for sharing your thoughts, gifs, and creations with us for this past month. I am so thankful that we got to do this experience together twice. I look forward to our next big outing.

#Ben watches #Ben writes #love in the big city #litbc book club #kdrama #korean bl #bl series

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ar3s-r4t-qu33n · 5 months ago

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Johnny's Bluffing

CW for discussion of potential sexual assault, toxic/unhealthy relationships, stalking, obsession, and, of course, murder and cannibalism. Nothing like, too crazy I think? But especially this one section on sexual assault, it's brief but separated out so it's quite easy to skip if that makes folks uncomfortable.

Hi I am currently in a really bad insomnia cycle and as such haven't slept so I'm sure I'm gonna have missed something that immediately prove me wrong, but here we go:

I don't think that certain members of the Family know that Maria is alive, and especially Nancy. This theory sort of delves into a lot of different stuff, I wrote and rewrote this a fair bit and idk, this is what I ended up with. It's a lot of my personal interpretation of both the written text and the way lines are delivered, as well as my own analyses on characters and how I personally think the timeline of events went (Danny and Virginia dying before the gang even show up in Newt, Maria being the 'Definitive Final Girl' and surviving to the very end, but never getting to escape the Slaughters/Johnny. That isn't to say that she dies, but Sally is the first and only person to escape until Stretch if she is canon to this timeline now that Choptop is on his way) so idk, I hope you like what I've been thinking about I guess?

Nancy and Drayton both have several voice lines that refer to Maria being in the past tense. So does Johnny, but my theory here is that he is playing into this line of thought so they don’t realise that he is still keeping her.

I will source my way of hearing all of the voice lines at the end.

Starting with Nancy, she has several;

‘It didn’t have to be this way, you know? You just had to come looking for that floosy of yours, didn’t you?’

‘Your little friend had it coming. Looking at my Johnny that way- he’s a sweet boy!’

‘You ever hear the saying murder starts in the heart? … I think my Johnny liked that girl…’

The first two are obviously extremely defensive over Johnny and are meant to taunt the other Victims over Maria’s ‘death’. The last one, however, feels almost like a realisation. This line has confused me for a long time, because it sounds like two different once spliced together, but they are, in fact, connected. This is the only time that Nancy ever speaks about Maria in any other way than pure disgust and defensiveness. Another interesting thing about Nancy is that she does not hate her husbands. She murdered all three of them, none of them were able to give her a baby of her own, and yet she defends them from Sissy, she keeps them all in her basement man cave, and even when talking to Hands, she’s apologetic about Harold to him. She still holds a fondness for them, it seems, and I feel like maybe this is what makes her finally realise that Johnny actually, truly loves Maria. For Nancy, she loves people to death, and that type of love extends to Johnny, too. Sure, he’s still alive, and could easily kill her now, but she permanently scarred his face when he tried to leave her. I don’t believe that Nancy isn’t above murdering Johnny to keep him with her, and I think this admittance leads to her realising that Johnny actually did love Maria. Of course, she can’t say ‘love’, that’s a bit too far, but at the very least, she will acknowledge that he likes her, and these days, Johnny doesn’t seem to like anyone, not even her. It’s also interesting to note that she says this after losing sight of a victim she was chasing. She says herself that she hasn’t hunted like this in a while, it seems as if physically chasing people down to kill them is making her reminisce on her feelings about murder and love in a way.

But all of that to say, she believes Maria is dead. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, she’s dead now, and maybe she plans to talk to Johnny about it later, maybe not apologise, but try and make it easier on him now that she’s realised just how much she meant to him.

Then we’ve got Cookie.

‘Look, I’m sorry about your friend… but… I’m afraid you done landed square dab in the shithouse!’

‘We didn’t have much choice! Couldn’t let Johnny spring no lovechild around here. It ain’t personal! Now get back here!’

There is obviously a lot less here, the former being Cook or Drayton’s more humble, car salesman type approach to everything, apologising sincerely that their friend had to die… but now so do they, so how sorry can he be, really?

The second is far more interesting. I’m still sort of working out the kinks with what I think on all this, but it implies not only that the whole family knew about Johnny’s feelings for Maria, but that there was a worry about something more than just his feelings. A genuine attachment, the possibility for a child.

Now, one thing I wanna throw in real quick is that a lot of people think Johnny assaulted Maria once he kidnapped her. And I personally don’t think that that is true. And it’s more than just ‘noooo not my pookie he would never!’, I feel as though Johnny’s feelings for Maria are beyond sexual, or beyond purely sexual. I’m not gonna get super into it because I wanna make a whole post about just their relationship, but in short, Johnny knows he’s hot shit. He knows women love him and men do too, and he uses that all the time to lure people to their deaths. Maybe he fucks them first, then kills them, who knows. But this is a man who is used to being sexualised and uses it to his advantage, like a reverse femme fatale, almost. A lot of his lines are sexually charged and he speaks seductively low at times, even flirting on the odd occasion. However, Maria is in love with Danny and is a sweet girl in the seventies. There is no way she’s heading off to knock boots with the pretty boy at the bar no matter how charming, persistent, helpful… always somehow exactly where she needs him to be… is. She’s kind, she’s sweet, she brings out the best in people, we know this about her. And when there’s no sex, when it’s not about fucking them and killing them… Johnny has no choice but to fall completely head over heels for her. It’s no surprise that the day she’s heading out of town, maybe to go back to see her boyfriend, that is when her car breaks down. Johnny’s oil stained gloves, the fact that he’s designed to look like he helps at a gas station, his friendship with Uncle Hands, the fact he lives in a junk yard? This man knows mechanics. He knows cars. And he is definitely not above tampering with an already busted old car to ensure it stops before she can get away from him. It’s just his luck that she happens to break down by his family’s land. All this to say, I don’t think Johnny assaults Maria once he has her. Not only because that would be a lot, like, in general, for this game to go from goofy cannibals to sexual assault by one of the game’s most beloved characters to one of the game’s most beloved characters, but because I don’t think Johnny is the type. He’s pretty and charming enough that people want him, he doesn’t have to take it, he earns it. And he wants Maria to give it to him, for him to earn it because she wants him. He likely spends his time down there with her trying to get her to fall for him and forget about Danny. He wants her to want him. Or at least, this is my personal interpretation.

Maybe she does begin to fall or maybe Drayton’s complete lack of any and all sexual knowledge just makes him think they’re already going to pound town, but he was worried about a baby. That’s something I wanna explore in the future, why he’s so worried about Johnny and Maria having a baby, but moving on; again, Drayton is seemingly fully convinced that Maria is dead.

For Johnny I wanna take his lines one at a time, but it is important to note that I think some of these lines are referring to someone else and not Maria, but also some of these are in present tense, he either slips up or sometimes on purpose mentions things that could hint to her being alive to the Victims.

‘You wanna know how your friend died!? … I can show you!’

‘Your little friend put up a better fight than this… come on! Make it interesting, will you!?”

Pure just bluffing to get them angry and scared. It could also be referring to Danny but more on that a different time.

‘That’s what I get for taking it easy on them. Time for them to join that little friend of theirs…’

‘You’re gonna look real nice next to that friend of yours…’

Again, if my belief that Danny not only went to Nancy’s a lot earlier than the others is true and that he has been dead for a good few days before the gang shows up, then this is absolutely about him, not Maria.

‘You kinda remind me of your little friend’

To Ana about Maria, obviously, and comes across as quite flirtatious. He’s figured out that not only does Maria have a sister (if she never told him), but that Ana has no intentions of leaving there without her. I interpret this as Johnny taunting her, making her his new priority to get rid of. I said he loved Maria, I never said he loved her in a healthy way, alight? This is The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, not the Notebook (never seen that movie)

‘You should have never came here looking for that girl!’

I don’t need to explain. Pure possessive Johnny in his raw form.

And finally, the infamous;

‘You know… I was actually kinda fond of that girl, I-I didn’t really wanna hurt her… but… family first, you know?’

Johnny is an agitator. Almost all of his lines are trying to fuck with the victims, playing with his food. Egging them on to hit him, teasing them about being too slow, the way he calls after them as he hunts them down, he wants to see them upset and charged, he wants a good fight, he wants to feel something. The main part of this line is just that, I think; he wants them to believe that even though he cared about Maria, he fucking killed her. He wants them to be angry, to fight him, to hurt him. The end is guilty. Incredibly guilty sounding, and I don’t think that’s out of a guilt for killing her, since… well, Maria is alive and kicking. But more a guilt about his family in general. ‘Family first, you know?’ he’s almost saying it so himself, as if that’s what he should think, what he should be doing. But he is actively betraying them and knows that once everything blows over, he’s going to keep on betraying them for every day he keeps Maria alive. And he also knows that even if he feels all of this guilt, he will do it anyway because he loves her, and he can’t let his family have her. She is the only person who is truly his, who represents what life could have given him. I have another analysis I made on TikTok that I’ll repost here soon, but it essentially goes like this; Johnny and Danny really aren’t too different. Scrappy orphans who are good with mechanics. Except Danny got to go to college, travel freely, meet the girl of his dreams, and Johnny is forced to be someone he doesn’t want to be. He isn’t not a killer, but he also could have not been a killer. Maria is everything he has not been allowed to have; naivety, kindness, softness. And now that he has her, and once everyone else is out of the way, he has no intentions of letting that go.

So he is pretending that she is dead. And for now, it is working. I have a feeling in the canon story of the game, the victims stumble upon her somewhere once they’ve already caused enough trouble for the family, and then all bets are off. Once they find out she’s still alive, it’s a new game for Johnny, a choice; does he kill her, make his mother proud and live the only life he knows because even if he leaves, he knows he can’t be any better? Or does he take her away and try, try to be a different man in the softness of her love?

Rush Week could be the result of either of those. Either he kills her, and becomes an even worse, even colder killer, now able to handle a situation like in the game completely on his own, or he takes her away to start a new life and just couldn’t stop the urges; the Bad Man needs to feed. He stays late after work or pretends he has a night shift and gets his fill on blood and chaos before stumbling home, washing it all off, and returning to Maria’s (definitely traumatised at this point from seeing her friends and sister murdered (don’t worry about Danny I’ve got thoughts on him shhh) in front of her and ‘rescued’ by Johnny) arms.

That was a lot... Please tell me what y'all think on this, again, a lot of my personal interpretation on a lot of things, but isn't that what art is for?

Sources for the voice lines:

Texas Chain Saw Massacre Game - Johnny All Voice Lines (youtube.com)

Texas Chain Saw Massacre Game - Black Nancy All Voice Lines - YouTube

Texas Chain Saw Massacre Game - Johnny All Voice Lines (youtube.com)

Promised I'd tag @bloodfeeder when I finished this so here ya go!! :)

#johnny slaughter #maria flores #black nancy #drayton slaughter #tcm game #tcm #rush week tcm #tcm rush week #the texas chain saw massacre game

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confusion-est · 8 days ago

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hello let's have a friendly scholarly debate ala academic and protégé

i definitely feel some choices were rather weak, the beast bite could have been his own consequence due to actions he took, but there's definitely a more realistic (somehow, in our werewolf story) feeling to the "wrong place, wrong time", as that is, indeed, how most tragedies are, but an action and consequence would be far more satisfying narratively, and his scholar aspects were woefully underutilized by this narrative too, besides a concoction section that i don't even think is possible to fail, while sarmenti's second fight leaves you on 9 stress intentionally, so every move feels like a tense "oh no what if i did this wrong"

the choice to use damian as the torturer is one im absolutely behind, we see one of the torturers escape in the original comic and i love the "oops! all damian!" aspect of where the story's going, even if it does loop back around into comedic rather than tragic, for me at least, and gives further reason for his discharge from the church if he's similar to the fanatic in his zealous violence (i.e. beyond the control of the church)

they definitely failed to utilize him being a scholar like alhazred or paracelsus and did go for the cheapest option (wrong place wrong time), but it's, technically, the most realistic. however, i think the reason it feels as weak as it does is entirely due to the lack of narrative curiosity on what the creature was, so we're not left strung along by subtle hints, it's just "it bit him and now he's a Beastie". there's also a failure to go into the nature of what he has, with how it appears that this is a transmissable disease rather than curse or concoction, especially with the academic's own trapped abomination in his study

they do, however, do very well with spectacle, and the cutscenes did absolutely get my heart pumping, plus the moment of being sure you failed only to see "RESIST" become your only option was absolutely wild in the moment, even if the initial fight leading up felt less polished than, say, either of dismas' fights. it seemed to be purely a buildup to that spectacle of the transformation, which is understandable in a way, but still, as a paid dlc, then i'd want even the less important segment (human segment) to be just as tense as sarmenti's and just as well done as dismas'

overall? i think it is of a decent quality, with high quality animations and fun barks and personality, but the story is, unfortunately, quite weak to get there, even if i did enjoy it for the most part.

what do you think?

(Hi, I just wanted to say thank you so much for sending me this ask, it made me really happy and excited, since it gave me the opportunity to yap a lot. I agree with a lot of you say and you did make me rethink a couple of matters so thank you for that! I still wanted to share some of my insights, so I'm sorry if this is a little disorganized/chaotic.)

True I would not mind The Beast manifesting due to bite if it was a consequence of something. Yes, one could argue him wandering into the moor with no safety precautions is the consequence, but that's about as brutal as telling a child they got ran over by a truck while riding their bike because they did not wear a helmet. Really, I feel The Beast gets introduced too fast. I know they've only got 5 chapters to cover important story aspects, but I feel the story would flow better if it started with an introduction of who Bigby is/what he does (like how Sarmenti's story introduces him as a busker, how Audrey's story introduces her as freshly wed into money and how Paracelsus is introduced as a daring student, etc.) I believe that would also lean better into wrong place, wrong time if we still went with "well he just got bit while gathering herbs", because then by chapter 2 he would be in grave danger already - like first chapter we get a serene introduction to his alchemical woes and such and second chapter you get a sudden catastrophe - which is also a common trope and something that does happen irl. It would still feel somewhat weak, but the realism would've been retained… Although I'm not sure his story needs realism of that sort? I mean, I think art is allowed to exaggerate events, feelings and personalities to create a more compelling, intense and mostly interesting story. Sure, him suddenly getting bitten is realistic, but it's just not compelling. It's not fun, it's not intriguing. People don't read tragedies (which Bigby's story is) to just say "aw damn that's kinda sad", they read those to engage with a character, to understand them and feel their sorrows. To connect and to go through a sort of catharsis by sheer empathy (at least that's what ancient tragedies were about and I think the sentiment is still mostly retained). Sure the bite being such a random event adds normalcy to the whole situation, but nothing else and imo weakens the entire story overall. It'd be much, MUCH more interesting if The Beast was effect of his experimentation, his pride, his curiosity. Would be even more interesting if The Beast was originally the "intended" effect - something similar to Jekyll and Hyde , where Hyde was originally created as an outlet for various socially unacceptable desires. Those could be interesting, because you could get themes of pride, dehumanization, lack of attachment and you could generally create a discussion on what makes one human and such.

I generally feel like The Beast is as painfully underutilized narratively as Bigby's background of an alchemist. Like yes, he gets bitten by what I assume is another abomination, survives, The Beasts hunger gets him in trouble and then gets him out of the same trouble. Sure it's there and Bigby practically does not exist without it (I'll get to that when I talk about barks), but…. It's hollow. There's nothing really, it's just kind of a shadow that lingers. And sure, that could be interesting if handled well, a cautionary tale of intense paranoia, but it's not even that, because The Beast can be a tangible being that causes havoc and destruction. It exists as less than an animal I dare say. In DD1, there was a bit of ambiguity around The Beast, a lot even. Bigby was an unreliable narrator when speaking of it, often contradicting himself (depending on an affliction he would claim a different amount of control over it - for example a Fearful Bigby would speak of how little control he has over it, while Abusive Bigby would claim to be able to bring it out any second he wants to). So basically we didn't know if it was part of him or a completely deattached entity, save for shared body. We didn't know if it was sentient or not, we didn't know if what Bigby mentioned of it's whispering was true or his own imagination/paranoia playing tricks. It was, by virtue of the unknown, eldritch monster, that unexplainably attached itself to Bigby. And that was compelling! That was interesting, because Bigby himself was a very flawed person with a lot of desires, wants and regrets! It was fun to look at these and wonder what is their problem. It was fun to think of their shared dynamic, if there was any and again questions about self, what is a 'me' and generally ego. DD2 doesn't offer any of that pondering because it very plainly explains - it's an infection caused by a bite of the animal. That's it. There's nothing to ponder, save for origins of The Beast, but considering the state the world's in, you can probably just say "corruption" and leave it at that. It's just. So plain and boring, it makes me mad honestly. A lot of DD2 stories attempt to expand the lore of preexisting characters, add them new depth and such, and while I can recognize this attempt despite some failures, in Bigby's case it's a total disaster, I feel the lore got shrinked, not elaborated on.

I cannot however agree on inclusion of Damien, I honestly think it was unnecessary, but it also comes from my issue of how I understood Damien in DD1 and how drastically he was changed from that in DD2. Frankly, any of his appearances in DD2 feels like a caricature and not in a self-aware way. Gonna go on a bit of a tangent here, but DD1 Damien feels like such a misunderstood character. Yes, he is a fanatic, he is absolutely delusional and deranged. But he doesn't do it out of pleasure of flesh, in fact quite the opposite. He often describes pain and suffering as a burden that only he can bare and that it's something he wants to take from others. He doesn't see pain as privilege or desire, but something necessary to get enlightened, to ascend, to essentially be a good person. He associated self-punishment STRONGLY with being good. It's also a matter of him being a beggar before the revelation, someone who kind of wasted away and did not contribute to society. Someone who was rejected by it and could only try to take a little, just enough to survive. In that context him becoming so frantic and insistent of only HIM being able to take all the beating and not sharing the suffering, it almost reads like shame. Like he needs to punish himself. Like he needs to give back and be useful. Yes, he's weird about it, but at core he seems to be struggling with just existing. The purpose is so important to him that losing it again means death essentially. And again, it's not that he physically enjoys pain.

"Must the burden weigh on my mind as well as my body?" "Clear this mind. Clear this mind. Clear this mind." (this specifically is said when damaging himself) "I hesitated upon the path. Let the blood soothe my faith!" "What I once feared, I have become!"

Like. He clearly is not exactly enjoying himself in the common sense, but feels the intense need to push through, because if he starts feeling any fear and chickens out of this life, he'll go back to being a beggar. A corpse. A nothing. He will become nothing. And that fear (ironically) of another fate awaiting him is so awful, he'd rather suffer over and over. Feeling something over nothingness. Another thing to note is that during Final Missions if you choose him as the sacrifice he says "I've waited long for this! DON'T TAKE IT FROM ME.". He doesn't even see value of his life as it is, but a death so noble, a pure sacrifice would free him from it. He would be complete, carrying the ultimate burden of death. Also yes I do understand he can hurt his teammates during affliction and criticizes those who deny pain, but that's why I say he's deranged. He at core is a good person, but he still does some uncharitable deeds, again, in belief he helps. Which adds another layer to him imo.

And going from that kind of character to what we see in DD2 just feels like a parody. He's cruel and does not see pain as purpose, as freedom and right to exist, but as punishment and only that. What's worse is that Torturer implies (as well as his SoR text) that he enjoyed slowly torturing people to death. What he once would've taken as his, as a very dear gift of existence, a proof that he's not rotten yet, he now does just inflict of others cheerfully. It's almost comical how evil they try to write him. His first shrine does also mention that he simply sees pain as power rather than something dear and I dare say intimate to him. They made him so hedonistic for no apparently good reason. Like I do not mind character retcons and changes in characterization if it's for the better (like the character was originally boring, so they retcon some details to add depth). In Damien's case I feel that completely backfires. Again I understand the desire to change character, but my question is why? Why change a character that was already well established and honestly beloved by many people. Of course, most didn't notice how tender Damien could be in his rants about Light, but I did and it feels frustrating to see the character so watered down. And to see him repeatedly appear in other characters backstories is just a strange choice. In vestal's case he should've backed out the moment he saw The Light and that's bypassing the fact that he would probably not beat the shit out of her, but start by a conversation. A manic and insane rambling of a conversation, but a try nonetheless. Same for Bigby, he wouldn't get instantly to beating, seeing he's already wounded, mistreated, malnourished and such, but again start with rambling. With hope. Not with lash. And about the church discharge, I honestly think it's a bit weird framing that church is the "timid" one as he explains. Churches kind of have a history of corruptions, don't they? I feel like him being expelled would not need a reasoning, but also I think there are a lot of interesting ways you could go about "they didn't want him here" that go beyond "he's a little too freaky".

I know this is a very subjective/personal preference, but because of this Bigby's shrine impact is much lessened to me.

I do absolutely agree about the RESIST! part tho. As much as this is my least favourite shrine, it did have the best (imo) moment. It's good, it's tense (especially that the fight can be failed) and it really does feel like a catharsis (something I earlier mentioned that's core to the genre of tragedies). It feels good to see it in action, it's a natural "breaking point" of the story and that animation is wonderful. Really, visually RH did a lovely job with the visuals and the peak. But yes the fights overall do feel a bit weak (earlier mentioned by you concotion "puzzle" honestly feels more like filler than anything…).

As for the barks I have mixed feelings. I feel like some of them are good and feel in character, while others seem to drill in very hard how pathetic and sad Bigby is. Which I guess is not that majorly different from how he is in the first game, I just feel he has a little less bite. Like first game didn't shy away from showing him as wanting and somewhat needy while still wounded, here it's just misery and wishing for suicide (which I admit could be interesting if pushed further, that having a paranoia of bad things happening so strong it ruins you). Mind you I have not seen all of them so I may be wrong on this.

Overall I can't agree on the DLC being decent, I would say it's rather mediocre, at least from the Abomination standpoint, with a bit of highlights that honestly kind of make the dlc.

#darkest dungeon #darkest dungeon 2 #dd abomination #dd flagellant #dd bigby #dd damian #yapping sesh #<my tag for yapping i made it up now #i will not use it for the next who knows how long sorry not sorry #but again thank you for this ask!! and thank you everyone who read till the end!! have a good day

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princeblue · 2 months ago

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I'm just throwing my bone in,but I think Sanemi is naturally a "yandere" person per say. After the death of his family,he had promised to never get close to anyone but Masachika comes back like a boomerang and manages to befriend him. Now,this isn't the worst of it,but Sanemi does probably get unconsciously possessive and terrifed but he's like "Hes nineteen,and older so idgaf" Then Masachika dies and the "getting obsessively attached and derranged" problem increases tenfold,concluding to the cluster fuck that is Sanemi today. Idk,maybe it's my personal opinion but I do definitely think Masachika is an important person in his life,definitely more than Kyogo(I'm looking at you people on tiktok). Maybe I'm literally overthinking it,but canonly the reason why Sanemi pushes Genya away is because he loves him and wants him to live a happy life. Which ties into his thoughts of "virtuous humans die"(Genya living a happy life is impossible just like any demon slayer character being "pure" is).

I totally 100% agree that Sanemi is naturally a yandere type individual, just like I agree that Masachika & Kanae play a role in his ideals by, exactly like you said, “virtuous humans die” / the good die young. I’ve always just disagreed they meant as much to him PERSONALLY as much people say they did.

For Masachika im a little more lenient, he was Sanemis friend, he did try his best to help Sanemi physically and mentally, although he failed. It’s still quite interesting to me that Sanemi went back to his grave to speak about Genya joining the corps and already knowing what Masachika would say about it.

Personally, I don’t think Sanemi would be too yandere-like over Masachika, protective? Absolutely. But there’s a clear line between protective and possessive. And I think Masachika was viewed more as a mentor/sibling figure rather than someone Sanemi would murder for.

As for Genya though, i absolutely will die on the hill Sanemi has (platonic) yandere tendencies for his little brother. He’s already aware that this career destructive and dangerous, something Sanemi is perfectly fit for, but Genya is too precious/soft for it. Hence pushing him away.

The biggest point in “Yandere Sanemi” for me is the thing I’ve literally always repeated, BUT. It’s the fact that Sanemi was willing to injure Genya beyond repair to keep him from the Demon Slayers, so I really don’t think killing another person that endangers him/is not good enough for him/takes him away from Sanemi is too far fetched.

And this is kind of all over the place so I do apologize for that, but I think he would have been like this even before the deaths of his family/masachika. They did influence it, A LOT. But in his little section of the novel it’s stated Genya’s birth gave him purpose, knowing he’d end up being a protector of this little boy/those around him. He would have always been extra affectionate, clingy, and possessive as kids. And to me that ties into him seeing Genya as an “equal” to take care of their younger siblings, yeah Genya is working, but at least he’s working with Sanemi so Sanemi can keep a closer eye on him.

But since he is canonically, and sadly, not a yandere character. He didn’t go back for Genya and keep him close by, which is why one of my favorite aus ever is “spoiled Genya of the Wind Estate” uwu.

But yeah I really love to talk about yandere Sanemi and his yandere tendencies, it’s one of my favorite headcanons and au’s of him and something I will never not believe in. Hehe.

#demon slayer #kny #blue rambles #genya shinazugawa #sanemi shinazugawa #kimetsu no yaiba #kumeno masachika #anon

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simslegacy5083 · 3 months ago

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Today's (11/26/2024) Episode: Matters of Taste

“Well, it looks like someone went all out with their retail reinvention!” Luigi exclaimed later that evening as Skye showed off his new wardrobe.

“Do you think it looks OK?” Skye asked worriedly “Its not too much?”

“If you feel good about it that’s the main thing.” Noemi reassured him “If you start to feel like it’s too much you can always tone it down.”

“I think I really like it, especially how it matches Elyse” Skye smiled at the thought of her, then frowned. “Though I don’t see why boys can’t paint their nails – there was the prettiest blue polish at the nail salon that I thought would look great with this.”

“Boys can definitely paint their nails if they want to. What made you think you couldn’t?” Luigi asked

“Elyse said boys don’t paint their nails,” he told them “and none of my other friends are painting their nails.”

“Well, its not as common, but there’s nothing wrong with it” Noemi replied. “Next time you can absolutely get your nails done if you want to.”

“And what’s up with perfume and cologne?” he continued, clearly frustrated “Two different names for the same stuff, but “my” section of the store was smaller and missing my favorite scent. It seems like they should sell sims whatever they want from both sections.”

His father laughed. “Good news! Stores want your simoleons and are usually happy to sell everything on the shelf to anyone who will pay. It’s a poor salesperson who lets their own preferences get in the way of business. There’s a famous phrase - The customer is always right in matters of taste!”

Newly resolved to pay more attention to his own sense of style, Skye wished his parents good night and headed off to get ready for bed.

“That was… interesting” Luigi commented once their son was safely out of earshot “What do you think happened out there today!?”

“It sounded to me like Skye and Elyse disagreed on what was “appropriate” for boys and girls to wear” Noemi replied, frowning “I’m not thrilled that she apparently told him he couldn’t paint his nails – that’s ridiculous! Not to mention more than a little controlling.”

"Well, she’s young, I’m sure its just a lack of experience” Luigi soothed “As far as I know none of the men in her life wear nail polish. I was surprised at how strongly Skye seemed to feel about the cologne vs. perfume issue. The clothes he picked out were also fairly androgynous.”

“It’s just strange” Noemi said. “We know Elyse’s grandpar Wren was non-binary, just like your Great Grandy Jasper. It’s odd that she of all sims would be drawing such hard lines around what others are allowed to like based only on their gender.”

Luigi nodded “You know, even dad identified as gender fluid, though he liked to joke that beyond giving birth to me he was too lazy to do anything about it, and these days that hardly counts! You think Skye could be leaning that direction?”

“Honey, an interest in painting his nails or a taste for perfume doesn’t mean he doesn’t identify as male. I mean, we basically just got through telling HIM that” Noemi reminded her spouse. “Anyway, time will tell, and we’ll love him just the same regardless.”

“Of course we will!” Luigi quickly agreed “Although speaking of shopping in the lady’s section, I seem to recall picking up a rather fascinating silk nightgown earlier today. If you’re willing to show me what it looks like “in action” I’m pretty sure it will be exactly to my tastes.”

“Only if you wear those new boxers I bought you to go with it” Noemi smiled.

“It’s a deal!” he replied, kissing her eagerly before leading her off towards the bedroom.

View The Full Story of My Not So Berry Challenge Here

#sims 4 challenge #sims 4 #sims 4 legacy #sims4 #sims 4 nsb #sims 4 not so berry #sims4nsbstraud #sims 4 let's play #sims 4 gameplay #sims 4 lets play

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silyabeeodess · 5 months ago

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FusionFall Fic: A Nostalgic View

Feet dangling in the air from several stories above the metropolis, Silya felt remarkably calm. Though the sky was empty, the vast cityscape glistened beneath her like stars reflected on a wide lake. The open-aired, underground mall was directly under her, and Townsville Hall beyond that. Past the historic building was the Great Machine and a small patch of woods cutting the area off from the nearby outskirts. She couldn't see it, but she knew that further on still stood Charles Darwin Middle School, the Endsville nuclear plant, the Treehouse in Sector V... She wasn't a city-girl, but there was something about this view that felt like home.

Finding a truly quiet, isolated place anywhere within the City was a miracle. The young woman sat on a closed section of the Slider's track. It had been left untouched practically since the very start of the war, with maintenance efforts instead constantly focused on the main rails that ran all the way from Marquee Row to Peach Creek. Fusion Fighters regularly used these types of unmanned paths as short cuts, but this one saw very little traffic so far out from City Station. It was the perfect place for her to rest unbothered.

Well, she wasn't completely to herself. A light on her belt brightened as one of her nanos flew out of their chip to hover beside her. Golden pigtails fluttered in the wind while a pair of big, blue eyes stared at Silya innocently, "Is something wrong?"

"No, Plum, I'm fine," she shook her head at her Dee Dee nano. "I'm just feeling a little... reflective, that's all."

"About what?" The tiny doppelganger of her boss' sister floated down to rest her head on the young woman's thigh. Sometimes, she could be every bit as nosy as the real Dee Dee was, but in this case, Silya didn't mind.

"Just that I think I've grown up some," she answered.

It was hard for her to think of how far she'd come, both figuratively and literally. To have come from her small hometown of Farmville to then work as a research participant in Tech Square. To go from a child practically forbidden from leaving her own backyard to fighting fusion monsters across the world. She remembered wanting to be in the KND and living too far away to even talk to any sector, let alone join one. She remembered the Broccoloid invasion and that she'd been forced to stay inside the house, only to find out nearly every kid for miles had fought them off alongside the Powerpuff Girls. She remembered a time when her best friends were her toys and the cartoon characters she watched on TV. It was hard to call her that same little girl anymore.

"In what way...?" asked a harsh voice in a disbelieving tone just as a second stream of light—this time red—entered Silya's vision.

Ghost was her Hex nano, appropriately named for how often he tended to ghost out on the team at the worst of times. Not unlike some of her other teammates, however, he seemed to enjoy making an appearance when it meant getting the change to make a dig at her. A third, blue light would follow after him as Bola, her Coco nano, also zipped into view.

"If you think you've matured, I dread to know what you were like as a child!" the small, skull-painted face mouthed at her.

"Coco!" added the bird-like creature, flying alongside her head to pointedly level a wing above her scalp.

"Last week, you and Dexter went to pick up spare parts and got confused for twelve-year-olds." Plum was quick to add.

"I get it..."

"You were wearing a Chiisai Baani Baani t-shirt and that Sassy Cat jacket."

"I get it! Thank you, guys!"

Plum and Bola started laughing, the latter flopping over Silya's head as she fought to catch her breath. Silya just pouted. It was no small secret that she and Dex were two of the shortest and more baby-faced members of the staff at Dexlabs. New faces at the company always made a guessing game of their real ages. It was an issue only made more prominent when their more childish interests showed on the surface. Dexter was still a big fan of the Justice Friends and had a collection of action figures. Silya still liked cartoons and playing on the swings at the park.

So... maybe a few things hadn't changed.

Despite the teasing, a soft smile eventually found its way back onto her lips.

A loud shout immediately followed by an alarm broke the quiet. Looking down, the group noticed a large commotion near the mall, where a swarm of fusion monsters seemed to be trying to break in. An almost equally large unit of fusion fighters rushed to face them and the sounds of shatterguns pierced the night.

Silya quickly stood up and typed a command into her nanocom, a weapon manifesting into her hands. With a nod over to Ghost, she silently ordered him to use his magic to summon a strong wind. He groaned, but ultimately complied. The air beneath her grew almost ferocious and she jumped, trusting her nanos to help her descent. The time for reminiscing was over. The time for action was now.

((Didn't really have much in-mind for this oneshot, tbh. I just saw where the 20th Anniversary to CN City had passed this year and felt a little reminiscent about it. It wasn't the first era I was a part of growing up with the network, but it was one of the two that stuck with me the most. Combine that with me briefly dipping back into the game to check NPC locations/animations, and nostalgia hit me like a ton of bricks. As upset as I am with where CN is today as a company, there's no denying the impact it had on me growing up. And, hey! More nano nickname drops! :D))

#my writing #fanfic #fanfiction #fusionfall #oc #plum #ghost #bola #video games

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bookmuseum · 15 hours ago

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[REVIEW] War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

4/5 stars (★★★★)

DISCLAIMER: I will compare W&P a lot to Anna Karenina because it’s Tolstoy’s other masterpiece and my favorite book. Also oh my God, this review is so long and disorganized. I tried my best to break it apart into digestible sections, but that’s what happens when I take over a month to read a Russian brick with a girth the size of Napoleon’s fat French ego.

“I was happy and free and in such a good mood. I didn’t realize how happy I was. When did that end, and when did this ghastly business begin?”

General Overview and W&P as a “Book”

It took me seven years to finally read this book. I got this beautiful clothbound Penguin edition in my last year of high school from my best friend. Another girl in my class (who I didn’t like because she said Dostoyevsky wasn’t good, the bitch) was reading it too to show off that she could do it, and the petty side of me wanted to immediately start it (I had already read Anna Karenina and loved it, how hard can it be?) but I also knew there was absolutely no way an eighteen year old going into Biology for university would even survive the first 100 pages of W&P. And I was right. I am so glad I chose to wait until I was a little older (and transferred to English, leaving my cursed STEM days behind) to finally read it. I am not eager to re-read it any time soon though.

Before I actually started W&P, I watched a few documentary videos and did a modest Wikipedia dive into the Napoleonic Wars, particularly the Battle of Borodino and the French invasion of Russia in 1812 that I knew the novel’s climax would lead up to. I did this partly because I’m insane, but mostly because I knew virtually nothing about this point in time beyond what I learned in high school (most of my Russian historical knowledge starts around the late 19th to early 20th century). I was so, so glad that I did some research beforehand because I would’ve been so lost if I didn’t! I knew this edition translated and edited by Anthony Briggs was lacking in the supplementary reading department just from skimming the Introduction (the book gradually decreased its footnote quality and quantity as the book progressed), so I had to find my context elsewhere. I had fun researching, though I know not many would have found it all that entertaining. I also looked a little more into Tolstoy’s life and read the book’s chronology of him. Despite being one of my favorite authors, I feel like as a person he’s very distant and far away to me, which makes it even more hard-hitting during the moments when he says stuff that’s all too real like, “The countess was repeating the delusion of so many parents, who imagine their children have no secrets from them.” Damn, Leo. You’re right.

I spent a week on the preliminary stuff. W&P is one of those epic classic tomes that everyone says they’ll read, but never do. I totally get it. I honestly almost died and/or accidentally gave myself a concussion trying to haul this book around while I was reading it. This shit takes dedication. Even though I had some background set up, it was still difficult to know where to start because it’s so, so long. Yes, I love Russian literature, but I’d be lying if I said W&P’s >1400+ pages didn’t intimidate me. It also didn’t help that the book itself was awkward and heavy to carry; it made me realize how I do a lot of reading on-the-go because the book was so huge and unportable that I was forced to leave it at home whenever I went out, which significantly slowed down my reading pace. (W&P isn’t exactly a light cafe read that I can just tote around all day). That being said, I was surprised at how straightforward and easy to read the actual prose was, especially in the beginning when Tolstoy focused more on exposition and introducing the plot. I was so grateful that the chapters were so short; I think that alone kept me reading and significantly interested for a good chunk because I’d suddenly find myself having read 100 pages without getting too tired with the story. The writing is modern and simple enough to follow for the most part, although Briggs did say in his Introduction that one of his biggest aims was to make the book more accessible. For anyone who wants to read W&P but is scared to do it, I would say that, at least, this is one of its few consolations.

I Hate Men But Specifically Andrey Bolkonsky

My first impression when I actually got into the thick of things was that I really, really disliked the main male characters. When I met Prince Andrey and Pierre, I immediately hated the former and was extremely wary of the latter for appearing to be such a weak-willed person. I think Tolstoy succeeded a little too well in establishing Pierre as a rakish, deplorable character at the start of the book. His initial slutty, drunken forays at Kuragin’s were boring to read. I thought the bear tied to the police episode was funny, but when it was actually happening I was more disgusted by the careless animal torture done by these rich upper-class men than the cop harrassment. So much male stupidity in those beginning parts; I found it hard to sympathize with Pierre and even got to a point where I was frustrated he was one of the main characters. Like big whoop, you’re a bastard and don’t know your father very well but you’re also his favorite so you’re not like other girls wah wah what happened to ��No one has ever complained of being too much loved“? Get real and grow up, Pierre. (I’d eventually grow fond of him, but not for another hundred or so pages).

Andrey was even worse because he had the audacity to stay horrible the entire time. His mistreatment of his young pregnant wife Princess Lise really unsettled me, especially that scene when she tries to call him out on his cruelty for leaving her all alone with his family even though she’s scared to give birth to his child amongst strangers and Andrey essentially throws a manchild tantrum, making her feel guilty for worrying about the future. Pierre was also in that scene and he just stood by and did nothing, even when the “little princess” was violently sobbing, which is so typical. I think Lise’s character was well written, albeit one-dimensional. She was a complete victim. Tolstoy illustrates very well how men enable and excuse one another’s misogyny and violence. I never forgave Andrey for what he did to her. When she says, “I loved all of you, I never hurt anybody, and look what you have done to me, just look what you have done to me,” it broke my heart and I relished in how it made Andrey feel so guilty.

He grew more infuriating when he got on the battlefield. He seemed so indifferent to all the carnage around him, spending most of his energy glorifying the war and not caring about anyone but himself. Even when he does change and start to reflect more on who he is as a person, he always fell short from truly realizing the immensity of his assholeism. More on him later.

I did like some male characters though, like Denisov and his odd way of talking. I also liked old Count Ilya Rostov, Kutuzov, Platon Karatayev, and little prince Nikolay. I knew Petya was going to die so I forced myself not to like him much, which wasn’t very hard since he was kind of a dithering idiot.

Thoughts on the Rostovs and Russian Aristocracy

I liked reading about the Rostovs consistently; I think out of the four main families in the book (although can I really count the Drubetskoys as a fourth?), I enjoyed their sections the best. Interestingly enough, out of the Rostovs, I found the eldest daughter Vera the most fascinating, so I was kind of disappointed when Tolstoy married her off and she didn’t show up in the text anymore after that little housewarming party. He established her as a Lady Macbeth-like figure and I thought she had so much potential being the “black sheep” of the Rostov clan. I know the book is already long as it is, but I wouldn’t have minded more exploration of Vera, but oh well.

With the Rostovs, I also met another male character I never learned to like much, which is Nikolay. He was entertaining at first in Volume I, but quickly turned extremely dull and like a spoiled brat in my eyes, especially when he goes to war. More on him later, but for now all I can say is there’s no way Tolstoy didn’t know he was making Nikolay into a queer coded character. There is no heterosexual explanation for how homeboy was practically ecstatic and pissing himself whenever he saw the tsar.

I hated the wolf hunting section. I hate hunting scenes in general, but this one is one of the most extravagantly bullshit ones I’ve ever read. So many people were involved just to go chase after a wolf and her cubs; I found it all extremely stupid and diabolically gauche. Amongst many things, the hunt and how excited everyone was for it reminded me how radically different life was back then, especially in regards to the painful disparity between the classes. That part, more than any other in W&P, was so unnecessarily drawn out and lugubriously artificial in its useless aristocratic camaraderie and performative civility to me. Like with the rest of the novel, I was struck by the fact that the characters are very human, yes, but I found them very hard to relate to here because their nobility made them more cringe-worthy and idiotic than usual. I liked that line: “He looked on life as one long party that someone was bound to arrange for him.” I thought that encapsulated the Russian aristocrats perfectly. Their gross wealth and frivolous “problems” painted them in pathetic, unworthy colors to me. When they said stuff like, “But then, I am used to suffering,” and “I shall remember there are no rewards in this world, that in this world there is no honour or justice. In this world you need to be clever and wicked,” I found myself rolling my eyes with the melodrama of it all, rather than actually feeling bad for them. Call me heartless, call me vain. So much rich white people nonsense. Tolstoy unintentionally made it worse by meticulously mentioning the lower classes, valets, peasantry, serfs, servants, and subordinates that attended to all these people.

Thankfully, after the Rostov hunting episode came one of my favorite sections in the book: Tolstoy’s writing turned magical when he described the Rostovs’ Christmastime in the country. Natasha’s character became more fleshed out here and, to me, she started to be more like a human being that breathes and thinks and feels. That section reminded me a lot of the lyricism and romantic aspects I love so much from AK. It reminded me why I love Tolstoy’s writing; it made me feel so nostalgic and happy just like the characters were, though even when I read it I kept shaking my head because Tolstoy loves romanticizing the poor and “simple” life whilst at the same time never seeing the peasant and serf characters as equals worthy of contemplation.

W&P goes on to have a lot of great lines on truth, the human condition, and the cosmos like, “Nothing has been discovered . . . and nothing has been invented. The only thing we can know is that we don’t know anything. And that is the summit of human wisdom,” and “I feel I can never disappear because nothing disappears in the whole universe, and more than that, I always shall be and always have been in existence. I feel that other spirits exist, far above me, and it’s in their world that you will find truth.” A lot of these quotes were delivered by the Rostovs. I wrote down a lot of them because I appreciated their existential quality, kind of like some of the scenes when Pip was looking up at the sky in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. (Of course, the scene that parallels that one best of all is the great comet of 1812 one with Pierre at the end of Volume II). There were a handful of amazing parts, which is to be expected of a classic, but of course it’s impossible to list and talk about them all in the detail that I would want to.

War (Eugh)

“Once you allow that human life is subject to reason you extinguish any possibility of life.”

I won’t lie: Unlike with AK, which was at least consistent in how it centered around the Russian nobility and high society, I found W&P to be quite a slog a good chunk of the time, especially once we went to war and Tolstoy started going off about shit like, “Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to to get what he wants, and he feels with every fibre of his being that at any particular time he is free to perform an action or refrain from doing so, but the moment any action is taken it becomes an irrevocable piece of history, with a significance which has more to do with predetermination than freedom.” Like okay, that’s somewhat touching and novel, but then he goes on with the long, long passages like:

“We, their descendants — those of us who are not historians seduced by the pleasures of research and can therefore review events with unclouded common sense — find ourselves faced with an incalculable multiplicity of causes. The more deeply we go into the causes, the more of them there are, and each individual cause, or group of causes, seems as justifiable as all the rest, and as false as all the rest in its worthlessness compared with the enormity of the actual events, and it’s further worthlessness (unless you combine it with all the other associated causes) in validating the events that followed . . . If any one of these causes had been missing, nothing could have happened. It follows therefore that all of these causes, billions of them, came together to bring about subsequent events, and these events had no single cause, being bound to happen simply because they were bound to happen. Millions of men, abandoning all human feelings and common sense, were bound to march from west to east and slay their fellows, just as a few centuries ago hordes of men had marched from east to west slaying their fellows.”

Initially my reaction to these tangents was, “That’s all well and fine, Leo. You go, you funky little man,” but my bemusement didn’t last. Maybe because I’m not Russian. After Volume III especially, Tolstoy suddenly decides his yapping about historiographic theory is much better than the hundreds of pages of plot he’d set up and gotten me invested in. Every couple chapters, he’d interrupt the narrative to sprinkle in something groundbreaking like, “‘The hearts of kings are in the hands of God.’ . . . Kings are the slaves of history. . . . History — the amorphous, unconscious life within the swarm of humanity — exploits every minute in the lives of kings as an instrument for the attainment of its own ends.” Very witty, very wise, but there is a reason why this book is so long and it’s partly unjustified.

While I enjoyed some of these ruminations, I had hoped, like a fool, that the philosophizing would tone down, but it gradually increased. There are entire series of chapters of just Tolstoy presenting his ideas on war, history, freedom, morality, greatness, etc. He made sure you knew he was clever and everyone else was his inferior: “And it never enters anybody’s head that to acknowledge greatness as something existing beyond the rule of right and wrong is to acknowledge one’s own nothingness and infinite smallness . . . And greatness cannot exist without simplicity, goodness and truth.” Though I didn’t necessarily disagree with what he was saying, it was genuinely so aggravating, his Tolstoyian high-horse. (I know what you’ve done Leo, I know the things you did and how messy you were in real life). I fell asleep during these parts the most. I thought I’d enjoy reading about the war sections since I knew Tolstoy drew from his own personal military and war experience, but I found the battlefield to be as boring as it was unoriginal. True, Tolstoy mentions dead men, blood, explosions, gunfire, and chaos, but he does it so casually and without much emotional weight, which is effective in showing just how mind-numbing war is, but it was also somewhat narratively dull: “He was looking at faces and bodies, but they all seemed equally meaningless.” Tolstoy ironically made me all the more sure that, despite all the fanfare and loud noise, war is very boring -- more so than I think he intended. It’s true I was impressed by the book’s extremely vivid details at the start, but over time it grew unbearable and overwhelming. There’s only so much genius you can admire in a man like Tolstoy until you get exhausted with his vanity. He loves the sound of his own voice.

When he did go into his characters’ minds though, I really liked it. I liked when Nikolay had his arm blown off by a cannon exploding and that part when he’s being chased after by two French soldiers but all he can think about is how they don’t really want to kill him, surely, because “everybody loves me!” That made me laugh. Ah, human folly. I liked the moments when characters were just in complete shock with what was happening to them: “It was beyond belief: they were the only ones who knew what life meant to them, so they couldn’t understand, or believe, that it could be taken away.” Tolstoy demonstrated a very intimate yet detached outlook on the battlefield and war. Through the characters, W&P elegantly depicted the anxiety, painful waiting, and standstill of war right before a big fight happens, and then suddenly everything’s unrecognizable chaos:

“One step across that dividing line, so like the one between the living and the dead, and you enter an unknown world of suffering and death. What will you find there? Who will be there? There, just beyond that field, that tree, that sunlit roof? No one knows, and yet you want to know. You dread crossing that line, and yet you still want to cross it. You know sooner or later you will have to go across and find out what is there beyond it, just as you must inevitably find out what lies beyond death. Yet here you are, fit and strong, carefree and excited, with men all around you just the same — strong, excited, and full of life.”

Even though I hate Andrey, I really liked his thoughts during the Schöngrabern engagement and the night leading up to Battle of Austerlitz:

“Tomorrow, oh yes, tomorrow! . . . Maybe tomorrow will see the last of me, and there will be no more memories — all these memories will have no more meaning for me. Maybe tomorrow — yes, it must be tomorrow — I can feel it coming — for the first time I shall have to show what I’m made of. . . I don’t know what happens next, I can’t possibly know, I don’t wish to know, but if that’s what I want, if I want glory, if I want to be famous and loved by everyone, it’s not my fault that I want this, that this is all I care for, the only thing I live for. Yes, only this! I won’t breathe a word of it to anyone, but, my God!, what can I do, if I care for nothing but glory and the love of men?”

All of that made Andrey’s wake up-call at the end of Volume I all the more satisfying to read: “Looking Napoleon straight in the eye, Prince Andrey mused on the insignificance of greatness, on the insignificance of human life, the meaning of which no one could understand, and most of all the insignificance of death, which no living person could make sense of or explain . . . No, nothing is certain, nothing but the nothingness of all that we can understand, and the splendour of something we can’t understand, but we know to be infinitely important!”

Unfortunately he only half gets it because it's after this that Andrey turns really cynical and broods more than usual, which is so unattractive and irritating: “Who’s right and who’s wrong? No one is. Just live for the day . . . tomorrow you die . . . I could have died an hour ago. And why worry when you’ve only got a second to live on the scale of eternity?” He really thought he had discovered something new about the universe and that made him special, when really he just came to one of the laziest conclusions there is.

Princess Marya Best Girl

It’s safe to say that I much preferred the “peace” sections in the book. I don’t have enough time or patience to discuss every part that struck me, but I just wanted to mention that scene in Bald Hills when Princess Marya tries to prepare herself and look pretty to meet Anatole while her friends fussed over her in vain. It was really relatable. Her body dysmorphia broke my heart, I knew exactly how she felt. And Princy Vasily and Anatole’s thinly veiled misogyny and complete indifference to all her efforts were all too cruel and realistic. Ugh. Men! It’s always the men!

I think Marya was one of the most strikingly humane characters, which was unexpected because Tolstoy usually doesn’t imbibe his female characters with that much soul (or when he does, he kills them off eventually like Anna Karenina). His scathing depiction of the Bolkonsky’s family gender dynamics were eerily brilliant. It was so obvious that Andrey and the old prince expected Marya to do all of the emotional labor and caretaking for them, but they never once acknowledge even to themselves that what they're doing is cruel. I found their relationships and interactions with one another to be viscerally realistic. It’s clear the old prince’s mounting torture of Marya stems from the fact that he emotionally and physically relies on her to a degree that he can't intellectually handle, so he compensates for his feeling emasculated by his own daughter by bullying her severely. Despite appearances, Marya is the head of the family. She’s the nucleus of the household yet also the one with the least appreciation and authority — a classic conundrum of being a woman, particularly the eldest (or only) daughter in a male-dominated household. Even with Mademoiselle Bourienne (who also puts her through a lot of emotional labor that she doesn’t seem to reciprocate), Marya acts more like an elder sister than an equal friend: “I love you more than ever . . . and I shall try to do everything in my power to make you happy.” And the worst part is that Bourienne betrays her over and over again, first with Anatole then her father! It was so upsetting. To add, when Lise was alive, Marya was at her beck and call more than anyone to the point of exhaustion; it’s almost like she symbolically took on the emotional burden of pregnancy, whilst Lise handled the physical and literal aspects of it (not to downgrade either of those, of course). Marya perfectly embodies what countless women are forced to go through every day for little to no reward; it was all so pathetically spot-on and tragic.

I was even more impressed because Tolstoy emphasizes how Andrey also contributes to Marya’s suffering, but he doesn’t even see it because he’s too caught up with patting himself on the back for being such a good brother and son. Marya literally raises his baby for him and he never once expresses anything like gratitude throughout the entire book, as if her being Nikolay’s surrogate mother after Lise died was always a given. It made his supposed “remorse” for losing his wife seem even more disgustingly inauthentic because he didn’t learn anything from her death, as evidenced by how he continues to mistreat his sister -- the woman who selflessly tries to be both the mother Nikolay never had and the emotional support to Andrey that he’s been deprived of when Lise died. It’s so horrible too because, even though there is that one small part at Bald Hills when they “co-parent” the baby while he’s sick, it’s overwhelmingly clear that Marya does the day-to-day childcare and Andrey just fucks off whenever he feels like it. When he does come back, he almost always complains about how she’s raising his son by disagreeing with the decisions she is so clearly more qualified to make for him. In general, he’s so condescending to her in a way that annoyingly echoes his father’s sadism; for example, there's that one scene where Andrey and Pierre find Marya hanging out with some pilgrims, and Andrey the asshole’s immediate reaction is to belittle and make fun of her to the point that even Pierre gets a little freaked out by it and apologizes to her for him. His weaponized incompetence and total cognitive dissonance to reality coupled with his laughable attempts to prove himself a “good man” throughout the book made him a joke of a character to me. That’s why I really liked that small jab Tolstoy includes when Andrey is being sassy towards his sister, claiming to have his own private epiphanies that she couldn’t possibly understand. The text says, “It was at times like this that Princess Marya thought how desiccated men’s minds become with all that intellectual activity.” Get his ass, Marya! Eviscerate him! He isn’t smart or deep, he’s just a complete tool! I was so glad when he died, I don’t care.

Tolstoy also kept bringing up how, to the very end, Marya always managed to make excuses and forgive her family, especially her father, but the reader really can’t help but feel absolutely infuriated for her. Even if he didn’t intend to show it, it’s obvious Tolstoy based a lot of Marya’s character on his own wife, who did the majority of his emotional and domestic labor for him in real life. It’s very typical that Tolstoy subtly admires and narratively allies himself with Marya because he likes and is attracted to her nobility in theory but in actuality he fails to appreciate or even help his wife with her own work and the life they supposedly share together. Ugh! Men! Always men!

Pierre, Dear Bewildered And Awkward Pierre

I hope all that ranting has proven that Marya is my favorite character and the one I relate to the most. Pierre is a relatively close second. Even though we had a rough start, I did eventually come around to liking him and his awkwardness. I laughed when Julie Karagin calls him “a miserable specimen of manhood.” That’s when I knew I was dealing with an ideal Russian novel protagonist. By the end of the novel, Pierre is even a little self-aware of his own mysteriously intriguing essence, which I found quite funny: “I’ve come to the conclusion it’s an easy life being an interesting person. (I am now an interesting person.) People invite me over, and they do the talking.”

Tolstoy took great care defining Pierre and fleshing him out not just as the stereotypical “good man,” but a man trying to be good and usually failing: “He had the unfortunate capacity that many men have . . . for seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness and truth, yet seeing the evil and falsehood in life too clearly to be capable of taking any serious part in it.” He reminded me a lot of Kostya from AK, of course, but he felt more flawed and malleable than Konstanin because he just kept messing up over and over again. (True, Kostya also screwed up a lot, but Pierre is on a whole different level). And, most endearingly, he kept coming back for more, which was as admirable as it was ridiculously foolish. I love how Tolstoy lowkey suggested he reached the pinnacle of human suffering: “He had learnt that there is a limit to suffering and a limit to freedom, and those limits are never far away; that a man who has felt discomfort from a crumpled petal in his bed of roses has suffered just as much as he was suffering now, sleeping on the bare, damp earth, with one side freezing while the other side warmed up . . .” Basically, he went through so much bullshit that he reached the last boss level of agony and found enlightenment. Huzzah.

Yes, I felt for Pierre’s seemingly never-ending struggle trying to find his purpose in life, which I found to be more noble than any other character’s quest for meaning (Andrey’s was just pretentious). Pierre went through rollercoaster after rollercoaster of emotions throughout the entire book -- arguably, he experiences the entire spectrum of human emotions, which is what makes him so grand to me. Even when he started growing cynical after he got arrested and put into prison, I never blamed him for being pessimistic like I did with Andrey: “But now he felt he wasn’t to blame for the world collapsing before his eyes and leaving nothing but meaningless ruins behind. He felt powerless; there was no way back to his old faith in life.” I know it’s not exactly fair to compare both their sufferings or claim one got hurt more than the other (although Andrey did die, so I guess he wins in that department), but Pierre’s internal struggles matched his external grievances much more poetically to me than anyone else’s did. I was fascinated with how he went back and forth from aristocratic balls, futile trips to manage his different estates, underground clubs with gambling and debauchery, visits to his relatives and loved ones, the battlefield, the freemasons’ secret hideouts and meetings, the soulless social functions, the Moscow streets on fire, the different towns on the home front being ravaged by the French, etc. He was compelling. He was a conqueror. Every step he took moved the book forward for me. His character development made his epiphanic moments near the end all the more satisfying:

“And out beyond the forests and fields lay all the shimmering, beckoning distance of infinity. Pierre glanced up at the sky and the play of the stars receding into the depths. ‘And it’s all mine, and it’s all within me, and it all adds up to me!’ thought Pierre. ‘And they caught all that, shut it up in a shed and boarded it in!’”

Pierre had his pathetic loverboy romantic moments too, which always helps. He was both Kostya and Count Vronsky, but better. The line, “If I was somebody else, the handsomest, the cleverest, the best man in the world, and if I were free, I’d be down on my knees right now begging for your hand and your love” will forever be iconic. I honestly didn’t warm up to Pierre and Natasha as a couple until the epilogue since they both seemed so unlikely, albeit good friends, for each other, but when Pierre said that line after gallantly rescuing her from the crafty Kuragin siblings marked a shift in my shipping journey with them. And of course no W&P review is complete without mentioning this absolutely gorgeous line said by him:

“Every single thing I understand, I understand only because of love. Everything is — everything exists — only because I love."

Oh, he’s such a dreamer! “The whole meaning of life, for him and the whole world, seemed to be contained in his love and the possibility of being loved in return.” Oh, how our hearts bleed for him! “With his heart overflowing with love he loved people for no reason at all, and then had no trouble discovering many a sound reason that made them worth loving.” You are too wholesome for this world, Pierre. Too soft, too emotional, too impressionable and well-intentioned!

I will say though that Pierre Bezukhov has got to be one of the most unhinged characters I’ve ever come across in classic literature, and that’s saying something. (Yes, I’d even say he’s more unhinged than Victor Frankenstein, Dorian Gray, and Henry Jekyll). He was so unnerving and off his rocker the entire time. Tolstoy consistently portrays him as big and strong too, so I kept imagining this gentle giant who felt things too much and didn’t know how to handle it. One screw was always a little too loose with this guy. Even when he’d say poetic stuff like “Life is everything. Life is God. Everything is in flux and movement, and this movement is God . . . To love life is to love God. The hardest and most blessed thing is to love this life even in suffering, innocent suffering,” you’d smile and nod politely because yes, I agree, but you have genuinely lost your marbles, dude. There were parts when he would just burst out laughing randomly for no reason or stumble his way around town in a daze, like he wasn’t even aware of what he was doing. A lot of the time he genuinely was totally out of it. I could feel him physically vibrating with anxiety and angst, especially when he lost his temper (like when he challenges Dolokhov, that made my jaw drop) or when he confronts Anatole after he finds his wife and brother-in-law had conspired to abduct Natasha Rostov for their own selfish amusement. That entire interaction was insane, by the way. He was so right for banishing Anatole and rebuking him like that, but imagine your brother-in-law, who everyone makes fun of for being a corpulent cuckold, starts berating you about this girl you like and threatens to kill you if you don’t stay away from her. And that’s not all, because Pierre goes ahead and adds Anatole should instead fuck his sister, who is also his wife. Holy shit? I was cheering for him that entire scene; I loved how he threw those hands.

Also so hilarious that Pierre started off the book praising Napoleon to the point where he alienates himself from Russian high society but then later on he literally makes the “logical” conclusion that he needs to assassinate him because God chose him to do so apparently. That sequence of him just tweaking out and maniacally overanalyzing the Bible to justify why he needs to kill Napoleon immediately was peak. He’s insane and I cannot help but stan.

Natasha

When I first met the iconic Natasha I was a bit surprised she starts off as practically a child in the book because I knew her so well as the charming woman that Audrey Hepburn played in the 1956 adaptation. Despite being a child when the story starts, Tolstoy made sure you knew she was first and foremost a horny teenager, which was honestly so real of her. I was both amused and a little uncomfortable with how sexual Natasha was at all times. The “love scenes” between Natasha and Boris, as well as Sonya and Nikolay, were uncomfortable to read for me.

Natasha is a favorite character for many, which I can understand. She was easily the most charismatic and enchanting character, especially when she was happy and doing her utmost to be the center of attention: “She was at the very peak of happiness, when a person is transformed into someone completely good and kind, and rejects the slightest possibility of evil, misery, and grief.” Her more contemplative, sensitive side was stunning too. I really love the conversation when Natasha says, “‘Do you ever get the feeling . . . that nothing’s ever going to happen to you again, nothing at all, and anything good is in the past? And you don’t feel bored exactly, but very, very sad?’” and her brother responds, “‘I’ll say! It’s happened to me. Everything’s fine, everyone’s happy, and suddenly you get this feeling of being fed up with everything, and realizing everybody’s going to die.’” How perfectly Tolstoy captures the feeling of restlessness and depression that comes with the humdrum of life!

Yet, Natasha’s character was most relatable and tender to me when she was painfully pining away for that one year for Andrey. Her brief period of happiness slowly turning into mounting dread, anxiety, and doubt for whether or not she really loved him was splendidly done. Tolstoy affords her a lot of vulnerability and very authentic introspection: “She kept worrying about no one ever being able to understand everything that she understood, everything deep inside her.” Unlike her childhood dalliance with Boris (AKA Mr. Irrelevant), this was the first time she had been in love, and Tolstoy masterfully illustrated the struggles of budding female sexuality clashing with social propriety and courtship conventions. You could feel the potent frustration growing inside her that entire time Natasha was lovesick and helpless to do anything about it. As a woman, she can only wait for letters that gave her no answers or updates to a war she wasn’t allowed to understand. She had this burning passion within her and desperately wanted an outlet to express her love, but Andrey and everyone else (even her own family) cruelly kept her away from it because nobody imagined she as a young girl could feel that strongly, or suffer that deeply. Natasha’s problem really resonated with me as someone who’s had to spend a lot of time away from the people I most care about: “She felt sorry for herself, sorry that all this time was being wasted, passing by uselessly, no good to anyone, while she felt so eager to love and be loved.” I know what it’s like to just have so much love to give and have it amount to nothing. That’s why I wasn’t even that mad at her when she recklessly cancelled her engagement to get with fuckboi Anatole. She had spent months in a suffocating limbo of horniness and yearning so of course it made sense that she’d latch onto the first handsome guy who paid attention to her, even though anyone with a brain could see that Anatole is a rat. Whatever. She’s just a girl!

Natasha’s character development after the Anatole incident was also so brilliant, especially after she reunites with Andrey during the French invasion and nurses him on his deathbed. When he passes away, Tolstoy’s description of her raw grief in the aftermath was breathtaking (pun intended): “She was looking out towards the place in the other side of life where she knew he had gone to. And that other side of life, which she had never given a thought to in days gone by because it had always seemed so remote and unbelievable, was now closer, more natural to her and more understandable than this side of life, where there was nothing but emptiness and desolation or pain and humiliation.” The regret she feels when she says, “If I had told him what I was thinking about I would have said, ‘Even if he stayed like that, dying, dying, dying away before my eyes, I’d have been much happier than I am now.’ Now I have nothing . . . nobody . . . Did he know? No, he didn’t, and he never will. And now it will never, never be possible to put things right” felt so much more real and genuine than Andrey’s so-called remorse over never truly appreciating his dead wife while alive. Andrey wishes he was as deep as Natasha is. I was almost sick with jealousy when I read the line, “You must know that without you there is nothing left in my life, and suffering with you is the greatest possible happiness” because, girl, I know you were the one who screwed up the engagement and were disloyal, but he does not deserve you, get back up.

Fluffy Epilogue Straight Out of AO3

“I would never have believed it, never,’ she murmured to herself, ‘that anyone could be as happy as this.’ Her face glowed with a happy smile, but at the same moment she gave a sigh, and a gentle sadness showed in the depths of her eyes. It was as if there was a different kind of happiness, not like the happiness she was feeling here and now, a form of happiness beyond human experience, and it had come to her in an involuntary memory just at that moment.”

Really happy for Tolstoy that he gave himself an extra >200ish pages to wrap up everything in the same tooth-rotting, happy manner that fanfic writers on AO3 do. The entire first part of the epilogue was so shamelessly self-indulgent and gushy that it made the whole book worth it, no question. Seeing Natasha and Pierre’s married life, as well as learning how much becoming a wife, mother, and mistress of the house has changed Natasha for the better was truly a treat to read. It didn’t even feel like a forced “angel of the house” situation, which would’ve been annoying, because it genuinely made sense that Natasha made that transformation, and Tolstoy did point out that, even though she isn’t as “beautiful” as she was in her youth, she is definitely so much more vibrant and happier, which is what matters. I smiled so wide when Natasha cried out in joy and ran up to embrace Pierre after his long trip, only to do a complete 180 and start scolding him for being away for so long. Her nagging was spot-on and perfect. I loved the scenes where they were just chatting about everyday things, their children, the people they knew, gossip, etc. Tolstoy really depicted their love and marriage so beautifully: “You talk about what it’s like when we’re apart, but you wouldn’t believe what I feel for you when we’re back together again.” Even though I spent the majority of W&P uninterested in their love story, I realized by the epilogue’s conclusion that I adore this couple together and I am happy they are happy. Their love is based on mutual friendship and admiration.

I wish I could say the same for Princess Marya and Nikolay. My best girl ended up with a bare minimum man with anger issues who didn’t even like the nephew she dedicated so much of her life and energy raising all on her own. Plus, even though the epilogue was sweet, I couldn't help but feel utterly terrible for Sonya. I feel like she got one of the shittiest deals throughout the entire book, with Nikolay promising her, “I do love you. I think I love you more than anyone in the world . . . I’ve been in love thousands of times, and I shall be again and again, though I could never feel the same kind of warmth and trust and love that I do towards you” in the beginning, only to grow irritable and tired of her because she’s “too perfect”; then, after years of cheating on her with prostitutes while he was off at war, he marries someone else and she’s forced to live with them as a “sterile flower.” Even fouler that Sonya was the name of Tolstoy’s actual wife. For shame, Leo.

#classic literature #classic books #classic lit #russian literature #tolstoy #leo tolstoy #war and peace #russian lit #book review #book #natasha rostova #pierre bezukhov #andrey bolkonsky #marya bolkonskaya #the great comet of 1812

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