Symptoms of a System Error: The Manifestation of Myungha's Depression in Love for Love's Sake

Ok I will almost certainly have more thoughts about this when I go back to rewatch Love for Love’s Sake in the next couple weeks, but I’ve been thinking about the finale for the last couple of hours and I want to get some stuff out of my head. Before I get too far in to this, I want to say that I think most of the ambiguity in the show is brilliantly executed in a way that allows people to take whatever meaning they want to from it without contradicting each other, without stepping on toes, and without having to twist or bend the narrative beyond all recognition to  make it make sense. 

So I want to talk about the use of depression in this show, because the way Myungha exists in the world is recognizable enough to me that these moments of choice, and the system errors were extremely legible. That doesn’t mean my take is the correct one (and I honestly don’t think there is one right answer here anyway) but it’s what I got out of it, so with the needless ramble complete, let’s get to it. 

Prologue

gif by @dramascene

I connected rather quickly to Myungha as a character from right near the beginning of episode 1 because of how passionate he was about the character of Yeowoon and how much he hoped for a happy ending for that character. As someone who processes a lot of my feelings, and who understands myself better through media consumption, I was quick to appreciate the fact that Myungha recognizes the parts of himself that speak to Yeowoon and to know that because Yeowoon is fictional, he has a chance not to suffer with merely a stroke of a pen. The Author could have chosen from the beginning to give Yeowoon a happy ending, and did not because he believes that there are people for whom bad things will never stop happening. But from the perspective of a fictional story, the Author should consider who he is writing the story for. Myungha connects to Yeowoon, and it sends one hell of a tragic message for how Myungha’s life will end up if even in fiction the people who suffer have no hope of happiness. 

Myungha tells the Author that someone like Cha Yeowoon, someone like him [Myungha] with awful lives can still be happy. Looking back on that statement with the knowledge that Myungha kills himself, sends a very clear message, at least for me, of the hope that he was clinging to and finally lost his grip on. The Author asks if Myungha can change the outcome, and thus begins our story.

Debuffs

Now, I don’t know that I will have much more to say here than what @jemmo said in their very brilliant post, beyond the fact I agree with their interpretation of the debuffs. But I am thinking about the debuffs as it relates to mental health and to Myungha’s independence. One of Myungha’s first missions is to befriend Cha Yeowoon, and we see the difficulties associated with doing so when it comes to the Fondness Level meter and the debuffs that happen as a result. I love what Jess said about the dichotomy there: the debuffs mean that every time Myungha gets close to Yeowoon, something bad happens, Myungha uses that as a reason to stay away from Yeowoon to protect him when in fact, being around Myungha and increasing his fondness for him is the only way to really keep Yeowoon safe. 

gif by @dramascene

And here again there is something recognizable to me in this dichotomy. Myungha likes Yeowoon, Myungha wants to be friends with Yeowoon, every time something bad might happen to Yeowoon, Myungha is there to intervene. But Myungha is convinced that the potentially negative events that might occur during a debuff are because of him, and so he avoids Yeowoon as much as he possibly can. To me this makes the debuffs a stand in for depression symptoms. Myungha has convinced himself that he is the cause of the bad moments in Yeowoon’s day. Myungha has convinced himself that Yeowoon would be better off if they weren’t friends, because he only makes things worse. And that is not something he can easily shake off, it’s not something he can logic his way out of, that’s the game, that’s just how it is. And so he withdraws until Yeowoon comes to him. 

And honestly thinking about it, nothing bad really happens during those debuffs. The light doesn’t shatter, the boys back off on the bus, Yeowoon doesn’t punch Sangwon. Maybe the reason why nothing at all happens is because Myungha intervenes. Maybe if Myungha hadn’t been there, the light would have broken, maybe if Myungha hadn’t been there Yeowoon would have punched Sangwon. But that is not a lens that Myungha is capable of viewing himself through, that is never an option that crosses Myungha’s mind because he is too focused on feeling like the cause of Yeowoon’s problems. 

System Errors

I know there is a lot of confusion or at least uncertainty around the system errors. Why are they happening? Where are they coming from? For me, I think the answer is Myungha himself. The first time we get a system error, it’s in Episode 6, what I think is the day after Yeowoon and Myungha have their first kiss and very soon after Yeowoon and Myungha kiss on the rooftop at school. The first error isn’t subtle, but it’s not explicitly stated. Myungha walks in to a room to take a phone call and walks in to the middle of band practice, falling through the world as he tries to remove himself from the situation until he (literally) runs in to Yeowoon. Myungha goes home that night and gets his first moments in the black abyss, and the first explicit mention via pop-up of a system error. I have not gone through (yet) to track every instance of what happens before a system error pop-up occurs from that point on, but I will say moment that was most legible for me in terms of indicating that these system errors were stemming from Myungha himself were when he gets the notification both times that Yeowoon looks directly at him and tells Myungha “I love you.” 

gif by @dragonsareawesome123

That moment was a guy punch for me because I was not able to see it any other way except that Myungha is so incapable of believing that people could actually love him that someone telling him directly and sincerely that they love him cannot exist in his world. He literally cannot compute it, and thus an error occurs. Again from the perspective of depression, or trauma, or what have you, this is familiar to me. It is perhaps the most reflective part of Myungha to my own psyche. Neither of us know how to be loved. 

Myungha is called out on this repeatedly, he is nice to everyone, he does so much for everyone and refuses to ask for help himself. I’m the same way, I will bend over backwards as much as I can to help the people that I care about, but it is a rare occasion where I can ask for help myself. I’m not sure if this is the case for Myungha, but for me at least a lot of that stems from needing to make myself useful to people in some way so they keep me around. And so I end up feeling like a commodity to the people that I care about and help, and merely tolerated by anyone else that I do not help but that interacts with me any way. Myungha is called out consistently by multiple people, real or NPC about this similar habit. Myungha does not want to be a burden, Myungha only cares about other people’s happiness, Myungha is not happy himself and has maybe never been happy and so he pours everything he can in to lightening the load for others. 

He loves Yeowoon, but to be loved by Yeowoon is different. To experience any moments of joy cannot possibly be real. Maybe I am projecting too much on to the character, but it makes complete and total sense to me that Myungha’s worldview would break down upon having someone state wholeheartedly that they want to be a support system for him. 

Cruel Choices

gif by @dramascene

With the enmeshment of depression and video game mechanics in mind, I want to talk about the scene at the end of Episode 6. I love this scene so much for a number of reasons: 

It turns the game on a head for me as we slip further and further in to a nightmare scenario

It raises the stakes and attempts to get Myungha to make a hard choice 

It forces Myungha to think about what is important to him 

It’s ultimate purpose and who is posting the mission is ambiguous/uncertain 

I’m going to focus on number four. I think it is a perfectly valid read to see this and all video game mechanics as designed by The Author in an effort to help Myungha change Yeowoon’s story in which case this mission feels particularly vindictive and cruel. @lurkingshan posed the question in a conversation we were having about Love for Love’s Sake, where she wondered why the game could not hold two sources of love for Myungha at once. I love that question because it made me realize how differently this show can be read and how important who you choose to read as the entity in control of this game is for what this scene specifically means and I love so many interpretations of it, I love the interpretation that is was simply cruel, I love the interpretation that in retrospect this was the Author being angry at Myungha for dying, I love the reflection from @jemmo that said this felt like a choice between staying rooted in the past (sparing grandma) or choosing a future (sparing Yeowoon)

For me, I think I am leaning heavily in to the pop ups are under Myungha’s subconscious control, his mind, the missions he thinks are important, the problems he thinks he is causing are what is driving the base game. Because of this my base instinct is to lean in to the depression/anxiety/trauma tent where things have been going a little too well for him lately and he has convinced himself that he is due for something bad to happen. I am happy to once again acknowledge that this probably projection, but I know that my own mental illness(es) does not let my peace linger for long. Myungha is spending so much time with Yeowoon, Yeowoon who grounds him when his world is literally falling apart. Yeowoon who cannot contain his smile whenever he is around Myungha, Yeowoon who is downright desperate to bestow love and support upon Myungha, Yeowoon who has accompanied Myungha to the hospital late at night to be there for his boyfriend in a stressful time, and Myungha can’t have that. He loves his grandmother, he loves Yeowoon, they both love him and so obviously means that something bad is going to happen to them. 

gif by @25shadesoffebruary

[As an aside I am thinking about what the Author said in the final episode about wanting Myungha to be able to see himself from the outside, and how I took that to mean Yeowoon is supposed to be a reflection of Myungha and a journey to self love, and how Yeowoon told Myungha that something bad always happens to the people around him in relation to this hospital scene]

Secondarily, I do think being confronted with this choice at all allows Myungha to have a moment of reflection, and is clarifying for him to know that both Yeowoon and his grandmother are important people in his life that he doesn’t want to lose. That’s fucking huge, in my opinion at least. And for all this mission was cruel, it was the first time Myungha refused to complete the mission. He was asked to save one, he decided to save both, and the game could have been cruel and taken his grandmother and Yeowoon away for refusing to choose, but it didn’t. They both got to live, and sure Myungha’s mission to make Yeowoon happy was shortened significantly, but I do think fifteen days was enough time to be successful in his mission if the depression and the grief had not gotten to Myungha instead. 

Grief 

gif by @my-rose-tinted-glasses

Something about grief that my therapist told me once was grieving people love helping others. And I think that is the case of Myungha here just based on the way he throws himself in to helping as many people as he can, especially Yeowoon. He knows Yeowoon is grieving, he knows Yeowoon is struggling, and he can distract himself from his own shit by helping Yeowoon instead. But once Myungha is confronted with the possibility that either one of the people that he loves could die, the penality for failing in his mission to make Yeowoon happy looms over his head like a knife. Just like Myungha considered himself the problem with the debuff, he knows how high of a likelihood it is that Yeowoon would regress, would isolate, would sink into a massive low. 

And it would be Myung’s fault (in his mind). 

Especially because Yeowoon keeps saying that even thinking about going on dates with Myungha is making him happy but Myungha’s mission isn’t complete. Myungha has started to get low, he is not as engaged in his relationship with Yeowoon, he’s convinced himself he is going to fail, and is thus setting himself up for failure because he decides 15 days is not enough time to find happiness, but it is enough time to break somebody’s heart in preparation for a devastating loss. And maybe, maybe Myungha would have snapped out of it with enough time to spare initially, but any hope of that being the case was shattered the second Yeowoon admitted that he wasn’t happy because Myungha wasn’t relying on him. 

Myungha is so used to be self-reliant there is no way for him to break out of that habit in just two weeks. Myungha knew his death would hurt Yeowoon, but the final nail in the coffin for him was learning that his life was hurting Yeowoon too. And he almost got there, he almost did it, he admitted that he didn’t know how to, but he withdrew at the last second. He has spent all this time, all this energy, all this focus in to changing Yeowoon, he does not have the space to do that for himself. 

The Choice 

gif by @supanuts

The last moment I will really speak to as it relates to my interpretation of this game being controlled by Myungha as a manifestation of his depression is the author’s pen. Considering the fact The Author asked Myungha if he wanted to try again, I do not think if the Author was controlling this game world that he would have had Myungha disappear from it. Because according to the Gaga subs, the change that Myungha writes is that he wants Yeowoon to be happy, and immediately upon finishing that request, Myungha starts to fade. 

If we hold these game mechanics as manifestations of Myungha’s depression, which I do, it makes complete and total sense to me that Myungha would fall back in to the pattern of believing that Yeowoon would be happier if Myungha wasn’t there. Yeowoon has a modeling deal now, he has some modicum of fame, he has friends now, he has supports in place that he did not have before, so what need does Yeowoon have of him, when his inability to let people love him is what is now causing Yeowoon to feel sad. 

And I think that massive server error at the end where the world is burning and the universe is melting in to the game is a result of Myungha realizing too little, too late that this isn’t what he wanted. But it can’t be undone. The line he says when he is sinking in to the water about how at the last minute before he died, he regretted it. The game, the drowning here are one in the same to me. 

And for me there was just something so beautiful and hopeful from Myungha telling The Author that he wants to try again. We started the show with Myungha telling The Author miserable people can be happy, and we end the show with Myungha and Yeowoon finally getting the happy ending they never thought they would have. 

gif by @junghaesin

God I loved this show.

Okay, so Euclid, right?? It's 5 minutes and 13 seconds long, but Vessel only starts singing at the 13 second mark. First lyric? "Just run it back, give me five whole minutes".

We, as the listener, give him five whole minutes to say what he's gotta say. Further, the song ends on the exact same piano chord that it begins with; the song, in of itself, is a loop. Anytime you play Euclid on loop, you are running it back and giving him five whole minutes.

I HAD TO DRAW SOEMTHING DOWN FOR MY DUDE!!! I have Thoughts about all all this but good god this mans been rally thru it, they both have. AND YET HUGS ARE SO FAR AWAY. Don't worry Solar, you get hugs later. I'm just gonna assume his moon wrote down that note for him.

Making sense of love for love's sake: the game

Despite all the things i absolutely adore about how the plot unravels and expands in love by love's sake, upon first watch, there's some things i couldn't piece together, which @lurkingshan echoes in their post:

'The way the author was messing with Myungha and forcing cruel choices on him really does not track with a desire to help him find happiness.'

And to preface, this is not something i fully get yet either. I think i'll need a good month and a sizeable reading list of relevant resources to understand just what/who this author/sunbae is and what his role is and how he is associated with myungha. But as always with the best shows for meta (aka bad buddy), as a plot unfolds, you can always find a better understanding by looking backwards and re-contextualising what you've already seen. so i watched ep 1, specifically the scene between myungha and his sunbae at the bar. And i will talk about how everything said in this scene has a whole new meaning now we know the full story, but for now i wanna focus on that question that they keep coming back to; "Then... will you change it for him?".

When you watch the show for the first time, your brain follows the simplest, most obvious version of the story you're being told, one where myungha has been pulled into the world of his sunbae's novel that's being turned into a game and given the opportunity to fix the thing he didn't like about it; making yeowoon happy, and thus you just think the rules of the game are imposed by the author, and so when these cruel choices first come up, you see them as the difficult roadblocks that are nevertheless necessary to any kind of game, forcing the player to make an impossible choice so that the game can continue in a certain direction and its only after that you learn whether it was the right choice or not, or there is no right choice, it simply changes the game you are playing.

And when its revealed what this game actually is, at first i tried to interpret these cruel choices, namely the choice between yeonwoon and myungha's grandma, and at best i could come up with the concept of this being a choice between staying stuck to the past aka choosing his grandma, even though he knows that choice doesn't mean she's safe bc he knows the future where he loses here, its an inevitability, but thats the small happiness he knew before it was taken away and thus that happiness is known and safe, theres no risk, versus choosing to pursue a new happiness, a love of yeowoon and thus himself, which he doesn't know, he hasn't experienced yet, and could be risky. Its a happiness that isn't guaranteed like his grandma, but its a happiness that looks to the future and has hope in it that he can find a new happiness to pursue despite what has happened in his past.

And that fits nice, okayish. But then i watched ep 1 and heard that question "Then... will you change it for him?" And watching through the rest of the eps, we come back to this scene at the bar and each time we get a new run up to the author asking this question, either new dialogue is added or we hear a different piece of the conversation entirely. It starts at the beginning of ep 1 as:

"Because Cha Yeowoon is the only one who's miserable." "It can't be helped that some people's lives are like that" "The fact that some people are destined to live that kind of life is what's vile."

Then a bit later in ep 1 we go back and its expanded.

"It can't be helped that some people's lives are like that" "The fact that some people are destined to live that kind of life is what's vile." "Why? Do you think you'd write it differently?" "Yes, definately. Someone like Cha Yeowoon, or someone like me with an awful life, can also be happy."

And then all the way on in ep 6, we get this new dialogue.

"I don't like talking about destiny." "Why?" "Because it means everything is predestined." "Then do you not believe in fate?" "Fate and destiny are the same. My grandma likes to say that. She said life is like a written book, and how you'll live and die are written in it. (...)I don't like things like this. Even if fate is already destined, I think it can still be changed. Otherwise, there's no point in trying." "Really? Then Myungha..."

And while we don't hear the author ask the same question, I feel like him getting cut off like that insinuates that the conversation leads to that same ending point. All that is to say, every time we hear this question being asked, its like we learn more and more about what this whole thing is, what the game is, what myungha is saying he will do by agreeing to do what the author asks. And every time, we see myungha being more defiant against the idea of yeowoon being resigned to his miserable ending. He starts off thinking that kind of life is destined, and while it's miserable, its not something he can fight. Then he says he'd want to write the story differently, bc yeowoon, or even him, could be happy. He challenges the idea that yeowoon, and thus himself, is fated to be miserable, and opens up the possibility for happiness for them both, but doesn't yet have the means or resolve to do it, its like he knows its possible on a fundamental level, but doesn't see it as something he can actually achieve. But then we circle back to the idea of destiny and books, both of which came up in the previous quote, and seems incredibly pertinent seen as this whole thing is about a novel this author has written. Myungha talks about how he hates the idea that life is a book where everything written is predestined to happen, from the moment you live to the moment you die. He says "Even if fate is already destined, I think it can still be changed. Otherwise, there's no point in trying." That vile way of life he described before that he said was destined, he is now saying it can be changed, and that possibility is now something he's holding onto, its what he sees hope in so that he can keep trying, bc now he finally is trying, he has the resolve, he's trying to realise this thing, this impossibility of rewriting the life he thought was destined through the way he loves yeowoon.

And coming back to those cruel choices, given this fresh context, it made me think. bc this isn't actually a game that myungha has been put into where the rules are dictated by an author completely separate from him. He said himself, he'd rewrite it, he'd change things for yeowoon. And when you start to think of it less as him fighting against a rigid, removed system and more like him being a character in a story he is trying to rewrite himself, that has both the author and his own limitations, or just his own if you're in the school of thought that the author is some figment or part of myungha himself or his conciousness, then you can start to see where these cruel choices might come from. They could be myungha, the author making edits to this new story, imposing his own doubts and limitations on himself. When he says he has to pick between Yeowoon and his grandma, what if that's the new author myungha seeing this story unfold and thinking no this isn't right, he can't have it all, i'm not deserving of this much happiness.

And what makes me like this idea even more is that when we get that second choice between ending after 14 days or getting 100 days back at the cost of resetting Yeowoon's affection to 0, that whole conversation happens in what I think the bar actually is which is this frozen moment in time where myungha is in the water with this extension of a voice in his head that is talking through these things. That conversation in itself needs its own post, but when you look at it both as a decision to break up or not or a decision to hold onto life or not, you can see how the author is just this soundboard relaying the decisions myungha is going through in his head. The author's voice is his own, weighing up his decisions. And if he is the author here, it only reinforces that the person making the rules of this game is him. You can even extend it further to the idea of the debuffs, where he puts in place this thing that makes it so he causes harm to yeowoon when he's around, and its only by garnering affection that he can prevent it. He gives himself a reason from the get go to stay away from yeowoon and reason it as him doing it for yeowoon's safety, when in fact the only way to make yeowoon safe is to increase his affection, which he can only do by being near him. Its a system that at first gives myungha a reason to stay away aka not like himself, but ultimately says the only way you're going to make yeowoon like you, or the only way you can like yourself, is if you accept risk. And that in itself screams to me of a myungha writing in these game systems that are trying to encourage his own-self love while falling at the hurdle of his own lack of self-worth.

The idea is still messy in my head even for me, but i just really like the idea that myungha could be trying to fix this thing both as a character and game master, and that both these versions of him have these flaws that manifest in their different ways to cause the events we see. It kinda is the definition of being your own worst enemy, the idea that in order to work towards loving yourself, the biggest obstacle you have to encounter is yourself, bc we are the ones holding ourselves back, making all these rules that make it harder to like ourselves and pursue our own happiness. The voices in our head telling us that we aren't good enough and aren't deserving are our own, and while the things that happen to us can inform what they say, we're the one's reinforcing those words. And what this show teaches us is that, if we're the one holding that pen all along, we can choose to change what those words are. If we make the rules, you don't have to create a game with concrete ultimatums, you can create a game where rules don't control you. Instead, you make the decisions, and you can make the ones that make you happy.

(i feel like analyzing stuff again so here we go) kaz is smart because he knows people. he loves puzzles, loves locks, loves taking things apart to figure out how they work. he says in soc that you figure people out like you figure anything else out, by taking it apart. kaz is smart because he finds enough out about people to make assumptions.

he knows what people will do, and often times it leaves the ones being duped going "how did he do that? how did he know?" kaz never truely knows something will 100% happen, he's just assuming it will and is almost always right.

in the begining of soc, when the crows are breaking matthias out of hellgate, kaz assumes wrong, though. he knows that jesper has a reputation for being late, so he assumes that jesper will take to the task of releasing the animals like he will anything else he does, and be late doing it. he has, in some sense, taken jesper apart. he knows what jesper does, and he plans around this assumption, however ends up being wrong. nothing extremely consequential happens because of his assumption, but it proves that kaz will assume things with confidence.

a huge aspect to why kaz is so successful in his planning and overall schemes is because he knows how to make a good assumption. he has inej gathering him intel, which enables him to make such confident and correct guesses about how people will act.

one instance of kaz's assumptions being correct is the whole geels and 19 burstraat situation in the beginning of soc. when kaz threatens to burn down geels' lover's home, geels could have not cared, could have shot kaz right there, but he didn't. geels doesn't, and kaz continues very boldly facing him. why? because kaz knows how geels will act.

another instance is in ck when kaz kidnaps alys and uses her to get inej back. at this point, kaz knows how van eck will act. van eck has already duped kaz once, and i imagine after this one of the things kaz does to insure it never happens again is over analyzing and taking him apart. it works in this instance, because kaz has already seen how much van eck cares about a "worthy heir," and alys is literally holding that. kaz has taken van eck apart, and had figured him out enough to make a bold and correct act based on assumption.

all this to say, kaz thinks and thinks and thinks and is always thinking and picking everything apart, and that is the key to why he can get away with everything he does. and maybe one day his assumptions that make him so smart will fail him, and maybe one day they'll be fatally wrong.

Thinkin’ about The Siberian

I was sitting on a draft that said something to the effect of “Worm AU where Manton pulls an NBC Hannibal and moonlights as The Siberian on top of being a globally respected parahuman studies researcher. Is this anything.”

Then I thought about this a little more and realized that this might not be far off from what actually happened. There’s a throughline in Manton’s interests, in his trajectory through life, where he’s trying to figure out what you can use powers to get away with doing to people- about identifying constraints and overcoming them. 

He’s the guy who somehow credibly catalogued, and got his name associated with, the fact that powers generally can’t be used to pop people like balloons, and he did so reasonably early in the timeline, in the nineties at the latest. That’s.... an interesting direction to take your research! When people are just coming to terms with the fact that parahumans are real he’s out there taking careful note of whether they can manifest their powers inside people to instantly kill them. How did he test that? What capes did he collaborate with to test that? What did those conversations look like? Did the IRB at a minimum issue any revise-and-resubmits?

And then, of course, he gets picked up by Cauldron (also known as the infinite untraceable victim depot) to work on improving the vials- gaining a sufficiently in-depth understanding of what they are, how they’re made, and what they can do to people that when Cauldron told Legend that Manton had gone rogue and was the one creating C53s, he found this plausible. You’ve got the guy who’d later become the backbone of the Slaughterhouse 9 basically systemically cataloging every conceivable way a power could violate someone’s physiology- first from without, and then, at Cauldron, from within.

Then, when he pulls the trigger and gives himself powers, the resultant ability is essentially a distilled refutation of the Manton Effect- a minion that can obliterate anything, eat anything, delete any material from existence, viscerally dismember people in a unity of conventional and esoteric, power-enabled violence. And he’s insulated from the consequences of his actions on two levels- in terms of Siberian’s invulnerability, but also in the discrepancy between his form and that of his minion. He mixed the vial that gave him that power himself.

Essentially- I don’t think Siberian is something that just happened after a psychological break following a messy divorce. I think Manton basically pre-committed to becoming something like The Siberian, spent most of his career working towards some form of transcendence through superpowers, and the messy divorce was downstream of the cracks starting to show as he got closer and closer to what he’d been chasing.

Now to segue into a complication that’s more directly supported in the text- it’s Worm, it’s always complicated- Master powers spring from loneliness. My theory is that while Manton wanted apotheosis, and while he’d probably been gearing up for a rampage for a while, he genuinely didn’t want to do it alone; he wanted a sidekick. Hence why he bothered pursuing a family in the first place, hence why he fed his daughter a vial, hence why his own projection ended up looking like his daughter after he accidently made her explode or whatever with the bad vial- a monkey’s paw restoration, giving him back a facsimile of the person he wanted to take along for the ride, and making his capacity for violence inseparable from her presence.

This is why he joined up with the Nine rather than remaining a solo act; it’s why he engages in a bad imitation of the Parent/Child relationship with Bonesaw; and it’s why he seeks out Bitch as a candidate. His interest in her candidacy parses to me as genuine- Even moreso than Bonesaw, even moreso than Jack, Bitch has arrived at a no-frills fuck-you-I-do-what-I-want outlook that’s very appealing to Manton. He wants to have a murderer-daughter relationship!

But Rachel got where she is the hard way, by having a life that sucked a lot, by getting near-constantly kicked around! She has a clear reason to be so angry! Even if all my postulations about Manton having a long game are complete bullshit, there are several stages at which Manton had to actively opt in to the same lifestyle and reputation that Bitch was forced to adopt as a basic survival tactic. He didn’t have to start eating people! He’s a tourist! His “freedom” is inseparable from his distance, his disguise. Rachel’s “freedom” is just the freedom of having nothing left to lose.

All of this to say- In an interlude in which Bitch has an extended internal monologue about how people with families have the opportunities to be assholes and monsters to a captive audience, it is absolutely not a coincidence that she’s scouted by a would-be parental figure who proceeds to be an asshole and a monster in front of a captive audience, before trying to buy her affection with a puppy. In rejecting Manton, Rachel dodged an esoterically-packaged but ultimately very familiar bullet.

Love doomed Team Soulfire.

Because they all love so very deeply don't they? They love their children, they love their friends, they love their homes, they love the little peace they have found in the Island.

They love so deeply that they just want to go home.

But love can be a curse.

Love can lead to nothing but pain and disaster when that love blinds you.

The Entity says that their children's lives are at stake, that they must win if they ever want to see them again, that there is a cursed team and they cannot lose, that their lose is death to their children. And Team Blue cannot risk it, they cannot allow themselves to let their children be put at risk in case they are the cursed them.

For love, they would do anything.

And that was exactly what they did. When other's are getting their resources, when they are thinking about what to do, how to proceed, Team Soulfire already knew, they knew they would do anything for their children, they would kill and they would die.

Surely everyone else was on the same page wasn't them? Their deaths meant nothing as long as their children could be saved.

Love blinded Team Soulfire.

Love blinded them to the pain they inflicted on others. Made them unable to realize exactly what they are doing the moment they spilled first blood, because that? That was the moment Purgatory began.

Not when they landed on the desolate Island, not when they were separeted on teams, not when their children's lives were considered a prize in a twisted game.

That first death? That started Purgaroty. Because what Team Blue didn't realize was that not everyone else was blinded by love as much as they were, that for others killing wasn't their first goal, that for a brief moment people thought they could fight against the system, that they could try in other ways.

But after that? Oh no, there was no turning back from that.

They didn't realize that when you kill someone over and over and over and over again, without mercy, without pause, without thinking about the sort of pain you are inflicting on them, it doesn't matter why you are doing it. They wouldn't look at you and see a friend, they wouldn't see a person who just wants to go home, who just wants to end this hell.

They will see a murderer.

They will see someone who sees their suffering as a means of gaining points, they will see someone who doesn't care about anyone else.

They will only see betrayal.

They will only see a enemy.

You cannot burn your bridges and expect to find a way home. You cannot stab the people around you, even if you do it for love, even if you believe yourself to be doing it for good reasons, and expect them to open your arms to you when you need it.

Team Soulfire loves. They love so deeply, so intensely, so very much.

And their love doomed them to be hated. To be viewed as the ones willing to do anything, to kill and betray and destroy anything the others have. Their love blinded them to the suffering they inflicted upon the others.

And the most painful thing?

Team Soulfire does not realize others are not playing the game as they are. That when they try to even the scoreboard, when they try to make things "fair" they are just feeding an uncontrollable fire, they are just scattering the ashes even further, they are hugging the broken pieces of what once was and they don't realize that the blood coating their hands.

Oh my darlings, how they put so much faith in a verbal agreement about the safety of the egg statues. How they love the children so much that they could not imagine that others wouldn't see those stones the same way they did, that they wouldn't be petrified that there was the slight chance that hurting the statue could hurt their children, how they believed that people would feel the same, would respect it as much as they did.

But of course they didn't. Because Team Bolas Rojas has been stabbed in the back from all the sides multiple times, they could not phantom the idea of trusting the people who have hunted them for sport, who have killed them for points in their own home, who have done nothing but hurt and betray them, they don't look at Team Soulfire and see friends just trying to go home, trying to protect their loved ones, they just see the people who hurt them multiple times.

And Team Green Ninjas agreed to not kill the statues, they truly had never any intention of finishing the job, but at no point their ever promised they wouldn't try to win, because at the end of the day they too worry so fucking much they couldn't imagine the possibility of not trying to win to save their children.

So that leaves Team Soulfire isolated, burned by love, forever to be distrusted and hated and avoided because of the actions they took in day one, because they believed that anything done in Purgatory was done for love and would be forgiven because they all have the same goal, they all want the same thing, because they believed people would understand their motivations.

And they did! They do!

It just doesn't matter.

Because the hurt they caused is too deep to be soothed by that.

For love, they have caused what seems like irreparable amounts of pain.

For love, they doomed themselves to be the villains in the eyes of everyone they know.

I always felt bad for Link,reall,and Zelda. Link,the very first,started out as a normal kid. Now its thousands of years later and he is so old and so young and everything at once. A child with the soul of a hero,doomed from the start no matter what. People still name their kids Link even if they dont remember him. Zelda,she was a goddess,but she wanted love. She became human and then stayed that way,because she loved Link. He will always come back so she will. Forever,until the very gods die.

Zelda stayed because of love. She was mortal once and then forever,because she loved Link. She loved living. She loved it all and couldnt bear to leave it. Link always had to come back because Ganon would,because evil will always exist even if the hero stops it for a while. So she placed a peice of the triforce in each of them,even Ganon,so she would always be with him.

I assume these two asks were meant to go together lol? and i agree with a lot of your points about zelda, but i'd argue that LINK comes back for love too. the first link, the one we see in skyward sword, initially had NO connection to the goddess or demise or the triforce or anything. What he DID have was a connection to zelda, his best friend. The reason he initially goes to the surface is because she fell and he wants to help her. the reason he keeps going after her as she travels the surface and tries SO hard to push him away is because he loves his friend and he's worried about her. the soul of the hero irt zelda lore is something that a lot of people boil down to like. courage or fighting spirit or even just 'someone who is fated to fight ganon' as you kind of have here, but that interpretation of link's reincarnation ignores the reason any of this started: Link loved Zelda. it's all well and good that zelda loved link, and yes, she loved him so much she became human and stayed human and her descendants for the rest of time get to be human and know human love, too. but the reincarnation cycle doesn't work unless link loves zelda, too. if link never jumps off skyloft to follow his best friend, demise wins and the cycle never has a reason to start in the first place. If link never befriends a scared little princess in the palace garden and does what she asks not out of duty but because he UNDERSTANDS how powerless she must feel, the cycle never continues. if link never wears himself ragged fighting guardians to protect the girl he loves, the cycle never continues. Link is the hero's spirit, yes. the triforce of courage. but without love, what reason does he have to pick up the sword in the first place??

i think when we approach the conversation and history of the ‘purgatory underdog’ you have to take into account what the game and arc was portrayed to be to the audience (also therefore the players) at the time— this is to say that the earlier days placed a lot more emphasis on pvp, both narratively via the observer and in the daily breakdown. the first days were so hopeless for bolas ultimately because they didn’t see any kind of chance to outthink the game, which would be their sole route to victory. since then the only reason red’s had any kind of fighting chance is because they’re tactically stunning, their wins are almost entirely strategy because they could not beat green or blue in a one-to-one pvp environment. i think it’s kind of a disservice to analysis to isolate the days of triumph and victory and ignore that bolas worked around their glaring and blatant weaknesses compared to other teams in this specific environment

with some ppl following me here bc of my analysis posts, i figured i'd do a lil pinned post for my fics so you guys know what all this analysis is even for in the First place, SO!

my current main focus:

In the Next Life

a trimax vashwood time travel longfic where late trimax vash (aka as late as chapter 94) travels back in time to try to fix things. he's determined to change things, hopes to have a happy ending in this time, but still can't let go of his grief for what he lost in the time before (cough Wolfwood cough). currently a WIP, this is gonna be a Long One, so if ur into longfic this could be for u. just mind the spoilers lol

& i guess i can mention my other Trigun fic that ppl seem to like:

Sentido

it's complete! started as just a drabble piece to give myself practice with writing these characters. it's a 5 chapter character study for Vash, exploring the ways his inhumanity manifests in each of his senses. it is also very much an autism metaphor done by Yours Truly (someone who clearly has the 'tism) bc i just think autistic Vash is very good. set in tristamp events bc i wrote this before i finished trimax, but has a lot of trimax influence (especially in the last chapter). i'd say it's a tristamp/trimax fusion.

Also!

I have a vashwood discord server. If you're interested in chatting about vashwood or trigun in general, feel free to join! It's 18+ so please don't join if you're a minor, & there's also a no plantcest rule (bc we wanted a place where we wouldn't have to see it lol). If that sounds good to you, then click here!

midoyuzu for the ask game ..!!!

THEYRE SO GOOD AND I LOVE THEM. favorite ship for both! and i do think it makes sense in the fact that its a relationship that is healthy and sates both of their needs BUT lets be real i dont know if it would happen That soon . love them for their hesitant swag (depression/lack of personhood)

hello upper middle class northern usamerican tumblr user. i want to play a game. you will notice that you are in a super america convenience store in rural kentucky - you have three minutes to purchase a snack and drink of your choice and make normal small talk with the cashier. however, if you use the word "cryptid" or generally make reference to appalachia and its inhabitants as "wild", uncivilized, or lacking restraint around alcoholic beverages during your time here, i will personally tie you to the chassis of a four wheeler and tip it into the river. live or die. make your choice

just realised (or connected the dots) that when han juwon says that those who’re connected to the case shouldn’t handle it, dongsik agrees becuz the reason why the killer isn’t suspected is cuz he’s part of the close-knit village.

and dongsik understands this. and later on juwon understands that dongsik did understand that. which is why later on, juwon’s reflecting everything dongsik has taught juwon back to him, telling him “you’re too connected to this case. you’re too connected to the people connected to this case. you’re not suspecting the right ppl”

and mf gives him a list of ppl to suspect.

i love their dynamic so much

OKAY!! Tell me to shut up now because this is one of my favourite parts of Joo Won's character!!

Despite how rigid Joo Won is - spine-wise and in terms of his moral compass - he still manages to be a very adaptable person. I think it's one of the things that many of the other characters in the show don't expect from him, which causes them to underestimate his intentions and misinterpret his actions. Some of these characters are Han Ki Hwan, Lee Chang Jin, Chief Jung Cheol-Mun, Oh Ji Hwa and Kwon Hyuk to a certain extent.

Episodes 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 13, and 16 (there might be more) follow the theme of one being too emotionally connected to the case at hand. Whether that be Dong Sik with Min Jeong and Yu Yeon or Joo Won with his father. But the topic is first probably introduced in Episode 3. Episode 3: Joo Won and Dong Sik have been asked to give a statement after they found Min Jeong's fingertips, so Dong Sik can be dismissed as a suspect (which Joo Won realises straight away and states out loud for the audience). DS: Your office is big enough. Why are we here? JW: She's doing this for you. A cop is only human. She knows how people will think of you with the recent case. The first thing Ji Hwa asks in this scene is are you okay? She hasn't entered this situation as a police officer, which is something she struggles with throughout the entire show. [Side note: Joo Won and Ji Hwa oftentimes share the exact same beliefs about how to approach their jobs. They believe a cop is a cop and no one is above the law BUT the law sucks. They both express these opinions in different ways throughout the show, Joo Won with action and Ji Hwa with opinion. But obviously, they express themselves differently and we are meant to perceive them differently because of their age, gender, and their role within the narrative.] So, because of the traumatic thing that has happened, which she now has to investigate, she approaches the situation as a friend. Which, given the informal nature of the summons, I get BUTTTTT the issue with that is... They're police officers and this is an active missing person/murder investigation, of which, Dong Sik was the lead suspect in a similar cold case... So, the two of them sharing information willy-nilly in the investigation room is actually kind of unprofessional (in my opinion). When I first watched it, I agreed with Joo Won: Ji Hwa is too emotionally involved to be non-bias and Dong Sik shouldn't be given information (inside the interrogation room), it doesn't do well for the investigation... AND to give Joo Won credit, he did live with Prosecutor (Kwon Hyuk), so he probably knows the ways a lawyer can tear apart a case. This then poses a very interesting line of questioning. Joo Won states all the logical reasons why Ji Hwa and Dong Sik shouldn't be a part of the case: they were like family to Min Jeong, Dong Sik was once a suspect 20 years ago, and the formality of the questioning of a witness does not allow for the briefing of that witness. But then Dong Sik counters his argument with: What's wrong with that? Why can't detectives get their feelings involved? What's wrong with being like family to the victim? We want to lock up the bastard who did this to our family. What's wrong with that?

It's the whole reason he became a police officer. It's what he's spent 20 years doing!! HOWEVER, 3 years prior to the canon timeline, Dong Sik berated Lee Sang Yeob for having the exact line of thinking... and it influenced his actions, which lead to his murder.... (and considering how borderline suicidal Dong Sik is, are we stepping too far to assume that he doesn't care to come out of this whole experience intact/ alive??? Maybe, maybe not)

But Dong Sik knows where Joo Won is coming from because he's been in his shoes but he also knows that sometimes, you need emotions to get involved. Lee Yu Yeon and Kang Min Jeong don't have anyone to help them now... there's only Dong Sik left. So, when it's your family that is killing your family, you need those emotions to stop them/bring them to justice.

"To catch these monsters, we must become monsters." Dong Sik, episode 3

So, Joo Won thinks the police shouldn't investigate with their emotions. Dong Sik thinks they should. Out of the two of them, Joo Won is the hypocrite here. He approached his investigation of Dong Sik with nothing BUT emotion (despite how much he likes to pretend he didn't). Joo Won is responsible for Lee Geum Hwa's murder. She's a sex worker with no family in Korea, with no one to claim her body. So, incensed with folly and guilt, Joo Won investigates with emotion.

In episode 4, Dong Sik asks one of the most important (throwaway) questions of the whole series: “It’s a dangerous thing to become attached to someone. Don’t you think?”

The series shows us throughout that the answer is yes and no. It is dangerous but it is worth it.

Episode 10 Joo Won is one of my favourite versions of him. He took the time to digest his relationship with Dong Sik, he highlighted all the parts he didn't like and all the parts he did, he realised Dong Sik's language and decided to reapproach him speaking it. I don't care what anyone says, he's adaptable! It only took him a week to realise Dong Sik isn't the killer, it took a month for them to bring a 20-year-old serial killer to justice (although, you can't really give Joo Won credit for that), and it only took him 3 months to process whatever the fuck was going on between him and Dong Sik. Joo Won learned to speak Dong Sik's language by copying his actions. He planted the evidence (so the police would investigate Kang Jin Mook's suspicious death), he smiled at the camera so Dong Sik would know it was him, he made them dinner so Dong Sik would stay, he said the list of names to prove to Dong Sik 1) look I've been paying attention 2) I know you and I see you (he's a lil creepy) and 3) you've been blindsided by your trust. He doesn't want Dong Sik to make the same mistakes.

Plus... everyone should be a suspect. (that's the way i see it anyway)

Throughout the show, Dong Sik proves time and time again that there isn't much he'll do for those he loves. Plant evidence? Sure. Get himself arrested? Duh! Be a part of a plot to take down the Commissioner of the police? Piece of cake.

But Joo Won is just as willing and twice as reckless as Dong Sik.

So, if Dong Sik investigates with his emotions, Joo Won investigates with his whole heart. Because as soon as Dong Sik gains Joo Won's loyalty, there's not much Joo Won wouldn't do for him. Plant evidence? Sure. Voluntarily get arrested on live national TV? Duh! Promise to go to hell? Piece of cake. Go into a house with the knowledge that you could be murdered? Let's go!! Arrest your dad and your partner? (that one is a little harder)

(gosh he needs to chill)

So, Dong Sik asked: What's wrong with that? Why can't detectives get their feelings involved? What's wrong with being like family to the victim? We want to lock up the bastard who did this to our family. What's wrong with that?

He investigates with his emotions dictating his actions BUT like he says in episode 11:

Inspector Han, it's my job to go berserk without thinking about the consequences. You can stick to just being you. Be calm and composed. That is your job.

Dong Sik knows, as does Joo Won and us, the audience, that Joo Won is not a calm and composed man. Out of the two of them, that's Dong Sik. He is the one that can compartmentalize his emotions and think these through before acting but he is very trusting, far too trusting for his own good. Whereas Joo Won is very analytical but he's impulsive and his emotions can make him sloppy and presumptuous.

But when they work together, they are able to keep each other in check and follow through.

So, to answer Dong Sik's question Why can't detectives get their feelings involved? The answer the show gives is that Joo Won is right: A cop is only human. So, yes, they can but they need their partner to keep them in check.

-

Thank you for sending this ask! I absolutely adore this aspect of their dynamic as well. So I decided to agree with you by writing way too many words and include beautiful gifs. I went a little off-topic but I hope what I'm trying to say correlates with your point and furthermore, makes sense. I hope you have a great day!

Every time the topic of Vegetta and marriage comes up I am forced to see misinformation or even flat out lies about Vegetta's past wedding experience and his relationship with Rubius and I just

I think so often about the way the nickname The Tooth Fairy was always a hint about what was really going on, behind the veil, behind the fairy tale we're given.

Because it doesn't make sense for Francis to have accrued that nickname organically. His crimes have no relationship to what the tooth fairy does.

But if your design is finding all the little gifts the monsters leave for you in the dark and in exchange remaking them in their own image.

So that the monster on the outside matches the monster on the inside

Then the moniker the tooth fairy makes a little bit more sense

If you fancy yourself a predator who re-makes monsters so that they may become that which they always were, what they need to be, and in so doing remake yourself into the monster you always were, like Frankenstein

Well then The Tooth Fairy makes a little more sense

Frankenstein, a story about forbidden gay love.

And if your forbidden gay love is Hannibal the Cannibal who bites to fight & fuck... but also to love.

Well then the Tooth Fairy actually kinda makes sense

And if you have a bitchy mean sense of humor when you feel belittled and your husband loves a corny punny joke that tells the truth in a way that everyone will refuse to see, well in that case, The Tooth Fairy is a perfect sensationalist serial killer nickname for Will Graham

People who take a source that is both as ridiculous as emotionally and politically charged like metal gear is and represent its characters with chibis or furries or moe characters are SO right and doing an incredible service to society