my favourite scene from maigu ridge

Not Alhaitham being an unreliable narrator and having everyone convinced he received a "very decent house" from the Akademiya, only for Kaveh's story to reveal he was living in a research center converted into a residence, which he then let Kaveh decorate...

Finally turning it into a real home.

another Perceive piece 👁️

hi, i love dynamics that r like “we make each other worse” on the surface but when u look deeper it is actually just “we understand each other on a level that no one else does and nudge each other out of our typical comfort zone” which just circles around to “we make each other better”. it’s abt the accidental growth just by being in each other’s lives. idk

yin yu meta?

Yin Yu was a character who only sort of registered to me on initial read while I was busy losing my mind about...a lot of things, in particular everything about Black Water Arc but also just TGCF as a whole. and then OH NO HERE COMES YIN YU WITH THE STEEL CHAIR out of nowhere, and now that whole side-plot is solidly my second favorite subplot in TGCF.

(nothing beats out Black Water Arc, that one is just a little too perfectly tailored to my interests.)

but like...Yin Yu and his position in the narrative is fascinating to me because he's like. he's a gifted kid with all the pitfalls that already has (that come with being told over and over that you're destined for great things and, for a while, living up to it) but he has the misfortune to end up with the extra-extra gifted kid at his heels, and it happens because of Yin Yu's own attempts toward decency and his desire to be a Good Person (because he takes Yizhen in and acts as his protector and defender when he's a kid).

I think what gets me most about Yin Yu, though, is the specific way in which he snaps. we're introduced to Yin Yu sideways, in the play that Xie Lian cuts off, as a scheming, two-faced trickster, but when the actual story comes out later it's very clear that Yin Yu's banishment isn't a result of him making any kind of considered decision. it's the result of someone who has been keeping a very tight lid on himself for a long time, who prides himself on his restraint and polite manner, abruptly hitting the end of his rope and just fucking losing it.

and losing everything because of it.

and then! the fact that his choice is to go and...literally disappear. he hides his face behind a mask, he makes himself unnoticeable, nameless, anonymous. after spending the front half of his life trying so, so hard to be exceptional (and ultimately falling short), he just swings right to the other end of the spectrum.

THE OTHER THING I LOVE ABOUT YIN YU THOUGH is the fact that he's angry at Quan Yizhen! and he knows it's "unfair" and that it makes him a ~bad person~ (tildes because I disagree with a lot of Yin Yu's self assessment), but he still resents him and doesn't want anything to do with him, even as he also still cares about him enough to not want him dead; that when it comes down to it he won't let Quan Yizhen die. I just appreciate it when characters get to be, like, angry and resentful and it not be an indictment of them as a person. as a petty bitch myself it's nice to see.

anyway not sure this is remotely coherent but. yin yu. what a guy. chewing on him like a juicy bone

I have feelings for you. The feelings are envy, malice, hatred, crush kill bite claw claw claw

sometimes i think about how avdol's incredibly aware of what's going on behind his back + has incredible reflexes in regards to that (as evidenced by knowing kakyoin was there in the library, catching the hammer, turning his back on both polnareff and jotaro as a test of character), but both times that he's severely injured by attacks from behind, he was acting out of emotion over polnareff

like sometimes i think about how polnareff prides himself on his martial abilities but literally allows himself to get eaten by an enemy using avdol and sherry's visage against him. he forgot to summon chariot against them- the thought of using his stand against them literally didn't even initially occur to him. and how he goes into the mansion first, likely believing that this was the front line

on Occasion i think about how within the span of knowing each other, avdol and polnareff became each other's greatest weaknesses like sometimes i-

kiss emoji kiss emoji

you know what else is something? the fact that xiao xingchen’s affection was not enough to make xue yang better, but that losing him was enough to make xue yang worse

The Untamed | Episode 04 // Episode 50

someone gives this subject a healthy happiness!!

I consider myself a microinfluencer in the way I can get ten to fifteen people to consume a piece of media if I’m annoying enough about it