#I'm in my brainrot arc | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

blorb-el · 6 months

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Don’t know if you made a post on this but what’s your opinion on DCAU Clark and how unapproachable(?) they made him in the later JL/JLU series without ever resolving it? Like I know the Cadmus arc hinges on him never considering himself a possible threat but it seems there was room for no much introspection outside a couple moments (that were later backtracked).

I've had like 6 half finished posts about this buried deep in the drafts for a year because I have capital B Brain Rot about this, but every time I tried to write it out I got six sentences in and wanted to rewatch the entire DCAU in order to get my facts straight. This time I'm resisting the urge, so forgive me if I forget specific episodes

Also, unfortunately for you, it’s nanowrimo, which means my brain is in Type All The Words Mode, and not Communicate Effectively and Succinctly Mode, and also I need a break from WSBF chapter 8, so. You’re getting a 3.5k essay sort of answering this question but not really. you will see

Thank you to my fellow lawyer for the defense of Rectangle Clark @januariat for helping to put this together

I do rewatch STAS and JL a fair amount, but much less JLU, so I actually don’t have much to say about the specific execution there. I’m planning on rewatching it soon. But for now…

To me it boils down to two answers. The Doylist answer, and what I think the writers really did have in mind, is that they came up with the Cadmus plot, knew it was an absolute banger of a storyline, and decided that it was worth compromising Superman's personality in order to write a good story. which is not something I can fault them for - as a fanfic writer, I make the same calculated tradeoffs every time I set out to write a fic. Characters are tools for narrative, even if these particular characters come with an additional weight of the tradition of collaborative storytelling that their most effective stories honor.

However, I do think it’s possible to, post-hoc, cobble together a Watsonian, narratively satisfying (if fucked up and sad) character arc for DCAU Clark if you also take STAS and JL into account. I think the key to understanding his character arc is his relationship with control. Throughout STAS, JL, and JLU, and then one more time in Batman Beyond for good measure, over and over again, he's manipulated and his powers and body are used as resources for other people. Obviously that’s not much of an excuse for becoming more authoritarian/overbearing/etc, Fascism Is Bad and I personally think a more IC superman would retreat more than double down (as in Kingdom Come), but looking at the totality of things that have happened to him before Cadmus, it's a little more understandable why he'd get close to snapping under the strain. Here's my personal reading of his arc, and the events that might have led to Clark behaving so irrationally in JLU.

cut for sheer length, but also mentions of manipulation, sexual assault, victim blaming, that sort of thing

One of the recurring themes in the DCAU is villains dehumanizing, depowering, and/or manipulating Clark. In STAS, Parasite, Lex via Bizarro, Talia and Ra’s al Ghul use him as a source for their own power. The Preserver and Maxima treat him like some exotic prize, disregarding his wishes. Jax-Ur and Mala use him and then betray him. But the most impactful, by far, is Darkseid.

In Apokolips Now, Darkseid defeats Clark, puts his bleeding body into public stocks, and drags him through the middle of Metropolis. Clark’s only rescued by the last minute intervention of the New Gods, and as a parting shot Darkseid murders Clark’s friend in front of everyone. Even though Clark prevents Earth from turning into Apokolips, it’s a huge emotional loss, and they don’t shy away from showing his rage and helplessness. But it’s when Darkseid returns in Legacy, the finale of STAS, that Clark’s life truly takes a turn for the worse.

Forgive me if this is all plot recap to you, anon, but I feel like a lot of people don’t know that STAS ends with Clark being mind controlled, heavily implied to be sexually assaulted, and forced to try to take over the Earth, killing god knows how many people in the process. When the military finally brings him down with a Kryptonite warhead and imprisons him, they nearly kill Supergirl in the process. Then Lex almost gives him a lethal injection, with a US general looking on, implying that the government approves of killing him. Lois breaks him out, he tries to get help for Kara from Dr. Hamilton, and then goes to Apokolips. Most fights in STAS have him shrug off blows. He ends this one bleeding from his mouth, looking almost dead. When he finally casts down Darkseid, tells the Hunger Dogs (the slaves on Apokolips) that they’re free… they turn away from Superman. They cluster around Darkseid to protect and heal him.

Those universal truths of a lot of Superman stories, that goodness and liberty and the American Way* always win? They don't in STAS. A representative of the US government (as far as he knows) has tried to kill him. He lost his temper and spoke in a harsh tone of voice once, because Kara was dying and he was hurt and desperate, and now his friend Dr. Hamilton, the man he trusted to repair the Kryptonian ship, study his body and his powers, one of the people who knew him best in STAS, is afraid of him - and, as we find out later, takes immediate, drastic, and violating action against Kara and against him. The series ends with the small town man standing on the roof of the Planet, hearing people hate and fear him, wondering how people will ever trust him again.

*I hate this phrase personally when used as a Superman Motto, but it's used here as a contrast to the fascistic imagery of Apokolips Now and Legacy (as well as Brave New World, which, hoo boy, we aren’t even getting into that one).

Six months (iirc) after the STAS finale, in Secret Origins, the US government has agreed to let a visibly older and wearier Superman help disarm the nuclear stockpile - only for this to backfire on him because it was a Plot by the White Martians. Clark’s let down the country again. He’s helped aliens invade again, and to make matters worse, he sped away in the middle of an attack to break into an official government facility to free J'onn. Clark founds the Justice League beginning from a place of personal failure, as a check on himself. Clark has power and wants to help people with it, but he’s been turned against people he cares about, and has twice now failed to protect the world. It’s worth noting that Legacy put him into the world stage; before, in STAS, I can’t think of any true worldwide threats besides maybe Jax-Ur and Mala.

Most of the rest of season 1 of JL isn’t particularly Clark-focused, although he does appear in a lot of episodes, but the themes of some of these episodes are potentially relevant to understanding his character later, so: brief bullet point summaries.

During In Blackest Night, Clark sees his respected colleague turn himself into an authority that turns out to be incompetent investigators looking for a scapegoat. Interesting. Surrendering to governmental authority/oversight didn’t turn out too well here.

During The Enemy Below, on Clark’s advice, Aquaman tries to solve his problems peacefully with diplomacy and is immediately shot in a life threatening assassination attempt. Peaceful diplomacy doesn't work so well for him.

During Injustice for All, Lex is dying of cancer. Clark tries to reach out and is rebuffed, with Lex going on to try to found a team to kill him and the rest of the League.

During Paradise Lost, Clark sees his respected colleague turn herself into the authorities and immediately get banished from her home for the crime of trying to save it with all the resources she had at her disposal. Interesting. Surrendering to governmental authority/oversight didn’t turn out too well here, again.

During War World, Clark’s again captured for exploitation. This is essentially a retread of The Main Man from STAS, doubling down on how some people see him as a thing to be exploited.

During Fury, Clark’s completely ineffective at preventing an attempted genocide of half the world’s population.

Season 2 opens with Twilight, one of the most important episodes for understanding Clark’s mindset during the Cadmus arc. Imagine, if you will, the above happening to you. Darkseid shows up at your workplace. And the man you’ve worked with the longest, your friend, your ally, tells you to cry him a river, build him a bridge, and get over it. Tells you to get over being brainwashed, manipulated, and humiliated. Tells you to get over having your broken and bleeding body paraded around the streets of Metropolis, tells you to get over having your friend killed in front of you for trying to defend you, tells you to get over almost getting your cousin killed. Sure, Brainiac is a planetary-scale threat; Darkseid and Apokolips are in real trouble. Clark was wrong to write off Apokolips and its people, and the League should absolutely have intervened in the situation. But the way Bruce went about it was… one of the harshest things DCAU Bruce has ever done, and one of the only times the narrative seems to actually agree that he was an asshole about it. And even then, you really need the context of STAS to understand why Clark is so furious and hurt in this scene.

Clark relents and goes along with Bruce’s plan to trust Darkseid, only to end up betrayed again, the whole ruse just another ploy for Brainiac to gain control of Clark, torture him, and use Clark’s body to upgrade himself. Clark had spared Darkseid back on Apokolips at the end of Legacy, on Kara’s advice. But now Darkseid’s come after him, again. Used him again to put not only Earth but who knows how many other worlds at risk, now that Brainiac’s even more powerful. It’s the downfall of Krypton, over and over again. And when Clark goes to end it, I think he doesn’t care that the base is about to go, as long as Darkseid goes down with it. That isn’t a price Bruce is willing to pay, so he teleports Clark out. And he’s wrong, again. “No one could have survived that.” Well… no, Bruce. Darkseid does, and Clark knows it.

During Tabula Rasa, Lex manipulates Amazo the exact way he tried to use Bizarro. Clark once again fails to guard against a terrible, potentially world-ending threat, and in fact makes the situation worse by his very presence.

Then we come to Only a Dream, another key episode in understanding this version of Superman. Clark’s deepest fear is that his powers will keep on growing beyond his ability to control them, eventually destroying everything around him. In his nightmare He kills Lois and Jimmy, destroys the Daily Planet, and grows into a brutish, hulking, clumsy figure, first crying out for someone to help him, and then losing hope. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone. He goes back to the Kent farm and curls up in the spaceship in the fetal position, convinced that he’s only going to hurt anyone who tries to help. Is it any wonder, since that’s literally what’s happened to him in Legacy? Is it any wonder that he’d want to give up, to retreat? If we’re to take the World of Cardboard speech literally, he’s already having to focus on this restraint every day, in every interaction. This is my personal explanation/hc as to why in every single fight he lets himself get knocked around a bit first; he’s calibrating how hard he can hit back without doing irrevocable damage. Anyway. Deeply fucked up 2 minutes of horror. Wish they’d explored this a little bit more in later seasons.

Then, directly after this, it’s A Better World. After we’ve just seen that his worst nightmare is hurting people by being unable to control his powers, we come face to face with a world where he’s hurt people by the precise and controlled application of his powers. Justice Lord Clark uses the same Superman Robots we saw Kara use in Legacy. He’s become quite adept at his lobotomization techniques. Later on in JLU, we see ‘our’ universe’s Clark attempt to lobotomize Doomsday the exact same way Justice Lord Superman did. Again, Clark fails to protect the world from himself, and to make matters worse, the guy to save the day is Lex Luthor. I’d be a little miffed if the maniac who wants to kill me so so bad turned out to be instrumental in saving the world and now I owe him some unspecified favor in the future. Clark’s met with failure and distrust trying to fix things his way, now he tries to do things in an uncharacteristically sneaky way and… gets met with more dislike and distrust.

Eclipsed continues this trend of hurting his friends; he’s temporarily mind controlled and hurts Wally.

In The Terror Beyond, he fucks up and puts the world in danger again, all because from his point of view, he tried to prevent Solomon Grundy being manipulated and used (like he himself has been used over and over again).

In Secret Society, his frustration comes to a peak, amplified by Grodd’s telepathic manipulation. He’s been trying to do his best, but he snaps that he’s had better luck fighting armies alone (dubious plural there, but he did pretty much evaporate an army in Legacy, so at least once, ok) and that he’s had to hold back his abilities in order to be on the League. Again if we take the World of Cardboard speech at face value, this is true, and we see it in the episode when he accidentally hurts Shayera with heat vision despite shouting a warning beforehand. It’s also telling how other members of the League have the ability to constantly voice doubts about its usefulness and cohesiveness as an organization (hi Bruce) but when he expresses the same doubts everyone gasps. When he expresses his doubt and frustration, when he steps away, the organization that’s collectively saved the world several times falls apart; they’re reliant on him, and he has to be aware of the entire existence of the League as an extra burden of responsibility.

Since both this episode and the Cadmus arc as a whole are meant to show his flaws as a leader, it’s worth examining the foundations of that leadership as established in the DCAU. Clark’s the leader of the League, but narratively, Bruce is its brains and its ethics and Wally is its heart. As a result, Clark is filling the role of leader of the League without the narrative scaffolding that gives him the respect comics incarnations of the character are generally accorded. (I’m admittedly only drawing here from the JLA runs I’ve personally read, Morrison/Porter 90’s JLA and the early Fox/Sekowsky 60’s JLA). Superman might not technically be the First Superhero according to these continuities, but he is respected as though he is (and as we comic book nerds know him to be). The League in these comics treat him as something of an ethical standard bearer, a primus inter pares, as well as being the muscle. In the DCAU, Batman, having founded the DCAU with BTAS, is the First Superhero, and the entire plotline of the Justice Lords centers Wally as the emotional anchor of the team. Clark doesn’t have that pre-established stature. What really qualifies him to be the leader, besides the fact that Bruce doesn’t want to do it? His position seems precarious, relying more on Superman’s pre-established reputation than his actual onscreen characterization. Centering Bruce and Wally are legitimate creative choices I don’t even necessarily disagree with, but it means Clark-as-leader functions quite differently than more traditional JL structures.

Hereafter is something of a healing point for him. It’s a little fucked up that Superman almost bashes Vandal Savage’s head in with a rock, but you take what you can get at this point. He comes out of it fine, but everyone else is forced to reckon with what he means to them. Hereafter coming directly after Secret Society is a very good reunification for the League. Shame about what’s gonna happen in three episodes.

In Wild Cards, he’s useful to address the immediate threat but ineffective to stop the real, countrywide (worldwide?) threat. (I should note that of course I don’t expect every episode’s threat to be solved by Clark; I’m just pointing out a trend that I think his character would perceive as failures on his part. If the writers ever let him reflect.)

JL ends as it began, with another massive alien invasion that Clark helped facilitate in Starcrossed, by working with the Thanagarians during the first part of their plan. As a fellow exile, a fellow alien, he’s hurt and angry with Shayera’s betrayal… even though, in the end, in probably one of his best moments, he votes to allow her to stay in the League.

(Sidenote: almost every interaction Clark has had with other aliens have been despotic societies or individuals: Jax-Ur and Mala, Apokolips, Maxima’s planet, War World, and now Thanagar. The Guardians built robotic police/foot soldiers to enforce their will. Even New Genesis is ruled by a benevolent dictator. Martian society is nearly extinct, overrun by… more alien despots, surviving only with J'onn. Argoan society is nearly extinct, surviving only with Kara. At least Lobo isn’t a fascist? Small consolation.)

JLU begins after a short time skip. I’m not as familiar with JLU episodes since it’s been a while since I’ve watched them, so I’m not going to attempt an episode-by-episode breakdown. Also this post is already way too long. But the point of this post is to look at Clark’s overall arc until this point, and see how it informs his decisions in JLU. For a more JLU-specific informed point of view check this post by januariat!

What we have is a man who naturally wants to take responsibility on his own shoulders, a doer and a fixer who wants to get into the ring and solve problems, who wants to use his abilities to help, being confronted over and over again with a string of personal failures, manipulation, and betrayal. When he tries to set a boundary about not being willing to help the man who took over his body and forced him against his home in Twilight, he’s told to get over it by his most trusted ally. When his deepest fears are revealed in Only a Dream, we see them having been already realized in Legacy. And when he’s presented with his dream of a peaceful life farming, a family that loves him, and no responsibility to save the world, it’s ripped away from him in For The Man Who Has Everything.

Ultimately, I don’t have a good answer for exactly how he doubles down in JLU S2, because I need to rewatch all of it with this understanding of the character. But I think you can see the shape of a traditional Superman character in there, trying and trying again and again to do the right thing, putting himself on the line - only instead of learning from his experiences and letting them inform his actions, he’s carrying the weight of years of suppressed trauma while trying to hold up the entire Justice League. This long, long run of failure, manipulation, betrayal, and distrust adds up. And there’s only so much weight one person can hold on their shoulders, even if they are a Superman.

(And then as the nice little capstone to his story, in Batman Beyond's The Call, he’s kept under alien mind control for years! With the way Starro clings to his chest, he probably hasn’t been touched in years! Trapped in his own mind, forced to watch as yet another alien species uses him as a tool to hurt his own teammates and invade the Earth! And that’s the last we see of DCAU Clark! What a fun little ending to his character arc that doesn’t make me go insane whenever I think about it. Very very very normal about this.)

#id in alt text #like i said. brainrot. i'm so normal about clark kent #you really do have to like. put this arc together in your own head though. they did NOT put this on screen.#long post #dc meta #DCAU #STAS #JL/JLU #clark kent #my fucking kingdom for a fic where j'onn helps him develop mental shielding against mind control. and also gets him therapy. one day #my writing #<fuck it. putting it in the writing tag so i can find it again #thanks for the ask :^)

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trashlie · 1 year

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FP 224

First things first, if you read this episode when it initially dropped and had no music, please do yourself a favor and go back and reread it again. The music has been uploaded and it is BEAUTIFUL, just.... idk it’s a little haunting, a little playful, but a lot of melancholy! Please go re-read it with your sound on!

To no one’s surprise, I cried a lot, again, and in the subsequent few times I’ve reread it, I keep crying LMAO ;~; The feelings, okay. We’re having a lot of them. I want to shout about so many things but first I gotta protect everyone from spoilers, so let’s go!

I don’t even know where to begin with this one. The absence of Nana thus far was glaring, but until she showed up, I didn’t realize how MUCH Nol - and even we as readers - needed her. Shinae does such a beautiful job of trying to nudge Nol to opening up and trying to talk about his problems, but one of the main issues is that, of course, she just doesn’t get it. She doesn’t understand what Nol’s experience is, and doesn’t know just how deep the darkness goes. But Nana does. And she’s everything Nol needs in a guardian: someone who calls him out on his shit, someone who fiercely loves him, someone who can be honest with him, and someone who can apologize.

This is, by far, the most they’ve ever talked about Nessa, and his surprise that the Lochlain’s had a strained relationship goes to show how little they’ve really talked about her (and how it’s so easy for him to believe that Nana could have been a paid actor). And now that we know about their strained past, it’s understandable why she doesn’t come up more than she has, how difficult it must be to talk about it. This is where I just sobbed and sobbed lol and like!!!! Even trying to write about it!!!!!!

Nana was a single mother (confirmed on a patreon stream) so of course the last things he wanted was for Nessa to continue the cycle, to endure the same hardship. Of course from her view Rand was a terrible partner (if we can even call him that) given his circumstances (y’know, his marriage and living in a different country). Of course she would view this as a terrible idea, so it’s not a surprise that they argued and things left off in a bad way. But to know that there was never any reconciliation, that they never got to make any peace? That hurts SO MUCH. To know that Nessa spent the next years of her life raising Nol alone, with no family contact, before she decided to move to The United States of Asia (lol). There’s just so much grief for what could have been, what should have been, and what never got to be.

It’s no wonder she loves Nol so fiercely, despite everything. Even if she didn’t approve of the way he was brought into this world, the circumstances surrounding his creation, she loves him so much. I think a lot about her line, that not all “mistakes” are terrible - that yes, perhaps Nol was a mistake, that he wasn’t planned, that he was an accident between a married man and his lover, but that doesn’t demean who he is, or make him lesser. She still welcomes and loves him. In a way, she’s his opportunity at a do-over. To Nana, she failed her daughter; she should have tried harder to find her, to get in touch, to make peace instead of be angry. We can assume, too, she was only so angry because she loved her daughter so much and she didn’t want her to go through what she did to raise her. And now they are each others’ only connection to her.

It’s even worse that they live with this knowledge that she took her own life, that they have no reason to suspect otherwise. And frankly, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if finding out otherwise will reopen that wound? Nana has made her own kind of peace - she says Nessa didn’t strike her as the sort to do that, but that it shows we don’t always know what goes on inside someone’s head (does she wonder about Nol, about those darkest corners of his mind?) and in a way, she seems to understand how Nessa would arrive to the decision. She believes it’s something she could have talked her out of it, thus, like Nol, she carries her own burden of guilt, her own belief that by losing contact with her daughter and not trying hard enough to find her, she blew her only chance to save her, lost out on the opportunity to help her find comfort she needed.

So how will they feel if/when they find out that it may not have been suicide at all, that it may have been drugs or murder staged as suicide? When you’ve made a sense of peace, what do you do with all this new grief, when you realize it’s not that she reached such a dark point, but instead, that a witch worked her dark, ugly magic (yes, I saw the How to Banish Witches book [but only after it was pointed out to me lmao])?

Listen it just. It hurts lol it hurts a lot and it’s such a very real thing. Was Nana wrong for being upset with Nessa? Of course not. But unfortunately, none of them are fortune tellers, no one could see what future awaited Nessa should nothing change. There’s so many what if’s and what about’s and none of them matter because the future cannot change, the past has been set in stone, and if you dwell in a pool of what if’s too long, you will surely drown.

Idk, the grief is just. So heavy. And we can see how, in their own ways, they both carry that weight of guilt, but only Nana seems to have found a way to live with t. In Nol she has the opportunity to redo what she failed to, to stay at his side and not let him run away. Even though he doesn’t open up, she knows his past, she knows his awful relationship with his father, she’s watched the way he isolates himself and how he refuses to open up. She knows enough to know that Nol needs her at his side, that he, too, is bound to leave and run away, and it’s her goal to try to stop him. And goddamn, I love her so much for it. I love her so much for her unconditional love of him, for how fiercely defensive she is, for how much she continues to love him even when she can tell he tries to fight it. Where would he be without her? ;~;

Nana also paints us a pretty decent image of who Nessa was, not only in how she describes her, but her own personality. If Nessa was anything like Nana, and I imagine she must have been, she surely was tenacious and headstrong. Nana describes her as a good and honest woman, and while, sure, a mother would very likely talk only highly of her daughter and not describe her in negative ways, we can still see that from Nol, too. After all, he at least spent his formative years with her. He didn’t get his sense of goodness from nowhere. Even though he makes up justifications for why he’s done the things he has - like befriending people he could tell needed help, to put a little joy into their lives - it still stems from his own perceptions of the world, and what it takes to be a good person. After all, his efforts wouldn’t be penance if they didn’t have good intentions.

I think this leaves us with enough to confirm what I’ve felt all along - that Rand and Nessa must have truly loved each other. Nana herself basically says that Nessa wouldn’t fall for someone so cold and stoic as the Rand we know, that she wasn’t chasing money, but instead she saw something no one else has ever seen. Rand is haunted by his mistakes - by his marriage to Yui, by who seems to be an accidental baby, by the loss of Nessa. While he obviously shut down long before her loss, as an effort to give Yui nothing to use against him, keeping his cool so she wouldn’t have the satisfaction of rankling him, I do think the part of Rand Nessa knew and loved died with her. There’s something so profoundly sad about how his two sons are affected by this - one who cannot reconcile with not being good enough, the other who simply believes that man never existed - and how the only person who has ever experienced him is gone.

Not to get on our cycles and parallels, but I think Nessa was able to provide that comfort and safety to Rand, to give him a place where he could let down his walls. Even outside of his marriage, business is a harsh environment, with no room for a goofy clown. But I think away from all of that, in their own little bubble, Nessa was able to draw out that part of Rand, able to love and appreciate him for who he was. To some degree, it makes sense that he turned out this way. It stands to see yet if he met Nessa before or after his marriage, and how that alters my perception of events, but I do think it’s deeply sad that Rand found comfort where he wasn’t supposed to, that his choices haunt him the ways they do. I imagine when he entered his marriage with Yui, he had no idea how she would “turn on him” (I say this loosely because were they ever really on “the same side”?) and had no idea what a prison he was making for himself. Would he have chosen differently if he knew otherwise? Or would hubris have made him believe he could have endured it, that it was worth it for the fortune he’d amass?

Again, what it’s don’t matter, though, because he made his choices and here we are with his incredibly broken (mentally AND now physically) son and the shared grief between a boy and his nana.

When I tell you this shit HURTS me lmao ;A;

But, speaking of family resemblances, I love that panel of Nana musing that maybe she should break Nol’s legs, because it reminded me SO MUCH of that panel in 219 where Nol was talking about mistreating the meat before it became a hamburger. Just. So much family resemblance in those moments!

I could probably talk all night about how much this part of the episode hurt me but, frankly, it’s an episode full of pain so let’s get to it all ;~; lmao

Sigh. Sweet, sweet Dieter ;A; As always, I am proven wrong lmao which is so funny to me somehow. Like, I continue to make guesses that are never right, but in some way, I really enjoy that. Although, well...

I do think that yes, Dieter is very frustrated and upset about finally facing what I think he’s suspected all along, but I don’t think that’s the whole of it, if that makes sense? Like, of course he’s going to be upset, right? Even though he knew better, I’m sure he got his hopes up. Shinae wasn’t just spending time with him as a strictly platonic friend - the whole of their amusement park date, the hand-holding, the way she’s come to start relying on him, the way she was seeking comfort in him. He can’t help but hope it meant that maybe she was starting to like him the way he likes her. Even if he kept telling himself not to get his hopes up, that’s just the nature of feelings. We can’t kept control them, or else life would be so much smoother. And despite his hopes, I think at the back of his mind he knew. Remember when he was asking Minhyuk for tips on how to talk to Shinae, how to have that easy breezy kind of conversation she has with Nol. Dieter was picking up on their chemistry. When he and Soushi found her in the rain, the way he looked at her confirmed that he realized she was so much more torn up about this - not to downplay his own feelings at all, just that there was a reason she was so torn up, it affected her in a different way than it did him, because while Dieter also loves Nol, his feelings don’t border on something else like Shinae’s did.

And in that painful (but honestly, I’m sorry, really hauntingly beautiful) panel of him waking up in the shadows, looking on and watching Shinae and Nol tuck their heads close while listening to the music from her phone, Dieter confirmed something he didn’t want to be true.

And it DOES suck, it DOES hurt, he has every right to be upset about it. But I don’t think he’s upset AT Nol or Nol and Shinae. Not for that, at least. He knows just as well that you can’t control your feelings, because he was the one getting his hopes up after being rejected so cleanly. He was the one who couldn’t help but feel the sparks of hope when Shinae started to get to know him, to rely on him. And that’s what makes it hurt so much. Because she DOES. She says it herself - he’s always there for her, he’s so dependable and comforting, she has no problem seeking solace in him. The way she hugs him when he finds her in the waiting room - Shinae from before would never let anyone see such a vulnerable side of her, and certainly not face-on. But that’s the sum of it. He is the dependable friend, the comforting friend. When Shinae says she can always rely on him, we see Nol’s back - someone she hasn’t been able to rely on, and yet, he’s the one where her feelings have gone to.

It’s not a diss to him by any means. Those ARE things to cherish in a friend, those are things that make someone special. But Dieter wants to be more than that, and it hurts to be relegated into that role. Shinae doesn’t mean to hurt him, either; I think she’s so deep in her feelings she doesn’t realize the way they affect others. There’s no room right now for her to pause and realize that maybe it hurts Dieter, to rely on him this way. That’s not to say I don’t think there’s room for that comfort in their friendship at all - it’s just that he’s going to need that space to heal, to confront his feelings and make peace. Nol noted before that Shiane doesn’t always realize how her words and actions affect Dieter, that even if he said he wanted to be friends, it didn’t mean those feelings had gone away.

Something really interesting to me, actually, is how neither Shinae nor Dieter really address anything - but there’s a mutual understanding about something. Does Shinae realize that Dieter was awake? She must assume he knows something, because she immediately starts in about how stupid she feels about planning anything for Nol, that he’s so stubborn, so she must have some expectation that Dieter understands that Shinae left - and why she did. But it also feels like they’re dancing around it. There’s no acknowledgement that he overheard anything, that he has come to any realizations - and frankly I don’t think Shinae has come to any realizations herself. When she admits she does care, and she wishes that caring alone was enough, I don’t think she’s aware of the difference in how she cares vs how Dieter does.

This is also the most we’ve ever seen this side of Dieter - the closed eyes of deceit, how serious he is, how frustrated he looks. Again, very understandably lol. I feel for him, I really do. Just because I ship what I ship doesn’t mean I don’t have a soft spot for them - and it really hurts! I think it’s ESPECIALLY painful because yes, he HAS gotten his hopes up, YES as he and Shinae grew closer he couldn’t help but become hopeful, but also HE ALSO LOVES NOL. That’s his friend, that’s someone who reached out to him when he was so alone and homesick. He understands what anyone would have seen in Yeonggi, and he understands why, even after Nol hurt them, Shinae can’t let go. Thus, he understands how she would fall for him. But I think what hurts even more is that it’s mutual - that even if he only saw them for that moment, if he went back to pretending to sleep, to trying to ignore them even as he had to sit and listen, he still saw in that moment that same tender intimacy we did. When you consider the version of Yeonggi Dieter has always known, he’s always been a little stand-off-ish, that as open and friendly as he comes across, there’s always been that distance. And to see this very different version of him, the two of them caught in this moment of closeness and shared space, of Nol closing the distance he so often keeps around him. If I were Dieter, I think I’d feel sick to my stomach lol just with the sheer ache of it.

But I think what really has Dieter upset isn’t that he’s “just a friend” and it isn’t that his best friend seems to like the girl he likes and it’s mutual (we cannot forget the sting, that Nol has played wingman to Dieter from the get-go, that he sought every opportunity to help Shinae see something more in Dieter, that it was his every intention truly to draw them together), but rather, I think Dieter is upset about Nol hurting her.

I was originally thinking last episode he was frustrated to see Nol back to the lies, but even Dieter saves face in this episode - and don’t get me wrong, I’m sure that’s part of it, but I think it’s a lot more like.... he knows how hard Shinae is trying. He’s been the one who watched her fall apart, the mess that she became, he’s the one whose been consoling her when Nol continued to ghost them when he wouldn’t offer any explanation. He watched Shinae after they found Nol and sent him off, and the way she, too, took off. How she orchestrated this entire birthday party for him. Dieter is SO aware of HOW MUCH Shinae cares about Nol, the way she reaches out over and over, even though the version of him Dieter knew was a stand-offish girl who kept her guard up high. And despite how much she cares, despite how much she’s reached out, despite how much she’s anguished, Nol still hurts her.

Again, don’t get me wrong. I fully understand Nol, and I especially understand how his growing feelings for Shinae are even scarier for him because of his circumstances - because of not only his past but the truth that everything Nol cares about has been used against him. But Dieter doesn’t know any of this. He just knows that Shinae cares so much about him, and that Nol cannot (or will not) open up, that for whatever reason, he still pushes her (and them) away. And every time he does, it’s him cleaning up the mess, picking up the pieces, offering comfort that doesn’t really put an end to the pain.

And especially now that Dieter’s hopes are dashed, especially now that he sees something that has been under his nose the whole time, it feels a little more bitter, to be the one cleaning up those messes. Shinae wasn’t there to hear Nol’s apology, but she deserves to.

I do think Nol feels regret about what he did - I think he acted out of his need for safety, so I don’t fault for him for it. What I do fault him for is that he is, essentially, playing with Shinae’s feelings, even if he doesn’t men to. He opens up a little, he draws into her a little, but he can’t follow through. And that’s fine! I get it! But she doesn’t. The least he can do is apologize. She probably won’t really understand why he doesn’t want her to see him like this, why it’s so hard for him, and how his weaknesses have always been used against him. But the least he can do is apologize to her face. I think he probably didn’t expect her to leave, either, because when he finally takes off the mask and there’s no one there, he just seems... idk, defeated? Like he expected it but maybe he had hoped JUST A TINY BIT? When he’s playing with Shinae’s headband the entire time he’s talking to Nana, fidgeting with it and doesn’t even realize what he’s doing. When he hangs his head when Dieter returns and reassures him that she’s okay. I think Nol is aware that he’s crossed a different line - that he’s hurt her in a different way. And I can’t blame her, either. Again, she as enjoying that moment so much, and I can’t imagine how much it hurt to realize how alone she was in what she was feeling, how he said he didn’t want to look, didn’t need to.

And I think we can infer that he wasn’t being entirely truthful. He had a literal mask on lol. Of course he must’ve wanted to see, but he couldn’t find the way to explain to her it was that he didn’t want to be seen like this. It’s just such a tragic situation all around, because I fully understand and empathize with everyone. If it was easy, there wouldn’t be a story.

But I can’t help but feel with the three day extension, we’ll see something come of it. Now, again, we know my predictions are rarely right lol, but IDEALLY I’d like to see Nol approach her this time, because he seems to feel some kind of remorse, and I think he acknowledges that Dieter is lying (on Shinae’s behalf) based on the way he hung his head and the sweatdrop. I don’t know if he’s in the headspace or the mental place that he could, but I’d like to see him reach out, if ONLY to apologize that he’s idk what??? too broken to let her see his pieces? Too afraid to be that open? That it’s something he is incapable of doing right now? I don’t think it would solve anything lol I just think he owes it to her, you know? And as much as she’s been the one to reach out to him over and over, I think he owes it to her do to the same, to reassure her that even though it’s difficult for him, she’s still important, it’s just something he needs to work on. I just.... given his circumstances idk if he’s up to it, you know? In his mind, isn’t it better to push her away, safer? Isn’t it better to hurt her a little than for something worse to come?

But at the same time, the emphasis on his feelings remains really heavy. Like, LMAO my guy LITERALLY thought of Shinae and her mouth and just flustered so hard even Nana caught on LMAOOOOOOOOO. When Dieter returned, he hid!!! the bandana AND YET he didn’t even say hey what’s up welcome back or anything just immediately asked him if he bumped into her like. LKAJFKJAFJK MY GUY. PLS. PLS BE MORE OBVIOUS HUH? It’s funny because they are both so concerned about her, and Nol at least has the decency to hang his head, to feel bad that he’s hurt her yet again, after everything she’s done.

Also, again, I just find it so... funny? Maybe in a sardonic way, that Nol is hiding the bandana, acting like he didn’t have a disagreement with Shinae that caused her to leave, but still!!!! Acknowledges it! By asking if he bumped into her!!!! He’s trying to downplay it but in the same breath bringing it up.

So, I just can’t help but feel like they will meet again within the three days. Considering this is now December 22, that time extends to Christmas, and like... idk lol IT JUST FEELS LIKE SOMETHING, RIGHT? I think it would be utterly depressing to end on this note, before he goes away, right? Especially with everything that transpired this night - does Nol really intend to undo everything, to ghost them? I know I am naively hopeful but.... it just feels like there’s some emphasis there?

Of course, people have pointed out that Shinae is surrounded by exit signs, so maybe she will make that choice, but idk, she seemed so resigned to stick with him, to find another way to get through to him, and with that reoccurring emphasis on his feelings (I AM SORRY, I CANNOT GET OVER HIM PICTURING HER AND BLUSHING OVER HER MOUTH LIKE he literally pushed her away and hurt her again and he’s STILL getting flustered over her, she is STILL making a mess of him and SHE DOESN’T EVEN KNOW IT) I wonder if we’ll get to see some kind of.... idk I don’t think they can fully resolve things but just leave on a better note?

Alsonglthere’sthischeesypartofmethatislikegodwouldweactuallygetacheesychristmaskisswouldtheyreallykissbeforethetimeskipisthatpossible?! LKFJKAFJKAFJKAFJKAFJKAFJ LMAOOOO PLS i’m sorry I try to separate the shippy feels and my commentary BUT IT’S JUST RIGHT THERE, ISN’T IT?!

What I DO fully expect is a Nana and Shinae run-in, at long last. I feel like seeing Deter and Soushi leaving is so pointed, with Shinae remaining yet, and we’ve seen twice now Nana clocking his feelings. She knows that there’s another friend she hasn’t met, and she can probably tell based on that short exchange that something happened. Look, Nana is a headstrong woman and I think she’s done a great job of respecting Nol’s privacy, but if she goes out and finds Shinae, I won’t be surprised if she digs in a little, you know? I think, or maybe again this is just what I’d like to see, but I like the idea of Nana being aware that Nol is not an easy boy to be friends with. She knows how he walls himself off, how he shoves himself away. She especially knows that every time his birthday rolls around, he locks himself away, and this is the FIRST TIME he’s ever celebrated his birthday. If nothing else, I think Nana would like to say thank you, because it’s so hard to show Nol how much they care, because it’s so difficult to prove to him that their love is genuine. So many times she’s urged him to be with his friends, to spend time with people who care, so I think she would want to know the people who care so much about him as she does. It’s so hard to care about someone who pushes you away at every turn, but those kinds of people are important.

I also think Nana would just like the kind of person Shinae is - how she’s someone who is so understanding and empathetic, and that even though she’s been hurt over and over, she still tries, she still cares. In the same way she needed a friend so persistent as Nol, he needs that, too, even if in a different way. I just feel like it would be so wonderful for Shinae’s efforts to be acknowledged, because again, it’s just so difficult, but all Nana has wanted is for him to be surrounded by people who care about him ;~; And even though Shinae has made up her mind and decided to stick with him, it would be reassuring to hear it from someone else who loves him and has struggled with being pushed away, who has had to pushback against his efforts to thwart her affection lol.

Maybe it would be the encouragement Shinae needs, and maybe we’d get to see them make up before he leaves. I can hope, okay! I am nothing if full of pointless hope lmao ;~; I just want Nol to apologize! I don’t hope for too much more, because I understand what kind of place he’s in. But I just hope that the emphasis on his feelings is that realization that while he thinks it would be safer to push her away - does he REALLY want to? Does he really want to lose everything? He doesn’t know that Shinae has made up her mind to continue to get through to him, so the fear must exist at the back of his mind - that what if he pushes and one day she decides she’s had enough? Even if it’s what he thinks he wants, could he live with that? Could he bear to lose that?

Something this arc has highlighted is just how much comfort Shinae brings to Nol, through how much she cares about him, through the ways she reaches out to him. Every time he tried to grow that distance between them, she reached out and he faltered. “That won’t stop me from caring.” In the end, he always caves. He always angles back to her, always returns to her. In the end, he continues to care, because of how much she has cared about him.

Shinae showed him what it felt like to be noticed, to be cared about, to have someone reach out to him. Her persistence brought him a sense of peace he didn’t know possible. Before he realized why, he found himself letting his guard down - just a little. And I think he stands at that crossroad: that in his heart he feels like he should push her away and keep that distance, but at the same time, he doesn’t want to, because he wants to indulge in that. It scares him to care about her, because of the danger it puts her in, but I think likewise it scares him to push her away, and lose that.

In this way, they are one and the same. After everything they went through, after all the ways they struggled together and she leaned on him, she doesn’t want to throw away those experiences. Even knowing that he had lied to her, even after feeling betrayal, even when he hurt her and tried to sever those ties, she still couldn’t bear to throw it away, would regret not trying, would regret letting him win. And I think that must be how he feels, too. How do you get a taste of that - of comfort and solace, of feeling those choppy waters calmed, of what it’s like to be cared about, for someone to make you feel special - and go back to what it was before? Doesn’t it hurt more, to have experienced that and have to turn away?

It’s been such a short time, but their relationship is so profound. Anyone can see that. Dieter certainly does. I think Minhyuk is all too aware of it, even if he doesn’t understand it. I’m sure Nana is starting to get the sense of it, too. Can he really continue to turn his back, and to throw it all away to protect her?

GODDDDD I TOLD YOU I JUST HAVE SO MANY FEEEELIIIIIIIIIIINGSSSSSSSSSS and I just feel like the three day extension Means Something. If not, he’d be going right to prison like he’s supposed to. Nana’s arrival, Shinae lingering, the freaking holidays approaching lmao IT MEANS SOMETHING!!!!!!!!

But before we get back to that aaahhhhhhh I’m so excited (and a little nervous) for Hansuke to run the tests he wants! I hope that this is a real friend he can trust, because LOOK his career is LITERALLY ont he line here, and I worry how many people Yui has in her pockets. It’s not just that Hansuke is running tests he was never given practice to do, but this is KOUSUKE HIRAHARA. Whatever they uncover could be HUGE news and if it was leaked back to Yui or they run their mouths..... ugh. I just feel nervous about this one and I’m dying for next week to roll around faster and see if I can put my nerves at ease. Hansuke is a sweet and trusting person, but because he knows how much rides on this, and how important this is to him, I hope that means this is a person who is safe.

But there’s still the question of what do they do with whatever they find out? I have no doubts Yui is going to box Hansuke out, lest he be a reminder to Kousuke of what transpired that night, and also in effort to further make him reliant on her. And in that effort, I’m sure she’ll try to further play up what she started, paint Hansuke as seeing weakness in Kousuke, that he thinks something is wrong with him and that it doesn’t come from a good place. If Hansuke were to tell him the truth, would Kousuke even be able to see it for what it is, or fall for his mother’s set up and think Hansuke is trying to undermine him? How can they get through to Kousuke when Yui has such a tight hold on him? That’s the issue.

I guess there’s an angle that if they do discover that Kousuke’s being drugged, is there a way they can expose it? But I can’t come up with any clever ideas, here. Supposing he’s being drugged, how do you cut him off? And even if you do, would he see the difference in himself? I doubt it - the entirety of the Christmas party we watched Kousuke spiral more and more as his paranoia was heightened, and I don’t think it changed that much. But I like to hope that whatever they discover, they CAN use it to help him - or at least start. Because just as with Nol, this isn’t something that can change over night, and Kousuke, too, needs someone at his side who is persistent in their efforts to reach them and get through. Hansuke is the ONLY person who really has Kousuke’s well-being in mind (let’s not pretend that Yujing cares that much; I’m sure she’s still into this for the scoop, for how it will play into her story. She has a journalistic dedication to the truth, after all).

Every episode is just so FULL, there’s always so much to get into, so many feelings to dissect. I haven’t even touched on the continued insinuation that Rand might have a heart attack (although I do wonder if it was just a simple call back to Rand telling Nol he’s going to give him a heart attack, thus he’s so surprised~ it hasn’t happened). That one just..... ugh stresses me out because as shitty a father as Rand has been, without closure, it would be terrible for him to go, for Nol AND Kousuke. But also, Nol has already lost his mom, there’s already worry that he’ll lose Nana, he can’t lose all his living relatives, that’s just so depressing and dark (though what an interesting parallel to Rand who was an orphan himself and had no family). I just... I can’t fathom that one. I have to hope that if Rand does have a heart attack, it won’t be fatal, because Nol already carries the burden of guilt towards one parent, he can’t bear the weight of another one!

(I also found the callback of Nana talking about breaking Nol’s legs back to Shinae saying something similar back in the day lol. Again, I can’t help but think they will get along SO well and that Nana will love her. Shinae, like Nana described Nessa, is also a really good and honest woman, with so much love and empathy, so spunky and tenacious. I’m not a huge fan of the “Nol is drawn to Shinae because she reminds him of his mother” theories because yelch especially as we see Nol’s feelings for Shinae developing, but I do like the idea that Shinae is the kind of girl Nana would be fond of, that she has the traits she tried to instill in her own daughter, and into Nol. That her goodness and pluckiness would stand out as something so special. We love strong, tenacious women!!!!!!!)

Other things people have pointed out is how much orange is pervasive in this episode, but as we know, that’s not really my realm lmao. I just enjoy what others say about color and its use, and try to nod along lol.

At any rate, this episode absolutely broke my heart in a number of ways, but that sense of hope just remains weirdly persistent, whether it’s just because i am a hopeful person who desperately wants it or because that sense of hope is really there, we’ll have to see next week. I just... idk I can’t help but feel like Nol’s three-day extension will be a benefit to them, that we were all set to think that their one step forward three steps back is how they’d go off. Quimchee likes to keep us on our toes, and I feel like this might be one of those cases - expecting them to part on such sad terms and surprise, that might not be?

AAAHHHHHHHHH WE’LL SEEEEEEE ;A;

Also, hey, if you want to further rip your heart out: on Patreon, Quimchee posted this song as a song she’s had on repeat while working on this episode and initially I’d thought it might be Stalkyoo-related (the whole let you break my heart again) but in retrospect and after talking to @bittrbuttr it definitely feels like Dieter and ;~; MAN THAT HURTS ;~; SOME DAY YOU’LL FIND SOMEONE WHO LIKES YOU AS MUCH AS YOU LIKE HER, DIETER, I PROMISE ;~; YOU’RE A GOOD BEAN AND ONE DAY SOMEONE WILL SEE IT ;~; AAaaaahhhhhhh

ALSO ONE LAST SILLY THOUGHT: I love how Nana also called him Nolan Oliver T. Lochlain? LIKE? DIDN’T SAY WHAT THE T IS. HE DIDN’T SAY WHAT THE T IS. WHAT IS THE T?! WHY DOES NO ONE SAY IT?! LMAO