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leefi · 7 months

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The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere Read-through | Part 8: 100-127 (END)

How did Anna have a contact paradox...how many people is ophelia twinning her infinite feminine energy with...ok my new theory is that everyone is ophelia, except for theo chan, who is currently having the worst acid trip of his life

Su keeps pointing out how Kam had been weirdly reticient to Fang's ideas surrounding the murders basically leading up to the moment of their death. She's maybe mutually noticed something with them, or has privately ruled them out as the culprit. At first I thought they were maybe in cahoots but it doesn't seem to go both ways - but then again Fang was always super in their own head anyway, and kind of acts like a chaotic neutral-good agent (helping the rest of the class but also working to solve the mystery just for the sake of solving it/as an intellectual exercise). I really do think they were familiar with Balthazar to some degree (not necessarily in cahoots, they just know more about his deal than the rest of the class), but don't have much to go off of beyond that. Just wanna mention they were both pseudo-outsiders to the group. Also don’t wanna forget that Balt is primarily connected to Zeno in the first place, and nebulously connected to Utsu. He’s also a thanatomancer just like her.

Su said she can't help but feel as if this whole scenario was made for her. Is this her punishment? But why would she be getting punished?

Balthazar's name means "Bel protect the king". Actually let me look everyone up im curies

Kamrusepa was a goddess of magic and medicine. Go visit the Wikipedia page, the myth she appears in is pretty cool. Her symbol is an iron throne.

Ran: From Japanese 蘭, meaning orchid

Kuroka: From Japanese 黒岡, meaning black hill. thinking abt the story's cover art

Utsushikome was the name of a Japanese empress

Theodoros means divine gift/god’s gift

Ezekiel means strength of god

Seth means annointed, or placed. He was Adam and Eve’s third child, born after Abel’s death to appease the family’s heartbreak

I can’t find for his specific spelling but Bardia means exalted, lofty

theo zeke and seth are all biblical names im assuming. which is an interesting connection considering what the three of them are being accused of right now! bardia isn’t - it’s of persian origin. maybe the 3 of them were in cahoots about killing him together because of brett and the blood gulch. brettdiya

Fang: From Chinese 芳 (fāng), a gender-neutral name meaning "wind, fragrant, virtuous, beautiful". Kam’s name is also apparently associated with air but i could only find it on a google search excerpt. The goddess of medicine thing felt more prescient

Interesting thing I found on Fang’s name Wikipedia page! not implying that this is connected to the story, just wanted to share a cool thing given that this historical figure was an alchemist like them

Our group really did feel small and fragile now-- Down to just eight people. Even with the barrier, it didn't feel completely safe.

genuinely stupefied over how linos is still fucking alive. why haven’t they eaten him yet

I think Fang and the council lied about how long they'd been at the Sanctuary. That would explain why they seemed familiar with Balthazar too - they'd already met in a way that isn't impossible from when they walk into the conference room, announcing themselves. I think Kamrusepa had knowledge of this too - likely due to her position as class head. But why hasn’t she suspected Fang of Vijana’s death then? If she only knew that they agreed to show up, then kept it a secret from everyone else she would’ve tried to fit them into the murder puzzle. No, there’s probably something more she knows about Fang's role in this...

Yeah, Ezekiel was never supposed to meet Balthazar either. Ughhhhh this is making my HEAD HURT. FUCKING WEEKEND AT BALTHAZAR'S

im still laughing over him wearing the sunglassesssss indoors btwww. that was so cunty of him

You are what you are, and you can't be anything else. Right?

Ran of Hoa Trinh I love youuuuuuuu

me: wow i miss fang so much. sometimes i can still read their voice

READ ME

HEY GUYS

me: NOWAY

i spent the first day basically hiding out on my own in neffies room and only snuck out a couple times.

Neffie!!!!!!!!! also this could explain why the group saw nef grabbing a package of food over surveillance and delivering it to her room? but also was fang then the last person to see her alive?

The way Fang describes tls time is reminding me a lot of the Epic of Gilgamesh weird endless looping notepad fanfic where you can shuffle the pages around. Su found it AGES ago and I don’t think it’s been mentioned since. “anyway time in tls is FUCKED UP. it's not even really time at all. it's like if you asked a dumbass how they think time works and then made it that way instead. like ok. imagine you're some asshole god. and you can see that object. the whole 10d universe, everything that has happened+will ever happened etc. and you want something different to happen, but can't make it happen because everything already exists. so instead you grab a 1d point and pull it loose. a single "frame" of reality or something idk. now on its own that's not gonna do much right? but then you break it and make it rebuild itself. so then you have a new frame. bam. tls.”

ahh shit. i'm out of time. assuming i was killed and i'm not showing you this as a joke:

if i was shot from the garden, that means that the culprit doesn't remember the previous loops.

if i was shot from inside the room, that means they do.

AWAAYWAWYAWAWYAYW A GETS UP AND RUNS AROUND THE ROOM IN CIRCLES AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND

Su was pretty sure that the shot came from outside, and her memory is supposed to be the most reliable, like how Ptolema’s observations are. I don't think she'd emphasize it in her internal narration twice unless Lurina wanted to stress it

Does it even matter who the culprit is? Could the culprit already be dead??? RAHHHHHHHH

"It sounds more like you just don't want it to be true," Ezekiel observed. He seemed strangely resigned, like he'd already accepted the idea, though I couldn't say why that was the case.

its because he went up to bal's crazy funtime room and achieved enlightenment

Does granddad know that kuroka became shiko. I'm not talking about the dementia. I mean we saw him being against the idea and then Samium may have acted independently. But also Sami seemed to have been ignoring Kuroka completely. How does she fit into this puzzle? What did Su say, that they needed someone Shiko knew?

When she says she and granddad are really alike...maybe she means in comparison that Wen is his lost person and Shiko is hers. And they're both grasping for something they'll never have again

WHYW HW THEO CHAN IS ON THE STAGE????? REVUEDOROS???????????

oooh director and playwright treat specific scenes or character actions with probability...how inch resting

PTOLEMA BEING THE FIRST TO DETECT SOMETHING IS OFF WITH THE PLAYWRIGHT/DIRECTOR FOURTH WALL BREAK. SWEEP SWEEP SWEEP SWEEP SWEEP!!! SHE'S A SAVANT!

Joshi…hmm…modernized anima scripting…. HEIGHT SCRIPTING?

YOU CAN PLASTIC SURGERY YOUR HEIGHT NOW!!! SWEEEEEEEEEPPPP. also what is joshis blood type and culinary notes. i need it for my research

Su says the name is familiar but i'm confident we've never heard it before. how am i so sure? well it's all thanks to my beautiful gorgeous mind (i quote searched it on google) (ran also clarifies like 3 lines later but i didn’t see it because i was too busy quote searching on google)

Is this bioenclosure the same case as the pantry? anomalous to the time loops, kept more preserved thanks to the previous experiments they ran on it?

I climbed the stairs, and there she was at last, standing at the rear wall

PLAYWRIGHT: Ack, no! That doesn't work for this scenario! Switch it over to the alternative!

DIRECTOR: <sighing> Very well...

sorry that was me. but i got shy

THE IRON PRINCE STUFF. HUH

A MIND TRANSFERRED TO A MACHINE OF IRON…HUHHHHHH

Would putting someone’s mind in that kind of machine turn them into an invincible god? Like they’d have limitless connection to the power. Is that the key to immortality? Ok they clarify this in like 5 lines cool. Is that what the Order was trying to do in erasing themselves? Give themselves godlike powers then dip? Unmmn My brain feels like mush and baby im stirring that pot

They'd covered the sun in photovoltaic panels, and built minds for themselves as vast as oceans, where they could rule over their own artificial realities like gods. The rest of the human population lived and died by their leave, either as specks of detritus on Earth and the smaller colonies spread about the solar system and its close neighbors, or in a lesser state of transcendence within their domains. It was paradise and hell at once. All progress ground to a halt, and the distinction between real and unreal ceased to matter.

this literally happened in cookie clicker

ANNA???????????

WHAT

???

HUH??????

UHHHHHHHH

Sure. That might as well have happened

I don't think the timeloop explains Bal's knowledge of Su's past, which is how she just tried to rationalize it ...that seems totally separate. What did he call himself? a parasite to their group

Zeno thought Su was someone else...Bal is a close relation of one of Zeno's friends...RRRRRRRRR

watching kam sweep linos with this interrogation is so bonkers!!! go girlboss go!!!!!

Even at a time like this, I appreciated Kam's apparent willingness to become a huge hypocrite on my behalf.

kamsu 💖sweep forever

Personal matter. I'd overlooked the significance of that phrase. When you set aside the rest, that made it sound like the reason he'd been swayed had been something private and embarrassing. What kind of 'projects' did people have that were personal and embarrassing, and involved much younger men? The only ideas which came to mind felt more like a product of me being a pervert than anything, even if Zeno had made insinuations during our conversation.

Plus, when I'd asked Zeno about Balthazar, he'd told me he was here as part of a favor to an old friend. That didn't connect with what Neferuaten had said at all - so was it just an outright lie?

I think Bal is related to Sami…I have this feeling…ok so Zeno, their sponsor, is a neuromancer right. That’s the closest modern day equivalent to Samium’s pneumancy…so they could’ve worked closely together. That doesn’t really explain the embarrassing personal project though…What did nef say again?

"Everyone was part of the plan from the start," Ezekiel insisted, ignoring Seth's anger. "Not just Theodoros, but Bardiya, too. That's why you saw his room in the state it was earlier in the night-- He'd been upset about the whole thing, and drunk himself half to death."

LIAR! BROTHER BARDI DOESN’T DRINK. IT’S IN HIS CULINARY NOTE! kicks him down the stairs

idk about this culprit theo theory kam. I’m at the point where I can buy him doing something for bard’s death but swaying everything??? no wayyyy he’s simply too obvies and sweaty about it. but i could listen to you play murder mystery chicken with su all day long so please keep going

"Fine," she replies, with a flat look. "I will concede we cannot completely rule out a nude suicide attack from Balthazar

this is my nomination for best line in the story so far. runner up is wheres the elevator

taking a shot every time utsushiko says “you’re just fucking guessing!!!!” and kam replies “but my dear sweet precious trembling submissive prey animal of a classmate it is SUSPICIOUS 🤨☝️” and you find me dead at the bottom of a stairwell

"I'll tell you what almost certainly happened," KAMRUSEPA continues. "When we met with Bardiya, his room was in a terrible state. It looked as though he'd been drinking, and though he did a good job carrying his regular dignity, he was most likely inebriated to some degree, leaving

RAHHHHHHHHHH kicks her down the same set of stairs that im dead at the bottom of but Ezekiel’s body is suspiciously absent

So Bardiya was like…in a fit? In a haze? Was there a struggle in his room???? Why?

Why do Kamsu not realize the world has come to a standstill to listen to them talk. My answer to that is: the unstoppable tide of yuri

SORRY BOYS, this is YURI WORLD now and we’re taking PTOLEMA HOSTAGE

"What of it? Life precludes everything! I won't apologize for wanting to live above all else!" She brushes her curly ginger hair from her face, her expression growing serious as she stares at UTSUSHIKOME. "I know you're the same as me at your core, Su. You think I can't see it? It's why we get along so well in the first place. You do a good job of acting like a person with normal ethics, and sometimes your neurosis keeps you from acting when you know you should. But deep down, you're someone who would do anything to attain your desires. You'd even betray the entire world."

The kamsu is actually making me go fucking crazy. This is insane. THIS IS INSANEEEEEEE. ILL DO WHAT YOU LACK THE COURAGE FOR FOR BOTH OF OUR SAKES!!!

Su voice: we get along?

𒊹𒊹𒊹utsushikome: But I guess it couldn't have happened any other way. Pieces move according to the rules of the game. I am who I am, and I can't be anything else. <;smiling bitterly>

SHE’S QUOTING RAANNNNNNNN

did they just say deliberate assimilation failure

"It's not self-indulgent!" Samium declared. His tone was defensive, but it was clear it wasn't for himself. At this point he was obviously upset, a subtle tremble in his tone. "It's for Wen's sake! To give her another chance in this world, even in spite of everything!"

The parallels to Kuroka and Utushikome. I’m seeing them. Also sam i am definitely fucked that old man

This was such a shit garbage world. To have let this happen to Kuroka and so many other children. 200 years of peace and prosperity? more like 200 years of. Not that

Maybe Kuroka’s love of horror is part of the reason why she feels this punishment was designed especially for her. It’s like it’s tailor made to watch her suffer.

This yaoi between Samium and Gpa is going somewhere I can’t follow. You’re discussing KILLING A CHILD???? and you have NO HANGUPS???? They’re insane

In the midst of this, someone manages to throw a grenade in the air; they must have been carrying it since the visit to the armory.

There is only one cunt I know of who was hyperfixated on the grenades and they r not alive rn

I stared down into my cup listlessly, my hands trembling slightly as conflicting strands of thought shot through my mind. I cleared my throat hoarsely, almost like I was choking.

"...t-they tricked me," I told her, my voice feeble.

She was just talking about how she usually exaggerated how badly people were treating her to make sure they got in trouble.

Why does she keep calling her old body defective? Is it because she didn’t get pre-natal distinction treatment? Is there a disability we haven’t seen?

SHE’S RETELLING THE DEMON STORY FROM THE CARRIAGE RIDE WITH RAN??????? FRIM HER SPELEOSOEDITCIE (<-PERSPECTIVE)? BARKS

Do you remember the acclimation journal that I keep? The day number I wrote in it was 4412. If you count backwards from the first day of the conclave,

babygirl i was not going to do that

When she thought we were researching Induction in mutual ignorance during those first weeks, scouring old books and the logic sea for information, I was just working up the courage to talk to Samium's contact. When I told her I discovered my original body was dead, that was no revelation at all; Samium had informed me in advance exactly what the process was going to entail and how it'd be disposed of, and I even lied to her about the details, saying that it had been physically discovered rather than the truth, which was that Samium took it somewhere far away from the city and discreetly disintegrated it.

…

It was because I wanted to employ her as a tool to soothe my guilt.

it has literally never been more over than it is right now

she took 12 years of ran’s life. ran didn’t want to go into medicine. if someone made me go into medicine what I’d do to them could not be publically shared on the internet

through all these insane revelations I have just one thing to say. I cannot fucking believe that Kam was right about Theo

diversity win! the girl whose life and body you just stole might be bi!

These last chapters have actually been giving me a headache. I feel violated. Kudos to the author!

God everything she did made sense and the way her mentality was described was so so so perfect. I can’t believe it took 127 chapters to realize just how much of an antihero she is. She really let us believe that most of her self loathing was just some kind of self flagellation, but she was right. She really is as wicked and pathetic and awful as she claims. But the world failed her so so so so so many times, and then once it finally granted her a miracle, she threw it away.

Kam getting a double kill in the span of 5 minutes is making mejdjrjrjsjjsjsjdjdjdjdhhfrbfjjf. thank you Lurina for granting us the COD lobby i so dearly wished for

Bal says he thought someone could be saved by love…Sami was trying to save Su’s grandpa by bringing Wen back…Their manner of speech is similar to someone we’ve heard speak several times in flashbacks now…I feel fucking stupid even suggesting it but could Bal and Samium be the same person? How would that even work because they’re both alive and existing in the same place at the same time?

It would be so delicious if Su was dying for this chance to speak to Samium this entire time and she did. Like 3 times. While he was reading magazines

Also they’re a thanatomancer like su…i feel like if he were a neuromancer I’d be bouncing off the walls with this theory right now but it’s just my brain trying to make connections rn

Samium’s zeal towards this wen mission made me wonder if his conviction went beyond old man yaoi to a personal goal, especially after his call with autonoe. But then he actually dropped it after gpa said not to go through with it so. I guess he really is just super gay?

What would happen to Su if you put her in the Apega(?) machine?. Would she just revert to a younger combo of Shiko&Kuroka, would she maybe revert to younger Shiko only…like, could that be the way to kill Kuroka and restore Shiko?

So Su is Utsushikome and Kuroka simultaneously. A fusion of them. And Su also looks exactly like Wen, someone dear to gdad from before the collapse. So Su is like. 4 different identities at the same time - kuro chan, utsu, su (amalgamation), wen

And ran was literally forced to go into medicine

Zeno asks Seth where the world is. Seth is confused. Zeno’s answer is essentially “what you make of it”/in your mind/yours to mold. The world is a copy of something long dead. The protag is a copy of someone long dead. The narrative’s actors’ fixation on immortality…accompanied in tandem with the obsession with things long dead…absolutely tubular

Anyway here are screencaps of the lines that made my brain melt:

#my head is pounding. and i feel sick 😁👍#tftbn #*** was literally ****** to go into ********.

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