So fucking glad to see someone talk about SSS Class revival hunter 😭 I lived it so much and I feel like no one ever mentions it against more popular titles like ORV or even The Lout of the counts family, so I'm so glad to come here and see your amazing takes :>
Thank you for the ask which lets me talk about SSSCRH (the version I read was titled 'Suicide Hunter', which tbh I like more - no beating around the bush).
It's hard to draw an accurate comparison since I'm going off just the webtoon for SSSCRH, while I'm going off both the webtoon and the webnovel for ORV. And I love ORV, ORV is my media blorbo right now, it hydraulic presses my brain, I am writing ORV fanfic - it's, like, funner to enjoy. But SSSRH is just better. In the vast majority of ways it is is better. It's better than the holy trinity by a wide margin. TW talk of suicide obviously.
I can't believe I'm saying this but you need a basic understanding of Buddhism in order to understand SSSCRH. It's not about Gongja's suicides - he doesn't suicide from depression or lack of self-esteem. SSSCRH is about suffering in the Buddhist sense - dukkha. I don't want to make this an essay, so I might reblog this with more information, but extremely shortly:
The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism is the truth of suffering, the truth of the cause of suffering, the truth of the end of suffering, and the truth of the path that leads to the end of suffering. You've heard that Buddhists say 'life is suffering'. To put it one way that doesn't require defining a lot of words: the cause of suffering is experiencing the world as we percieve it instead of how it truly is. Suffering isn't just being miserable and in pain, and life isn't suffering because life sucks and global warming exists and people voted for Trump. Life is suffering because we can experience beautiful and joyful moments in this world, but we do not exist in the moment of that happiness or place our ego/'self' between us and that happiness. Living in that moment, accepting the moment as it is unconditionally, is freedom from suffering. The Buddha tries to free people from suffering through teaching Buddhism.
"What does this have to do with the webnovel and manwha about a guy murdering himself thousands of times" it has everything to do with it. Because SSSCRH is about suffering, and it is about using suffering as a tool in order to experience a world unfiltered by ego and break down the artificial boundaries between human beings. Suffering in SSSCRH is not a bad thing. Gongja has the unique capability to (reincarnate.) experience a person's suffering in unity with them, which dissolves the delusion of separation between people and puts us in touch with the reality of oneness.
The Murim arc was fucking insane because Gongja pulls a Big Bodhisattva Move and walks through the suffering of the world in order to achieve full understanding of the human experience. He takes all of the suffering of the world into himself and is liberated. You can tell it's Buddhist because death was not presented as a bad thing - death was an aspect of a happy ending for the Heavenly Demon lady, because she was finishing her life according to her own joy, and because her teachings were passed on she did not truly die.
But the purpose of embracing suffering is to discover the ability to fully embrace life, and that's where Heavenly Demon's teachings were incomplete - as the ghost dude said, Gongja hasn't even experienced his own full life and the infinite capability for his own happiness. You can only feel the depths of sadness when you've felt the depths of happiness. Sadness deserves its place in the world and it can strengthen you, but so does happiness.
Gongja is attention-seeking, envious, and unbelievably petty. When he drills down into his own desires and why he wants the things he wants, you see that he has a very strong sense of justice and right and wrong - he realizes he doesn't want to be famous, he wants to be acknowledged, but on an even deeper level he is desperate for love and to be loved. Everything he does is to experience love, and as such he learns to love others. His love for the Flamey Asshole was purely parasocial and ego-filled, with no concern for who he was as a human. Throughout the manwha, he grows to care for people as they truly are and pierce through any delusions or misleading outward appearances. He has released all attachment to life and death, and as such does not fear death, and as such has taken a step on the road towards becoming a Boddhisatva who frees others from the cycle of samsara, and as a result has learned sick sword techniques and is sooo good at beating people up.
I think the only other thing I want to mention here because otherwise this is an essay: in almost every time loop/regression story, only the final regression matters. In stories with dungeon monsters and NPCs, only the humans matter. The regressor exists in a space where there are no consequences for their actions, so they act terribly and do whatever because none of it matters. In Groundhog Day Bill Murray acts like an asshole because he can. That's not the case here. Everything Gongja does matters. The NPCs are fake, but Gongja never treats them as anything less than real people who deserve life. Once he understands a person's life he never treats them as unimportant. No loop is thrown away and no person or life is disregarded. His choices matter, the way he treats others matters, and Gongja never treats anybody as if they don't matter except for himself.
That was not short. There is a lot more. The female characters are so good and so rich. From a craft perspective it is excellently paced and has a wonderful sense of set-up/payoff and balances tone and maintains a lot of momentum, which is really hard in a time loop story. You have to do a few very specific things to write OP characters well and SSSCRH does it very well. There's more to say from a craft perspective and it's hard to judge accurately from a webtoon but it's good. I was so strangely struck the entire time about how sincere and genuine it was, how it said what it said with no trace of irony of confusion, and I think that's what stuck with me the most.
TL;DR: SSS Class Revival Hunter is good for a lot of very normal reasons, such as excellent pacing and set-up/pay off and characters, but it's also so sincerely and genuinely Buddhist that it blew my tits clean off.
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Can we talk about The Dying Swan moment in Coda? As someone who was once a very serious ballerina, I need to talk about the Dying Swan. Here's your context --
CHAKOTAY: Harry's clarinet solo was okay. I could have done without Tuvok's reading of Vulcan poetry. But the highlight of the evening was definitely Kathryn Janeway portraying the Dying Swan.
JANEWAY: I learned that dance when I was six years old. I assure you, it was the hit of the Beginning Ballet class.
Have you seen The Dying Swan? It is dramatic.
Here, take a minute:
First of all, this dance is much too advanced for a six-year-old, even if they’re doing it in demi pointe. (Six-year-olds emphatically should not be in pointe shoes btw.) The dance is almost entirely bourees and arm movements done to very subtle musical cues, not the foundational ballet moves typically taught in Beginning Ballet.
This is a very vulnerable, dramatic dance that is effective because of its subtleties. The performer would need to embody that vulnerability in some way for a convincing performance. It's short, but it's a solo piece -- all eyes on you. I mean, it was choreographed for a prima ballerina, BUT THAT'S NOT MY POINT
Can you imagine our unflappable Captain Janeway willingly getting in front of her crew to do this ballet? I get that it’s thematically relevant to the plot of Coda, but since Janeway is only vulnerable in front of her crew when it means putting herself in harm’s way, it seems like a wild decision. She tends to hold herself apart from her crew, maintaining the professional distance of the captain. Further, when she does any creative pursuit, it is almost always in private, since her sister was the artist in the family and she was the scientist. As a captain, she commands Voyager in a much different way than she would as a dancer with this piece. I'm not saying she never shows vulnerability because she definitely does, but not necessarily in this way. Then when she talks about it with Chakotay, she just casually brushes it off with a laugh like no big deal.
There’s also the question of costume – would she have gone full tutu? Done it in her Starfleet uniform? An impeccable yet flow-y white suit? She does get into costume and command a performance in Bride of Chaotica!, but Coda is still kind of early days for our captain. Arachnia aligns more with what we know about Janeway's character.
Granted, it is Chakotay laying down these complements about her dancing ability and he is clearly biased. To be fair, Neelix does too before they leave in the shuttle. If she did this dance and performed it poorly or amazingly, I feel like the crew would look at her a bit differently afterwards.
Canonically she did The Dying Swan, but I certainly have trouble picturing it happening.
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I think one of the key things for any relationship is to discover what your needs are.
Because otherwise you’re going to try and meet those needs in ways that aren’t entirely conscious to you.
Everybody has a need for passion, love, understanding, physical closeness etc. but we all find different ways of meeting that need.
And the most straightforward answer is to find a relationship.
However for those of us with emotional trauma it’s not really always easy or straightforward to find and build a relationship. And honestly that’s not always the priority for everybody anyhow.
The need for passion, love, and intensity can outweigh the need for a long lasting connection, especially when dealing with people who are suffering from trauma or living a life where they constantly feel anxious or overwhelmed.
And of course because a long lasting and intimate connection with someone else can just be a scary thing, especially when trauma or other factors have left you unsure about your connection with yourself.
However the thing is, the solution is not really looking for a causal relationship either. If your need is true passion and investment, whether you admit it to themselves or not, you are placing actual stakes on how things are going to work out and you would be personally hurt if you ever if you were to feel used like just another causal fling.
This is especially true with those who have attachment issues or abandonment issues, because unlike securely attached people who can just walk away, unresolved attachment issues can latch you onto someone even if you hardly know them.
So realizing it or not, it is kind of like a gamble that either things will just work out together in the long run, or that by the time the relationship runs it’s course, that having that passion love and understanding will have left you in a more resourced place where you will not only be able to handle the emotions of separating, but will also be left in a more emotionally secure place that is better then where you started.
And that’s not entirely untrue. Having someone compassionate who truly cares about you can really help you boost your mental health, and if you really work at it while you have those additional resources they are giving you through their care, you can heal yourself and build that emotionally security from within.
But really the therapist answer would be to look for friends, social supports, healthy communities, groups you belong to etc. to use as additional resources to help you heal and build that emotionally security.
And in fairness, the way society is set up doesn’t really make it easy to build a social support group and it’s not always a bad idea to just get to know someone and see where things naturally go.
But it can be more reckless and unsafe. By putting heavy emphasis on passion too early on in a relationship, your risk opening up yourself to someone toxic or not good for you or in the worst case outright abusive.
And this is why it’s important to know your needs, because if you try and meet them in a way that feels familiar to your childhood trauma, it can be a recipe for disaster if you are unconsciously trying to recreate an unsafe environment.
So regardless of what you do I emphasis learning more about yourself, slowing things down, and seeing how you feel at each step. See if past traumas get brought up, if attachment issues start acting up, if what you are feeling is limerence or true connection, if you are considering your own needs in the relationship, if you are voicing those needs in a healthy manner, if you are staying true to yourself or if you are “fawning”.
And it’s not that I want to scare people off from finding connections or meeting new people, I just think it’s really important to understand your needs in a way that you can confident in yourself and confident enough in the relationship to move forward.
And confident enough to objectively consider losing the relationship, confident enough to objectively decide what kind of relationship it is that you want (considering your own needs and not someone else’s), and confident to walk away if that is what is best for you.
So try and volunteer somewhere, join clubs, slowly let yourself be more social to be build that social safety net, and yes please take risks. At some point you will have to address your own vulnerability and that means risking yourself.
And this post is already a lot so the last thing I will stress is just how important it is to understand your own vulnerability so you don’t unintentionally make yourself more vulnerable than you intend to. A lot times when people aren’t comfortable being vulnerable but want to try to be, they can overextend and be more vulnerable than they intend to. And here’s a good video to learn about that.
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