#lots of musings here

[thesovereignsring-if]

1. How would the Ro's and Mc's brothers react to Mc going cold and distant.

(after their Aunt's death if is not spoilers)

2. How would the Ro's react to Mc ruling like a "tyrant" in reality their just a very good and just ruler but absolutely merciless to their enemies

(and anyone who disrespects their dearly departed aunt).

(Their cousin and pretty much everyone walking on eggshells everyday trying not to get on Mc's bad side since the whole Sins of the Father card gets you a one way trip to the dungeons or the torture chamber).

(just break their bones but let them live they say)

This ask is hard to answer without spoilers, but I will say that are certain characters in the cast who detest tyrants, even those with good intentions. How to you deal with your enemies/desenters will color your character as much as being kind to your allies.

How far can you justify cruelty? Your biggest enemy in the game will be your family. How far will you go against the law for your own means? How far will you go to punish someone with good intentions, but ambitions/ideology that go completely against yours? Would cruel punishments be warranted in that case as well?

Some characters/RO(s) will may to justify cruelty and ruthless for a better cause, but even they have their limits. Especially when there are better options involved.

I haven't decided on how ruthless/cruel you can be, but if you guys want to go that route, all I'm going to say (for now) is watch who you sleep next to. Your reign might be short in the end.

[tofixtheshadows]

Id love to hear ur interpretation and analysis on falin! She’s one of my favorite characters and and I was wondering what ur thoughts on her are

Man, I struggle to think of anything I could say about Falin that others have not already said. But she's one of my favorite things about Dungeon Meshi too.

So much of the story revolves around Falin, and she's not even there. Tumblr loves to talk about haunting the narrative, but Falin might be one of the best examples of it ever put to page. She's dead. She's alive. She's dead. She's alive. She's alive but she's missing, she's alive but she isn't herself. She's dead but she might wake. She's dead but she's frozen in ice. She's alive but she's sleepwalking. They chase her ghost and they chase her body all through the story.

I think what Kui does with her is fascinating. Not just as character with a personality we can analyze, but as an object in a narrative- that's why I say she's one of my favorite things about the story, because I also mean it in a mechanical sense. As a writer, Kui's really good at misdirection- that is, setting you up to believe or expect something about a character or a plot, and then turning that on its head. It's most apparent with Kabru, but it works really well with Falin too.

Because the precious little sister is a very well known character archetype, right? So is the gentle healer. The heart of the party. The white mage girl. The damsel in distress. The martyr.

And this isn't a Laura Palmer situation, where we find out that beneath her wholesome surface there's something dark and troubled. No, Falin truly is a kind and gentle person. That isn't where the misdirection leads (and that, too, I think, is another misdirection- it's not "Plot twist, she isn't as nice as you thought!", which would almost be too easy).

The misdirection here is more about structure than about character (but also, yeah- a little about character).

What I mean is, with these archetypes firmly in mind, along with a whole other host of fantasy genre expectations, I think anyone who goes into Dungeon Meshi un-spoiled probably expects Falin's rescue to be an endgame event; at least on a subconscious level, where you're not really thinking about it but in the back of your head you're already stretching out the story to place Falin firmly in the distance. Fire breathing dragon at the bottom of the dungeon is perfect final boss material, right? Slay the dragon. Rescue the princess.

And Falin is the perfect prize in the traditional old school fantasy that the concept of the titular dungeon is a send-up to. Blonde (white), soft-spoken, sweet-natured, beloved by everyone. An angelic figure.

Maybe that's why Ryoko Kui gave her white wings.

It is sort of jarring when chapter 23 rolls around and it's already time to fight the red dragon. And it takes a few chapters, but they succeed. And then Falin's impossible resurrection succeeds. But by then you guess that this is not going to be the story you expected it to be.

I want to point out that Falin spends a lot of time getting, well, babied, post-resurrection. Marcille washes her in the bath, despite Falin stating that she's capable of washing herself. Marcille schools her about her mana use despite Falin demonstrating that she is not hurting for mana, and brushes aside Falin's explanations. Both Marcille and Laios refuse to actually tell her what happened. Laios scruffs up her hair like she's a little kid and scolds her for something she can't remember doing. Marcille explicitly calls her a little kid when Falin tries to talk about how much she's grown.

Of course I'm not saying that Laios was wrong to act like a big brother, or that Marcille shouldn't be worried about taking care of her shell-shocked friend in the bath. But the framing of it clearly shows a Falin who is struggling to be heard.

If you'd like to address the big gay elephant in the room while we're here, I want to state for the record that- whether you read her as gay or not -I think Marcille is completely oblivious during this. Because Falin is her little friend from school. Her best friend, yes, but also the young tallman student she, in her infinite elven wisdom, had to mentor and look after. Marcille has not yet accepted that Falin is an adult now, nor has she accepted that she, herself, is only barely past teenagerhood developmentally and is not nearly as mature as she believes. Of course she'd scrub Falin in the bath and fuss over her.

Falin, meanwhile, seems more than aware of her own adult body and the inappropriate way Marcille is treating it.

The mana-sharing scene is, I think, Falin trying to get a little of her own back. How do you like it, Marcille?

And she tries again in bed.

Maybe she's wondering if their relationship will change now that they're grown ups. If Marcille prefers her as a little girl, or at least as a woman who lets herself be guided like one; if Marcille will react badly if Falin keeps trying to assert herself. She also might be subtly trying to signal to Marcille that bed sharing, like bathing, carries a different weight to it when you do it as adults rather than as children.

With all this in mind, the decision to turn Falin from the precious prize they rescued into to the vicious dragon they have to slay, hits a lot harder.

Falin with a powerful, monstrous, destructive body. Falin, who couldn't even stand to cause people pain from using healing spells, slaughtering half a dozen people in brutal ways. And that's not her, she's being mind-controlled, but as an object in the story she has completely flipped. From damsel to threat.

And I love that she carries a little bit of that with her when she's resurrected again.

Because she's no longer the girl who's going to let herself be stifled by her brother's and her best friend's co-dependency, no matter how much she loves them. She's different now: stronger, eyes open, forging her own path instead of following in their wake. Falin is still going to come back to them again, but this time it won't be because they chased her. It'll be because they let her go.

[invinciblerodent]

This is going to be very ranty and disjointed, probably borderline incomprehensible post, but with the "return" of Dragon Age Discourse (and really, did it ever go anywhere?) and me repeatedly seeing the complaints and dismissals of DA:I as a "chosen one"-type of a narrative, I just.... I keep finding myself thinking about the relationship of truth and lies within the game.

Throughout the course of DA:I, the idea of a malleable, flexible personal identity, and a painful confrontation with an uncomfortable truth replacing a soothing falsehood, follows pretty much every character throughout their respective arcs.

There are some more obvious ones, Solas, Blackwall, The Iron Bull, their identities and deceptions (of both those around them and themselves) are clearly front and center in the stories told about them, but this theme of deception (both of the self- and the outside world) is clearly present in the stories of the others as well.

Like, for example, ones that come immediately to mind are stories like that of Cullen, who presents an image of a composed and disciplined military man, a commander- all to hide the desperate and traumatized addict that he sees himself as.

Dorian grappled with the expectations of presenting the image of the perfect heir to his father's legacy, the prideful scion of his house, his entire life (he even introduces himself as the result of "careful breeding", like one might speak about a prized horse)- all while knowing that his family would rather see him lobotomized and obedient, than anything even just resembling his vibrant and passionate self.

Cassandra calls herself a Seeker of Truth, and takes pride in that identity- only to learn that in reality, she has been made a liar, a keeper of secrets, without her knowledge or consent, and it is up to her to either uproot the entire organization and painfully cut out the abscess it is to build it back from the ground up into something respectable, or let the information she had revealed sit, and continue to fester.

And this theme continues and reframes itself in, among others, things like Sera's own inner conflict between her elven heritage and her human upbringing, or in Cole being caught in this unconscionable space in-between human and spirit, between person and concept, etc.

The Inquisitor isn't exempt from this either.

I feel like this is where the core of the many misunderstandings of this plot come from, why so many people continue to believe that Inquisition is a "chosen one" or "divinely appointed" type of story, because I think many might just... not realize, that the protagonist's identity is also malleable, and what they are told in the setup/first act of the game is not necessarily the truth.

The tale of the Inquisitor is the exact opposite of that of a "chosen one" story: it's an examination and reflection of the trope, in that it is the story of an assumption that all wrongly believe to be the truth, and thrust upon you, even if you protest. The very point is that no matter who you choose to say that you are, you will be known as the Herald of a prophet you don't even necessarily believe in, and then that belief will be proven wrong, leaving you to cope with either a devastating disappointment if you believed it, or a bitter kind of vindication if you didn't.

There's a moment just after Here Lies the Abyss (when you learn of the lie you've been fed your entire journey in the game) that I don't often see mentioned, but I think it's one of the most emotionally impactful character moments, if you are playing an Andrastian Inquisitor who had actually believed themselves chosen (which I realize is a rather unpopular pick, lol): it's when Ser Ruth, a Grey Warden, realizes what she had done and is horrified by her own deeds, and turns herself in asking to be tried for the murder of another of her order. As far as she is concerned, she had spilled blood for power, and regardless of whether she was acting of her own volition at the time, whether she had agency in the moment, is irrelevant to her: she seeks no absolution, but willingly submits to any punishment you see fit.

And only if you play as an Inquisitor who, through prior dialogue choices, had established themselves as a devout Andrastian, can you offer her forgiveness, for a deed that was objectively not her fault- not really.

You can, in Andraste's name, forgive her- even though you, at that point, know that you have no real right to do so. That you're not Andraste's Herald, that Andraste may or may not even exist, and that you can't grant anyone "divine forgiveness", because you, yourself, don't have a drop of divinity within you. You know that you were no more than an unlucky idiot who stumbled their way into meddling with forces beyond their ken.

You know you're a fraud. You know. The game forces you to realize, as it slowly drip-drip-drips the memories knocked loose by the blast back into your head, that what all have been telling you that you are up to this point, is false. And yet, you can still choose to keep up the lie, and tell this woman who stands in front of you with blood on her hands and tears in her eyes, that you, with authority you don't have, grant her forgiveness for a crime that wasn't hers to commit.

Because it's the right thing to do. Because to lie to Ser Ruth is far kinder than anything else you could possibly do to her, short of refusing to make a decision altogether.

There are any number of criticisms of this game that I can accept (I may or may not agree depending on what it is, but I'm from the school of thought that any interpretation can be equally valid as long as there's text that supports it, and no text that contradicts it), but I will always continue to uphold that the Inquisitor is absolutely not- and never was a "chosen one".

They're just as small, and sad, and lost, as all the other protagonists- the only difference is that they didn't need to fight for their mantle, because instead of a symbol of honor, it acted as a straitjacket.

[loopnoid]

whos this guy

[relicsongmel]

AA fandom has a strange tendency to pretend like Ema's canon crush on Miles doesn't exist (at least from what I've seen) but none of you will ever be able to convince me that Ema doesn't have dozens of Miles Edgeworth x Reader fics on her AO3. You only hate me because you know I'm right

[everythingloveandanimated]

Something that I’d like to see in future book is Eragon realizing just how afraid Murtagh is of other people.

He never forgets that Morzan is Murtagh’s father, but he also knows that Murtagh is so much more than his parentage. He will do everything he can to remind Murtagh of this truth.

Eragon is also aware of how the denizens of Alagaesia feel about Murtagh and Thorn. Hostility at best, desiring to cause physical harm or death at worst.

He remembers Murtagh’s resistance towards going to the Varden, and probably expects some of that same resistance when he mentions Carvahall.

But then he realizes, it’s not just doubt or regret or belief that people will only see him as his father’s spawn, and the evil lieutenant of Galbatorix who betrayed the Varden.

No, Murtagh is afraid. Afraid of not being able to redeem himself. Afraid of being rejected. Afraid for Thorn’s safety. Possibly afraid for his life and being overpowered.

I expect this revelation to surprise Eragon in some way as it sheds more light onto his brother’s mindsets. It’s not just stubbornness or frustration at his situation or pride. No, it’s fear that keeps Murtagh from making connections.

[canonkiller]

do you consider your self made?

[st-just]

Reading fantasy where patriarchy just, notionally Isn't A Thing but other than a scattering of women being knights and wizards this having zero effect on the author's imagining of medieval/early modern life, and on the one hand wishing people would dig a bit deeper here, but also on the other being painfully aware of what the average fantasy story trying to actually engage with that stuff looks like.

[girlbob-boypants]

You know Jade having a helm where wings cover her face/"eyes" is really interesting given her current hypothetical position in the lore.

The Jade Light was the ultimate death sentence. A finality of judgement. And its often said (at least here in the USA) that justice is blind. To the point where Justice is represented as a woman with a blindfold.

But Jade's helmet wings open up.

And the Orokin are as corrupt as they come.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

nervously holding out & rattling a Little Tip Jar

[verycharismaticdragon]

Currently reading a Korean webnovel instead of Chinese ones and this is making me conceptualize something, let’s see if I can put it in words…

My musings started with realizing that I’ve become very used to this cnovels thing where the main pairing is literally stated in the summary. Not the case for the k-novel I’m reading, and therefore I’m experiencing Pain and Suffering, — torn between my every instinct screaming that the author is setting up the OT3 endgame, and trying to lower my expectations to avoid disappointment. (And the novel is ongoing so I can’t even get spoilers for the ending :) girl help.)

As you may’ve guessed, I found myself strongly preferring the Chinese variant; but as to why exactly it was so important for my enjoyment to know the main couple… it took me a bit to figure out.

I mean, it’s not like I’m reading exclusively for romance, okay? Fannish activity-wise, sure, I tend to get fixated on ships (though even then, not all the time), but when it comes to reading (or any media intake, really), it’s not necessarily what I’m most interested in. Among my beloved titles, there are many where there’s no canon or fanon couple I'm attached to — and more than a few where there’s a canon couple that I neither love nor hate, just accept. So why did I get so attached to the concept of being, essentially, spoiled the endgame couple beforehand?

The key word that made it click was: promise. After all, it’s not like knowing the names of the characters that get together tells me anything about if they will be interesting or boring together, if they will be good for each other or make me scream “break up!” a million times. But it is a solid promise that these two people ARE gonna be a couple. 

And thinking about the word promise reminded me of discussions on plot twists that I’ve seen on here, about what makes a good plot twist and what makes a bad one — specifically, the phrase “narrative promise” that someone came up with. Basically, narrative promise is in the set up and the build up. If the plot twist betrays the narrative promise, it will not work, and it will be hated by the audience, who’ll feel like their emotional investment into the story was mocked.

The thing about the narrative promise, and why this term stuck with me, is that it’s actually applicable more broadly than just for shock-factor plot twists. For example: what is queerbaiting, if not betraying the narrative promise that the two characters are gonna be together? The fans see the narrative promise — the set up and the build up that would be unequivocally romantic for a het couple — and expect it to be fulfilled; only to be called delusional by the very creators that gave them this expectation. 

And this brings me to the next point: the catch of the “narrative promise” is that it’s never a guarantee. You can be completely sure the author is setting up X, only for them to turn around and do something completely different. (Possibly while calling you a little bitch for having the stupidity to invest your feelings into their creation, too.) After a while, a fan learns to manage their expectations. To not bet too much on anything, even if it feels like there’s no other way it can go. To wait until the end of the season or the last chapter before allowing themselves to get attached; to hold back on deciding whether something is good or not, lest they hype up something they will want to bury and forget later.

And this is where we circle back to c-novels, and to spoiling the main couple in the summary. Except I hesitate to call it “spoiling” because, as discussed, it actually heightens my enjoyment. For a simple reason: this practice takes the narrative promise from its nebulous, uncertain status to something concrete and real. Only for this one aspect and with the minimal-est amount of information possible, but still. That’s one thing I don’t have to guess about or doubt myself on (am I seeing things? is there a heterosexual explanation another way to read this? will the author simply kill off one of the characters before the end so that they don’t have to decide whether to make them explicitly queer?), and one thing I can count on (whatever else happens in the plot, I’ll still have this). It’s easy to invest emotionally into those characters and their relationship, when you have an assurance of their happy ending.

Ofc, I’m not saying that I don’t invest emotionally into relationships or characters other than the main CP — just that it is easier. And I would even say having this one(1) hard promise makes it easier to invest into other elements of the work, too, as it makes for a sort of safety net even if something else is disappointing or painful. 

Like, say you are invested in one couple with great chemistry and one side character. In case of a pre-stated ship, even if the side character dies, at least you still have the canon couple. So it’s not like all of your emotional connection to the book is lost, and you can probably bear with the loss of that character by writing everybody lives AU or something. But if the side character dies AND the couple you were invested in gets broken up or killed off or straight-married with other ppl… then doesn’t that make the entire thing into one massive disappointment? to the point that you might even regret picking up the book that made you care only to slap you in the face?.. 

So yeah, having even just one ship guaranteed is very comforting. And then I thought, well, doesn’t this apply to another type of fiction that I’m very familiar with?

Fanfiction?

Which, since very early on, has adopted the practice of putting the endgame ship in the header of the fic. And which, probably not coincidentally, is often a response to a broken (or at the very least not brought to its logical conclusion) narrative promise. And which always felt uniquely easy to read for me… 

See, prior to getting on this little thought train, I always assumed the ease was due to pre-existing familiarity with canon. You know, not having to learn the entire new setting, already having attachment to the characters… But now that I’ve connected these dots, I thought about times I read fics for fandoms I wasn’t familiar with, and originals formatted as fics — and really, wasn’t it always about the narrative promise made solid? 

Esp with how fics make it even broader than cnovels, by having extensive tags and ratings and such. Getting into a fic, you have a pretty clear idea of what may or may not happen in the story, even if you don’t know what exactly will happen or how. And a fic can fail to live up to the premise set up by ship/rating/tags — but not completely turn its back on it. 

(Well, normally. But in those exceptional cases where tags are misleading, at least you have something to point to when saying, “this is not what I was promised”. The ficwriter can hardly claim they don't understand why you expected [ship] to happen when they personally tagged their work as containing that ship — unlike the traditional media creators, who can always play the "you were totally misunderstanding my intentions the entire time" card.)

And having a solid promise like this, it turns out, takes lotsa pressure off starting a New Unfamiliar thing. I do, in fact, trust like that! So it’s no wonder that there were periods in my life when I would only consume fanfiction, because it was so much easier than extending trust to new titles. And it’s no wonder that what brought me back to being an avid reader were Chinese webnovels that use a practice very similar to what we have in fandoms.

I guess I understand myself better now! Still wish I knew if that k-novel's author is /j or /srs about the ot3 though.

[canisalbus]

I love the shape language for Machete and Vasco, how angular and pointy the former is VS how round and soft the other... It's so GOOD I adore that

Thank you! I like the contrast as well, it makes them very fun to draw together. I try to keep them visually distinct while still making sure that they look harmonious and complementary next to each other.

[persimminwrites]

dramatic inspo for your art, writing & ocs

need to draw your ocs in a heart wrenching, devastating pose? need inspo for writing a dramatic scene? want to paint a beautiful moment between two of your favorite characters and need that perfect pose for pining?

ballet is the best resource for all of your expressive needs

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[heartbeatbookclub]

I think, in a lot of ways, Monika and Sayori are reflections of each other.

Really, I think all of the girls are similar in a lot of their issues (self-esteem, anxiety, etc) and that's something emphasized in a lot of the stories, and a big part of why they all gravitate towards each other and work to create the club as a safe space for all of them, but I think Monika and Sayori in particular are just very much alike.

I think Trust really emphasized this similarity in the reveal of Sayori's poem, Become the Flower.

Prior to shifting focus onto the poem, Monika talks to herself about her real vision for the Literature Club. I think here, Monika points out what Sayori actually meant when she said that Monika was "trying to make the club [she] needs the most, out of anyone", even if she doesn't actually realize that yet. It's pretty clear that when she says that literature is a window to the real self underneath the person who's "forced to always smile and blend in", and is "forced to be perfect", she's really talking about herself.

I think that a lot of Monika's character throughout Trust is expressed more subtly, often in a roundabout way like this. A huge part of the story is centered around Monika's own personal struggles expressing herself, and that trait is pretty well exemplified in this indirect way of talking about her own struggles. I think that the reason why Monika's characterization here is so subtle overall is reflective of this.

And I think it's pretty blatant that this is statement is also meant to be reflective of Sayori, given that we immediately move from this statement onto the poem which reveals to Monika that she's been hiding her own problems. In this way, I think Team Salvato wanted to explicitly point out how similar they really are, and draw your attention to it.

I think that the way that Trust as a story is put together is meant to really emphasize just how similar they are even in their differences; spending a great deal of time focusing on Monika's own problems, to then showcase Sayori as the mirror to them.

I think the two of them make a very interesting pair in that respect, because a big similarity they have is that they very much place others above themselves, so they both end up individually building each other up while they put themselves down. It creates this strange back and forth where they each insist they suck and the other is great, when the reality is that they're both pretty fantastic.

In the statement Monika made to herself about her vision of the club, while it's clear she's talking about herself, she frames it in the context of somebody else getting those benefits out of the Literature Club, rather than herself. Throughout the entirety of Trust, she speaks dismissively of her efforts and her problems alike, while pointing out that Sayori is providing a lot of help. Sayori by contrast spends most of her time hyping her up and points out, explicitly, that Monika doesn't give herself enough credit. She also dismisses her own efforts, pointing out in most things she does, up into the climax, that Monika is a lot better than her at whatever she's doing. And when Sayori's problems are actually revealed, she explicitly says that she doesn't want Monika to worry about her, and that she doesn't want to have this conversation.

I think this all really shows that both of them are averse to tackling their own problems head-on, and I think this comes out of a fear of being vulnerable, since that's directly mentioned several times in Monika's issues openly expressing herself.

I think what makes Monika's particular brand of self-negging quite so disheartening is that she dismisses it out of hand as her being silly and dramatic, and in that way, she doesn't actually address the fundamental problem underlying it, nor does she actually address the statements themselves as incorrect. The amount of time she spends talking down her own problems as something trivial and silly, particularly in comparison to Sayori's problems, are a manifestation of her own desire to avoid the vulnerability of even having these problems, and it's just...heartbreaking. Sayori's denial is its own can of worms, but Monika's ability to so consistently minimize her issues when they are clearly still impacting her is so uniquely troublesome.

I think a big difference between the two of them in that respect is that Monika wears significantly more of her heart on her sleeve, so Sayori finds it a lot easier to directly target Monika's problems than Monika does in the reverse, but their individual habits of avoidance are coming from the same place.

I'm traveling a bit aimlessly in this essay, trying to tie things together nicely as I see them, but there are just a lot of similarities I notice between their actions and the way they think that showcase that they have a lot of the same problems, and a huge theme in Trust is expressing oneself, which both Monika and Sayori struggle to do, in much the same way.

I think a key similarity between the two of them is their tendency to catastrophize over a situation when left alone, mostly revolving around seeing the worst possible scenario for how they could've personally messed up the situation. I'm just rewatching Trust for this little essay, so there are two major moments I see Monika doing this, but I remember Sayori doing this...a few times, actually, throughout the side stories.

I think the spiral Monika goes into after reading Become the Flower is particularly important, as it exemplifies the habit of dismissing her own problems fantastically; in this case, she has an excuse. It's true that Monika's issues with her perfectionism seem silly and trivial in comparison to Sayori's, but that's exactly the thing: She shouldn't be comparing them in the first place! Her problems are real, and they clearly cause her distress, but because Sayori's own issues appear so much more serious than hers, she dismisses them wholesale as her being dramatic and silly. Because Monika's problems seem so small, she doesn't see them for the problems they really are. In the same way, because her own accomplishments and work seem so small, she doesn't see them for the accomplishments they are.

This spiral showcases Monika's biggest problem, the reason why she has such trouble expressing herself, and conversely, the exact same problem Sayori has. She doesn't want to be the center of attention.

Put another way, she doesn't think she deserves to be the center of attention. Her problems are so trivial; her accomplishments menial. Her fear of vulnerability isn't a fear that others will hurt her; it's a fear of being selfish.

Sayori is very similar, in that the reason she actively works to avoid showing any possible sign that anything is wrong is because she doesn't want anyone to worry about her. She doesn't want other people to dedicate time and energy to her.

I think that for both of them, this comes from low self-esteem. Sayori is self-explanatory I think, but I'd say Monika's perfectionism makes it exceptionally difficult for her to really feel accomplished in anything she does, which, coupled with her constant preoccupation with how she appears to other people (I think Monika places very high expectations on herself. I mean, Trust literally starts with her frantically apologizing and saying "I normally don't ever do this!" when Sayori finds her napping) makes it very difficult for her to feel confident in herself.

The fear both Sayori and Monika have in being vulnerable isn't that people will use that vulnerability to hurt them.

It's that people will try to help them.

And I think that's a really big part of why Sayori feels like she can trust Monika with her darkest thoughts, because she understands that they're the same in a lot of ways.

Monika created the club which she needed the most...and it was also the club Sayori needed the most, for the exact same reason.

I think it's kinda easy to overlook a lot of this because of the sheer amount of focus placed onto Sayori and the more explicit issue Monika has (insofar as the plot is concerned), but I think Sayori is exactly what Monika needs just as much as Monika is what Sayori needs.

[mochixkisses]

in another life, i would have liked to make tea and breakfast with you in our cozy kitchen with the warmth of our laughter and love filling the air. the sun would shine warmly and brightly through the window above the sink and the birds would sing a song for us. in another life, i would have liked for us to be mundane, but in love all the same.