You know, I think the most heartbreaking thing that I've experienced in I was a Teenage Exocolonist so far is that despite being able to remember your past lives and saves, despite being able to save so many people that died in previous lives, despite being able to go out of your way to save people and kill a faceless.
There's no way to save Kom. Kom's jersey will always be retired in the rafters before he was ready to hang it there himself. Anemone will always lose her brother and become susceptible to the human supremacists' idealology. Anemone and her family will always be hurt. All this cosmic power and intervention, and still some deaths and tragedies are inevitable. No matter how hard you try and how badly you just want everyone to be okay.
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I remember when I was reading DOTC when I was around 10, and ever since Misty died I had been waiting for the moment where Birch and Alder learned about her murder, how everyone in their lives has kept it a secret. And then it just didn't happen.
I also remember obsessively re-reading the part where Quiet Rain blows up at Clear Sky.
Birch and Alder are two characters that are just so...
I WANT to say they were forgotten about, but that word doesn't feel right for how they're constantly showing up on the screen. Clear Sky occasionally feels guilty about how he murdered their mother, but for the vast majority of the time, that's described in passive voice. So you're not reminded of just HOW cruel he was, and still very much is.
It's like they're not allowed to be characters.
Like, how does Alder feel about Clear Sky, who seemed to be acting as an adoptive father until he beat her as a child? How did Birch respond later, when Clear Sky was so busy thrashing his sister that he was threatened by a dog? How do they feel about the man who took their mother away from them?
They keep getting cited as "Good Examples Of Non-Campborn Cats," dodging around the fact they were stolen and raised by Petal. Like a lot of the other "adoptions" in the series, she quietly stops mattering to them. But even this fact... like, they're being OTHERED when they were functionally raised SkyClan.
How do they feel about THAT? That their earliest memory is SkyClan, and yet, they'll never be considered truly, fully "clanborn."
Their whole life taken from them, by Clear Sky's cruelty, their formative years spent in his violent shadow, and the narrative is just not interested in that.
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I am with you at being constantly frustrated with the FR community's insistence that people are being censored when staff deletes forum posts about moderation. I've been on FR for almost 6 years and during that time they've always deleted moderation related posts, so why must people freak out and act like it's a brand new thing thought up to silence people every time it happens?
I believe that it's possible to criticize staff over new rules without developing weird conspiracy theories whenever they direct people towards the correct places for feedback
I feel like there's a certain subset of flight rising player whose god-given mission is to formulate only the most bad-faith interpretation of anything staff says or does and then spam the flight rising tag with their entirely unconstructive and needlessly vitriolic knee-jerk response to it. And it feels really fucking mean to say that but it's been my consistent experience in the fr tag for years now.
And listen I love being a hater I love criticizing this game I also get mad at staff when they do and say stupid shit (which happens disappointingly often) but those weird conspiracy theory posts are just. Soooo tiring. Consistently witnessing people just outright refuse to use the communication method that staff directly fucking links them to instead go on about how staff doesn't listen to them is slowly turning me into the joker.
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I've been thinking a lot about magic healing today.
Like I can't stop thinking about how much truly incredible medical knowledge (specifically what we now think of as folk medicine, or like... battlefield surgery) is rendered pretty much completely obsolete by the existence of people who can mend bones with a thought. About how rare it must be for someone to actually know about how a body functions, when among most adventuring types, there's... actually little practical use for such knowledge, with little motivation beyond curiosity to figure it out.
Like of course, I'm sure there are many settings in which those with magical talent are few and far between. I'm sure there are low-magic settings where having access to magical healing is rare, and/or comes at a prohibitively high price for most commoners. But I can't help but think that... in worlds where healing spells and broad-spectrum healing potions are found in the stock of pretty much every merchant and every thug's inventory, ready to be looted, the work of midwives, village wise-women, herbalists, field medics, surgeons, and a thousand other professions is made pretty much completely irrelevant to so many people, simply because clerics, paladins, druids and such, are able to just.... wave a hand, and eradicate diseases, mend bones, transfuse blood, restore limbs, and sometimes even raise the dead.
Being medically knowledgeable on top of being magically adept would probably not only be rare as hell (hello, Halsin), it'd also take a lot of dedication, and a lot of respect for the body and the natural way of things that... I don't know how many even among the best magical healers would actually have.
I'd imagine that many who usually have steady access to a healer don't actually know jack shit about their own health, and... maybe even those who rely on magic to heal, don't actually know what they're doing all that often.
Idk. I'm just rotating this thought in my head today.
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olivia rodrigo’s “the grudge” + mickey milkovich
- I have nightmares each week about that Friday in May
One phone call from you and my entire world was changed
Trust that you betrayed, confusion that still lingers
Took everything I loved and crushed it in between your fingers
And I doubt you ever think about the damage that you did
But I hold on to every detail like my life depends on it
My undying love, now, I hold it like a grudge
And I hear your voice every time that I think I'm not enough -
- And I try to be tough, but I wanna scream
How could anybody do the things you did so easily?
And I say I don't care, I say that I'm fine
But you know I can't let it go, I've tried, I've tried, I've tried for so long
It takes strength to forgive, but I don't feel strong -
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Love for Love's Sake (2024)
Extremely Spoilery Meta about the Finale
A drama that really REALLY worked for me. Just like "A Journey to Love" is my exception to a hate for tragic ending romances, "Love for Love's Sake" is an exception to my burning hatred to unclear endings.
In this case, I think the ambiguity is fine for me because it's not "open" and unsettled. The ending is definite. It's how the viewer personally interprets the ending that is open. And the director/screenwriter earned the multiple interpretations every step of the way. I felt satisfied with my own answer (and the protagonist's peace at demanding no answers), which is all that matters for my enjoyment.
The whole drama is set up to reward a rewatch and it's intended to be enjoyed more the 2nd time around. There are subtle clues from the start that the protagonist has died & it's an AU "adaption" of his own backstory that he's been dropped into. (for example, not just the mirrored history he has with Cha Yeowoon, but also multiple settings we see from the flashes of his Real Life show up in the Game World. The world is being populated with places from his repressed memory. omggggg guys when the game is 'glitching' and he appears damp [SCREAMS] )
"He suffers so much from beginning to end. ..The perfect happy ending you're talking about might just be an inescapable tragedy for others."
"It can't be helped that some people's lives are like that."
This could be referring to Cha Yeowoon, from the storyline The Senior has introduced. But more I think it's directly referencing Tae Myungha and the tragedy of his short life. Even with altered memories of a truth he isn't ready to face, he feels an injustice. In the liminal space between life and death, with a blurred recollection of what came to pass, he faces the author.
The whole opening has an unreality feel as they discuss death and how some people get left behind from others' happy endings. How dark and unfocused the background is just emphasizes that this conversation is occurring in no place & time.
Then he drops into The Game, unsettled and unmoored.
The sense of urgency they give the character is interesting. It plays 2 ways. The drive to save your favorite character from his doomed narrative. And the secret, hidden drive behind the wall holding back his memories. That last second desire not to be extinguished.
So what do I ultimately think is the meaning of what Tae Myungha experienced and of the ending? 🤔 I think there's no 1 truth. The drama's narrative is intentionally ambiguous. And so I don't want to tell anyone what their interpretation should be.
But what I ended up believing is that this is Tae Myungha's journey to make peace with his regrets, forgive himself, and find love & happiness like he failed to do in his life. He is given an opportunity to seize these things (by death, by buddha, by some god-like author idk) but he has to go through a journey to solidify his place in this next life. An afterlife of sorts - call it The Good Place. ;) Many different theologies have the concept of a mid-place waiting area and it's not guaranteed that you will cross over to what comes next.
"Please carry out the missions and build the world."
Cha Yeowoon starts out as his mirror but Cha Yeowoon isn't a version of Tae Myungha. I might say he's the RPF AU version of Tae Myungha lmao. [my meta on this topic here] Once the world begins to take shape, the core people our protagonist interacts with become real and gain autonomy. Tae Myungha's actions could stabilize & help build out this new world he's entered. But he couldn't make Cha Yeowoon act as he wished or be happy exactly when & how Tae Myungha wanted & expected it. Myungha can't predict him.
What does it mean to be 'real'? If the core people who are built out in this world develop their own feelings and thoughts, can hurt & care, then they're real enough to love and be loved back. Cha Yeowoon picked up the pen himself at the end and decided not to accept Tae Myungha's erasure. Ultimately, they were both able to wield the pen. It was by both of them joining hands that Tae Myungha got to stay.
In the end he is in a warm & bright room, almost hazy with light. His grandmother is there with him, looking healthy & happy. His friends and the boy he loves are waiting for him. They're going to the beach, young and careless. It looks like an endless summer day. The game is over, a reward offered: the happy ending.
Episode 1: "So is this reality or not?"
"This place is better than the real world. Should I just stay here?"
Finale: "In the daily life that is too ordinary to be called destiny but too beautiful to be called a coincidence, I finally realized I have all the answers I want. Our days are filled with unquestionable happiness."
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