"how about this? if you really wish to pay me back, you better not challenge me to a fight again." "i don't need you to teach me how to repay you."
(so i will live on for you)
fun fact there's a saying in cn, especially common in BE novels where one character is dying/will leave soon, where the couple will watch the snow together and have snow drift onto their hair, and then wonder if this counts as 白頭偕老 (to grow old and have white hair together)
anyways do you ever think about how Li Lianhua didn't make it to winter during canon so they can't even have that?
ok looking at pictures of käärijä didn't help i'm still mad
jere is someone who had to fight to stay alive as a young adult, and he's said multiple times he struggled with ideas of suicide. iirc he even had a plan for how and where he'd end it all, at the time. he survived against the odds and even a few days ago was saying that he never expected he'd make it to 30.
for hundreds of people who don't even know him to come into his dms and tell him he should be dead, he should kill himself... i can't even put into words how mad that makes me. i don't have a snappy way to end this post i'm just so angry
stultifera navis rerun AKA thinking about Iberia hours again because a lot of the Iberians have such fascinating relationships with the concept of home but specifically Thorns and Lumen are eating at my brain. like where do you call home when the place that is your home Just Fucking Hates You? Elysium's rewinding breeze specifically makes a point to hammers home how differently Iberia treats its Liberi and its Aegir
(which is especially interesting since this comes right after a conversation where Purestream commented on how despite Leizi being a high ranking government official, there are still some experiences that are universal for all Yanese people - because the experience of what Iberia itself is like isnt universal for all Iberians)
But all that being said, Thorns also straight up states that Aegir is not his home, and yeah, how could it be? How could a place you've never been to, never truly known, ever be your home? How could it ever feel like a home?
so where do you go when the place that you are from hates your people and the place your people are from is completely unfamiliar and alien to you? Thorns' answer at the end of the conversation with Aya is: my home is where i chose it to be. my home is where there are people I care about and people who care about me
in the complete opposite direction, Lumen's oprec asks: why do you still stay in a place that wants you gone? because the people of Gran Faro like Jordi well enough but when push comes to shove, they will want the only Aegir in town gone
and yet, when Rald the messenger offers him a chance to leave Jordi turns him down and when he's forced to escape Gran Faro after the people there literally try to send him to his death (or worse) at the hands of the Inquisitors he keeps trying to go back because like everyone in stultifera navis, Jordi is clinging to his own dreams of a golden age
but the shape of that dream is unique to every character and for Jordi, his dreams are deeply, inseparably bound to the Eye of Iberia, the legacy his parents left behind
and it's this dream of becoming someone great, of bringing about that golden age that his parents devoted their lives to help create that ties Jordi to this nothing town because despite everything, despite the mistrust of the townsfolk and the hostility of the Inquisition and the danger from the ocean, he simply cannot leave it behind
(or, because i personally dislike the official translation,)
"I just see this place as my home"
so yeah. not sure what overall point i was trying to make here i'm just. deeply in love with these stories about chosing what is and isn't your home, of saying you will not call a place your home because it has given you no reason to or saying you consider a place your home even though it has given you every reason not to. deeply unwell about them <3
Cannot believe Li Lianhua spent the entire show trying to accomplish one last thing, only to find out the truth behind what he thought was true. He wanted to neatly tie up all the strings he had left in life, then exit it. He's the ghost haunting the narrative, except he's still alive, and both the people who hate and love him refuse to let go of the memory of Li Xiangyi. Even when in the end he actually does die, after he sends a letter to Di Feisheng and asks him to fight someone else, and leaves his worldly possessions to Fang Duobing, he still has people chasing after him and asking him to please just come back and live. He was a ghost haunting the narrative when he was still alive and he's haunting the narrative even after he's dead.