Not to be That Guy but like.
Am I the only one that can't stop thinking about how Tianlang-Jun says about Luo Binghe that he pretends to be cold-hearted like his mother. The hint of fondness there, the heartache in that utterance.
Like it drives me absolutely insane. Imagining her putting on a front of strength, cold and driven and unrelenting. Why does TLJ say that about her. Did she secretly look for solutions that meant reconciling with demons instead of hurting them when her sect wasn't looking? (I wonder this because I feel like his weird fondness for SQQ would lowkey track if it's connected to the woman he once loved.) Did he mean that she was tasked with basically assassinating him and she fell in love with him instead (re: failed step one)? Did he mean that she was fond and doting in her own way (e.g. conceding he was attractive, paying for his exploits and humoring him)? Did he mean that, like LBH, she thought that power would be the thing to protect her--and that it was disguising a person who was deeply and privately wounded? All four????? I don't need sleep I need a n s w e r s
Did she know about the Huanhua Palace Master's skeevy ass intentions before she met TLJ? Or did those only come to significant light after she fell in love with TLJ? Is that why she never anticipated that level of betrayal, because initially she had no intention of being with anyone romantically? And HHPM just assumed she would be under his thumb forever?? Was she furious at her own indiscretion or did she try to use the pregnancy as a bargaining chip, a way to try to stop the immortals of Cang Qiong Mountain from attacking TLJ (plus the bonus of marriage entrapment no takesies backsies this is where LBH gets it from)? Did she try to use that claim on her to dissuade HHPM from his covetous advances, framing herself as tainted so that she could finally escape? Did she dream of a life by TLJ's side, far away from Cang Qiong Mountain?
Like. Literally every single permutation of what this could mean guts me to hell. Do you ever just cry about tianxi because I--[loud bawling noises]
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Love doomed Team Soulfire.
Because they all love so very deeply don't they? They love their children, they love their friends, they love their homes, they love the little peace they have found in the Island.
They love so deeply that they just want to go home.
But love can be a curse.
Love can lead to nothing but pain and disaster when that love blinds you.
The Entity says that their children's lives are at stake, that they must win if they ever want to see them again, that there is a cursed team and they cannot lose, that their lose is death to their children. And Team Blue cannot risk it, they cannot allow themselves to let their children be put at risk in case they are the cursed them.
For love, they would do anything.
And that was exactly what they did. When other's are getting their resources, when they are thinking about what to do, how to proceed, Team Soulfire already knew, they knew they would do anything for their children, they would kill and they would die.
Surely everyone else was on the same page wasn't them? Their deaths meant nothing as long as their children could be saved.
Love blinded Team Soulfire.
Love blinded them to the pain they inflicted on others. Made them unable to realize exactly what they are doing the moment they spilled first blood, because that? That was the moment Purgatory began.
Not when they landed on the desolate Island, not when they were separeted on teams, not when their children's lives were considered a prize in a twisted game.
That first death? That started Purgaroty. Because what Team Blue didn't realize was that not everyone else was blinded by love as much as they were, that for others killing wasn't their first goal, that for a brief moment people thought they could fight against the system, that they could try in other ways.
But after that? Oh no, there was no turning back from that.
They didn't realize that when you kill someone over and over and over and over again, without mercy, without pause, without thinking about the sort of pain you are inflicting on them, it doesn't matter why you are doing it. They wouldn't look at you and see a friend, they wouldn't see a person who just wants to go home, who just wants to end this hell.
They will see a murderer.
They will see someone who sees their suffering as a means of gaining points, they will see someone who doesn't care about anyone else.
They will only see betrayal.
They will only see a enemy.
You cannot burn your bridges and expect to find a way home. You cannot stab the people around you, even if you do it for love, even if you believe yourself to be doing it for good reasons, and expect them to open your arms to you when you need it.
Team Soulfire loves. They love so deeply, so intensely, so very much.
And their love doomed them to be hated. To be viewed as the ones willing to do anything, to kill and betray and destroy anything the others have. Their love blinded them to the suffering they inflicted upon the others.
And the most painful thing?
Team Soulfire does not realize others are not playing the game as they are. That when they try to even the scoreboard, when they try to make things "fair" they are just feeding an uncontrollable fire, they are just scattering the ashes even further, they are hugging the broken pieces of what once was and they don't realize that the blood coating their hands.
Oh my darlings, how they put so much faith in a verbal agreement about the safety of the egg statues. How they love the children so much that they could not imagine that others wouldn't see those stones the same way they did, that they wouldn't be petrified that there was the slight chance that hurting the statue could hurt their children, how they believed that people would feel the same, would respect it as much as they did.
But of course they didn't. Because Team Bolas Rojas has been stabbed in the back from all the sides multiple times, they could not phantom the idea of trusting the people who have hunted them for sport, who have killed them for points in their own home, who have done nothing but hurt and betray them, they don't look at Team Soulfire and see friends just trying to go home, trying to protect their loved ones, they just see the people who hurt them multiple times.
And Team Green Ninjas agreed to not kill the statues, they truly had never any intention of finishing the job, but at no point their ever promised they wouldn't try to win, because at the end of the day they too worry so fucking much they couldn't imagine the possibility of not trying to win to save their children.
So that leaves Team Soulfire isolated, burned by love, forever to be distrusted and hated and avoided because of the actions they took in day one, because they believed that anything done in Purgatory was done for love and would be forgiven because they all have the same goal, they all want the same thing, because they believed people would understand their motivations.
And they did! They do!
It just doesn't matter.
Because the hurt they caused is too deep to be soothed by that.
For love, they have caused what seems like irreparable amounts of pain.
For love, they doomed themselves to be the villains in the eyes of everyone they know.
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Something that makes reading TOA so devastating is how fucking much Apollo feels about Everything. There’s so MUCH. Like I don’t even know how to describe it to you if you haven’t read the books yourself. He has so many complicated thoughts and emotions about just about everything and he cares about everything so much and there is just SO MUCH going on in his head. And yet none of it ever reaches his mouth!!
He almost never says what he’s feeling. What little comes out of his mouth about his thoughts barely even scratches the surface of what he actually means. Like he’ll be having a long ass monologue about how incredible someone is, showing a deep understanding of them as a person and empathizing with them so hard you’d almost think it’s projection but it’s not he’s legitimately just mind melding with this random person he met like a week ago and he’s thinking the softest, kindest thoughts about them like he knows they’re fucking incredible - and what comes out of his mouth is just like, “you’re a wonderful friend :)” AND ITS LIKE. THERES SO MUCH MORE UNDER THE SURFACE. the sheer admiration and adoration he has for everyone around him……… UGHHH!!! But he never VOICES ANY OF IT!!!!!! He never tells anyone about what Zeus did to him……. He never tells anyone except the reader about his realization that Zeus is abusive…. He never even tells commodus about how much he adored him, not then and not now… he refuses to tell anyone when he’s in pain or tries to justify the things he does when he actually had Decent Reasons for why he did something… I’m. I’M. AUGH. AHHHHH
HE DOESN’T EVEN TELL US ALL OF HIS THOUGHTS IS THE THING. THERES EVEN MORE THAT HE IS NOT TELLING US!!!!! THE FUCKING OCEAN OF FEELINGS AND THOUGHTS HE HAS ABOUT EVERYTHING IS THE CLIFF NOTES VERSION. I AM IN DISTRESS.
And YET…. Even what slips out of his mouth is so fucking devastating it is SO devastating. He’s so fucking kind and gentle with Harley and Meg and and other younger Demis and his kids… he’ll act like an obstinate idiot and then turn around say something that drags the core of the person he’s talking to into the light like nail on the fucking HEAD like he reached into their soul and gave them the words to express something that they were struggling to say aloud or that they didn’t even realize about themself. Around the 2nd book he starts putting voice to some of his feelings and thoughts about others and even that tiny fucking sliver is overwhelming to the people he’s talking to bc he’s SO. AUGHHHH
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