#chapter spoilers with commentary

[ihearasound]

The way Canto IV just dropped the statement "people hired from less fortunate circumstances will be much more loyal to the prestigious company than more fortunate employees" right after Samjo throws himself into the primordial soup for K Corp was really something man. I keep thinking about it. Samjo dropped his #inspirationalstory about how the companies technology saved his life and its immediately followed up with "and that's how we exploit you to your death :)"

Not to mention the "our employees need to break their own legs first before getting life saving treatment" and "in emergencies we do summary executions because data shows it keeps up the morale" happening previously

#canto iv spoilers #limbus company #i think projmoon always has interesting commentary on capitalism and it always gets straight to the core #but this chapter goes especially hard with the social commentary

[forgerfamilyantics]

Chapter 96 of SxF was released today! And it was absolutely a perfect continuation of the last chapter! (Spoilers below!)

So we start off with the challenges that Ewen and Emile have for all of Damian's possible dance partners! The first challenge was called "The Clapping Scarecrow Endurance Battle".

You have to admire their perseverance- all of the girls looked deathly determined to win. But of course, Anya had Loid on her side. I have to admit, his methods were impressive: he tied some thread to Anya and used his hand to control her movements!

It just goes to show how strong Loid is 😂 Of course, Anya being Anya, she started showing off with some moves of hers... I think this was the first time I've ever heard Loid think of his daughter as a fool, lol.

Next was an obstacle course! And Anya went a little insane on this one- she took off her shoes and completely plowed through the entire thing...

I do have to say, "inchworm Anya" wasn't something I was expecting in this new chapter 😭😭

And then the final challenge... The Ultimate Damian Quiz! With her mind-reading skills, Anya absolutely crushed the competition! Although some of the questions were a little challenging 😂

And then there was this scene, which made me want to throw my computer out the window (in a good way, of course).

AGH!! LOOK AT HIS FACE! MY CHILDDD

Of course, Anya won!

We also have this scene of Henderson asking Martha for a dance... I reallyyyyy hope Endo gives us some backstory soon, because I totally love their dynamic. "Old time's sake"... they definitely have some sort of history...

Poor Damian 😭 he's so freaked out to hold Anya's hand! But the two of them get the hang of it eventually.

AND THEN WE HAVE ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL SCENE!

(I swear to God, this will be my new phone background for the next two weeks) Look at his eyes... He looks so wistful 😭😭 I REALLY want him to meet the entire Forger family eventually! He's only ever had individual interactions with them. I wonder how he would react with all of them!

And then we have this scene, which made me gasp out loud.

SHE TOLD HIM. SHE. TOLD. HIMMMMMMM He doesn't believe her, but SHE TOLD HIM. And Endo dedicated an ENTIRE PAGE to this scene, which tells us that this was BIG. Not only because she essentially revealed her biggest secret (which he didn't believe her- yet), but it shows that Anya trusts him. I feel like this is something that'll be tied in later on... Plus it was an absolutely beautiful panel. (They're both so adorable <3)

The chapter ends with Anya and Damian bickering, but luckily, their friendship level has gone wayyy up. (Go Plan B!)

Anyways, that was a beautiful chapter! I can't wait for the next one!

#spy x family #sxf #spy x family spoilers #sxf spoilers #spy x family manga #sxf manga #anya forger #loid forger #damian desmond #spy x family chapter 96 #sxf chapter 96 #forger family commentary

[cuchufletapl]

Loid going from internally willing Yuri to shut up to telling him out loud in one page lmao

#spy x family #sxf manga #sxf chapter 80 #loid forger | twilight #yuri briar #sxf manga spoilers #my original post #my commentary - sort of meta? #reading!

[cosmicjoke]

Okay, chapter 57 of Saezuru!

So, we're at an impasse again.

I don't want to see anyone shitting on Yashiro here, though I know inevitably there's going to be people doing that, and probably people shitting on Doumeki, too. I think what people need to constantly remind themselves of while reading this story is that, at it's heart, it's a story about trauma, and the difficulty, sometimes near impossibility, of ever fully overcoming that trauma.

I know some people are going to talk badly about Yashiro's reaction to Doumeki, regarding especially the moment when he pushes Doumeki away from him. They're going to grow frustrated and say he's sending Doumeki mixed messages, etc, etc... But Doumeki is also doing the same.

Doumeki, at this point, seems to me to be operating out of frustration, while Yashiro is still operating out of fear.

I felt like the pivotal moment of this chapter came after Doumeki turns Yashiro around and, for just a moment, lets his mask drop. When Yashiro makes his comment to him about him "making a face like (he) wants to do it really badly", I felt like Doumeki had an opportunity here that he blew. I'm not blaming Doumeki, let me just say right off, so that nobody misunderstands what I mean. But I think Doumeki still doesn't quite understand what's wrong with Yashiro. I think he thinks Yashiro is playing games, but he's not. Doumeki saw Yashiro's earlier moment of pushing him away when he started kissing and licking at his leg, when he was being gentle with Yashiro, and I think likely took Yashiro's comment about the face he was making as a mocking statement.

The awful part here is, it was a statement made in earnest.

So was Yashiro's reaction to pushing Doumeki away.

Yashiro is still triggered by gentle treatment. Look at his face when Doumeki starts licking at his leg, as he remembers four years earlier, to the first time they had sex. His expression is horrified. He's scared. He's traumatized. He's giving a trauma response to what's happening. You can tell by his reaction after pushing Doumeki away that it wasn't even a conscious thing he did. His body just reacted. He has this wide-eyed, shocked look, like he doesn't know what just happened.

And then Doumeki lets his frustration and probably some anger dictate his response, which is to manhandle Yashiro onto his stomach and take him from behind. Again, it's really important to watch Yashiro's reactions here to understand what's going on with him, I think.

Once again, his face is stricken. You can tell he doesn't want this at all. He even looks frightened for a moment, and then in pain as Doumeki pushes into him.

The thing is, Doumeki doesn't want this either, but like I said before, I think he's operating out of a place of frustration and anger. He lets his frustration with Yashiro's seemingly contradictory behavior push him to be forceful with Yashiro. But it doesn't last long. Doumeki then turns him again onto his back, and that's the moment he lets his mask drop, and Yashiro makes his comment about his expression.

Again, I think it's vital to understanding what's going on with Yashiro to also pay attention to his own expressions. He reaches for Doumeki's face, and smiles at him, and the look in his eyes is very soft. You can tell he means it, what he says to Doumeki, and you can tell he genuinely longs for it, for Doumeki to look at him the way he once did, with that gentle kindness and genuine desire.

If Doumeki understood what was really at the heart of Yashiro's issues, I don't think he would have reacted the way he did. He makes a mistake here when he pulls Yashiro's hand away, and even squeezes down painfully on it. Yashiro's reaction is one of confusion. He doesn't understand why Doumeki is suddenly back to being cold. He says "Huh?", when Doumeki tells him "What a nostalgic thing to say.", before once again forcefully pinning him down. Again, I think Doumeki thinks Yashiro is playing games, but he's seriously not. His response to Doumeki's gentility is a trauma response. He's still triggered by that kind of treatment, while simultaneously longing for it. He doesn't mean to be sending Doumeki mixed messages. This is what I mean when I say people need to keep in mind that this story is, at its core, about trauma and the ways it manifests. His responses to Doumeki aren't a conscious thing on Yashiro's part. He can look back at them retrospectively and think about them, like he does at the end of this chapter, but in the moment, I don't think it's voluntary at all. I think if Doumeki had taken that opportunity to just be honest with Yashiro, to tell him how he really feels, it would have been met with honesty from Yashiro in turn, because I don't think Yashiro is being dishonest at this point. I think his responses to Doumeki are all real. He says at the end of the chapter "I'm full of contradictions", a direct callback to when Yashiro was a teenager and he thought the same about himself. He's both genuinely triggered by Doumeki's gentility, and at the same time, wants it desperately.

The heartbreaking thing here is, Yashiro is blaming himself for fucking it all up again. He compares himself to livestock that can't change, and says he's completely incapable of growth. Yashiro's self-loathing is on full display. He really believes he'll never be able to move past the seeming contradictions inside him, contradictions he's felt since he was a boy. The longing for love, the deep desire to be loved, and yet, because of the severe abuse he suffered, his inability to receive that love without succumbing to a terrified, panicked response. It's Yashiro's trauma, rooted in what his stepfather did to him for years, that's preventing him from fully embracing Doumeki's love. He wants to, but he can't.

And that's the thing, too. Yashiro has always been aware of the contradictions in himself. He spoke about it as a teenager, about how he wanted to hurt Kage, but how he knew he would be hurt if Kage rejected him. That's where Yashiro misunderstood himself, though. He never wanted to hurt Kage. That was Yashiro's warped perception of himself, the part of him that thinks he wants to destroy beautiful things. It's not that. He's always just been afraid because affection triggers him, and so he convinced himself he wants to be abused, that it's his fault he's been abused because of that, as a means of coping with the way that abuse has destroyed him.

Exacerbating all of it is Doumeki's refusal to drop his mask of indifference. Again, I'm not blaming Doumeki. He's understandably frustrated, and I think starting to become angry, because he thinks it's simply a situation in which Yashiro is refusing to be honest with him about his feelings. He thinks Yashiro is messing with him, so he responds by pretending like he feels nothing for Yashiro. I don't think he realizes that he's only affirming for Yashiro his own fears that he's managed to turn Doumeki against him, that he lost Doumeki's love for him by pushing him away before, which only makes it all the harder for Yashiro to, essentially, ask for help. And Yashiro needs help. He can't do this on his own. He can't process his trauma and explain what's happening to him, explain what he's feeling, without understanding.

I don't think Doumeki understands Yashiro right now. I don't think he understands what's wrong with him.

Yashiro thinks about Doumeki with Izumi, and thinks about himself as a teenager, alone, and correlates his seeming inability to change with that aloneness. Doumeki has moved on from him, he believes, he's found an emotional connection and partner in Izumi, while Yashiro remains stuck in the same place, forever destined to be cut off and isolated from all, human affection.

He needs help. He needs someone to help him work through this, to cope with the fact that he both longs for kindness, gentility and love, while those things also terrify and repulse him and trigger a flight response in him. Yashiro isn't doing this on purpose. He's not lying. His natural inclination and desire for love and kindness is coming into direct conflict with his trauma, with the way those things, as a consequence of the abuse he's endured, have rendered love and kindness triggering to him.

I don't think Doumeki can help him until he figures out that Yashiro isn't being dishonest, but that he's trapped by his own trauma. Until he figures that out, until he realizes just how damaged Yashiro is, he's going to keep pretending he doesn't care about him, either as a punishment, or in some crude attempt to force him into acknowledging his feelings, which ultimately is having the opposite effect. It's only pushing Yashiro into a deeper hole of self-loathing and fear, only reaffirming for him every negative thought and feelings he's ever had about himself.

#saezuru tori wa habatakanai #twittering birds never fly #chapter 57 #Yashiro #Doumeki #spoilers #meta #analysis #commentary

[charismawizard]

the real reason public safety doesn't pay for denji to get a therapist is because then he'd realize half the fuckin people they send to him are freaks who shouldn't be allowed within 20ft of a school.

#csm #csm 142 #chainsaw man #denji hayakawa #csm spoilers #ford speaks #gotta give fujimoto credit though because the government genuinely is that inept #anyways #my money is on her dying in the next 3 chapters #(yes there is a lot of interesting commentary to be had from this chapter about the debate over denji while also ignoring his feelings) #(and also about the fact this is clearly a response to the camps of fans while also building on the narrative he has no trustworthy adults) #(however i'm ignoring that for a bit)

[wutheringmights]

AUTHORS COMMENTARY FOR NEW CTB PLSSSSS😭😭😭

Thank you! I would be more than happy to explain myself.

My commentaries have, historically, been a pain in the butt to read on a formatting level. I have attempted to fix this by breaking up the commentary into labeled sections. Consequently, this led to me writing out way more than I normally would.

So, enjoy.

[The Past]

Pre-Festival & Festival Day

As I mentioned previously, I wrote a significant part of this past section for the last chapter-- all the way up until Link asks for Icarius’s name. I ended up cutting the chapter into two for space, which meant that there was a few weeks between writing the first and second half of the icarius stuff. 

I really did not spend as much time with the latter half as I wanted to, and I think it suffers for it. I’ll elaborate on that in a second. Let’s try to stick to talking about the chapter in a somewhat chronological order. 

I joked about this last weekend, but Jakucho is extremely funny for hearing Link speculate about Icarius and Nephus and deciding, “Yup. Not my problem. Have fun with that.” Of course, she thinks he’s obsessed with Nephus and not Icarius. 

Gaze upon my weak attempt to confirm Ayane is trans. I think this might have been a bit of a clunky way to do it. I never know how to get characters to confirm their identities without it sounding too much like a script read. Hopefully, this was at least clear if not entirely blatant.

Holidays are such an important part of world building, and I think it is very silly when you are in a fun little fantasy world and they celebrate not-Christmas or the like. That being said, sometimes you are so exhausted of any ideas that you have to sit down and say “Fuck it. Off-brand Halloween.”

That being said, having a holiday to mourn the loss of the Sacred Realm feels fitting for the world, even if the inclusion of masks was a bit clunky. 

I really do think an under-explored area of Zelda lore is that the goddess’s realm is just... gone. Corrupted. Where are the goddesses now that the Sacred Realm is the Dark World? Is there a holy crusade to restore the Dark World to the Sacred Realm? I think Nintendo could do a dark fantasy spin off about this. Or when I finally get around to running that Hyrule homebrew DND campaign I have been cajoling my friends into playing, I’ll make it a plot point. 

Now that I am typing this, I am realizing that I really should have had a little moment where all the masks forces Link to remember the child. Fuck. 

In my original vision, Icarius was going to be very polite and quiet while at Jakucho’s estate, only for his next scene to be him snarking at some guys during a bar fight. What a bait and switch that would have been.

When I was a kid, I genuinely thought that the keaton mask was supposed to be a Pikachu mask (in part because I had only seen it in my cousin’s copy of Super Smash Bros). Hence, the yellow fox vs yellow mouse banter. 

Link’s House / Icarius Backstory

Writing Icarius and Link banter was surprisingly difficult. I have this whole vision in my head about these two being loving to verbally spar with each other. And for some reason, the dialogue was just not flowing the other day.

And by the other day, I mean that a part of my major revisions the day of posting was to fix this entire section. Did it work? Not really. But I got a D grade prose up to a B-, and that was going to have to do. 

My biggest gripe is their conversation in Link’s house, where Icarius info-dumps his entire backstory. In my brain, this scene would have felt dark and moody while still being a little romantic. They definitely hit all the points I needed them to hit for the plot, but it just... it’s so stilted. It doesn’t feel like Icarius is unloading years-worth of grievances on someone who he can trust to listen, if only for a night. It feels like Icarius is reading from a script. Ugh.

There was going to be an in-story explanation from Icarius as to why his hair is bleached that never actually came up. For those curious, it’s that Nephus had the grand idea first to bleach his hair but was worried it wouldn’t look good. So he had Icarius dye his first. Sure enough, he thought it looked terrible and decided to not go through with his end. Icarius was going to be very annoyed by that and would bitch about how long it would take for him to grow it out again. 

I originally was not going to give him the bleached hair to begin with, but after everyone made fun of Warriors for not recognizing him in the first place, I felt like I had to make a significant change to his appearance. It actually helped to get him to play the role I needed him to play in Link’s post-war problems.

Let’s rewind. In my original outline, Icarius was never here in Kakariko. This entire chapter would have instead been Link deciding on his own terms to get over his hang-up over being involved with men and going out to flirt with one. This would have been a random soldier who had been discharged and was just passing through town on his way home from the war. Link would have subconsciously been attracted to him because he resembled the engineer. 

For example, he would have made some comment about liking how strong his hands were. 

This soldier was truly going to be a random guy. At most, he would have mentioned rooming with a friend on-leave named Arlo (who appeared earlier in story as a soldier in the trenches). The whole point was that Link felt like he could connect with another person as long as he didn’t give them a chance to look too deeply into him. 

But after the House of Nephus characters were all introduced, I realized I needed to find some way to elaborate on them. Switching out the random soldier for Icarius was the easiest move.

Does it work? Kinda? It definitely helps the obsession plotline, but the original point got lost among all of the Icarius backstory.

So, Icarius backstory. I feel terrible for everyone who was looking forward to Link being swept away in a beautiful, touching romance. I tried to warn you.

Icarius and his relationship with Nephis is fascinating to me, and I really feel like I only have time to scratch the surface. Icarius is very smart, but believes that Nephus is one the “good ones.” But he can see that Nephus is starting to lose respect for him, so he plays these tricks to remind him that he’s still needed. He knows its foolish but his entire like has encompassed Nephus and he’s scared to know what it would look like without him. It works for a while, but not long enough. The reader knows that it stops working because that smart mouth of his that always picks fights gets taken away.

And that’s not even addressing the greater society Icarius lives in or the way Philo’s addition changes things for him even more. 

All that’s to say that even if Icarius is not the perfect romantic lead people were hoping for, I intended to suggest in-story that if either him or Link were in different circumstances, there could be something there. 

I actually really like the idea of Warriors’s love interest being an agent of an enemy state who is mean to him in the exact way he thinks is hot. Instead of inventing Hylian soldier or Sheikah warrior OC’s to be Warriors’s love interest, can there be more of this? It doesn’t even need to be Icarius. I just think falling-in-love with-the-enemy-but-the-enemy-is-a-shithead-about-it is an extremely funny dynamic.

There is also nothing funnier than Icarius thinking he’s met a nice, normal guy only to realize mid-act that he Messed Up

Also I hope this contexts helps fill-in the blanks for some of Icarius’s actions in the present day, which is no doubt a lot of “oh crap, it’s that guy I screwed that one time” and “how dare you forget about the one time we screwed!”

Post-Icarius Timeskip

I really needed to spend a few days at least on that last bit about Link’s realization. It’s so pivotal for his character, and I really just shoved it in at the end there. I’m going to have to add a lot of flowery prose to the beginning of next chapter to make up for it. 

That being said, it’s important to me that there really isn’t a specific trigger for him realizing what he’s done. He just finally feels comfortable and safe enough for his brain to start processing everything he did. 

It was very important to me that Link decided to stop dwelling in his past by putting a bowl into his cabinet, only for that bowl to break when he realizes what he’s done. Symbolism and stuff. 

[Present Day]

Ganondorf’s Arrival & Townhouse

I’m really happy that so many of you were excited for Ganondorf’s arrival last chapter. That scene was so cheesy that I was worried it would dampen the excitement of actually getting to see him. 

Originally, Ganondorf and Lincoln were going to have their argument in a bedroom, but I moved it to the foyer for convenience sake. But in my mind, I never moved Lincoln’s starting place from hiding in Ganondorf’s room, hence why he started the scene at the top of the stairs and not a more logical spot (in the hallway).

The reason it was going to be in the bedroom was because I thought Lincoln had snuck past Ganondorf’s guards and housestaff. But they all know about Lincoln, so it made more sense for Lincoln to subtly enter through the back entrance. It’s a whole thing. 

I think my favorite part of the Chain already being at Ganondorf’s house is that there’s an implied subplot that happened off-screen where they plus Lincoln had to go hunting for where they thought Ganondorf was staying. 

When Spirit pretends to not know who Ganondorf is, there was going to be a joke where the boys are trying to explain everything and he’s like “oh, so we’re all being racist here.” I ended up cutting it because, well, they were being racist.

Speaking of which, the whole thing with the maid calling Warriors “my lady” is that Warriors was going to try to gently correct her (because he thinks she’s stupid), only to find out that she was just being passive aggressive

Some may remember that one of the hardest cuts I made to CTB was a reporter OC. You can definitely tell that I am massively regretting that cut right now. Imagine how could it would have been for Warriors to pressure this antagonist journalist who’s been reporting all his fuck-ups into helping him fix everything. That sub plot would have been so good. 

I was going to have a few of the other heroes confront Warriors as to why he credited Zelda, reaching a similar conclusion that his narration provided. Ended up cutting it for space. 

A lot of the black blood stuff that I came up with for this chapter really doesn’t hit with LU, but at this point, I really don’t care. 

There’s something about how Spirit viewing monsters and humans the same resulting in him very easily killing people while also being the only one who would realize that black blooded monsters could have always been cured, had anyone thought about it before. I just enjoy the way this man thinks.

Also, Spirit really enjoying spicy food is such a stupid character quirk, and I am almost ashamed of how much effort I went to develop it. Originally, I wanted Wild to get so fed up with Spirit being unimpressed with his cooking that he would demand Spirit to cook one night, only to discover that he actually can’t cook and just overcompensates with a shit-ton of hot sauce. 

Ganondorf’s speech about how to win a war is partly the result of me spending months ruminating about how the Triforce could be used to end a war ethically, and partly an exploration of how Ganondorf thinks 

I wanted to do one last scene of everyone leaving, where Wind would confront Time about being an asshole to Ganondorf. I cut it for space, then convinced myself that I would have time to add it back in, only to then cut it for time. My apologies to the Wind fans who have gotten nothing as of late. 

Hospital & Family Dinner 

I said before that I wasn’t initially going to rescue Toto until the end, which means that I had no plan for how Toto would feel until now. I realized that Toto was just... done. He wanted no part in Warriors’s life any longer. Unlike Kat, who got a lovely send off, I think this will be the last we see of Toto: an unfinished, unresolved mess of emotions.

When I was first describing Lincoln’s casual fit, I remember thinking to myself that I was just describing a semi-retired aged rockstar. The image has not left my brain, and if I was willing to throw a few more anachronisms into the story, I would have 100% described Lincoln like that. 

Fun fact: Orlanda’s family was going to come back in the form of her sibling being a prominent member of the rebellion. I didn’t do it because it was getting ridiculous how many relevant people were related to each other. 

When I was first coming up with Linkle’s character, I had the idea that she had that shallow form of feminism where it’s a big win for women everywhere when, say, generic action heroine wears pants. So I had it in my mind that Linkle hates dresses on principle. So during the fever dream sequence, when Warriors dreamt that Linkle was fawning over a dress, it was to show that he didn’t really know her that well.

But I never really established this idea that well and no one knew this about Linkle, so into a dress she goes.

I told myself that I was going to scour the entire story to double check if I had ever described Lincoln laughing anywhere, but never got around to it. But the nice thing about unreliable narrators is that if I get something wrong, I can just blame Warriors (that is not really how unreliable narrators work)

I have a friend who “tee-hees” while she laughs, and it’s the cutest thing ever. I just think it would be fun if Lincoln also has an adorable little kitten laugh. 

I had to look up how they build roads on dunes for this chapter. 

I did write the full Lincoln and Ganondorf backstory in a post way back when, if anyone wants to review it. It would be nice to get to get all the small details into the main story, but it’s really not pertinent to any of the main action

I definitely talked about Niko before, but I can’t find the posts. To refresh: Niko is Spirit’s uncle, in that he’s a member of the Macaryll family but no one can remember who he’s actually related to. Spirit’s parents are dead, and he lived with a different uncle and aunt until his apprenticeship. Then he moved in with Niko since he lived near Alfonzo. 

Warriors hating chocolate is a character quirk that’s not necessary to the story, but I just think is too funny to not go out of my way to include

The idea of Linkle and Lincoln dancing came from a completely different scene idea. I played around with doing a similar set-up while the Chain is on the road to the Zora’s Domain. The scene would start with Sky showing Lana how to do a Skyloftian dance, which would lead to everyone else showing off their moves. When Warriors admits that he doesn’t think he could dance anymore, Spirit would teach him a New Hyrulean dance that required only one hand. 

That led to an idea of Warriors dancing with Linkle and Lincoln, then just Linkle and Lincoln dancing themselves.

The night was going to end with Warriors forgetting his scarf and, when he went back to get it, he would overhear Lincoln venting to Ganondorf about how the whole stepping up as the parent thing is going. This got cut because it’s more fascinating when you’re forced to infer that a character is thinking. 

The Walk Back & Out Dancing

This scene of Warriors and Spirit walking back together and opening up is my real pride and joy this chapter, which unfortunately got massively overshadowed by everything else. 

So I will now take time to gush.

Spirit’s photography... so I wanted to give this man a hobby because the man cannot just like trains. I know everyone headcanons it as his hyperfixation, but it’s also his job. He needs a richer life than just that one thing. Granted, I took the route of making him start as a trainspotter like the Spirit Tracks NPC Ferrus. 

I just feel like I am so correct about Spirit liking photography. I want this to be my cultural impact. I know I said that already about Icarius, but I mean this more. Go forth and give that man a camera. 

The official document Spirit was carrying around was his engineering license.  

Also, I was 100% ready for everyone to flood me with questions about Spirit’s ex-boyfriend. After the ickywars ordeal, I figured that there was a significant chance y’all wouldn’t be normal about him. I was prepared. And you know what? I’ve heard zilch. So, let me info dump about this man now.

Spirit’s ex-boyfriend is named Jean. He is on the cusp of 30 (compared to Spirit’s 23/24). He’s a mechanic, which is a few steps below Royal Engineer. He lost his leg in a work accident when a piece of machinery fell on him. They met through work. Spirit goes through phases of being a serial dater before swearing off dating for a few months, but Jean is the first person to make it past an awkward first date and hit relationship status. Spirit thought that because he was older, he would be more understanding. 

And Jean tried. He really did. But Spirit is massive defensive and always on the offensive, so every slight disagreement turned into an explosive argument. Jean decided that he could not deal with someone who could not have a rational conversation with him, so he dumped him after 6 months. This was fairly recent, about three months before Spirit returned to Warriors’s era. 

Spirit was going to name drop Jean in his speech later, but I couldn’t figure out a way to make it clear who Jean was without it sounding awkward. 

I really like Spirit and Warriors’s conversation about Icarius, if only because it shows where their communication fails. When Warriors insists that you have a duty to disobey bad orders, he is criticizing himself for falling into the military mindset. This sounds like a criticism to Spirit, who insists that people will do anything under orders because that is what he did. 

After Warriors has spent nearly every chapter since his amputation bemoaning his disability, I really wanted there to be a moment where he realizes that just because his ability level is different, he doesn’t have to give up doing everything he loves. That’s just an important lesson for him to learn, even if it is a little inspiration-porn-y.

The Hot Mess

You might realize that there is a massive elephant in the room I am not going to discuss here. That is because this post is going into the main tag. No one has complained to me yet, but let’s not tempt anyone right now. Just like the Neck Thing, I’ll make a separate post later for anyone who wants it. Just remind me in a few days.

With that being said--

Them sharing a cigarette was another scene that was originally conceived as taking place during the trip to the Zora’s Domain. Spirit’s anecdote about failing to make friends would have served as an early hint about his loneliness and inability to make friends. 

I also have never smoked a cigarette before, so I had to sit there on wikiHow reading up on  how to smoke one without coughing. 

The half in Spirit’s four and a half attempts at quitting is this time he decided to quit, only to relapse after three hours. It was too short to count as a full attempt.

Spirit’s speech hopefully reveals what exactly is Spirit’s problem, both how he sees it and how it really is. Unlike Warriors, he never found support and healing once the war ending. No one understood his experiences, and his coping mechanism of lashing out ward away anyone who could help him. Spirit just wants to feel better, but he doesn’t know how. 

Like... his whole thing about starting his own garage-- he’s a child prodigy who is used to be good at the things he does. He ended up tarnishing his own reputation, so he threw himself back into work because working on trains and fulfilling his dream is supposed to make him happy. He’s successful, but he’s not satisfied.

I was also expecting people to have a ton of questions about why Alfonzo disowned Spirit. In short, Spirit was already on a thin line with his lashing out and shitty attitude. Alfonzo was willing to let that slide until he realized Spirit was breaking work regulations to go on more runs without taking the legally required amount of time to rest inbetween. Spirit was a legal liability. He fired Spirit, but made it very clear that he was doing him a favor by not reporting him and getting his Royal Engineering license suspended. 

No one else in New Hyrule knows the real reason why Spirit was fired, so they all assumed it was his personality. So he has a bit of a reputation now for being hard to work with. 

Another thing that was not 100% conveyed in Spirit’s speech was that even if he didn’t hurt Zelda, he could not be with her because he does not want to be Prince Consort. His experiences in Warriors’s Hyrule thoroughly scared him off from politics, though he would have refused anyway since he would never give up being an engineer. 

 Fundamentally, Spirit is an extremely lonely person who has felt abandoned by everyone in his life. He knows that his life is the way it is now because of his experiences with Warriors. His guiding principle is trying to find some way to fix himself so that he can get the life he was supposed to have, one where he is happy and loved. 

I just... god, I love this character.

And then there’s Warriors, who feels like he not capable of change and that any opportunity he has to change has been denied to him. Fixing Spirit and Time’s relationship was supposed to be a part of his redemption. Making Spirit happy was supposed to mean he’s forgiven. He has no friends, not in the Chain or in Toto. No one needs him.

Warriors also just means so much to me. I adore this disaster of a human being. 

Warriors’s Plan Out

Does Warriors’s plan make sense? I am assuming it does since no one expressed confusion, but nearly every comment thus far has exclusively been about the Hot Mess (understandable). 

There was a reason I was peeved I had to cut every chance in earlier in the story to go back to Castle Town, and it’s because I’ve known that it was going to be an extremely important location. 

Warriors choosing to forgo a glorious revolution in favor of maintaining (if not manipulating) the status quo is not a great philosophy for our protagonist to be spouting in 2024. In my defense: a) I came up with this story in 2021, which was a different real world landscape, and b) Warriors would never become this ideal hero.

It feels more true for Warriors to not really become the idealized hero. His best is not that great. But if he can’t help being the worst, he could at least use his methods for good. 

I have mentioned before that I have low empathy. Lincoln’s speech about people naturally being better or worst at being good is a product of a lot of my musing about how I sometimes feel frustrated and resentful at how hard I find it to follow the social cues that would make me a “better person.” Wouldn’t I be a better person if I had an easier time recognize when someone is in trouble and needs my help. Instead, I have to depend on myself to remember the cues, and I am so prone to mistakes.

I want to be a kind person. I want to be the best person anyone has ever met, but it’s an uphill battle. I feel like I am always working against myself. But it’s still important that I make the choice every day to be kind to others. 

Besides, I have been told that I am more kind and helpful than other people, if only because I don’t rely on my feelings when deciding to reach out to others. So it has its perks. 

I’m not saying Warriors has low empathy. I have expressly written him as someone with empathy. But my philosophy that kindness and caring for others is an active choice just felt like it belongs here. 

There is story-canon low empathy character that I wanted to reveal in story to help Warriors beat the accusations and get people to not armchair diagnose him. I am still holding out hope I will have time and space to explore this in story, but if I don’t--

Four is written to have low empathy. It’s a consequence of the Four Sword splitting up his emotions, making it extremely difficult to tap into more than one emotion at a time, much less his empathy towards others. He can feel how this change in himself and has some thoughts on the whole thing. 

Is that the end of the chapter. Fuck yeah. I’ve been working on this since Monday, If you read all this... congrats! I hope it was worth it.

Also, I forgot to mention that this is the end of Act 5. My act system is a scam and not that important, but I figured I should let you all know.  

#your bonus fact is that i misspelled ganondorf's name about twenty different ways while writing this chapter #the swiftness and volume of demands for a commentary was very funny #y'all really wanted me to explain myself #bonus bonus fun fact is that it took all my will power to not formally name the chapter the Hot Mess #but like the neck thing we will just have this informal title for the scene in question lol #me rambling #lu ctb #ask #linked universe #anonymous #ctb spoilers #ctb commentary #ctb lore #fallenleafofmaple #meanlesbean #shoot-i-messed-up #savimatteo2810

[bugeyedfreaks]

Was looking at some of the old PPG chapter books today and I SWEAR I had read Ms. Meane before, but I feel like I would have remembered this whole chapter:

I LOVE the idea that the girls don't go to a normal doctor's office because of their superpowers: they get tested in a lab by the Professor's peers (I assume, haha). That's honestly so awesome! They have to do the same sort of stuff kids do like hearing and vision and reflex tests, but in an environment that'll be able to handle their superpowers if things go a little out of control (and I can just picture the Professor patiently waiting in a little chair and/or checking over their lab results/fretting over them in a dadly fashion).

The character bits of the girls are also such a treat to read. I love them.

#bubbles #blossom #buttercup #professor utonium #powerpuff girls #this turns out to be a little weird but also FEMME FATALE is in it yaaaaaaayyyyyy #i also love how (spoilers) her idea of a perfect strong woman is just a very angry woman #if that ain't how some people think though....... wow deep meta commentary for a kids chapter book lol #also fhsifuowndis BLOSSOM correcting the scientist’s math I love her #you go girl

[raamitsu]

#oh finally there’s gege’s commentary for the latest chapter #i wondered why mya didn’t post it yesterday lol #jjk #jjk 230 #jujutsu kaisen leaks #jujutsu kaisen spoilers #jjk leaks #jjk spoilers

[hella1975]

I CANNOT STAND YOU BITCHES

#rori for being the thing that pushed me over the edge. gloomy for starting this miserable process to begin with. aiaia for egging it on #and everyone else who watched silently rubbing your grubby little hands together #i am going to read the raven king by nora sakavic book no.2 in the infamous all for the game series #this WILL be detrimental to my mental health. i wish i was kidding #aftg #hella reads aftg #<- like last time pls block that tag if u want to avoid spoilers #rori i know you wont listen to me but consider blocking the tag as well like the real impact of aftg happens when you have NO fucking clue #what's happening or what's about to happen #but also ur defo gonna finish trk faster than me if it's anything like how you read tfc so maybe it'll be fine. who knows #keep sending me ur chapter commentaries tho bc they're hilarious. we can compare notes

[bestofmadnessandalsoitsworst]

SxF SPOILERS AHEAD***

I know Master Henderson calls out 'Miss Forger!' and I know Becky calls out 'Anya! Nooo!'...

But part of me hopes it's actually Damian and not Becky. Wow let's see what the anime does hmm... Would be interesting to watch how in the aftermath Damian would be blushing ears to toes when he realises he wore his Little Heart on the sleeve for a moment there. And the ensuing denial...

"Are you a good person sy-on boy?"

Yep.

#spy x family #spy x family spoilers #manga #manga spoilers #sxf chapter 74 #sxf manga #sxf commentary #sxf #anya forger #becky blackbell #damian desmond #red circus arc

[amozon28]

something im really enjoying about the events happening in the latest chapters is that because Twilight isnt able to get involved because he isnt being informed and hes a full city away. is that in the aftermath hes going to be confronted with his two ideologies clashing. because yes, hes a spy that prioritizes getting the mission done for the greater good, his greater good being creating a world were kids wont have to cry alone like he did. in this stance his and WISE goals align. however he also cares about children on the micro level. he cares about the safety and well being of each kid he comes across. and this comes into direct conflict with WISE, who are willing to disregard the safety of kids if it doesnt help aide them in their greater plans of peace

Here WISE not caring about a busload of kids. saying that the police can handle this. and this is something Twilight himself tried (and ultimately failed to do) to prioritize his mission over the safety of one child when Anya was kidnapped in the beginning of the story.

Had it not been for the fact that Anya and Damian were on that bus, which jeopardized Operation Strix, WISE would have left it to the police. which isnt a bad thing its just where WISE and Twilight's desires dont always agree.

So when Twilight finally does learn about what happened with the bus and Anya hes going to be DEVASTATED. because as Twilight he was useless, being on a different mission, and a Wise agent he was useless, by not having a buss full of kids be on WISE radar. Hes Westalias GREATEST spy and he couldnt protect his little girl when she needs him most. thats going to HURT him, especially a man who tries to control and account for every possible outcome and blames himself for every failing.

however where hes going to fail as a Spy i feel like hes going to be reminded that being a spy isnt the only way to protect and make Anya feel safe.

Twilights mother wasnt a soldier or combat vet or spy or anyone of note. she wasnt someone who could physically protect twilight from the bombs raining down on them every night. yet as a child he felt SAFE with his mother because he inspired that feeling in him just by being there for him. sure it was a false sense of security, but as a child thats all he needed. and its still true to him years later as an adult when he cant even remember his mothers face, he still remembers how safe she made him feel in those scary moments.

and i think post this arc Twilight is going to be reminded how important this kind of strength will be for Anya. because while he couldnt protect her from the terrorists, or the bombs or the SSS police, he can hold her and comfort her and tell her “everything is going to be ok” as she falls alseep.

honestly i wouldnt be surprised if this arc ended with Anya asking if she can sleep is Papa’s bed with him because she doesnt want to sleep alone. and Twilight letting her, remembering how it made him feel as a child, and allowing Anya into his room, being another metaphor for slowly letting his walls.down.

because sure he failed to protect Anya as the spy Twilght, but he will succeed to protect her as her father Loid. because “Thats the sort of strength that will finish the job”

#loid forger #spy x family #spy x family spoilers #spy x family manga #anya forger #sxf #sxf manga #sxf manga spoilers #sxf spoilers #spy x family chapter 71 #mine #sxf commentary

[markantonys]

AMOL chapters 9-20

“[lan] remembered teaching that same concept [duty being heavier than a mountain] to a youth out of the two rivers. a sheepherder, innocent of the world, fearful of the fate laid out before him by the pattern.” 😭😭

update since last recap: gawene ARE officially married! “the marriage had been performed by silviana in a simple ceremony the night before.” and right now it’s morning, which must be at least the morning after the Big Meeting if not several mornings after. so they weren’t married yet in chapters 1-8 but they are now. why did it happen offscreen! why do the weddings i want to see keep happening offscreen (this + lanaeve) when we saw morgase and tallanvor’s, a wedding i could not care less about, onscreen! how could you deprive me of “clandestine wedding the night before we die in battle tomorrow” when that is my favorite wedding trope! yes we already got it with perrin and faile but i want it AGAIN!

“it still felt odd to know that egwene had authorized her own wedding. when you were the highest authority, what else could you do?” jkjfg incredible. now i’m thinking of rand and elayne legally authorizing themselves to marry each other as well as mat and avi and if anyone’s like “but you can’t marry 3 people!” they can say “well actually i’m the highest authority, so jot that down.”

“rand turned back to the maps. what he saw impressed him. elayne was preparing well.” proud husband!!

RANDLAYNE SCENE!!!!! YES!!!!!!!!!!!!! i am going to break this down in so much detail with so many quotes that you’ll basically read the entire scene by reading this post, let’s go

it begins by rand being surprised when elayne enters the tent and elayne being surprised to find him there, which should not be possible since they’re bonded but whatever lmao for once with randlayne in this book that IS something small and harmless enough that i can happily suspend disbelief!

“now here was life. flushed cheeks, golden hair with a hint of honey and rose, eyes that burned like a bonfire. her dress of crimson showed the swell of the children she bore. light, she was beautiful.” completing the holy trinity of mat’s and aviendha’s loving descriptions of how beautiful elayne is! tragically rand is the only one who doesn’t mention her hair glowing in a conveniently placed source of light, but her eyes are glowing so half credit! he also notes later that she smells wonderful lmao

“rand al’thor, are you going to talk to me, or do you wish to ogle me further?” “if i can’t ogle you, whom can i ogle?” djfkgj i love them your honor!!! also this is so funny, “whom can i ogle if not you” rand says as if they both don’t know full well that he has 2 other girlfriends.

elayne scolds him for sneaking up on her and says “honestly, as if aviendha weren’t enough” (since avi snuck up on her a couple chapters ago) AVIRANDLAYNE THROUPLE TRUTHERS RISE!!!

both of them definitely show concern over secrecy and not wanting people to know that rand came to visit her, which is interesting, although neither mentions a specific reason for this. i assume it would be because they’re both two extremely high-profile leaders and they want to keep their personal relationship under wraps, and perhaps also because they wouldn’t want the other leaders to accuse rand of showing favoritism to elayne and things like that. which all makes perfect sense. except for the fact that bashere made elayne publicize the fact that rand is her babydaddy djfkgj so now what’s the point of sneaking around? sanderson never thinks to consider in depth other characters’ perception/public perception of rand’s various relationships (though rj started dropping off in the last couple books too, since mat and nynaeve stopped reacting to rand having multiple gfs despite being very pressed about it in LOC and WH respectively).

i’m totally onboard for them wanting to keep their relationship quiet for the above reasons, and in fact i defs think that’s the wisest course of action (even if my heart wants them to be a public power couple), but in that case sanderson should’ve a) not had elayne tell everyone rand’s her babydaddy and b) made it clear for the first 8 chapters that this was what was going on, so then their ignoring each other and needing to use third parties to find out what’s going on in the other person’s camp would’ve come off as a bona fide attempt to be discreet rather than Batshit Insanity. (and even then they should’ve had a quick scene right off the bat wherein one Traveled into the other’s tent, they reunited and talked about the babies, and then agreed to keep their distance until they could find another moment to meet in secret.)

“i am happy to see you, and i am glad you came. i’m just trying to get into my head how you fit into all of this. how we fit into all of this.” “i don’t know. i’ve never figured it out.” this seems like an allusion to the political complications their personal relationship poses, but again the idea is referred to in such a strangely vague way. we deserved books and books of rand and elayne dealing with the PR and political repercussions of their relationship! it would’ve been fascinating! instead we just get some sparse, vague, and conflicting moments.

“he knelt before her, getting a cocked eyebrow until he placed his hand on her belly - hesitantly, at first.” 😭😭🥺🥺 MY HEART

also, cracking up at elayne raising her eyebrow when rand starts to kneel, homegirl thought he was about to immediately start going down on her jkfjgh i mean hey rand DID say once that he wanted to kneel at elayne’s feet and worship her 👀 so i bet their all-day all-night sex marathon was crazy.

rand says that tam will be a grandfather 🥺 fucking introduce him to elayne then!

“he found that deep down, he’d hoped that someday he would be a father. it had happened. that gave him warmth. one thing was going right in the world, even if so many had gone wrong. children. his children. he closed his eyes, breathing in, enjoying the thought.” 🥺🥺🥺😭😭😭 MY HEART IS EXPLODING i take back what i said about Fratboy Rand (our new name for Zen Rand in case anybody missed that discussion in the replies on the last recap) being a deadbeat dad, he wants to be a dad he wants to know his babies!!!!

“he would never know them. he would leave them fatherless before they were even born.” NO STOP THAT [squirts him with a spraybottle]

“rand let himself go still as he felt her womb. was that motion? a kick?” okay google says that typically you can’t feel the baby move from the outside until end of second trimester or beginning of third trimester and there is NO WAY IN HELL that elayne is THAT pregnant right now! sanderson you’re killing me!! i can’t even cry over rand feeling the babies kick because i’m too distracted by the fucked up timeline of elayne’s pregnancy slash sanderson not bothering to look up timelines of pregnancy milestones jkfgj unless we are really supposed to believe that 6-7 months have passed since Randlayne Sex, but i do not buy that at all. WH was deep in winter and COT and KOD spanned very short time periods. i guess rand was in arad doman for a full month in TGS, and TOM also covered 1 month (it begins with rand telling egwene he’ll meet her at merrilor in 1 month). so at our most generous, by the end of WH 1 month has passed since Randlayne Sex (since rand WAS in far madding for some time, though i don’t actually think it was a whole month), COT-KOD is 1 month together, TGS is 1 month, and TOM is 1 month. elayne should not be more than 4 months pregnant, or 5 if we’re being EXTREMELY generous! definitely not 6 or 7!

elayne says she wants to name the boy rand. which would be weird if their dad rand was also part of her and their lives (i mean people name kids after their living and present parent irl often enough, but in books nobody does that) so i feel like she’s just already been long assuming that rand will either a) die in the last battle or b) be a deadbeat dad lmao

but rand asks her not to name either baby after him bc he wants them to live their own lives, awww. “my shadow will be long enough as it is” but they will still be stuck in it even if they aren’t literally named rand seeing as bashere made elayne tell everyone that they’re the dragon reborn’s kids!! sanderson you’re killing me again!

“he looked up to meet her eyes, and he found her smiling with fondness. she rested a smooth hand on his cheek. ‘you will be a fine father.’” 😭😭🥰🥰

god rand and elayne sitting down and talking about their babies and being soft and domestic!!!! unfollow me now this is gonna be the only thing i tweet about for the next week i’ve wanted this for years fuck what the fuck

“no talk of death, of duty.” “we cannot ignore what will happen.” “we needn’t dwell on it either. i taught you so much about being a monarch, rand. i seem to have forgotten one lesson. it is all right to plan for the worst possibilities, but you must not bask in them. you must not fixate on them.” and we have another Very Helpful Girlfriend Perspective that rand was deprived of until the final book when he was already mostly okay again! min clinging to hope and refusing to accept that rand might die + aviendha accepting it and assuaging him of guilt over her future pain because it’s her own choice to love him and endure that pain when it comes + elayne planning for it but not fixating on it and instead dwelling on present happiness = a perfectly balanced set of life outlooks that could’ve been immensely helpful to rand earlier in the series, but instead he got all of the first and none of the second or third.

elayne’s like “no more shoptalk i just want to have dinner with the man i love” and then they spend the entire meal talking about battle plans jfkgj they’re such workaholic nerds i love them!!!

rand is so full of praise for elayne’s battle strategy plans and tells her she has a head for it 🥰 but alas she deflects and says that it’s all the great generals’ doing, as well as bryne’s and her mother’s for teaching her. you ARE good at strategy elayne! on your own merits!

“the conversation reminded him of their time in tear, stealing hidden kisses in the stone between sessions of political training. rand had fallen in love with her during those days. real love. not the admiration of a boy falling off a wall, looking at a princess - back then, he hadn’t understood love any more than a farmboy swinging a sword understood war.” I LOVE THEM YOUR HONOR!!!! THE NOSTALGIA!!!

“their love was born of the things they shared. with elayne, he could speak of politics and the burden of rule. she understood. she truly did, better than anyone he knew. she knew what it was to make decisions that changed the lives of thousands. she understood what it was to be owned by the people of a nation.” YES!!!!!!!!!!!! YES YES YES YES YES THIS IS WHAT I’VE BEEN SAYING FOR THE WHOLE SERIES!!!!!!! I’M SO USED TO GIVING AND NOW I GET TO RECEIVE!!!!!!!!!

god seriously elayne IS the one that knows him best. for so many books the narrative kept trying to insist that title fell to min, but it’s elayne, and here it acknowledges that! min and rand were always telling us that she knew him better than anyone, but we were never shown that. instead, we saw min constantly making incorrect assumptions about rand, misunderstanding him, not being aware of things that were going on with him, etc. whereas elayne, despite barely getting screentime WITH him, has throughout the series often thought or told others “rand would probably react to X in Y way” and been spot on every time, and has been able to correctly work out his motives after hearing second- or third- or fourthhand reports about an action he took. in salidar, when they agreed they shouldn’t tell rand about the viewing of 3 women loving him, elayne’s reasoning was, accurately, that it would make him try to push them away to protect them, whereas min’s reasoning was that if rand knew about the viewing he’d want to take advantage of having 3 hot women on tap. when rand went to caemlyn in WH, elayne clocked his saidin dizziness and the fact that he was avoiding channeling within SECONDS of seeing him again, whereas min, who’d been with him for weeks at that point, never noticed a thing.

i absolutely stand by the statement that the only reason elayne wasn’t narratively allowed to spend time with rand is because she would’ve been too helpful to him and interfered with his downward spiral arc.

and here again now, elayne immediately notices a small facial cue of rand’s and asks him about it, which prompts him to confide in her about how upset he is that so many people will die for him in the coming battles.

“rand found it remarkable that, though they had often been apart, their connection held. in fact, it felt even stronger. now that elayne was queen, now that they shared the children growing within her.” ❤️❤️ this line could’ve so easily felt like “author attempting to justify a relationship that’s disproportionately strong for the little screentime it got” but it doesn’t, because the individual characters have been developed so well, and the relationship in its little screentime, that i believe this 100%, it doesn’t feel forced at all or like the narrative’s trying to Tell me something it never Showed me. somehow randlayne manages to be the best canon romantic pairing despite having like 3.5 scenes together in 14 books. their power!!

“‘i feel as if i should be able to do more, now that i remember. he tried to break me, and he failed.’ ‘is that what happened that day atop dragonmount?’ he hadn’t spoken of it to anyone. he pulled his seat closer to hers.” and he proceeds to confide in her about the dragonmount epiphany! which he hasn’t spoken of to anyone else! not even min, who was demonstrably completely unaware of what had happened up there in the previous book (i forget the context but i remember commenting on how it revealed that rand hadn’t told her anything about the epiphany). because ELAYNE is the one that truly understands him best, the one he feels most comfortable confiding in about his deepest feelings and struggles!!!!

“‘and you remember lews therin now?’ she whispered. ‘everything he knew? that is not just an air you put on?’ ‘i am him. i always was. i remember it now.’ elayne breathed out, eyes widening. ‘what an advantage.’ of all the people he had told that to, only she had responded in such a way. what a wonderful woman.” LIKE!!!! 🥰🥰 when rand talked about LTT’s memories like they were his own, min thought about how she hates when he talks like that and how it makes her uncomfortable and how he seems mad, and when rand then told her outright about him being LTT etc she was weirded out at the thought that he’s Not Really The Same Person anymore. but elayne just goes “oh that rocks!” what a wonderful woman indeed!!!

“he never quite knew what she was going to say or do, and that excited him. like the excitement of watching nightflowers, knowing that what was to come would be beautiful, but never knowing the exact form that beauty would take.” ROMANCE!!! also, rand comparing elayne to fireworks, which are mat’s beloved - matrandlayne rights!!!!

rand knows that elayne has the Talent of creating ter’angreal! i’m not sure if he’s ever alluded to it before, so i’m glad to have confirmation that he knows. and he gives her a Seed which can be used to create an angreal. “when i found it, forgotten, i thought of you.” romance!!

and elayne gives rand the knife ter’angreal that hides the bearer from the shadow! finally that extremely handy knife that was ignored for several books comes back into play! let’s see if rand actually ends up using it.

“she reached up to touch his face. he placed his hand on hers. they stayed together long into the night.” ❤️❤️❤️ romance!! rand gets to Kneel And Worship long into the night, hell yeah!

overall thoughts: LOVED THIS SCENE it was finally the sort of randlayne scene that i’ve been waiting for ever since book 4! since the 1 other time they saw each other since then, the two of them pretty much didn’t have a meaningful individual interaction, it was all about the 3 women confessing their feelings to rand and then as soon as rand and elayne were left alone we cut right over to min to experience their first time through her pov, and by the time we went back to elayne pov rand had already left. but THIS scene was so wonderful, it was romantic, it was fluffy, it was serious, it was complicated, it was supportive. one scene, and it’s so clear how truly compatible they are, how easily and how deeply they GET each other. they understand each other so well yet also have different opinions about some things and aren’t afraid to disagree with each other, but when they DO disagree they resolve it through calm discussion rather than losing tempers or getting petty.

i take back everything i’ve said over the past 3 books about sanderson not getting randlayne because he totally nailed them in this scene. well maybe i don’t take back EVERYTHING because there were definitely some things in TGS, TOM, and the first 8 chapters of AMOL that i was Quite Annoyed about. i take back SOME things. but on the whole, one very happy customer over here! and i bet randlayne won’t have another dedicated scene for the rest of the series, so i’m glad that this one was so wonderful. i do kinda feel like sanderson’s just checking off boxes like “okay, rand and aviendha had their scene alone, don’t have to show them anymore, rand and elayne got their scene, that’s all done” lmao

egwene mentions that other sisters know she’s married to gawyn, which confirms what i’ve been suspecting for a while but forgot to comment on before, that the amyrlin seat not being allowed to have a romantic relationship is only a thing in the show verse and not the book verse. (it IS a thing in the show verse right? i’m not misremembering that that was one reason why moiraine and siuan had to sneak around, it wasn’t just that they have to keep secret that they’re in cahoots regarding TDR?) anyway, assuming i’m remembering correctly, this could have some exciting implications for the show version of gawene! think of the extra layer of sweet sweet angst that would cause in their TGS/TOM issues where gawyn wants a more all-encompassing relationship than egwene is able to give him (all-encompassing as in he wants to be her boyfriend all the time everywhere, not just in certain contexts).

i have JUST ABOUT HAD IT with birgitte and her condescending babysitter’s attitude towards elayne. i think it’s come to the point where i genuinely dislike her now, which is so sad because i used to absolutely adore her and her relationship with elayne.

good news: elayne and tam had an interaction! bad news: it was only battlefield commands and they showed no sign of knowing each other on a personal level

“she’d heard rand brag about his bow, and she’d seen a two rivers longbow used on occasion” oh i’ll bet she did. last night, for instance.

now that i think about it it’s hilarious that mat was The Archer of the group in eotw and then never again. at the time of reading eotw i was like “i can’t believe the show gave rand mat’s bow skills in addition to sword and channeling skills and made mat just a useless twink” but now i see why they did that because the books also took away mat’s bow skills after eotw. mat can be a useless twink for a while until he gets his knives and ashandarei, as a treat.

speaking of the useless twink, here he is fucking about in ebou dar when LITERALLY EVERYONE ELSE is in the middle of fighting the last battle!!

“rand should have just hidden [in the rahad], instead of going up to fight the last battle. the trollocs and darkfriends would have come for him, and the rahad would have left them all unconscious in an alley” so mat is worried about rand??? i have to find my cauthor crumbs wherever i can since mat has denied me real moments by going to fuck about in ebou dar!

things that happened to mat in ebou dar: getting raped repeatedly and turned into a sex slave, getting attacked by a gholam, having a wall fall on him and nearly kill him, being subjugated by invaders, being trapped in the city by his abuser for weeks, watching hundreds die because he tried to free them and feeling responsible for it

mat’s constant emotional state in ebou dar: anxious, nauseous, scared, depressed, self-hating, trapped

mat now on ebou dar: “he was surprised at how familiar, even comfortable, this city felt. he had liked it here.” “he now realized that his time in ebou dar had been among the best of his life.” “strangely, this place felt more like home to him than the two rivers did.”

like. WHAT???? i mean. WHAT??????? and i scream at the top of my lungs, what’s going on!!!!!

i know that “footage not found” is my favorite thing to say about the second half of the series, but holy shit this has got to be the worst instance of it yet!!!!! i don’t even have any rants to make, i’m simply speechless.

he also reflects on tylin as “a fun game” and hopes to have plenty of other women like that, but then notes that tuon is like that and he won’t need any others since she’s enough of a handful. this poor man has been gaslit so badly into thinking an abusive partner is desirable! i’m not even mad at mat anymore, i just feel sorry for him and the miserable life he’s been forced into and convinced himself he loves.

someone thinks mat is an assassin after tuon. man i wish!!! that would’ve been so sexy

once again mat frets about assassins being after tuon and wants to find out info to stop them. dammit mat!! this is the opposite of a problem!!

“‘sheepherder,’ lan said. rand raised an eyebrow. lan saluted him, arm cross his chest, bowing his head.” 😭😭

RAND HAS FOUND FAT LITTLE MAN ANGREAL MY BELOVED!!!!! 😭😭😭😭 i literally punched the air in delight when i read this!

look at this! i’m going back to reassure my past self that it will be okay and rand will find our emotional support fat little man angreal again! rand notes that no one knows he has it and that this is important. what if fat little man angreal my beloved ends up being the key to defeating the dark one!!

walmart: choedan kal gucci: fat little man angreal

rand destroying the choedan kal and now finding fat little man angreal again symbolizes him turning his back on power for power’s sake and returning to his good boy roots. now if only he would give up tai’daishar and get back his good boy horse, jeade’en. except jeade’en might have been eaten by trollocs since he might have still been in caemlyn when they attacked and elayne said the trollocs ate all the palace horses!!!!

“i will beat you, taim! i will finally do what i should have months ago!” no SHIT you should’ve done it months ago, rand. also i mistyped taim as tim at first jkfjgh somehow “i will beat you, tim!” doesn’t have the same gravitas.

rand goes to his dreamshard, which looks like a peaceful valley, and he’s wearing simple two rivers clothing. “he placed sturdy boots on his feet, like those he’d worn growing up. they fit him in a way that no new boot, no matter how well made, ever could. he wasn’t allowed old boots any longer. if his boots showed a hint of wear, one servant or another made them vanish.” 😭😭 baby boy!! rand and mat should meet up to discuss Boots As Metaphor For Class And The Burdens Of Leadership.

rand sees lanfear and we get some nice little tidbits of LTT Backstory. he says that lanfear just wanted him as an accessory, but also he has memories of walking into parties with her on his arm and having sex with her yet he never truly loved her. Fratboy LTT! lmao

i’m wondering if lanfear is going to ever Do anything by the end of the book. if not, then a) what was the point of not killing her off for good in TFOH and b) it will make so much sense if they give her mesaana’s plot in the show, since mesaana does nothing in the first half of the series and lanfear does nothing in the second half.

egwene and the aes sedai going apeshit on trollocs was pretty cool, but overall i’m getting tired and bored of all the battle scenes. and i’m only a third into an entire book about The Last Battle lmao

elayne mentions that rand occasionally visits her in her camp in the braem wood! fuck yeah!! and a little later she mentions rand’s failure against the dreadlords! they are visiting each other and telling each other about the things that happened to them while they were apart!

“‘these tactics aren’t bad,’ tam said, reading the orders. ‘the queen has a good head for warfare.’” father-in-law stamp of approval!!! ❤️

but perrin replies “she listens well to those who know their tactics and she doesn’t interfere.” jesus christ i KNOW perrin did NOT just say that elayne, the high commander of the forces of the light, works best when she’s shutting up and sitting quietly while men do all the work. fuck you to hell and back, perrin! and alas, tam goes on to say that that’s what he meant. i agree with the overall point that a good leader is one who knows how to listen to and take advice from others, but it being centered around undermining a young woman’s competence in favor of older men’s is very yikes. i feel like elayne’s military strategy skills are being unfairly retconned away in this book, because in previous books she’s been shown to be pretty good at military strategy because bryne taught her a lot about it. or actually, in this book elayne is showing good strategy skills but other characters tell us that it’s mostly the great generals doing the work and elayne herself minimizes her own contributions when rand compliments her. sigh.

“someone needs to watch rand’s back, and it...well, it’s going to be me. i know it, somehow.” i hate this sudden narrative that perrin is rand’s best boy when for 13 books it was mat! why the fuck isn’t mat here right now? why the fuck am i not getting my 3 boy besties teaming up together at the last battle AS I WAS NARRATIVELY PROMISED SINCE BOOK FUCKING ONE????

i was saying this before on a specific post i made complaining about mat going to ebou dar, but it would’ve made soooo much more sense if mat went to merrilor with moiraine and we got our full ef5 reunion and a nice scene of the 3 boys chilling together and catching up for the first time since TSR, and then rand finds out mat’s married to the seanchan empress and the two of them go to ebou dar together to rope her into the alliance, or maybe mat goes alone first to meet up with tuon and then rand arrives later so it doesn’t look like they plotted together to ambush her. like, if mat needed to be in ebou dar to a) spend more time with tuon and b) be present to mediate the rand-tuon alliance, then sanderson could’ve just sent him there on rand’s behalf after they’ve had a chance to reunite and plan together. same goals accomplished without breaking mat’s characterization by having him voluntarily go back to the location where he was the most miserable in the entire series and claim that he always loved it there and had such great times.

perrin makes tam a lord because i guess the two rivers is now so far up nobility’s asses that they won’t accept tam taking over perrin’s authority unless he’s a lord. “steward over the two rivers in the name of his son, the dragon reborn” that’s cute though ❤️

gaul is another minor male character like talmanes that i feel the fandom is disproportionately obsessed with. people are ready to grab pitchforks at the prospect of him being cut from the show! gaul is a nice dude and i like him, but it would not affect my life in any way if he didn’t make it into the show lmao but i AM glad he’s going with perrin to the wolf dream, it’s nice to see perrin have a friend who isn’t his wife or a subordinate. and i WOULD really enjoy seeing gaul/chiad/bain adapted in the show in a way that explicitly acknowledges this is a bi love triangle rather than trying to frame it as chiad’s male love interest and ~very close female friend~ fighting over her. i absolutely love the concept of first-sisters, but only when it doesn’t feel like a blatant No Homo on rj’s part, as it does with elayne-avi and bain-chiad. amys and lian, on the other hand, i would be equally happy to see kept as platonic sister-wives as i would be to see them made each other’s wives.

perrin mentions that aviendha is with rand when he goes to find him! and he does not say that min is there 😌 although i can’t imagine where else she’d be if not barnacled to rand’s side, so maybe she is there and perrin just didn’t think it was important enough to mention.

“i only need [rand] for a moment.” “you have this moment and many, perrin. i owe you dearly.” perrin has really not done ALL that much for you, rand. his one real job was to deal with masema, which he waffled over for like 5 books before faile finally took care of it! once again i’m totally seeing that perrin is sanderson’s favorite.

rand tells perrin to watch out for mat, concerned husband!

“‘may the light shelter you, perrin aybara.’ ‘and you, rand al’thor.’ perrin hesitated, and realized what was happening. they were saying goodbye. he took rand in an embrace.” 🥺🥺🥺 okay since sanderson took over we’ve gotten a mat-perrin hug and now a rand-perrin hug, he better come through with a mat-rand hug!

perrin says that defeating slayer will be key to dealing with the black tower situation, and it turns out that slayer’s anti-gateway dome is covering the black tower. ooh taim should’ve been slayer if he wasn’t demandred! that would’ve been neat and would’ve given slayer some much-needed narrative relevance. i like that solution much better than taimandred actually, since taim and slayer are both unsexy and can therefore be merged whereas demandred is too sexy to deserve being taim.

interesting dynamic of lanfear helping perrin in TAR! i feel like she’s hovered just on the edge of being a compelling villain throughout the series, so i’m hoping the show can pull back the curtain on her some more and shed more light on her characterization and motivations. AOL flashbacks to her relationship with LTT and decision to join the shadow would be excellent!

“my suffering goes beyond what you could conceive” babygirl i’ve undergone suffering you wouldn’t even believe

perrin going “it’s so unfair that channelers can be turned to the shadow against their will!” coming in with a solid No Shit Sherlock moment jkfg he’s like “does rand know that this is possible?” boy rand has known about this since book TWO get with the program!

mat is breaking into the tarasin palace to see tuon. imagine how romantic it would be if he was breaking into the caemlyn palace to see elayne! we were robbed.

in good news, this chapter does acknowledge that mat’s time in ebou dar was Not So Great Actually and does a decent job presenting the argument that mat is lying to himself when he says that he misses it and that he liked being with tylin. there are a few lines that do this, but most notably: “he had lived in this palace, free to come and go. for the most part. he scratched at his neck, and the scarf he wore there. for a moment it felt like a ribbon that felt like a chain.” this is a really good line and i am very happy to see it, but also so very sad because it really hits home how depressing mat’s endgame fate is. more than any other character, all he ever wanted was to be free, and he ends up with a stronger chain around his neck than any other character has in the end. i just don’t see how anybody could interpret mat’s arc as anything but a tragedy. and i do think that under sanderson’s pen the narrative does commit to it being a tragedy (there are some really heartbreaking lines in this chapter showing so clearly that mat is desperate to be loved but tuon only sees him as a tool) if not fully, at least moreso than it did under rj’s, where he treated their whole courtship in COT and KOD like a fun little romcom. and i think sanderson has also committed more fully to tuon being a villain rather than rj going “yes she enslaves people but all her slaves love her uwu” but on the other hand, sanderson!tuon shows more affection for mat (as in, 0.01 ounce of affection rather than 0 ounces) than rj!tuon did, so i don’t know.

“if tuon wanted to live in a city where the head of her armies was trying to have her assassinated, that was her choice.” i agree! leave her to her fate! this whole passage, props to sanderson for nailing the classic “mat complains about how that idiot other character is asking for trouble and he’s not gonna save their ass, while actively going out of his way to save their ass despite them not asking for his help” but also it was usually rand and elayne who got that attitude from mat and tuon does not deserve it jfkg

“if rand was up north, where all the trollocs were, then mat wanted to be as far from the man as possible. he felt bad for rand, but any sane person would see that mat’s choice was the only one. the swirl of colors started to form, but mat suppressed it. [paragraph break so that these following 2 sentences stand alone in their own paragraph, which i think is important] rational. he would be very rational.” i was about to blow my lid and say that this is wildly ooc for mat and is TDR mat behavior and erases all the growth he had in terms of coming to accept rand and his own responsibilities thereto. and i still say those things, but i am not blowing my lid because the end of the excerpt and especially the “rational. he would be very rational.” does a pretty good job of conveying that mat IS lying to himself about not wanting to go help rand with the last battle and that he secretly feels guilty for not being there. or maybe i’m just so desperate to believe that mat’s character hasn’t been entirely butchered that i’m grasping at straws jkdjfg but in TGS and TOM mat WAS totally prepared to bring the dragons and the band to help rand at the last battle and also told the aes sedai to tell egwene to make sure the horn of valere was ready for him, so i can’t say that this about-face is entirely sanderson’s fault since he did show in the prior 2 books that he understood that mat was ready and willing to help at the last battle. i wouldn’t be surprised if mat fucking off to ebou dar instead of going to merrilor was in rj’s notes and sanderson had no choice but to go with it.

selucia: “if [being called Highness] bothers you, cauthon, you have a very irritating life ahead of you. there is only one way to stop being the prince of the ravens, and that is to find your neck in a cord.” another very good line. it’s played for laughs on the surface, but it also shows a narrative awareness that this fate IS really terrible for mat. and the entire chapter, which revolves around mat and tuon’s reunion which you might think the narrative would want to frame as romantic (and in some places it does), is titled “your neck in a cord” so i think that that choice of title for this chapter definitely undercuts the ~romantic moments~ and shows awareness of The Tragedy Of Mat.

we move to rand who is just returning from another visit to elayne! ❤️❤️ i’m glad sanderson is at least making it clear that they’re in regular contact and spending time together even if he doesn’t bother to show any meeting but the first. haha in the previous 2 books i was certain that he loved rand/min the most and didn’t give a shit about rand/avi or rand/elayne, but in this book, once the initial weirdness of them avoiding each other was moved past, rand/elayne has been getting the best treatment and being depicted as the most important of rand’s relationships. we’re 300 pages in and min has still barely been mentioned at all! love it.

we also learn that their visits are no longer secretive: rand is walking openly through the camp and tells us, “elayne had made her armies aware of his earlier visit. i lead these armies, she had said as they parted last time, but you are their heart. you gathered them, rand. they fight for you. please let them see you when you come.” god the power couple-ness of it all!!!! if only mat was here, just imagine the power throuple-ness of the dragon reborn, the high commander of the armies of the light, and the greatest general of the age.

rand visits tam!! this whole scene is so wonderful!! too many wonderful moments and lines to call out all of them.

rand gives tam a new sword to replace the heron-marked blade (sob. i want the heron-marked blade and jeade’en to join fat little man angreal in coming back to rand at the end of it all!) and i think this must be the mysterious sword that he acquired before TGS and was cryptic about. he’s still so cryptic about it here! “it belonged...to a kindred soul.” what’s the point of stringing me along like this sanderson just tell me where the stupid sword came from! my only theory is maybe it was LTT’s sword since later in rand’s narration is “he’d never had a chance to fight with it” and that line is in its own paragraph which feels significant. but wait no then it turns out that rand hasn’t fought with a sword since losing his hand, so that’s probably actually what that line meant. who did this fucking sword belong to and why is it worth dragging out like this!!

“this is too fine a gift, son.” “nothing is too fine for you. nothing.”❤️❤️ “think of it as a thank-you, from all the world to you.” ❤️❤️

argh rand once again calls tam by his first name to his face! but then 2 pages later he calls him “father.” sanderson what are you doing!! this is such a tiny point but it makes me so mad djkfjg definitely one of my Unimportant Wheel Of Time Hills I Have Chosen To Die On (we all have some)

“to think. if you hadn’t wanted me to be a good archer [by teaching him the flame and the void], i’d have never have learned the thing that kept me sane through the rough times.” 😭❤️

“people’s eyes tended to slide off [his missing hand], as if they were seeing a gray man. they didn’t like the idea that their dragon reborn was flawed. he never let them know how tired he felt, inside.” 😭😭

and rand and tam swordfight for a while which is some nice father-son bonding and also rand fiiiiinally reacting to and working through the loss of his hand! what a good scene! i have for the moment taken Fratboy Rand’s title away from him because he has been a good boy so far in this chapter chunk lmao

rand mentions a gray man metaphor above and then there’s a real gray man in mat’s next section, and rand had also used a moss metaphor and then mat notes the moss in the garden with the same “moss still lived” line. parallels!

“mat was pretty sure rand was to blame [for plants dying]. rand or the dark one. mat could trace every bloody problem in his life to one or the other. those flaming colors...” mat why don’t you give rand a kiss on the lips and maybe you’ll calm down

“he had married her...she had married him back” why did that make me laugh so much

i’m so mad because this description of tuon practicing wrestling or whatever fistfighting she’s doing would be so sexy if i didn’t hate her so much jfkjg show come through and make her evil in a sexy way instead of a gross way and then make her redeem herself in a sexy way! and the moment of mat throwing the knife at her but actually the gray man behind her and she instinctively turns to look behind her instead of assuming mat is trying to kill her could also have been so godtier in a proper, well done enemies-to-lovers arranged-marriage-to-real-love dynamic. but instead it’s probably just tuon knowing mat’s wrapped far too tightly around her finger like a good little slave to even think of killing her :(

min and min/rand i never would have found that compelling even if the ship had been done to the best of its potential because the ground layer of that character and ship are simply not that interesting to me, but tuon and mat/tuon............................[gazes off into the distance thinking of all we could’ve had]

i think that because it’s been so long since i last saw mat and tuon onscreen together (like, super long since i’ve been so slow about reading these last few books) i WAS able to read this first moment almost in a vacuum and appreciate the good stuff for a page until tuon opened her mouth lmao

“you must not stay away. you are important to the empire, and i have use for you.” “sounds delightful.” / “did you save her? the one you went to rescue?” “how did you know about that?” “i have decided not to be jealous. you are fortunate. the missing eye suits you. before, you were too pretty.” / “good to see you, by the way. usually, when a fellow says something like that, it’s customary to tell them that you’re happy to see them as well.” “i am the empress now. i do not wait upon others, and do not find it ‘good’ that someone has returned. their return is expected, as they serve me.” “you know how to make a fellow feel loved.” it is so clear how absolutely MISERABLE mat is going to be in this marriage. despite his protests about not wanting to get married, he does want love, he wants to be loved and appreciated as a person, but tuon only sees him as a tool and thinks of him in terms of how he can be useful to her, and yet mat desperately laps up whatever tiny little scraps of would-be affection she throws his way (like later when she says it’s good to see him and he’s like yay i’ll take that for now!). The Tragedy Of Mat!!!

“when you saw me with a dagger in hand - as if to throw at you - you didn’t call for your guards. you didn’t fear i was here to kill you. you looked over your shoulder to see what i was aiming at. that’s the most loving gesture i think a man could receive from a woman.” like this is GOOD??? i LIKED this! if only tuon wasn’t Like That then i could enjoy this moment properly! even so, this line + the actual knife throwing scene a page earlier is my favorite mat/tuon moment of the series. which is like saying “my favorite war crime in history” but yknow.

“she did not reply. light, but she seemed cold. was it all going to be different, now that she was the empress? he could not have lost her already, could he?” mat i do not know WHAT delusions you were previously operating under that you ever thought she wasn’t cold or that you “had” her lmao! she is behaving exactly the same as she always has been!

tuon now rewards his good behavior with sex just like how she rewarded his good behavior with a kiss in KOD (i think it was that book). i 100000% subscribe to @butterflydm​’s theory that tuon is using slave breaking methods on mat (rewarding good behavior with treats, refusing to acknowledge his original name and instead forcing a new one on him until he begins responding to it - all things we’ve seen sul’dam do to damane). actually that’s not even a theory, it’s just a fact that that’s what she’s doing.

“i would not have said the words i did if i had found in you only a toy. a man missing an eye is no toy anyway. you have known battle; everyone who sees you now will know that. they will not mistake you for a fool, and i have no use for a toy. i shall have a prince instead.” a tiny bit of progression since she no longer views him as a toy or a fool, but she’s still seeing him as an object. only considering how he can be useful to her and how having him on her arm will affect public perception of her. she wants a nice Real Warrior to parade around and show off to everyone.

tuon when she brings a wild dangerous lion into her home and then he someday destroys it from the inside: surprised pikachu

i wish we could’ve gotten that spinoff of mat taking down the seanchan empire (if that’s what outriggers would’ve been about, which for my own sanity i must assume it would’ve been). then The Tragedy Of Mat would be a good launching point for that story, rather than an unsatisfying endgame.

“loial, son of arent, son of halan, had secretly always wanted to be hasty.” gasp! scandalous!

“it is nearly time for me to go.” “to battle?” “no, to mat. he is in ebou dar.” rand misses his man!!!

we finally learn the last thing about callandor, and it’s that it’s a sa’angreal for the true power as well as the one power! rand just suddenly knows this and doesn’t explain how - LTT memory maybe? - so i guess min’s 5 books of callandor research were completely useless lmao excellent, looks like we can officially begin and end the list of min’s plot contributions with “helping siuan escape the tower”

moiraine makes a vague allusion to mat having ancient memories that flies over rand’s head. it KILLS me that they never had a talk about their shared experience of having ancient memories!! also, wasn’t rand kind of aware that mat had ancient memories back in TFOH? or no i guess he only knew that he’d suddenly gained lots of battle strategy knowledge, but he didn’t know where it came from.

“why go to ebou dar?” because his husband is there, moiraine! he already said that!

rand is really STILL out there saying he’s gonna KILL the LITERAL DARK ONE. [1x01 moiraine intro monologue voice] the arrogance

“‘well,’ she said. ‘i am still in need of a cup of tea.’ rand looked at her, incredulous. then he laughed and walked away to bring her some.” 🥺

some dumbass tries to tell lan to talk tenobia and the other saldaean women out of joining the battle and lan claps back with: “i’ve seen saldaean woman spar. if i were to place a bet on a contest between one of them and a man from any army in the south, i’d bet on the saldaean any day...this war is everything or nothing. if i could round up each woman in the borderlands and put a sword in her hands, i would. for now, i’ll settle for not doing something stupid - like forbidding some trained and passionate soldiers from fighting.” FEMINIST KING LAN MANDRAGORAN 👑👑👑👑👑 so much love to him for being The First man in all of wheel of time to not be Weird about women going into battle!!! oh this was so satisfying.

poor mat wakes up naked in the garden with soldiers all around and tuon acts like this is normal and he’s stupid for being embarrassed. the rest of his life is going to be SO MISERABLE for him.

and finally, drumroll please.......................CAUTHOR REUNION!!!!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

okay now that that’s out of the way, it was actually kind of a letdown i’m not gonna lie lmao but let’s get into it!

“rand looked older, more weathered, than the last time mat had seen him in person. of course, he had seen the man recently in those blasted visions. although mat had trained himself to stop thinking of rand to avoid those colors, he still slipped on occasion.” mat HAD TO TRAIN HIMSELF to STOP THINKING ABOUT RAND oh my god mat. and still slips on occasion! on occasion? mat, you are thinking about rand and getting pressed about the visions like once a chapter! perrin sure didn’t have to train himself to stop thinking about rand, i’ll tell you that.

“anyway, seeing rand in person was different.” seeing rand in person is DIFFERENT, you guys. mat is shook!

“it had been...light, how long had it been? the last time i saw him with my own eyes was when he sent me to salidar after elayne. that felt like an eternity ago. it had been before he had come to ebou dar, before he had seen the gholam for the first time. before tylin, before tuon.” 😭😭😭 especially with that last sentence, this reads so much like mat seeing his gay lover for the first time after tylin and tuon forced him through a conversion therapy arc to make him a proper heterosexual husband. i’m hurting!!! that interpretation of mat’s arc changed me as a person.

“rand did not seem the least bit worried; his face was calm. he wore a nice coat of red and black, a white shirt underneath, black trousers.” “rand watched the man go, nonchalant though he was bound. you know, mat thought idly, he kind of does look like a king.” mat really wants us to know how hot and fuckable Daddy Rand is right now, thank you mat.

tuon thinks that mat was just playing her last night and was actually luring rand to her. man i wish! but rand jumps in to tell her not to blame mat, protective husband <3

mat gets bound by the power. his gut assumption is that it’s rand doing it - heartbreaking - but it turns out it’s a damane, and tuon stole the medallion off him while he slept - heartbreaking. remember when rand refused to help moiraine get the medallion from mat? remember when elayne turned down the medallion when mat offered it to her in a dangerous situation because she wanted him to keep it and be safe? and meanwhile tuon steals it from him while he’s sleeping to protect herself. mat deserves better 2k22

“‘thanks a bundle for this,’ mat muttered to rand. ‘you’re such a bloody good friend.’ ‘it’s good to see you too,’ rand said, a hint of a smile on his lips. ‘here we go,’ mat said with a sigh. ‘you’ve pulled me into trouble again. you always do this.’” THEY ARE SO MARRIED this takes me back specifically to rhuidean when mat was like “well i won’t wait for you! so there! you better not think i will!” and rand was like, smiling, “of course i wouldn’t think that of you mat.” Poor Mat, His Husband Gets Him Into So Much Trouble! and fond husband rand just going “ah classic mat, i love this fool”

(also, might i add that “it’s good to see you” was tuon’s alleged big romantic line to mat just 2 chapters ago? 👀👀)

“‘you think you could stay away from me?’ rand asked, smiling.” rand knows mat is whipped for him god bless

amidst all his complaints mat slips in right away “what did you do to your hand, by the way?” concerned husband 🥺 “lost it capturing one of the forsaken.” “capturing? you’re growing soft.” proud husband who knows rand could kick any forsaken’s ass any day of the week! also good for him for unknowingly roasting rand for refusing to kill semirhage Because She’s A Woman lmao

“he glanced to the side. ‘you look nice, by the way. you’ve been taking better care of yourself lately.’ ‘so you do care,’ rand said. ‘of course i do,’ mat grumbled.” 😭😭😭 MARRIED!!!! also, mat, if i was going to tell my friend that they looked healthy and in a good state i would say that they looked “well” or they looked “good” i would not say that they looked NICE, MAT that’s gay. in what world is “you look nice” a comment on anything but somebody’s physical appearance in terms of attractiveness rather than in terms of health, mat. if i told somebody they looked nice they would immediately assume i was complimenting their attractiveness or their outfit or something, mat.

“‘i mean, you have to keep yourself alive, right? go have your little duel with the dark one and keep us all safe? it’s good to know you’re looking up to it.’ ‘that’s nice to hear,’ rand said, smiling.” mat is IN LOVE with rand and rand knows it and that’s why he spends this entire conversation smiling like a fool. mat’s like “you look nice. um i mean healthy and stuff! and i only care because you have to stay alive to fight the dark one to save everybody!” and rand’s just smiling because mat called him hot, no takebacks <3

and unfortunately that’s about the last of it as the rest of the scene is all about tuon being The Worst

mat immediately upon hearing tuon declare that she’s going to take his best friend captive and bring him back to seanchan: “mat smiled. light, but she made a good empress.” ?????????? WHAT THE HELL MAT also he always does this about not only the shittiest things she does but also the stupidest. like she’ll make some completely empty ego-based threat and he’s like “wow she’s such a good empress!” have any of her wild claims and threats ever ACTUALLY happened, mat? no they have not.

however, he does immediately follow this up with “there was no need to filch my medallion, though, he thought. they were going to have words about that. assuming he survived this. she would not really execute him would she?” tuon taking away mat’s possessions - and a possession that is extremely meaningful to him and makes him feel safe - is another one for the list of abusive partner markers that she displays. all together, this paragraph reads so much like somebody who is subconsciously aware that he’s in an abusive relationship but doesn’t quite know how to verbalize it to himself :(

“you know, mat thought, he does a fair job of sounding like a king too.” okay mat being into Empress Tuon can retroactively have half a right only because it implies that a bi panic is going on when paired with this line about rand jfkgj

rand flexes on tuon so hard and it’s SO sexy. “rand stepped forward. ‘i held the loyalty and fealty of all seventeen generals of dawn’s gate. fortuona athaem devi paendrag, my authority supersedes your own! ‘artur hawkwing-’ ‘my authority supersedes that of hawkwing! if you claim rule by the name of he who conquered, then you must bow before my prior claim. i conquered before hawkwing, though i needed no sword to do so. you are here on my land, empress, at my sufferance!’ thunder broke in the distance. mat found himself shaking.” yeah i’ll bet that mat Ruler Kink cauthon is shaking after that 🥵🥵

“i allowed you to live when i could have destroyed you in an instant” rand can you please just destroy her in an instant, christ!

mat persuades tuon that rand is trustworthy: “he’s a good fellow. he’s rough at the corners sometimes, but you can trust his word. if he’s offering you a treaty, he’ll make good on it.” “i grew up with rand. i vouch for him.”

and finally, perhaps the most romantic love declaration in all of WOT, “you can trust rand al’thor with the world itself.” ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

the cinematic parallels to rand defending mat to tuon back in TGS and saying he’s a good man and a loyal friend!!!!

“you called them my forces. they are our forces. you are one of us now, matrim.” “well, i guess i am at that.” stop harshing my vibe!! leave me alone i just wanna sit here and enjoy my cauthor!

speaking of harshing my vibe, UGH the deal ends up being that tuon can keep all the damane she’s already collared!!!! rand at least makes a halfhearted attempt to make her release all the ones she’s taken from the westlands before folding like a damn chair as soon as she goes “no :)” and mat just stands there and doesn’t even try. this is so fucking frustrating and it’s SO unnecessary!!!!! narratively, WHY did this need to happen? why couldn’t rand have gotten her to agree to release all the damane she’s taken from the westlands? even that is still far below what SHOULD be the endgame here - the total collapse of the seanchan empire wherein every slave in the whole empire is freed and all the lands they took in the westlands are released - so why couldn’t we have had tuon be forced to make ONE fucking concession? she almost got pulled by ta’veren sway and agreed to rand’s terms in TGS, she should be extra susceptible now that there’s two ta’veren! i’m so mad!!!! chewing rocks, as they say!!!!!

and like, you would think that the ENTIRE PURPOSE of mat’s marriage to tuon should be to help with this alliance, but he basically does NOTHING in this scene! sure he convinces tuon to trust rand, but that’s it. during the actual negotiations, he doesn’t say a peep, just sits there chewing his nails because The Girls Are Fightingggg and makes no effort to help rand get tuon to free the damane. we could’ve axed mat and tuon’s marriage entirely and it would not have been difficult to get to this same endgame result.

“‘by the way, i saved moiraine. chew on that as you try to decide which of the two of us is winning.’ mat followed tuon, and behind him rose the laughter of the dragon reborn.” a nice little note to end our cauthor scene on since i think i’ve heard it’s the last one in the whole series 😭 but also a depressing note because mat follows tuon and turns his back on rand! the metaphor of it all! The Tragedy Of Mat!

AND I DIDN’T EVEN GET MY CAUTHOR HUG GODDAMMIT!!!!!!

“‘you are right [that i need sleep], of course. and you needn’t feel surprised to hear me admit it.’ ‘i wasn’t surprised.’ ‘i can feel your emotions, gawyn.’ ‘that was from something else entirely. i remembered something sleete said a few days back, a joke i didn’t understand until now.’ he looked at her innocently. that, finally, earned a smile. a hint of one, but that was enough.” I LOVE THEM YOUR HONOR

“asha’man fighting for the enemy. why wouldn’t the dragon reborn have done something?” god i know right jkfjgh

“outside, egwene sighed, closing her eyes. he put his arm around her and let her slump against him. the moment lasted but a few seconds before she pulled back, standing up straight and putting on the face of the amyrlin. so young, he thought, to have so much required of her.” 😭😭😭

“of course, she wasn’t much younger than al’thor himself. gawyn was pleased, and a little surprised, that thinking of the man did not provoke any anger. al’thor would fight his fight. really, what the man did was none of gawyn’s business.” look at gawyn so happy over the progress he’s made in working through the one-sided breakup with his toxic ex who never even knew they were in a relationship djfkjg good for him!

“i begin to think she assumes all seanchan to be darkfriends.” “you beat her and imprisoned her, making her into an animal to be led by a collar.” king gawyn once again being the only man in the series to take damane enslavement and its traumas seriously! 👑👑

gawyn feels wasted on the battlefield since he spends 95% of his time just standing there and not doing anything and acts shifty about the bloodrings and conceals from egwene the fact that he has them. oh no baby boy i sense your As Yet Unknown Crime approaching and i am afraid! but given how staunch i have become in loving gawyn - my original genuine love only being fueled higher by spite since everyone else hates him - his crime will have to be truly incredibly unbelievably heinous to make me dislike him hahaha even if it is i am fully prepared to dismiss it as ooc behavior and not his fault!

exhibit a: “you decided to stand in egwene’s shadow, gawyn, he thought. you decided you would protect her, do what she needed of you. she was winning this war, she and the aes sedai. would he let himself grow as jealous of her as he had been of al’thor?” on the one hand, still mad about gawyn’s sudden issues about being in people’s shadows that never existed prior to TOM being turned into the foundation of his character, and extra mad that all the character development he went through in the last book to overcome those issues - character development that was already unnecessary since those issues were invented purely for that one book - are now doubly unnecessary since he’s just regressed back again. on the other hand, thrilled by him paralleling his feelings for egwene with his feelings for rand, as if rand too was a lover whom gawyn grew jealous of over time djfkgjh

min shows up and says things for the first time (page 353) blech, but at least it’s brief. “light, what would he have done without her? i’d have fallen, he thought. during the dark months...i’d have fallen for certain.” FOOTAGE!!!! NOT!!!!! FOUND!!!!!!!!! you know what actually would’ve happened without min during the dark months, rand? a) you would never have been kidnapped and put in the box, b) you would never have lost your hand, c) you would never have been broken by having to torture and almost kill someone you loved, d) you wouldn’t have had to endure cadsuane’s bullying, e) you wouldn’t have had constant viewings worsening your paranoia and mistrust of others, f) you wouldn’t have had your personal secrets and traumas spilled to people you do not trust, g) you wouldn’t have had an allegedly supportive girlfriend frequently hitting you, threatening you, and working with others behind your back to “handle” you like you were a disobedient child. ETC!!

i say this all the goddamn time but i have to say again HOW FRUSTRATING it is that rand and min bludgeon us over the head with how min was The Only Light In The Darkness and The Only One Who Truly Knew Him and The Only One Who Helped Him Hold On, when there is literally no actual behavior or actions or events in the text to support these claims and in fact min’s presence actively made things worse for rand much of the time. ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

cadsuane fondly tells min that she’s been reading too much after min recites some stupid low-hanging fruit philosophy (if rand says he’s a fool, then that means he is a fool, but if he says he’s not a fool, that still means he’s a fool since it implies he doesn’t seek further wisdom) and then a page later says about elayne “then she has spoken wisdom at least once in her life. a better average than i had assumed of that one.” fuck you to hell and back along with perrin, cadsuane! elayne is far and away one of the most intelligent characters in the series and i am tired of the other characters undermining her intelligence.

but regarding that line, “rand refused to rise to that comment” and notes that cadsuane is testing him, so at least a) rand is angry to hear her speak badly of elayne and b) cadsuane is mostly just talking shit to annoy him

so far rand has gotten nice goodbye moments with elayne, aviendha, perrin, tam, lan, moiraine, cadsuane, and in a couple chapters egwene. the fact that FUCKING CADSUANE got a proper goodbye moment with rand and MAT did not!!!!!! i’m raging!!!!!!!

lan to mandarb: “we’ll rest soon, my friend. i promise. we’ll make a home. the shadow defeated, nynaeve and i will reclaim malkier. we’ll make the fields bloom again, cleanse the lakes. green pastures. no more trollocs to fight. children to ride on your back, old friend. you can spend your days in peace, eating apples and having your pick of mares.” 😭😭😭😭

“rand al’thor had begun to crack that shell, and then nynaeve’s love had ripped it apart completely. i wonder if rand ever knew, lan thought.” 😭😭😭😭

it’s just so weird that all rand’s relationships are getting such nice tributes paid to them but his relationship with mat, which was his KEY RELATIONSHIP for the first 5 books of the series, is completely brushed off. like i enjoyed their little reunion banter, but it was not nearly sufficient to be the sendoff of one of the series’ most important relationships.

speaking of sendoffs, egwene gets one with the wise ones 😭 “‘i am proud of you, girl,’ amys said. amys, tough-as-nails amys, looked teary-eyed. they rose, and egwene embraced them one a a time. ‘light shelter you, amys, melaine, bair,’ egwene said. ‘give my love to the others.’ ‘it will be done, egwene al’vere,’ bair said. ‘may you find water and shade, now and always.’” 😭😭😭

and egwene also decides not to return to TAR for the moment since it’s increasingly dangerous. “‘and farewell to you, old friend,’ she said to the air. ‘until i dream again.’ she let herself wake.” 😭😭😭

knowing what i do about egwene’s fate, this all hurt me so much!!!

egwene, gawyn, and rand have a scene alone together, perfectly timed to coincide with my third eye being opened to this forbidden polycule jkdfjgh

rand gives egwene a hair ribbon: “you always looked forward so to being able to braid your hair.” 😭😭😭😭

why didn’t mat get a nice little present from rand!!!!!!!!

“‘i just...i didn’t want to go to my fight with our last meeting having been an argument, even if it was an important one.’ ‘oh, rand,’ egwene said. she stepped forward, taking the ribbon. she embraced him.” 😭😭😭❤️❤️❤️ all of this late-series rand-egwene stuff is gonna hit SOOOO well in the show since their early-series relationship was strengthened so much!

rand tells gawyn that he (rand) is galad’s half-brother!! finally this is shared!!! “egwene had figured this out ages ago” why didn’t you tell gawyn or elayne then jdkfg though maybe i’ll hopefully assume rand has told elayne by now in one of their little battle camp rendezvous.

gawyn is shook and asks about elayne and rand assures him that he and elayne are not related. secretly gawyn was asking because he wanted to know if HE and rand were related and if he would have to feel awkward about his homoerotic obsession with rand djfkg

“half-brother. not that it would probably mean much to a whitecloak.” 💔💔 galad winning the worst brother of the year award once more! and at least this does explain why rand wouldn’t have sought him out to tell him that they’re brothers. “‘i think galad would surprise you,’ gawyn said softly.” is gawyn??? being nice to rand??? oh my heart!!

and we have an uncomfortable and sad scene of mat being poked and prodded at and forced into new clothes that he hates, YET AGAIN. tuon really is just tylin 2.0

“normal life had been harder for mat than for other boys.” the Queer Mat vibes of this line when taken out of context!

“for much of mat’s life, he had wished that people would not look at him so much...now he had it [since the seanchan are all lowering their eyes], and it made him sick.” 💔💔

the one bit of good news from this scene is that mat is in last battle mode and is all business and prepared to whip the seanchan into shape, so that bs of him abandoning the last battle seems to be over now. and i can see narratively why rj would’ve wanted a major protagonist entrenched in the seanchan firmly enough that he can force them to come to the last battle and be their military commander, but there were just so many better ways to execute that.

okay so a MASSIVE army of sharans, whom we’ve heard about in passing like 4 times before this moment and barely even knew existed, just Traveled into the middle of egwene’s camp COMPLETELY OUT OF THE BLUE what in the goddamn hell???? talk about a deus ex machina! this is even worse than guybon and his massive army showing up out of the blue in KOD!

“i am the amyrlin seat, she told herself firmly. i will be strong. i will survive. so long as i live, the white tower stands. she still let gawyn hold her.” 😭😭

“if the end of the aiel was the sacrifice required for rand to win, [aviendha] would make it...better that one people should end than the world fall completely under Shadow.” okay but in the visions the world fell completely under the seanchan which is the SAME DAMN THING

we get another wonderful little avirand scene, hell yeah i wasn’t expecting to get another!!!

“she stepped up to him, and he moved so that he stood just beside her, his shoulder touching hers. he did not drape an arm around her, and she did not take his hand. he did not own her, and she did not own him. the act of his movement so that they faced the same direction meant far more to her than any other gesture could.” I HAVE BEEN STRUCK DEAD BY ROMANCE!!!! SHIT!!!!!!! I’M DEAD ON THE FLOOR!!!!! understated romantic moments between reserved characters are my kryptonite!!!!! also, howling screaming cackling at the STARK contrast between min and her possessiveness and insecurity constantly plastering herself all over rand and trying to show everyone that she owns him LMAO

RAND CALLS AVI “SHADE OF MY HEART” 😭😭😭😭😭😭🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰

okay okay i’m calm! no i’m not, but i must continue on.

AVI STRAIGHT UP SAYS RAND SHOULD TAKE THE DARK ONE GAI’SHAIN JKJFKGJ THE ICON JUMPED OUT

rand used the dagger ter’angreal on his shayol ghul scouting mission and it successfully prevented the dark one from seeing him, nice! “aviendha, that you should find this and identify it when you did, that elayne should give it to me...the pattern weaves us all where we need to be.” AVIRANDLAYNE PERFECT THROUPLE PERFECT NARRATIVE COMPLEMENTS THERE IS NO NARRATIVE REASON FOR MIN TO BE PART OF THIS RELATIONSHIP

“rand smiled, then added, ‘elayne sounded sad when she gave me the dagger. i think a part of her wanted to keep it because it would let her curse by the dark one’s name without drawing his attention.’” DJFKJG he knows his wife! also, i adore this little moment of rand fondly ribbing elayne to aviendha, just as elayne fondly ribbed aviendha to rand when complaining about how they both snuck up on her. they are all married! MIN is never involved in these moments of other partners being fondly ribbed, because she refuses to acknowledge that rand HAS other partners when she’s with him.

rand tells avi that the shadow has the seals! a small thing but after so many books of rand needlessly keeping information from his own partners elayne and aviendha, i get so happy in this book when he keeps them abreast of what’s going on!

“‘we will find a way to stop this,’ aviendha said, voice firm. he looked to her and smiled. ‘always the warrior.’ ‘of course.’ what else would she be?” ❤️❤️

nynaeve’s been studying callandor, which makes no sense as she has no ability with ter’angreal, but she has nothing to do while elayne and aviendha are busy doing hot girl shit, so that task was punted off to her. nynaeve really was so wasted after WH, or really after ACOS, i feel like her breaking her block was her last truly big solo moment. why isn’t she with egwene blowing up trollocs and helping with healing? she would be so effective there!

lmao of course min was hoping and assuming that rand would take her with him into THE LITERAL DARK ONE’S PRISON WHEN HE GOES THERE TO FIGHT HIM 1V1 good god i cannot with her. aviendha at least had reasonable grounds to hope to go, as she is an extremely capable warrior with both the power and with physical weapons, but what did min think she was gonna do, recite other people’s philosophical ideas at the dark one?

but rand is sending her to egwene’s battlefront and i’m guessing they might not see each other again, in which case min did NOT get a dedicated scene with him like elayne and aviendha did, fuck yeah we love to see it!!

“tomorrow, we invade shayol ghul and claim it as our own! if we must put our head into the lion’s mouth, let us make certain that he chokes upon our flesh!” damn! i was hoping to get to halfway through the book for this recap (currently 50ish pages away from halfway), but this is just too fitting a place to end the post!

one last note for the road: i’ve got to apply this quote to The Tragedy Of Mat. he is being forced to put his head into the lion’s mouth, but someday they WILL choke upon his flesh!

#wot #wot book spoilers #this chapter chunk wasn't even 200 pages lmao how did this post get so long! #especially considering so much of those 200 pages were battle scenes i skipped over with no commentary! #i guess 40% of the post is deep dives into the randlayne and cauthor reunions djfk that's important content!

[forgerfamilyantics]

Chapter 93 of Spy x Family was released! And Anya will find out how she did on the finals... (spoilers below!)

I was speculating that she would do well, and she did! She made a huge jump in the rankings- from 213th to 168th! Congrats, Anya!

As a diehard Damian stan, I was so proud of him when he earned a Stella for history 😌 But I have to say, I was even prouder of Anya getting second highest in classical language, earning her a Stella as well!

Unfortunately... she also earned a Tonitrus in math... but I can't say I blame her. (I'm pretty sure in one chapter they were learning the Pythagorean theorem- in first grade, no less!) And I loved Anya and Loid's faces when they saw she had gotten a bolt.

As opposed to blacking out like the last time Anya earned a Tonitrus, Lloyd has this reaction:

And Anya's face is absolutely adorable!! 😭❤️

Barbara and Sigmund also congratulate Anya on her Stella. (They're such good "grandparents" to her!)

Later on, Loid asks Anya about her experience with classical language, and if she had any exposure to it in her childhood before the orphanage. She says that she doesn't really remember... But I can't help but feel that her backstory will be revealed someday.

Plus, this little panel where Loid tells her to not kick off her blanket, which I found to be so cute!

The next morning, Anya and Damian receive their Stella. Emile mentions the middle schoolers are receiving their awards next, and I did a double take at this panel.

FOLKS, DEMETRIUS DESMOND HAS MADE HIS APPEARANCE!

He's not as adorable as my little Damian, but I do have to say that he's joined the ranks of my favorite characters. Especially because when Anya reads his mind, all she sees is this:

So far, she's read Melinda, Damian, and Demetrius' minds. Damian's argumentative with himself (which is pretty normal), Melinda is extremely contradictory (mostly when it comes to her sons), and Demetrius is just... blank.

I have a theory that it may be because of Donovan- maybe like how Damian's pushed aside his childhood, Demetrius has made his thoughts blank to cope... but with what exactly? I definitely think that more will be revealed about him later.

The only times Anya hears his thoughts, it's just these:

Intriguing- I'm super excited to see more of him soon!!

Anyways, we finish out the chapter with some Damian angst- mostly wondering about his father and Demetrius' relationship- and Anya imitating Demetrius' blank expression- saying she wants to become a "super genius".

Looking forward to the next chapter in two weeks!

#spy x family #sxf #spy x family manga #spy x family spoilers #sxf manga #sxf spoilers #anya forger #damian desmond #demetrius desmond #sxf chapter 93 #forger family commentary

[cuchufletapl]

Every day I am rewarded for having Mr Henderson as one of my favourite SxF characters.

He's such a good man who genuinely, sincerely cares so much for his students.

Not only does he go personally to the place where the bus has been detained as soon as possible, but he doesn't hesitate to put his own life on the line to bring food and water to the children and try to put them at ease — and then he decides to take an unwell colleague's place and stay in the bus.

(Look at how the students react when they see him! They're scared and tired and I'm sure seeing any adult they know would prompt a similar reaction, but still — that girl says that they missed him. He's a teacher they know to be fair and to help them when they need it (see Short Mission #4 or Chapter 64 for instance), so it makes sense that they'd feel particularly comforted by his presence. He's not just an adult they know, he's an adult they trust, and Henderson knows this.)

This man has the moral backbone of a steel beam and a true dedication for education and I appreciate him so much.

#spy x family #spy x family manga spoilers #sxf manga spoilers #sxf chapter 72 #henry henderson #my commentary - sort of meta? #my original post #manga #sxf meta

[fruitybashir]

if i dont get at least 5 asks from you after a new chapter id be like oh i fucked up .............. its the metric by which i determine if the chapter was good or bad hahahaha 💖💖💖💖

(yes I stole your reaction pic, sorryyy)

Thank youuuuuuuu I am always scared that I'm being annoying this is great reasurance <3

Now, onto the actual chapter:

The longer the day goes on, the more Bojan seems like himself again, awake and active and talking, talking, talking- … and it should annoy Kris, it really should. It did, just a few months back but there’s none of that now.

I relate to both of them so hard in this scene, I too talk a lot all the time always and I too absolutely adore listening to the people I love talk :D

apple spam under the cut :D

lmaooo like remember when kris yelled at bojan for not shutting up? and look at him now. where did all attitude go huh? 😌

baby steps, baby steps, he thinks he can still get out of it if he just admits hes crushing but thats just the admission that opens possibilities for more hahaha

i cant heeeeeelp it, every time i see bojan with kids im like 😭😭😭😭 he belongs with kids and i can SOOOO see him in daycare/kindergarten like,,,, it is all so clear to me

its just scraps and glimpses into why their dynamic was the way it was at the start and they need to get it all out in the open and clear it up a) for kris to realise he can trust bojan now and bojan isnt that asshole teen anymore and b) for bojan to understand why kris was so cold to him and accept that he had to earn that trust/affection back

also the thing (in this au) was that like. kris had a crush on bojan and then bojan calls him a slur and that not only hits extra hard in the being called a slur department, but also being called that by someone you looked up to (inspired him into music) and that you put on a pedestal and admired etc, that just cuts extra deep, it feels like a betrayal almost

NO SAME THO!! like i couldnt form a dutch sentence if my life depended on it but when i looked them up and thomas helped me figure out what sounded most natural etc, id read them and be like oh yeah. i understand that. all of that. its so weird!!!

oh and one day he will make a home in that <33 one day <33 after theyve got their shit together and become a couple and get married and have children and then kris will have bojan laughing and kissing him on the couch always <33333

#fresh apple spam straight from the orchard!!!!! (orchard = köln queue) #my fingers are freezing off. #20mins til entry and i can barely hit the buttons djdkjskkd #so ill keep it short but thank you soooooo much as always for your commentary it means the world to me <333333 #inbox #apfel07 #chapter spoilers

[crunchycrystals]

riordan you cant just drop the fact on me that percy and annabeth have both discussed marriage before im going to lose it

#crunchyposts #pjo #cotg #cotg spoilers #reading commentary #percabeth #GOOD CHAPTER. REALLY GOOD CHAPTER. I LOVE THE MIX OF SLICE OF LIFE AND ADVENTURE STUFF #ITS DEF DIFFERENT TO THE PREVIOUS BOOKS BUT THE SLICE OF LIFE STUFF IS MY FAVORITE PART I JUST WANNA BE AROUND MY FAVORITE CHARACTERS AGAIN #anyways. im losing it every time theres a percabeth moment #i get more percabeth moments auauagksajgfjkdlsgklsdgs