This shit fucked me up ╥﹏╥
It’s so beautiful in its exploration of sentience, emotion, and humanity. The gems seem somewhat apathetic to each other beyond matters of their defense against Lunarians. They have these intense, long lasting attachments after a loss, but even that seems to fade over time and they don’t have a particularly supportive social structure. That might make sense since they’re not biologically designed to be social.
We see over and over that Phos has the best of intentions to start with, but we all know where those can lead. They want to help Cinnabar, they want to retrieve their lost comrades, they want to end the lunarian invasion. They are slowly corrupted by memory loss, trauma, and all of the changes to their body. And the whole time, an entire society of ancient beings, including their Sensei have been slowly leading them to an inevitable end of destruction and loneliness. Phos just got such a raw deal. They were essentially raised as a sacrificial lamb.
1. They’re born weak and considered useless, to a species is in a constant war of attrition due to Lunarians trying to torture Sensei into praying (which he can’t do even if he wanted to)
2. they gain enough power to be helpful after several traumatic fights, but all of the people around them that they care about keep dying
3.everyone treats them like they’re nuts for being suspicious of Sensei
4. They are slowly losing their mind between all of this while losing memories and continuing to fight to protect their comrades
5. eventually gets damaged, which causes a head transplant combining them with another gem’s personality, further destabilizing/altering their mind
6. Gets awkward looks for being crazy again
7.labeled a traitor for going to the moon to find the lost comrades
8. Finds out the lost comrades have been turned to dust and can’t be fixed
9. Slowly loses sight of their goals because the lunarians and sensei have been manipulating their entire life to traumatize them enough to become human
10. Finds out that even though lost comrades can be restored, their memories will never return, so it won’t be the same beings
11. Tries to return and talk to Sensei to beg for a peaceful resolution, gets obliterated without hesitation by every gem left on the island, taken apart, and hidden in pieces for 200+ years
12. Gets messed up from being so damaged, then reformed (twice, once by Sensei, once by Aechma, who is implied to have focused on restoring more of their negative memories to cultivate the human emotion, vengeance)
13. Basically destroys Sensei by trying to force him to pray, then is forced to become god in his place
14. Left in complete isolation on Earth for 10,000 years to force them to properly absorb the power of god, even new gems are taken away to prevent them from having anyone to interact with. All of the other gems and sensei are basically partying without a care on the moon this entire time
15. Fulfills the wish and sends all sentient life into the afterlife, being left completely alone for millennia
16. Sentient life finally develops and they are able to interact with them, then the sun explodes and instead of taking the escape capsule with them, they are afraid of the corruption in their human parts and choose to die with the planet
The emperor pisses me tf off. He has always been a deadbeat to Etienne. He left his kid under the control of a morally bankrupt rapist (he did not want to marry or sleep with her, so she overpowered him with drugs and pheromones). That’s why she lost her shit about Etienne being an omega, because it was her only chance to conceive.
But he’s also at fault for leaving a child to the mercy of someone like that. He never even tried to teach or mold Etienne into a good son or ruler, just tried to tear him down and replace him with Rishar every chance he got.
Their relationship recently improved, but it was only because Etienne started to conform to what he wanted, and was useful in countering house Herace. He still doesn’t give af about Etienne and is more than happy to abandon/condemn him the second his secret gets out.
This is a really interesting example of how patriarchal constructs dehumanizes everyone. The very first plot point of the story involves the teammates deeming women attracted to an attractive bachelor as “nuisances” and then banning them from the premises without asking the subject. Then they are irritated by the inconvenience of not being allowed to have women over and basically scheme to set up DeMarcus with a girl that THEY deem is ideal, without asking his opinion, but their main goal isn’t really to help DeMarcus, but “get him laid to end the ban”, so they can all get laid.
Women who are trying to meet up with them are either a nuisance or a commodity, and it flips as convenient. DeMarcus is treated in a similar way. Just like they make assumptions about the intent and behavior of women, they don’t even bother to ask what kind of girl he wants, or if he even wants to meet someone that way.
I actually appreciate the subtlety and how it drives the plot without bashing the reader over the head.
I’m just tired of authors coming up with a self centered top and literally bending over backwards to create a selfless, devoted bottom who will rearrange their lives and take on insane burdens just to avoid inconveniencing or requiring the top to take any emotional or actual responsibility for situations of their own creation.
It just feels that in some moments Geonwu doesn’t react like a person or his own character, but an accessory to Taejun. As such, he will always end up prioritizing Taejun’s convenience and preference over all else. I just want real characters that feel like real, autonomous people, not designed to cater to an asshole mc and make sure they always look better than they are
It’s interesting that this is the moment the author chooses to show a more innocent and human side to Grayson. Up until now, he constantly behaves and thinks like a selfish asshole on the borderline of having antisocial personality disorder.
Now he’s about to get some karma, but we’re being set up to feel bad for him, like all the people he wronged are sniffing out some precious glimmer of empathy, as if he didn’t have an entire lifetime to start seeing others as human.
This story is such a great example of how abuse victims become abusers. Talia knows who is truly responsible for her misery, but everyone else in her life also participates or contributes to it. She doesn’t see a way to escape the abuse, so she’s at a precipice. She doesn’t really want to kill Ayla, but it’s the only measure of control that she feels she can exert, a more extreme version of her keeping the servants in line through violence. She wants to be free, she wants to be happy, she wants to be with her love, but it just won’t happen.
She is simultaneously incredibly jealous of Ayla for her loving family, her lack of abuse, and her betrothal to Varcas, but also completely self loathing. She hates her life, she hates how powerless she is, she hates that her mother only uses her, she hates the way she acts, she hates herself as a person.
At the end of the day, she isn’t lashing out at the person she resents the most, the person whose death would actually benefit her, or the primary architects of her misery, she’s trying to attack someone who appears weak enough for her to harm.
This man is holding onto his last shred of sanity trying to change the future lmao.
So basically Iheon never learned anything. He felt bad about the effects of his actions, but not the actual harm they caused, which is why he is still controlling and possessive even after his second chance. He is still trying to pressure, coerce, and entrap Huiwon into a relationship, but just more self aware about it. I don’t get why he’s getting a gold star, for…not being physically abusive. Just because he doesn’t hit Huiwon doesn’t make him a decent partner or person. If we got an intro of him from the last part of the story he would still be a red flag.
The only reason the relationship has any semblance of functionality is because Huiwon’s feelings somehow override literally all trauma, even from the first life. And in the second one, Huiwon is just magically fine with all of the controlling, manipulative, and abusive behavior. It just feels like he’s built around making Iheon look less bad, because if he reacted like a normal person it would be more obvious that Iheon was and still is the villain.
Just bland in general. I’m a bit tired of stories where the fl mindlessly devotes her mind, body, and soul to a ml who she’s not even that attached to. It feels artificial and cheap because nothing that’s happened has actually shown their relationship deepening to that degree.
Despite him not warning her about his sleep murdering (risking her life in general, but even worse for not giving her a heads up), her development seems to be husband = love, therefore like husband.
His development is the usual possessiveness over love trope, so he’ll treat her ok as long as she’s doing what he wants, but doesn’t really respect her as a person, which is why he basically imprisons/posts watchers on her.
As usual, author needs to make sure she acts like a docile doormat to avoid showcasing how problematic and undesirable the ml is.
She was basically hyped up with a cool backstory of a noble fighting on the frontlines and then immediately morphed into a Bella Swan cardboard cutout.
This is such a refreshing and interesting take on dungeon stories! I think it does something really unusual and focuses on mystery and suspense instead of action (thus far). I’m really looking forward to it!
Can we talk about how destructive the mother’s choice was?!?! Forcing both kids to grow up as 1 person, which requires them to suppress their true personalities, interests, and abilities to keep up the ruse. Constantly being compared and forced to conform to a fake persona, never able to develop genuine personal relationships.
It’s established that twin girls are an ominous sign, but the explanation is that two sisters centuries ago got into a succession war about it. That’s the entire reasoning. It’s not like they would have been executed. There would probably have been some political back talk, suspicion, and negative rumors, and yes, the finger pointing could have messed them up, but ITS ALREADY HAPPENING BECAUSE OF WHAT THEIR MOM DID.
And what exactly was her endgame? Reveal the secret twin 18 years later and expect that to go over better sociopolitically? What’s more concerning, having “unlucky” royal twin girls born and grow up normally in society, or suddenly finding out there were secret twins later? People are going to freak out more for the latter because everything they knew was a lie so of course they can never trust the royals again.
The fact that she even hid it from their father robbed them of having a genuine relationship or effective support from him. And how guilty are they going to feel about deceiving everyone around them? And if/when it gets revealed, of course most people would feel betrayed.
Their mother threw them into an untenable situation with no way out just to sidestep a stigma that wasn’t a genuine threat to them at the time
This man is so goddamn stupid. She’s crying about how much his deception hurt her, that she misses her chosen home/family, and that she miserable to be trapped with him forever.
Then he flashes back to genuinely useful advice from his mom about honest communication in relationships, he digs deep, and the best he can come up with is some bs about how she changed his preference for chicken breast?!
I get that he didn’t have a lot of time, but he could have said literally anything, “ I know this is a difficult situation, but I want to treat you well”, “I’m sorry for deceiving you, I want to find a way to make it up to you”, “I know the circumstances of your arrival were not pleasant, but I want to have a positive relationship with you”, or LITERALLY ANYTHING OTHER THAN WHAT HE ACTUALLY SAID.
Granted, even if he says the right things it will ring hollow from someone who will be effectively imprisoning her for the rest of her life whether she warms up to him or not, but still
Jaehyuk really does cause all of his own problems. First he blames Garam for not properly managing the stress induced medical problems HE caused by constantly ignoring his boyfriend’s concerns and opinions. Then instead of just being more subtle in public and talking it out like Garam wanted, he dumps and ghosts him out of nowhere like that’s not going to cause stress. His problem is that he always does whatever tf he feels like in extremes and won’t compromise even at the expense of his boyfriend
Top is so true to character here, he’s no longer interested in Gyuha, but he’s fine with going with the flow and basically using him for his own convenience until he loses interest despite the marriage and children. If I don’t want anymore “I can just walk away” excuse me that’s unacceptable even for a one night stand if a baby is involved (╯°Д °)╯╧╧
It’s always been about him and his wants. He’s never sacrificed anything for Gyuha
I honestly feel like the creator really cheapened the story with the developments between Sienna and Asiel, her feelings were so random, there was no proper buildup other than the classic “feelings go thump”. Now this forced proximity angle is just so artificial and trite.
There were so many ways that the author could have arrived at them developing feelings and a relationship without compromising the quality of the story.
It should have been a genuine slow burn with both of them struggling to manage their feelings while healing from their trauma.
Sienna basically caught feelings out of nowhere, with some hesitation and literally no other exploration of the effect that had on her psyche or any complex reaction.
Asiel’s emotional arc was basically feeling guilty, guilty about having feelings, and then the forced proximity trope. We didn’t even get to see his initial reaction or the family’s groveling because the time skip happened immediately after they all remembered.
It feels like I was being served a ten course gourmet meal, and halfway through someone started bringing out fast food. If I wanted cheap and generic I would be elsewhere, I came for this story because of how beautiful and in depth it was, now it’s just one of a thousand other shallow romances with the same stale tropes
It’s so insane that the mom is like “oh no the 4 year year old is rly sad that he has no siblings, how could he ever recover from this deep and traumatic emotional wound” like her actual motive isn’t wanting another grandkid.
Imagine applying that logic to literally anything else a toddler wants. That’s how you raise a spoiled little monster. It’s even worse that everyone knows about his inherent struggles with his trait, to the extent that he got reassignment surgery, the psychological difficulties of the pregnancy. Even right now he’s not comfortable being open about his sexuality and traits in public. All that on top of the sheer debilitation the first pregnancy wrought on his body, but sure, the toddler is sad so we obviously need to consider that just as much