Sofie > Recent Status Updates

this sequence of the underwater kiss, to the cozy stroll through ghost city, to them writing two halves of a love poem together, to hua cheng deliberately jerking his hand on the brush to make xie lian hold on to him even tighter is so deeply romantic and endearingly absurd and silly and the perfect example of why i love this genre so fucking much

daddy issues on the opening page let's goooooooo

i don't remember literally anything from book 4 so i might've already read this but. ming yi with 444 lanterns? death x3??? .....not a great sign

oh my god what perfect timing too, i'm pretty sure the mid-autumn festival is happening right now

i am once again determined to finish this series and instead of restarting from the beginning like a fool i'm just gonna start from the second half of this volume and go from there. i know volume 1 so well at this point and volume 2 is too depressing to stomach rn so !!!! onward

meant to read this earlier so i could really flex getting it a month before release but alas, one day early it is. still counts!!!

“if crane hadn’t been such a coward, and asked for help, he could’ve avoided it all. but nobody ever told him he was allowed to”
fuck! this is. this is!!!!!! sometimes we just need to be told that we’re allowed to be alive, sometimes that’s all it takes!!!!!!!!! there’s some parts of crane’s story that i can’t relate to but overall? i am him and he is me

(cont.)
or traumatized veterans (idk what stagger’s deal was before he joined the hive but i hope we find out) and then the hive used that desperation to trap them in the same exact system under the illusion of freedom. it’s truly fucking sickening. maybe if the world treated queer and mentally ill and neurodivergent people better, we wouldn’t resign ourselves to these slow, solitary death traps

shocker, the hive doesn’t give a fuck about its people either!!!!! it wants to see the sun and i’m sure that’s what the experiment with stagger was about, and i suspect it’s a similar idea with crane and whatever he’s about to give birth to (which levi definitely got implanted in himself first). they wanted to be free from humans who threw them away for being mentally ill or autistic or trans (cont.)

i think crane is finally understanding the difference between a healthy, consensual D/s relationship and an undernegotiated one that halfway exists as an excuse for crane to take the punishment he thinks he deserves for having the desires he does and for being the kind of person he is

levi i am wishing you a torturous death in the next 100 pages

this is sick and fucking twisted what the FUCK!!!!!! so he wouldn't eat bc his parents taught him to always eat with family but he thought he killed his family and didn't even deserve to miss them. but now he grows his own food and eats with his found family as often as he can oh i'm gonna sob

that sequence just knocked the breath from my lungs WOW. what a tragically beautiful way to depict ume's lowest point and the flash of realization just as he starts to fall that gives him the epiphany he needs. he didn't kill his parents, his parents died protecting him bc they loved him more than anything. and if he throws away the life they died trying to protect, then that'd be the true sin

.....you're fucking kidding. you're actually kidding. not only did both of his parents die but his mom was fucking pregnant too????? as if it wasn't tragic enough already???????????? god he was supposed to be a big brother and now he is to so many people, they're just not related by blood
i thought i was prepared to see this backstory but DAMN it wasted no fucking time huh

hey so opening this up to a trigger warning for suicidal ideation just sent me into fight or flight
umemiya's backstory is about to absolutely wreck me isn't it

THE WAY I GASPED OH MY GODDDDDDDDDDD BABY IK-SU MY LOVE HOW I'VE MISSED YOU

sugishita and sakura's completely nonsensical beef is so hilarious they're simply ridiculous

WDYM HE NAMES AND FEEDS THE STRAY CATS IN THE AREA
oh i'm so endeared i love him

"that's why i tried to bury my emotions and pretend not to notice" over the image of the divots in his finger YUPPPPPP so the cognitive dissonance theory was the most accurate one i think. he knew what they were doing was awful and that it was his burden to bear for leading them down that path, but he saw no other way forward. so all he could do was inflict these small punishments on himself as penance

THAT EXPRESSION????????????? holy shit i'm definitely enjoying this arc much more in the manga than i did in the anime WOW i'm close to tears at this climax

the nail thing could also be a way for suzuri to remind himself that he's alive so he has nothing to complain about? just keep pushing forward no matter what bc being alive is all he thinks he can ask for. or it could be a way to punish himself for taking on jobs that he knows are immoral in order to ensure his and his group's survival. any or all of these potential reasons are compelling

(cont.)
and this is what makes tsubaki the PERFECT opponent for him. tsubaki is completely motivated by love and compassion and doing whatever it takes to be true to oneself, even if it seems trivial or selfish or strange to other people, and his strength is derived from those virtues. who better to teach gravel the importance of pursuing one's happiness, no matter how bleak it seems

(cont.)
so him having to draw blood in order to gain the strength to fight really speaks volumes to where he's drawing his energy and how unsustainable it is. he doesn't allow himself to be motivated by grander things, so he has to inflict pain to ignite those survival instincts instead. he can't fight for bigger things, any goals or wishes for himself bc he gave up on those (cont.)

it didn't really hit me when i was watching this part in the anime, but reading it now, i LOVE this addition of the leader of gravel (don't know his name yet) digging his nail into his skin before gearing up for big attacks. his whole thing is that he's been running purely on survival mode for years, hence why he's so apathetic and aloof to tsubaki's love for "trivial" things (cont.)

“it’s everything sophie would’ve wanted” OKAY BUT WHAT DOES CRANE WANT!!!!!!!!!!! if he doesn’t end up happy and safe and free and with a healthier idea of what it means to want to submit by actually CHOOSING that submission for oneself by the end of this i’m gonna lose it

the first tears have been spilled as my heart breaks for crane and how beaten down he is. i think there’s still a bit further down for him to go before he’s truly at rock bottom but we are steadily approaching and it hurts so bad to read. the world really made him feel so utterly useless as a human that he forced himself to believe he’s better off taking orders and nothing else

i’m very much seeing the outline of a happy-ish ending with stagger and crane escaping the hive together and i’m thrilled about it

i’m already having a bit more appreciation for this arc in seeing the contrast between this group’s ethos of “erasure of the individual to serve the greater whole” vs furin and roppo ichiza’s focus on community. it’s a different kind of contrast we’ve seen before with shishitoren and keel, and i’m interested to see if it sticks the landing

oh we’ve got character blurbs now that’s how you know it’s getting serious
really though we’re about to enter an arc that i didn’t really enjoy too much in the anime so hopefully reading it with fresh eyes with give me a new appreciation for it!! and if not, then at least after this i’ll be in all new non-anime territory

(cont.)

into something that reads as deeply human and relatable. the violence we inflict upon ourselves (even indirectly, even passively) and the violence we allow others to inflict upon us, bc of our repressed fears and desires and how that can cause those totally normal, HUMAN feelings to become these monsters with lives and agendas of their own. god i am loving every single word of this book