Happy Valentine's Day - Again!

Figures at work in a winter landscape, an approaching storm beyond (1859) by Fredrik Marinus Kruseman (1816-1882)

It's only just now clicked for me that all the despicable horrors Sukuna drags Yuuji through time and again, all the feats of grand, unseen violence he puts up just for Yuuji, all the heinous atrocities and pain he inflicts on Yuuji -- they actually carry an inkling of something strategical, coldly calculated. Don't get me wrong, doing all that Sukuna clearly enjoys himself, his rampage in Shibuya sizzling with euphoria of finally getting to move freely, unshackled, and in the end that is the very nature of a curse -- cause suffering for the sake of suffering and feast upon it. But Sukuna, perhaps rather oddly, doesn't strike me as someone who would hold petty grudges and act upon them spitefully. Especially in regard to someone like Yuuji, who Sukuna considers little different from the filth beneath his feet and doesn't hesitate to make it known. So why even bother hating something so insignificant, miniscule? Why spare an effort to make this particular life miserable when suffering is already inherent to human condition? And while I'm at it, here's one more question, perhaps more on point with what I'm trying to say: why retreat of your own free will to the state of entrapment and give up the reins of control so soon after they fell into your hands?

Back to the point I started this rambling with, it seems to me that in the chaos Sukuna causes there is calculation. I think he's trying to do to Yuuji what he did in the end to Megumi -- crash this boy's beating heart and drown his soul. Sukuna's actions appear pointed, aware of the effect they make, targeted directly at that very thing which would hurt Yuuji the most, thus pushing him to the breaking point. Countless casualties, pointless bloodshed and utter devastation -- all to crack Yuuji's resistance, to eliminate the ability to fight back in a boy who was careless enough to wear his heart out on his sleeve in a world that grinds the kind down and spits out their bones.

But the darker the weather, the better the man. Where every other human being would break, Yuuji stands unyielding. The more is taken away from him, the more reasons he has to keep fighting. When the only sacrifice he could ever accept was his own, he lost too much. So he ploughs on -- because that's the only way he can pay the unfathomably high cost of him being alive. And for all his experience and cunning wit, Sukuna's miscalculated with this one: he cannot destroy Yuuji's heart for it was never Yuuji's to keep. He gave it away a long time ago. It beats with other people's pulse.

started house of open wounds.

pater.. new mission from command... you have to SLAY !!

Omg sorry I have completely forgotten people’s names but whatshisface and his WIFE. Relationships of all time I gotta say. I was so absolutely delighted with how far the book just leant into the bizarre and the horrible with absolute glee

i quite genuinely horked outloud with that reveal. it was fantastic and so beyond anything i could have predicted, but once revealed, it felt like, of course!! who else would his wife have been!!

Also if I could run a dnd session that worked like Ilmar I think my life would be complete. The whole book felt like i was watching dominoes fall in slow motion while all the narrators played a fucked up relay race with the narrative and it was just so good

OKAY FACTS i had almost the EXACT same thought and i was especially struck by the reproach?? almost immediately i was like ohhhhh i want to send my players here. but yes. the plotting. the way it starts with one death and just snowballs and you're following that single thread, that one pulse of the butterfly's wing rippling out through this living, breathing city.

follow me twt for doodles. sometimes i forget to post them here until i can compile a bunch 👍

POV: Sukuna stole Nobara's nail polish

European Citizens' Initiative - Ban on conversion practices in the European Union

eci.ec.europa.eu

European Citizens' Initiative

Give your support !

European Citizens' Initiative is a mechanism to bring issues direct from the people to the EU commission. I strongly urge every citizen of the European Union member states to sign this Initiative to ban conversion therapy and similar persuasion practices.