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psychewritesbs · 7 months

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Chapter 236: Go South—JJK is generational

Gosh. Can we pleeeease just like... have a moment of silence for the one and only...THE Man, Gojo Satoru.

Ok, time's up.

Moving on.

Word vomit under the cut.

The process of reading this chapter was a very interesting one this week because the fandom got really noisy as soon as the leaks dropped.

Between allegations of bad writing and the utter sense of grief Gojo fans were expressing, it was quite the 💩 storm.

And then the actual scanlations started dropping, and little by little they replaced most of the noise with the utter sense of calm and peace and satisfaction that Gojo felt in his last moments in this plane of existence.

I gotta say that I just absolutely loved how Gege depicted those emotions (outside of Gojo's "dream") through shots of the devastated Shinjuku district.

The remnants of the battle of The Strongest, as if the landscape and the buildings themselves represented the end of an era, the devastation of the structure of Jujutsu society itself.

After all, as The Strongest sorcerer in the modern era, Gojo represented the very system he was trying to destroy.

Gege loves his irony.

Now, I would normally say that the words in the speech bubbles are superfluous because Gege creates such a beautiful atmosphere through the setting alone. But it is the words themselves that re-contextualize not just the battle, but also shed more light on Sukuna's interest in Megumi, which I feel we haven't seen the extent of what he had in mind.

Now I'm hoping this isn't a dream

Listen, I must admit I've never cared for Gojo.

I don't hate him, I don't love him, I simply never really cared for him.

That, of course, changed with this chapter.

And it is perhaps Gojo's death that really solidified in my mind the idea that one of the underlying themes in jjk is... dun dun dun... DEATH.

Yeah, I know. Sue me, I'm late to the party lmao.

But it's not just death itself that is a theme, but rather the face we put on when death comes knocking at the door.

There aren't many things that we can be certain of in this life, but death is one of them. So how we confront death and our mortality shapes the sense of self.

I know a lot of people were dissatisfied with the transition from 235 to 236 and Gege not showing how/when Gojo got slashed in half, but I find the abrupt transition makes sense, and I even dare say was... quite poetic.

For one, now knowing that Gojo knew Sukuna was holding back, a lot of incidents throughout the battle are given new meaning. Like that look of confidence on Gojo's face as he "thinks" he's finally managed to "get through" to Sukuna.

So I have to say that I loved that Gege starts the chapter with Gojo becoming aware that he has died or is dying.

In other words, Sukuna's attack was so sudden that Gojo's next moment of awareness as "Gojo Satoru" is in what we would normally think of as "the light at the end of the tunnel" where he is greeted by people who were of significance to him in his youth.

And can we please just talk about how Geto is the first person he sees when he becomes aware that he is dying?

Please. This is fucking poetry!

Insert keyboard smash.

Screaming in jjk.

Go South

I literally lack the words to explain why I love this whole chapter so much. Which is a lot to say because I am about to word vomit about it. But like...

Again, hindsight is 20/20.

I always thought of the panel above as Geto being jealous of Gojo surpassing him in strength but, in retrospect, I think Geto's disappointment had more to do with Gojo's sense of self over-identifying with the title "the strongest" and how that made him harder to relate to, which is one of the main themes in this chapter. I'll come back to this in a sec.

But first...

Quick depth psych segway. I think I've said this before, but it bears repeating again that an overwhelming sense of self is all ego. There's nothing wrong with ego per se.

The problem is that an over-identification with ego means inherent separateness because, as an organ of the psyche, the ego sense of self is what gives us a separate identity from the collective.

On the other hand, soul/heart (another organ in the psyche) is the principle of relatedness--love, the single energy that can bring us all together as a collective.

But as we already know, the stronger the sorcerer, the more overwhelming the sense of self.

Unfortunately, because an overwhelming sense of self = separateness, this also means the person in question can't relate to others.

And is this not thematically perfect for a sorcerer whose perfected cursed technique was meant to render others unable to "reach him"?

In other words, Gojo saw himself as separate (because he was "The Strongest") and that made it harder for him to relate to others, but only because he self-identified as "The Strongest".

Infinity ∞, in this sense, is also about the self-fulfilling prophecy Gojo was stuck playing out in his life in regards to seeing himself as "The Strongest".

But like a serpent eating its own tail, Gojo came back full circle, and in the moments before his death, learned that what really mattered to him was not strength for the sake of strength, but rather the connections he had fostered with others.

PLEASE. GEGE. WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCKING FUCK?!!!!!!!!!!!

To bring it back to "Satoru became 'The Strongest'"...

I just loved so much that seeing Geto as soon as he becomes aware he's died felt like an encounter that meant Gojo had returned to the person he was before he self-identified as "The Strongest".

But more importantly, Gojo's imagination of himself as back when he was young also speaks both to how much he cherished that period of his life, and to how he was emotionally frozen in time due to his encounter with Toji.

It makes me wonder whether Gojo was afraid of dying alone when Toji almost killed him. So it's almost like what he took away from that battle was that he was always alone, and so he sought to push others away.

The kicker is that he simultaneously feared his existential isolation and yet craved the very source of his fear--human relations.

But in choosing self-preservation, he was a selfish to the very end.

What an idiot (tragically affectionate).

Anyways. How much of this is hc? Someone tell me please 😂. I feel like I went off the deep end in the last few paragraphs.

Like everyone else in this fandom I've lost all objectivity when it comes to Gojo because his departure from the story was truly one of the most heartbreaking moments in jjk.

I understand people's complaints about the "execution," but I think the world-wide phenomena that Gojo's death has spurred speaks to Gege's ability to elicit deeply archetypal emotional responses as a story teller.

With Gojo's death, a part of our own psyche too has died. And what's most significant about this death is that it was, true to Gojo's character, "something that needed to die because it represented the very thing it sought to destroy."

And this would be why I love Gege's writing.

A fitting way for Gojo to go out

I know not everyone agrees, but I really appreciated that he was satisfied and at peace in the very end.

He got his cake (battle to death with Sukuna) and got to eat it too (reconnected with his loved ones).

Sukuna

But we can't talk about Gojo without talking about Sukuna as the one who liberated Gojo from the burden of his existential isolation.

Sukuna gave Gojo a fun battle, but if it weren't because Sukuna figured out how to cut through Gojo's metaphorical defenses by learning to cut through space-time itself--the very fabric of reality, Gojo might not have found his humanity once again.

The outcome of this battle spells out in no uncertain terms how dire the situation is as Sukuna has proven himself to be the uncontested "Strongest".

But in a sense, the end is a new beginning, and this time, there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

JJK is generational

I get the feeling that everyone will remember where they were when this panel dropped.

I was in bed. It was 6 am and Tasokare, my miniature panther, was demanding attention.

A moot was on the way to the gym. They never made it out of the house after seeing the panel.

Another moot was completely avoiding Twitter to avoid leaks, but her brother, who does not even read jjk, saw the panel on Facebook and showed it to her.

Yet another moot was on vacation at the beach.

JJK is generational like that and there's just so much more I can say about this chapter and its implications (like the idea that Sukuna can now cut through space-time, why?! what does he want to get out of this ability?), but I just don't even know what more I can say right now.

Anyways, thanks for reading. I'm looking forward to any thoughts you might have. Just a heads up, I'm very, very slow at replying.

#jjk ch 236 #god I love jujutsu kaisen

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ddarker-dreams · 1 year

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Quid Pro Quo.

Yan Chrollo x F Reader.

Warnings: Yandere themes, unhealthy relationships, mentions of not SFW although nothing explicit happens. Word count: 3k.

“Feeling a little bit restless, are we?”

Chrollo is what you like to call the king of unwanted commentary.

If he were to ever retire from his murderous/thieving ways, you think he could make a career in narrating documentaries. No script necessary. Just set him in a recording booth, turn the microphone on, and let him have at it since he apparently never runs out of things to say.

Frowning, you cross your arms over your chest. “Oh, whatever gave it away?”

“You have your tells,” Chrollo purposefully does not match your sarcasm. It might be the only moral highroad he’s ever taken. “If I had to narrow it down to any one factor, though, it’d be how you glance at the clock every few minutes.”

What an astute observation! Scrub away the names of Freud and Jung in the psychology textbooks, their contributions clearly pale in comparison to Chrollo’s own expertise in understanding the human psyche. What might his theories be named? Something involving the Bible, surely. Or maybe the widely rejected Apocrypha since heresy is more his style. Regardless, you can confidently surmise the names would be superficial and pretentious. Perfectly befitting their progenitor.

“Considering we drove for what, five hours to some off-grid airport? Then flew an additional five, only to now be stuck on this train for… hm…”

“Eight hours,” he offers in kind. Too kind. You would gag, if not for your determination to get your irritation across. Priorities, priorities.

“Eight hours! Even if I had my phone, that’d be enough to make me go mad.”

“In ‘ye olden days’ as you like to refer to them, you never would’ve made it on the Oregon Trail if you thought eighteen hours of traveling to be worth complaining over.”

“Obviously. If I had to sit on the back of a wagon with my eight dirty children whom I secretly despise, I’d be drinking the water to get dysentery. Or flinging myself underneath the wheels. Either or.”

“See? This is much better then,” Chrollo gives you one of those little smiles that reminds you of a debate kid who thinks he has his opponent in the bag. “There are no eight malnourished children in sight. Just you, me, and a world of infinite possibilities.”

“For you, maybe. ‘Infinite’ might be a stretch for me.”

“My apologies. Near infinite.”

“More like one: following you around as if I were a leashed dog.”

“I had never considered a leash,” Chrollo hums, giving you a once over, presumably for show. He already has your sizes memorized better than you ever did. Neck included, you assume. “I’ll consider your suggestion.”

Unable to mask your distaste, you reply without thinking, “It wasn’t a suggestion.”

“Oh? A request, then?”

You roll your eyes and decide not to dignify that with a response.

Back to staring out the window for entertainment it is then. Looking past your despondent reflection, you’re welcomed to a sea of nothingness; swaths of deep hues blurring together in an unidentifiable mass. It’s too dark for you to enjoy the grand scenery outside and too cloudy for the stars to twinkle overhead. You’ve already conducted a thorough examination of the luxurious train compartment, which for all its ostentatious décor, feels oddly cramped. As if Chrollo intentionally picked something that’d force you into close quarters. You wouldn’t put it past him.

He sits a few feet across from you, legs crossed, the gaudy bandage that normally covers his forehead nowhere in sight. He looks as content as ever with his loungewear on. Yours is still strewn across the bed, untouched due to the scorn it earned. So he gets slacks and a loose t-shirt while you’re forced to model a lingerie line? It’s for this reason you’re stubbornly sitting here in your jeans at two in the morning. In retrospect, skinny jeans were not the optimal option for this boycott, if only you had known to expect such shameless reprobate-like behavior in advance. You were just getting used to the time zone when he informed business had to take him elsewhere.

And wherever he went, you went too. Kicking, screaming, crying, or anything in between; you’d be hauled off regardless.

“You don’t have to force yourself to stay awake, you know,” Chrollo once again voices his unasked-for opinion. “Why not allow yourself to relax? For starters, try changing into something more comfortable.”

He motions to the aforementioned nightgown that has no reason to be so sheer. Seriously, it’s an insult to fabric everywhere. You swear that a little breeze would be enough to rip the fragile material in two.

“And have you ogle at me the rest of the night? I’d prefer the diseased children.”

“I wouldn’t call it ‘ogling’, I’d call it ‘appreciating’.”

“Alright, Mr. Company HR representative.”

You make the mistake of checking out the clock again. Only five minutes have passed? This is psychological torture. While you’d normally read to pass the time, the possibility of motion sickness is enough to put you off from the idea. There’s one thing in this world that’s worse than being with Chrollo — and that is being with Chrollo while sick. Just thinking about it is enough to make you bristle. His usual infantilizing behavior gets a boost that’d have the most mentally stable person banging their head against a wall. Not fun, an easy pass. He won’t stop giving you romance novels when you ask to read, anyway. If he thinks that’d put you in the mood to reciprocate his grimy feelings, he can think again. He’s no Mr. Darcy or Mr. Rochester. You’d pin him for more of a discount Heathcliff on a good day.

There has got to be something for you to do. A little excitement, a little zest… could anyone blame you for seeking this out in your monotonous days?

That’s when a potentially damning yet undeniably exciting idea comes to mind.

“Hm… I know that look. You’re preparing to ask me for something, aren’t you?”

“Maybe, maybe not. That all depends. Are you feeling particularly indulgent tonight?”

“I always feel indulgent toward you, you just never ask for the right things,” he leans forward slightly, belying his intrigue. He’s so full of it. Apathetic as he may act, you’re convinced he’d listen to you sing an opera-length aria about tinfoil if past experience is anything to go by. Chrollo can’t get enough of you. The feeling is decidedly not mutual.

“Feel free to make your pitch whenever, [First]. I’m waiting.”

“Right. That book of yours… Pundit’s Secret?”

“Bandit’s Secret,” he corrects.

“Tomato toh-mato. If memory serves, you once told me an anecdote about this ability that made lying impossible. But the person you use it on has to meet certain conditions… or something. Doesn’t that sound like a fun way to pass the time? You ask me some questions and I return the favor?”

His gray eyes glimmer with amusement. “I don’t know, darling. I’d be taking far more of a risk than you. There’s little you could reveal about yourself that I’m not already aware of.”

“I guess so…” you trail off, trying not to linger on the unsettling sentiment. How can anyone just come out and say that as if it’s the most casual thing ever? “Fine. How about you get to ask me a whopping three questions and I get to ask you one? Only one. It won’t be anything stupid, like how I could kill you or run away. You can set that up in the conditions, right?”

He gives you a long and hard look. “I suppose I could. So I’d get to ask you anything at all, whereas your options are willingly limited?”

You shrug. “What can I say? I have to get my kicks somehow. Even a mere glimpse into the mind of the infamous Chrollo Lucilfer should be worth sacrificing some dignity over. I think.”

“We’ll see,” there’s that enigmatic smile again that makes your stomach twist into knots. He holds out his right hand — and voila — a primarily red book with a white handprint on the cover manifests. The numerous pages flip in rapid succession before landing on whatever poor soul he stole this ability from. Apparently, this ability’s progenitor was a private investigator who made the mistake of looking into the Troupe. You wonder how his business has plummeted since the ability that gave him success got snatched.

The air around Chrollo shifts. You feel an odd throbbing in your brain for a few seconds, that disappears as fast as it arrived. With that, Chrollo lowers his hand with the book into a more comfortable position, eyeing you curiously.

“I may ask you any three questions which I please, whereas you can ask me one, so long as it may not aid you in escape or hinder me in any serious way. Do you agree with these conditions?” He playfully tilts his head to the side. “Last chance to back out, dear. I won’t hold it against you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Of course I accept.”

“Wonderful. So do I. Now, what to start off with…”

You swallow the saliva starting to build up at the back of your throat. The odd feeling permeating your body is akin to what you experience before going on a rollercoaster — a cocktail of regret, anxiety, and the thrill of what is to come. Fight or flight that can’t make up its mind between the two extremes. In a false display of bravado, you refuse to break eye contact with him, tempting as it is to shrink away.

Oh lord, he’s looking at you like he’s ravenous.

“Have you ever wanted me to fuck you?”

“Yes,” your tongue answers for you without hesitation, causing heat to rush to your cheeks. You try to slap your hands over your mouth, but it’s too little too late, you’re not done humiliating yourself just yet. “I once masturbated to the thought of you while in the shower at a hotel we were staying at.”

He raises an eyebrow while looking extremely satisfied with himself. You want to die. You want the cold, bony hands of death to embrace you in an eternal slumber. What was that last addition?! The ‘yes’ was bad enough, but your mouth really went for the last nail on the coffin there. Scratch that. It killed you, dismembered your body, flung you into a six feet deep hole, and built a parking lot over your remains.

“Ah, I forgot to mention,” he slaps his forehead, as if the fact made him genuinely remorseful, “This ability does more than get you to tell the truth. It also makes you say the first few things that come to mind upon hearing the question. For that reason, it’s fittingly titled No Filter.”

Despair manifests itself in unique ways. In this specific instance, it has you glaring with all your might at Chrollo, who looks as if he just won the lottery. You bite down into your lower lip almost hard enough to draw blood. How did he manage to ruin what was meant for some lighthearted, schoolyard-esque fun? In the future, should fate ever tempt you to tango with Chrollo again, you’ll refer to this incident.

Well, on the bright side, you figure it can’t get any worse than that.

... Right?

“Tempting as it may be to have you elaborate on that further, I’ll be gracious and move on to a cleaner subject.”

“Have my attempts at getting closer to you been successful?”

If a change in atmosphere is what he wants, he might get more than he bargained for.

“Partially. I no longer fear for my life, but I don’t have a life either. You took every sense of normalcy away from me. If I ever seem more open to your advances, it’s because pretending I have a say in the matter. It’s all I have left to cling to.”

Chrollo’s countenance takes on a more contemplative edge upon hearing this. You feel like heated metal submerged into a cold pail of water; the conversation took a 180-degree turn. However capable of emotion he may be, you hope he feels the same. For him, a question such as this must be a double-edged sword. Any other time, had you answered like this, he could retain some comfort knowing you might be acting dishonestly from spite. Not here. Not when he knows you’re an open book. There are no mental hoops he can jump through to convince himself otherwise.

“... I see,” he speaks up after some time. The weight of his gaze is tangible. “This is what I find so fascinating about you. You act so bubbly, always ready to make light of things, yet there’s far more to you than that. I might be one of the few people that could ever recognize this quality of yours, [First].”

You recognize what he’s doing — he wants you to give more without having to use up his final question. It’s an obvious ploy that you have no intention of falling for. If he’s going to be difficult, you’ll be difficult too.

“Not taking the bait, huh,” Chrollo chuckles. You do not. “That’s my girl. Very well. Final question. Could you ever come to love me back?”

“Not in the way you want.”

He nods his head, not so much from acceptance; mostly him just acknowledging your words. “Interesting. I thought that’d be what made you talk the most. I see I was wrong.”

The three questions are up, meaning you’re no longer compelled to answer. You could very easily leave it at that and carry on. If only you weren’t the type to hold a grudge. Kicking someone when they’re down has never been your style, but well, there are exceptions to every rule. Chrollo might be eager to move on; you can’t say you feel the same. Some wounds shouldn’t receive pressure. Some wounds should be left to bleed.

“Something tells me you already knew my answer to that last one,” you theorize. You then continue on without missing a beat. “To think even a realist such as yourself could get swept up in fantasy… I guess we all have our own shortcomings. Some more than others.”

“Some more than others indeed.”

His smile doesn’t reach his eyes and you content yourself immensely with the fact.

“My turn!” You exclaim in a singsong, clasping your hands together. “Oh Mr. Lucilfer, feared leader of the Phantom Troupe… there’s something I’ve been absolutely dying to know. You’re a confident man. A person who can, essentially, accomplish anything he sets out to do. So tell me. Why couldn’t you have just taken your chances and loved me normally?”

Considering all the angles you could’ve taken, this is the knowledge you long to attain the most.

You frequently have lots of time to spend alone with your thoughts. More time than you would’ve had you been living a regular life, anyway. In that time, you began to mold an idea of the enigma Chrollo Lucilfer in your head, using what few scraps he offered as your clay. You could never come close to anything satisfactory. Every attempt always turned out so hollow. This left you with an overarching dilemma:

Was Chrollo impossible to understand, or was there nothing for you to understand in the first place?

With the fragment of knowledge that should come from this, you hope to take on your chisel and hammer again.

Subconsciously, you lean closer to him when his lips part.

“I’d love to say I don’t understand what you mean by that, but I guess I can’t,” whether the forlorn timbre of his voice is genuine or not, you can’t say for certain. Your bets are on the latter. “Because, darling, you’re too good for me. Not due to any superior strength, intellect, or virtue on your part. I’ve never been able to identify exactly what it is. My best guess… is your vibrancy. You have something that I severely lack.”

So that’s it, then? An underlying fear of rejection? There’s nothing grander, no bigger picture that you weren’t able to see? He doesn’t appear ashamed in the slightest, either. He could at least give you that much to pride yourself on. For him to have dragged you through limbo over such an inane reason, that any other person might be plagued with yet could overcome all the same...

Your lips curl into a near-malicious smile. “You’re more pathetic than I thought, Chrollo.”

Perhaps the husk you imagined in his likeness was always accurate.

“And you’re far more ruthless,” he closes his book with a lopsided grin. The sound of it slamming shut resonates throughout the compartment. “Although, I’m afraid I already knew that.”

That makes two of you. Getting called ruthless by a murderer feels overkill, though. You think about voicing this and decide against it. Chrollo doesn’t deserve to hear your puns of subpar quality. What he does deserve, however, is to have you stomp over what measly heart occupies his chest. With spiked shoes. Poisoned spiked shoes.

“Does it hurt to get a taste of your own psychoanalysis bullshit?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Chrollo returns to his previous relaxed position, an arm resting over the back of his seat. You mirror his body language and relax as well. “If anything, I’m more motivated than ever to sink my teeth into you.”

“Then I’ll just have to make it so you’ll spit me out, won’t I?”

He closes his eyes, leans his head back, and hums. The pleasant sound grates your ears. A melody from hell.

“You can certainly try.”

Now that he’s no longer under the influence of the ability, you wonder how much of what he said is true — and how much is a lie. For if you managed to hurt him, even in the slightest, even if he returns it tenfold...

... Then everything on this train ride was worth the price of admission.

#chrollo x reader #chrollo lucilfer x reader #yandere chrollo x reader #hxh x reader #hunter x hunter x reader #yandere hxh x reader #yandere #yandere x reader #my stuff

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