#the shipping commentary on my end is all speculative lol but i'm feeling it okay!

[trashlie]

ILY FP 215 and 216 spoiler ///

wah i missed your ily commentary so much, tysm for taking the time to share your thoughts ❤️

i agree with you on so many things - similarly to you, i've been going back and forth on whether nol has been developing romantic feelings or not. he's so deep in the dark that for now i believe shinae is the light he can't help but be drawn to. and that may or may not imply something romantic, so for now his feelings are a schroedinger's cat type of situation. what's probably going to be a theme from now on is how shinae is able to calm nol down, be "a silence he likes". we've seen this during the confrontation with kousuke, when nol's anger was starting to boil up, she touches his shoulder and he snaps out of it. similarly, when he wakes up in the hospital and starts panicking, he immediately calms down when he sees her. also, her birthday is written on the morphine drip, so the symbolism is pretty straightforward - she relieves his pain. now i hope this isn't going to transform into a "she will fix him" kind of thing, but it looks like he will lean on her more.

i'm not sure if i agree with you that nol would've died that night if kousuke hadn't followed him. the way i interpret it, the fall on the glass table isn't the main cause of the life-threatening injury - it's kousuke's repeated physical assault. the punch/fall likely gave nol a head injury/bruises and the glass got into his coat then, but he still seemed mostly okay. sure, maybe it's the adrenaline that kept him going, but like, he registered pain (he flinched when he stepped on the broken glass), but he wasn't reacting (yet) to his neck at all. there was no blood anywhere (not even in the snow where he walked). it's only after kousuke attacks him again that he starts touching the back of his neck, and a red hue appears on his coat. when kousuke slams him into the ground, there's also a panel where he flinches and the colours are inverted, which imo is meant to signify intense pain. and i feel like this is the moment the glass shard cut deep into him and cause the damage.

would've nol collapsed and died eventually any way? honestly i'm not sure. maybe. at the very least, kousuke's attacks definitely worsened the injuries. but at the same time, like you said, it took nol almost dying to finally receive a moment of peace. it's twisted, but in some sense... if not for kousuke almost killing him, nol really might've just disappeared into the night and then went to jail the next day.

and isn't it so representative of kousuke and nol's entire dynamic, too? the fight could've been a goodbye between the brothers. nol has finally managed to break kousuke out of his shell, and in turn, is now giving kousuke's what he's always wanted (disappearing). they could have left it at that, nol wanted to leave it at that. but of course, kousuke STILL thinks nol's scheming something, chases after him again to get him under his control, and by doing so, causes him more pain and misery like he always does. obviously kousuke doesn't want to actually kill his brother... and given kousuke's mental state, it's not all black and white... but there's definitely blood on kousuke's hands now.

btw multiple people have pointed out a really interesting detail in kousuke's flashback of nessa and nol (same chapter): nessa tells nol there's a spider on the back of his neck (actually it's just the tag of his shirt sticking out), and that he needs to stay still, or the spider will bite him. she puts a lot of emphasis on the neck being very sensitive, which seems like such a random thing, but where does nol end up getting injured, in the present, after this flashback? the back of his neck! someone also pointed out that "spider" in this context might be a symbol, and that it might relate to yui and how it's her web of manipulation, and kousuke as her pawn, that ended up almost killing nol. in typical yui fashion, by pulling her strings without actually making her hands dirty. what do you think?

sorry this got so long. enjoy your watercolor drawings, that sounds fun ❤️

Aaaahhhh aahhhh yay welcome back!!! I have definitely missed these asks and getting to build off your ideas! I'm trying SO HARD to learn how to balance life and it's SUCH A DIFFICULT THING TO DO but!!!! I'm not going to waste any time replying to this - gotta get to it while it's still hot!!!

I love love looove how you put it - that Shinae is the light that Nol is drawn to. I think quimchee has been very good about how she's set things up to ensure that Shinae won't take on a "fix it" role, which is such a cliche! Actually, and I'll try to keep this brief lest I go off on a tangent, but I still think about the way Kousuke and Nol were set up as romantic lead tropes - "the asshole with a heart of gold", "the nice guys who finishes last" - and how ordinarily, the asshole with the heart of gold would be the character who gets the fix-it love interest and instead, it's the "nice guy" (I have started this post so many times - Nol as the "second lead" tropes and how he defies them all because he was never the totality of how he's presented but I never like where it's going lol). But yes, all that said, I think Shinae has been presented wonderfully as a catalyst, rather than a fixer. I also agree that because Nol is in such a place of darkness, it's hard to know if that light will simply be guidance or develop into anything else. I love a good gradually falling story, where somewhere along the line, those "roles" blur and what used to be platonic comfort becomes the kind of comfort you want to spend forever with - but I think there's just no room for that kind of concept with him, yet. He's spent so long denying himself any kind of joy or happiness he deems undeserved; the idea of wanting someone's presence forever is probably far from his mind, yet.

But that said, I think it sets up fantastic potential for Shinae becoming the person Nol turns to and comes to depend on, the person he goes to for bad as well as good, and I LOVE that as a set up for romance lol. Realizing this person is more than a lifeline, this person is the person who makes you feel happy to be alive. (I'm saying this loosely here because the phrasing makes it feel so much like an unhealthy dependence, but rather I mean we have good potential for Nol feeling glad he never made the choice to give up, lest he had missed out on everything that would follow, you feel me?)

Also I really like your interpretation of the injury! I admit I like the flare of dramatics and thinking of the most dire timeline lol but I think that's a good point. The way I'd been thinking it was that yeah, it was partly adrenaline, partly trying to will it away and that the bleeding hadn't yet gotten through his clothes. Once in 6th grade, a friend of mine was in band class and he stepped on his music stand accidentally and it swung over and cut him across the forehead. He laughed about it to a friend, unaware that he was BLEEDING. He told us he just didn't feel anything! It wasn't until someone else pointed it out and he had to go get stitched up! (Funny enough, this was on his birthday LMAO I had forgotten that detail until now!) But right, I think you are probably more right about this - that at any rate, Kousuke made the injuries worse.

It's taking everything I have in me to NOT go on a Kousuke and Nol tangent, and I hope I have the time and energy to write it up tomorrow, because I'd like to do it before the next episode, lest it derail me lol. A thought that's been hanging around me is that I think Kousuke doesn't actually want Nol to leave - on a very deep, subconscious level that he wasn't really aware of. He pushes him away and does what he can to prevent Nol from rising above him, but his acknowledgment that "nobody" liked him - nobody being young Nol before Kousuke beat him down - makes me wonder if he's realized that in some way he didn't want Nol to leave. I don't think it meant he wanted to like him lol so much as Nol was the yardstick against which he measured himself, and in a dark, toxic way, he needed Nol to stay around to keep him from being truly alone. Idk, there's a lot of thoughts there that I'll try to come back to but it makes what you said ever more interesting - the blood is now on Kousuke's hands.

Is there any way to ever recover from this? How can he and Nol ever resolve their issues? How can they ever find peace, with the way things stand? I had always hoped that, eventually, they would make peace, reconcile, find a way to be at peace, but with these events, it's hard to imagine how that would happen. (I mean, there's so much story to yet unfold lol so I'm not saying there's no hope! Just stating that the story has set itself up in a way that keeps me keen to see how it all pans out!)

Good point, also, about Nessa! I had been more focused on the cold juxtaposition between Nessa and Nol's warmth vs Yui and Kousuke to pay attention to the emphasis on the neck! That's a good way to look at it, too - everything is a web of Yui's making, right down to Kousuke. He, too, is as much a victim as Nol and Shinae. Without knowing yet what really happened with Nessa, there feels like a sense of Nessa protecting Nol - until she could no longer. (I think we've seen this played out with Nana, too; under her care, Nol was safe. Again, used loosely because danger still befalls him, but Nana has stood toe to toe with Yui before.) I wonder how much more of that past we'll get to see - surely we'll, at some point, be privvy to Yui and Nessa interactions? Or speaking of each other or... something? But that's a whole OTHER tangent.

ANYWAY wow I really lost myself replying to this lol I'm sorry if it feels all over the place - I am jumping all over the place!

Thank you for also bringing up Shinae's birthdate! I hadn't noticed that, but god I really love that. Shinae gives him peace, Shinae brings him comfort, Shinae can drown out the storms. UGH. I'M SUCH A SUCKER FOR THAT! Like, again, this is all just speculation at this point and possibly even conjecture lmao but I just love the way they are set up! Even if it's not set up for romance. I love Shinae becoming the beacon of light to the person who became light to her. THE WAY SHE ADMITTED THAT SHE WAS JUST TRYING TO EMULATE HIM!!!! DOING THE THINGS HE DID FOR HER! ALL SHE DID WAS TRIED TO BE LIKE HIM!!!!! SHE JUST WANTED TO BE THE FRIEND HE WAS TO HER and now SHE is that bright ray of sunshine to his gloomy cloud! She's the one making him open his eyes! I JUST! LOVE! THAT SO MUUUUUUCH.

It makes me wonder even more where we're headed. Nol clearly isn't immediately going off to jail yet - he's got a LOT of recovering to do, but what happens when that time comes? There's no way he can continue to try to evade them right? Surely by now he's accepted that at the very least, Shinae will do whatever she wants? Do we get to see him admit it to himself - that he doesn't want to leave? I was looking at 151 again because I'm a masochist and the whole "do you want to disappear? I don't want you to disappear" especiallyyyyyyyy juxtaposed against Kousuke spending his whole life trying to make him disappear.

I love them ;~;

#I Love Yoo #ILY Spoilers #ILY FP #ILY Brainrot #Shinae Yoo #Nol #Nolan Oliver T. Lochlainn #Stalkyoo #Aegi #the shipping commentary on my end is all speculative lol but i'm feeling it okay! #i just feel like in spite of all the tragedy that has brought us here #in spite of this whole wretched night #this little moment of calm this pocket of peace this little ray of light #;~; #THEY DESERVE THIS #I WANT MORE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH #this whole arc has been amazing i will never shut up about it