RainyShadows's Topics (66)

Wear ear protection damn it! Being sexy does not trump losing your hearing!

I am frustrated. Jaeha has been set up as a somewhat emotionless, scary gang leader who'll do whatever it takes to get what's his (Yujun).
Jaeha is aware that Yujun's phone is bugged so I'm sure that any plans that we (the readers) are being told about is likely to be some kind of trick.

And yet we end on a cliffhanger with Jaeha showing... regret / shock?? These emotions are not in your repertoire! Who is this person?? Nothing so far has shown me that you've had some sort of emotional awakening. It's completely out of character.

All I can think is that the author is going for a - what a twist! - this is all part of Jaeha's scheme! Everything is a lie! But you're doing it wrong. Bring back my scary, manipulative Jaeha dammit!

You know what. I'm going to try not to jump to conclusions here so I'm going to say the throwing up could have been from anything. Hell, maybe Guwon does this on a regular. He seemed pretty casual about it.

More importantly. How do I take that last line?!
1) Is he talking to himself in the 2nd-person??
2) Is he talking like that because he has no memories??
3) Has he been possessed and the original Guwon doesn't exist?? (Well 2 & 3 are pretty similar).

Ah well. It's a wait and see.

So. I'm well aware this is a coincidence, especially so since Sisyphus is Greek, but when I searched for 'Egyptian God figs' I found Hathor - who is known for 'life, protection, and the afterlife' which I thought quite apt for the current apocalypse they're in.

In addition: "The sycamore fig tree was believed to stand at the edge of the desert, where pharaohs' souls would encounter it upon death, and Hathor would emerge to welcome them to the afterlife, offering nourishment and protection."

Mainly, it's very curious that they purposely mentioned that Guwon smells of figs so I'm currently going down a rabbit hole of what that could symbolize...

Or maybe the author really loves figs.

Today I learned a new word: Calumnies
"(the act of making) a statement about someone that is not true and is intended to damage the reputation of that person." - Cambridge Dictionary.

Until absolutely proven otherwise.. I refuse to believe that Bada is actually an NPC.

Look. Sometimes when reading something like this, you just have to... mentally correct the things that don't make sense.

"The Basement" has apparently been in the hold of a boat (probably a super yacht) this entire time. We don't know how many rooms there are but there's at least a dining area, a bedroom, and a couple of office spaces. There's also a decently sized BDSM dungeon with similar equipment scattered around Ian's various work spaces. This is fine. Nothing unusual here.

Benjamin appears to suck as an agent because he's better at fighting than sneaking around. He also got trained by a small group within the CBI since he was young (after his parent's deaths) which is really sus. Any time he does something incredibly stupid, I remind myself: It's not his fault. He grew up in a cult and doesn't know better.

I'm considering the storyline as a 'how I met your mother' and that various things in the retelling have been exaggerated. Ian does not have a third arm as a dick. Benjamin was properly lubricated off screen before taking anything up his ass. It's also possible that just like Ian appears to be super strong, Benjamin is super stretchy there.

So. Before it was confusing because we didn't know what was going on (and I'm pretty sure we still don't). And now that we've learned that some characters have been pretending to be NPCs, rereading is going to be such an experience (and also I'll be judging everything someone says). -- how do the players know that this is a game called Dreadful Nights anyway?

But I'm also still seriously confused by the latest chapter -- are they saying that they picked Bada up from the side of the road (tunnel) but he doesn't know this because his existence/memory only starts from when the prologue stops and the game officially begins (when he 'wakes up')? Or was he in the car the entire time but it's still the same scenario??
(And every time I think about what they did to Bada, it makes my heart hurt).

So Ch1 ... Seongchan stops Doha's tape and sends a villager to distract him from noticing (can the 'players' notice this, or is Seongchan being extra paranoid?).
Ch2: Doha's been reset to factory settings. Hence why he's saying things different to the previous sessions. Bada and Doha are both sus of each other.
Ch5: Bada's played the game over 50x (so Doha and Seongchan have been faking it that long + they must've played longer than that before Bada joined the team). [No wonder Seongchan prefers the 'die early and have someone else progress in the game for me' approach].
Ch7: Doha creates a new save file. [Seongchan's tape is removed].
Ch8: Doha 'wakes up' while driving. [No tunnel now?] Abandoned House location becomes available. [Since the House is only 'completed' on Seongchan's save file and that's no longer active].
Ch11: Bada mentions his memory issues. Hyungshin (blue hair) partially recalls the game.
Ch13: Bada gives info on how he thinks the tapes / save files work. Doha kills the killer twice.
Ch14: Doha seems sus of the tape explanation.
Ch15: Bada learns Doha already killed the killer (but didn't tell him). Bada is not happy.
Ch18: Bada wakes up in the game. [This is likely not the next session since Doha said he ejected Bada's tape around this point].

Okay this is getting waaay too long. I wonder what a "true" NPC looks like? Doesn't do anything? Won't talk unless spoken to? Obviously it was different enough from the others that Doha was willing to give up his own save file to keep Bada from hearing the "truth".

My new headcanon is that Bada went into the game to fix a bug or two (can't kill the killer, save files not working right) and got trapped. Who knows how long the game has been looping for. And the other 'players' were sent in to rescue him. (maybe they're playing an updated/patched version of the game). Either way, everyone's stuck now...

The only bonus is that I've finally figured out how the tapes work.

You know what. All these revelations have told me that you can't trust anything they're saying. Everyone is an unreliable narrator.

With the option of removing tapes / interfering with them.. who knows if what Doha or Seongchan are saying is the actual truth? They may believe it is, but someone else (Bada?) could have wiped their tapes (save files) in the past and they wouldn't be any wiser.

Saying that Bada is an NPC based off not being able to kill the killer.. isn't necessarily the 'truth' either. They're making assumptions about the rules of the game and stating them like they're facts.
For example: In one of my DnD sessions my party learned that in order to push open a particular door we would have to dance or else we'd be electrocuted. It turned out that the door was completely safe and that the dancing turned off the lightning spell that activated whenever someone touched part of the building. But because we'd touched the door first and been zapped, and then did a little dance and didn't get zapped, we made the assumption that we always had to dance to not get zapped (which technically worked but for the wrong reasons).
Hence, there could be other reasons why Bada can't kill the killer. Maybe Bada is playing the game on hard mode? Or maybe it's a - good at solving puzzles, but can't damage anyone - thing. Not sure what the others would be.. good at acting, bad at staying alive? Good at fighting, bad at working as a team?? Yeah, I don't know.

I'm also suspicious of the line "It was like you were born to be a gamer"... Is that foreshadowing?

I'm irritated.
Here we have Karnan: Traumatized. Mentally unstable. Emotionally manipulated since he was a child. Thinks he's the reason everything turns to flames (well...).
Then along comes the head of the IPA. And you'd think that someone in his position knows a thing or two about de-escalating situations?
Nope.
You have Karnan figuratively standing at the edge of a cliff. And instead of talking him off the ledge, that asshole shoves him off instead, and then has the audacity to blame him for falling (rampaging).
I get that it's happening for the "plot" but it's so unrealistic that it's pissing me off. Does no one have any training for this? How have they become such a big organization without learning something this simple?? Arrrrggggh.