truly nothing funnier than having an archive of when you first started getting into a media that has since consumed your entire life
guess who's still coping
omg so many people are interacting with my posts😱😱 (13 activity) and I've mostly just talked abt tadc and dhmis but thats bc those are what im consuming rn but im actually pretty multifandom, I could list it all down but I'm afraid we'd be here all day and I'm not very keen at the thought of typing a lot. so just wait and see for my other fandom ramblings soon.
I will be talking about how there's much more to the Clock Keepers and how they are an active danger to everyone else, and and an even more terrible threat than even the pit god, at that.
For an introduction, Akane agrees: The biggest threat to the students are the Clock Keepers. But it's a much bigger threat that anyone would expect.
This arc is about the Clock Keepers changing the timeline that we know of into a new one, everything has gone wrong and Nene is the only one left.
But it would seem it goes much deeper than that. After all, the timeline we know of isn't even the original one.
For starters, Akane explains that while there are some who are able to regain their memories of the 'Old World', they would be rewritten with memories of the 'New World'. It's specific for 3 days due to the Festival being 3 days long, an event where the timeflow becomes unstable.
During the Festival Season of 1968, Yugi Amane attempts to get the clock moving so he can manipulate time, and Hanako states that he HAD to get it moving until the end of the School Festival, but he can't remember anything about the clock.
Sounds familiar?
To get to the point, Yugi Amane of 1968 had the memories of a 'previous world', and tried to fix the clock so he can go back. But he failed to do so, and, as a result, forgot everything about the clock.
Until Chapter 124, this is also seemingly supported by Teru and Akane.
Even if they may not be aware, their impressions are right. It's extremely unlikely that this is the first time the Clock Keepers altered time, like playing 'God'.
But now, it's even further confirmed by Chapter 124.
The past has indeed been changed several times. But why do so many people have to suffer in this way, have their souls cut and forever bound to the Boundary, some even going crazy as a result. In a way, it sounds like something the pit god would do, isn't it?
But *why* would the Clock Keepers do that? There's an easy answer. They need to bend the rules. At first glance, the Clock Keepers seem overpowered, unbeatable. They can seemingly turn back time on a whim with no repercussions- But we know for a fact that's not true.
After all, Shijima herself states it. Each Boundary of the School Mystery is bound by rules. Mysteries can't just do whatever they like- There are rules they have to respect. Especially when it comes to such an overpowered ability like messing with time, there has to be a major weakness or price to pay for it, a drawback that Kako discovered how to circumvent. Such an overpowered ability, unregulated? No way.
After all, it's not only the Clock Keepers' servants that are clockwork dolls, they themselves are also clockwork dolls.
Kako cutting up souls everytime the past is changed is not a coincidence. It's so he can have someone else pay for the price of altering time.
Wouldn't that be why Kako decided to travel to 1968, to the time he would find a 12 year old who is so desperate to turn back time?
After all, it's so much easier to find a human willing to pay the price in your stead. Especially if it's a child motivated by desperation. For every timeline change, someone has to sacrifice something. But Kako had found an easier way: Just sacrifice someone else.
Some are able to accept reality as it is and just dutifully abide by the Clock Keepers' rules as their masters, like the cat, and some don't and end up crazy, like the broken doll. Whether from the past, future or another world, they're all the same- They all used to be humans.
This cruel practice is so Kako is freely able to play 'God' without worrying about the rules every mystery has to abide to, and it's even solidified by the victims who can't recall the circumstances themselves. It's a practice that, if revealed, exposes the Clock Keepers' limits.
Why do you think Kako had asked Akane to stay alive until they wake up? Because if all else failed, the Clock Keepers would be able to exchange Akane's soul to turn back time once more. It's literally Akane that's a safety net, not just the Yorishiro.
Wouldn't that also explain why the position of the Clock Keeper of the Present is vacant and only filled by humans?
Why was that position vacant until they found Akane, a boy who similarly wanted the power to control time? The "Clock Keeper of the Present" is simply a disposable asset.
But now, Kako messed up big time. He used time as his playground to attempt to get rid of an actual God, one who now is aware of the danger the Clock poses.
The consequences for this will be lethal for the Clock Keepers, ones who treat time and lives so lightly, and karmic retribution will come swiftly.
As final words, it would seem that Nene finding the truth behind the dolls behind finding Kako is done on purpose so she cannot fall in the Clock Keepers' trap and play her cards right.
Kako will not be able to get away with treating this world as his personal playground.
I think for the first time I will talk about Shijima, even if her story is one of the ones that moves me the most.
Seeing her trying for the last time to do what she loves the most, and trying to immortalize it with lines and colors on paper. The tower, crooked, as if representing her trying to use all the effort she has to stay upright, even if the tower could fall at any moment. And even if it did fall, she would still be there, inside that tower, where her happiness would live.
Her desire to be happy didn't exactly only create another world, but another version of herself, because in her eyes the world is good and she was the one who couldn't keep up, so she recreated herself in a world where it would be possible to be happy, even in a tower about to fall.
Imagining herself in another world, in another place… in a place where she could be herself, even if it wasn't real, still brought joy.
Shijima's story also reminds me of the first Harry Potter book. The orphan boy who one day found a magic mirror that reflected what he most desired. He saw his parents, who had died to save him when he was a baby.
illustration by TomScribble
And Harry went there every night and day, over and over again, to be by their side, to see them smile for the first and countless times. Until Dumbledore, the professor, discovered and told him that dreams bring us joy, take us to the sweetest and deepest pleasure of living what we could never.
But it wasn't worth it to always be dreaming and forgetting to live.
At that time, it didn't make sense to me. Who would choose to stay in the real world? But the truth is that dreaming kills your hopes little by little.
Until you have none left.
Mei dreamed that Shijima would live, she did what had to be done, she stayed in the dream that Shijima made for her, but she never came back.
The wish that she had lost hope.
Tsukasa gave her the freedom to finally have enough strength to stop dreaming.
Shijima never stopped smiling, not because she was resigned to death, but because she knew that the dream would one day come to an end, but she wanted at least one version of her to be happy.
The tower, Shijima's last painting, was the representation of the happiness that she wanted to immortalize.
She was happy while she was alive, and she became eternal in the form that she loved most, painting.
Stopping dreaming is so hard. Watching the world fall apart makes it feel like you're falling apart with it. But it's necessary.
It's better to stop dreaming before you lose hope.
When hope dies, not even the world of dreams makes sense anymore.
Nothing does.
One day Harry Potter would realize that his parents were already dead, and he would have died with them if he had just kept dreaming about something he could never have.
But, just like Shijima, he knew the right moment to break the world of dreams. The boy who found the magic mirror that had been hidden in the deepest part of the castle, for having killed the hope of so many others.
Mei thought that "killing" Shijima would be the best way to break the dream
But killing her would bring nothing but negative feelings. Killing a dream won't bring you peace.
Accepting that it was good while it lasted will bring you true freedom. Like what actually happened.
She accepted that the dream was over, and went to face reality. Shijima accepted death, and Mei accepted that she is the part of Shijima that she wanted to live and be remembered, no matter how she was remembered.
I love how Aidairo make reality so raw and strong and how it reflects so well on them. How Amane "killed" his dreams, when he lost hope, how he quickly realized that the world was fake.
Because that happiness was so unreal to him.
Even if Mei had put him in a world where it would be just him and Tsukasa, happy as it should have been in the past, he would have known it was fake.
Because he no longer had hope, he killed hope when he raised the knife to Tsukasa.
When he spent so much time trying to change the past, trying to make things work out, trying to save his brother at all costs and at any sacrifice.
When he realized that going to the moon was no longer possible.
When he decided not to go anywhere.
He didn't give Tsukasa his freedom, like Mei gave Shijima - even if forced initially - or, Tsukasa himself didn't give Amane the freedom to leave, when he decided to sacrifice himself.
Amane was supposed to die.
Shijima was supposed to die.
But dreams made they postpone it.
In the end, reality still came.
And it's never easy. But at least accepting it completely is less painful than dreaming and losing everything in the end.
Seeing that none of it was real.
You're now drowning in reality and embracing the pain of a dream that never happened, but that you miss. And since that dream never came true, you lose hope.
What's there for you now besides reality?
It doesn't matter, you're not going anywhere.
Like Dumbledore said,
“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live”
Sometimes, it takes a while to accept even that.
But it's needed.
here it is btw! if you're ever planning to sign, make sure to give a real sounding name so it is believable:P thank u!
before anyone gets surprised, yes, I am an enstars fan. I haven't played in months but the brainrot still won't forsake me
also akatsuki is 3, I'll get the petition link in a min wait
builder wife steve and in the mines netherite husband alex
that one scene in the end of dhmis made me start seeing the ship of a weird red guy and a duck. send help they are building space in my brainI
sayaka drawing
Caged Wings Had this idea in my head for a while now. Finally gave it a go. Though my original idea was of a caged tiger, it somehow became birds as I sketched. Maybe I'll make another version with a tiger in the future~ Here's a quick timelapse. The full hours long 6 recording sessions for this painting, plus HD image and PSD file will be DMed on Patreon.com/Yuumei on April 5th.