i've been having a lot of saja boy thoughts over the weeks (it's becoming a problem, i am too old to be this obsessed with this movie) so i need to excise them and write them down. just thoughts, ideas, hc, etc, probably things that have been posited before but here we go.
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one thing i am having trouble with is figuring out how they might move forward from this movie. even though there's a lot of buzz of sequels, stage shows, etc, i think it's too early to say for sure what will actually materialize. BUT it seems rightly so that it will focus on huntrix, their origins, etc. prequel stuff. my problem is i don't see any narrative benefit to including the saja boys post rainbow honmoon (that's even assuming they didn't perma-die in the attack). jinu sure, a case can be made for his convoluted return. but the rest? they were pawns in the plan, under developed, suited their very specific purposes and then were snuffed out. this makes me gravitate heavily to canon-divergent saja boy material, finding any crumb or reason to explain why they are not gone for good.
there is a couple movie details that i kept coming back to that lead me to a possible way to inject the saja boys back into the narrative. it's a little meandering so bare with me.
lets start off with the types of demons we see in the underworld.
the movie shows that there are at least two ways gwi-ma makes his army. it implies that the more souls gwi-ma devours, the more demons he can conjure. the other is how jinu became a demon: a bargain that became a curse and eventual servitude for all eternity. i intuit this to mean that the reaper-style demons (which are the most human looking of the demons) may also be former humans. (there are probably other ways but these are the ones we're shown)
it was that fact - that some demons used to be humans - that made me think about the ethics of the honmoon itself. while i am sure not every person who became a demon was a stand up citizen, gwi-ma's influence cannot be ignored. he preys on the desperate, he feeds on shame, and it would be too sad to assume everyone who became a demon via gwi-ma's influence deserved it. jinu proved (eventually) that demons can change, or at the very least, those that were once human can be human again (if being human means getting your soul back somehow and becoming a sword in the process).
i don't know how the new honmoon functions differently from the old one (i even have headcannony doubts that turning it gold is possible and/or will do the things it's said to do. seriously, how would anyone know if it's never been done before?) i don't know if gwi-ma is locked away or dead. but i feel like with what was experienced with jinu, and with rumi being half demon and still a hero, i don't think they can justify or moralize locking everything and everyone in the demon realm for good. ESPECIALLY not if we ever get a story about her learning the whole truth of her mother and father. i feel like they would have to recognize and acknowledge the humanity locked away and needing help.
this is the groundwork my brain has laid out to a possibility of seeing the saja boys again.
the next step is convincing myself they did not die. i know there's fan theories (that i LOVE) that say that those that did not get killed on screen are still in the human world, that some disappeared before being killed. but rationally, i have to believe that killing demons only sends them back to the underworld. the logic of it is a little sweaty though. humans disappear when their souls are harvested and they never implied they returned to the real world after gwi-ma's defeat. in a balanced duality i would have to assume the same would need to be true for the demons when slain. still, that's the biggest hurdle i have to overcome to believe that saja boys returning is even a possibility.
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now why SPECIFICALLY would the saja boys be set free/get a seconds chance/whatever?
despite what early concepts may imply, or what showrunners/writers would have liked to include, what we ended up with was a set of perfectly crafted demons to execute jinu's plan. the saja boys technically go through two transformations, pre-saja boy (demon) and saja boy (human). in this picture you can see they are stock basic reapers possibly even just stripped down jinu models (giggity).
i believe this was just a shortcut/visual short hand, but you know us, we will read into anything. this image stage suggest that the reapers in question are no one in particular. fairly featureless and indistinct from each other. you don't even see mystery's tusks that he loses after the saja boys transformation.
again, i don't think these necessarily mean anything or are mistakes, i just think it's just an animation shortcut and visual story telling (look at these nobodies turn into heart throbs).
now the fact that these are nameless faceless reapers before becoming the saja boys convinced me at first that these were not anyone to consider as anyone in particular. even as the saja boys, they are manufactured to be the perfect group to steal fans. they picked non-names that were so surface level, and did not hesitate to do gwi-ma's bidding. being humans exhausted them.
and yet, this set up does couch pretty nicely with the popular fan theory that the group in the photo in the han clinic is the saja boys.
now realistically, i'm not entirely sold on the group in the han clinic being the saja boys. i'm not entirely on board with them even being visually similar to the saja boys (the only thing you really have to go on is extremely vague hair shapes), i think it was just meant to be a visual gag showing that the doctor likes to show off his involvement in celebrity lives. it appears before we even see the human saja boys making it a little narratively clunky. BUT.
i am MORE on board when i compare them to the pre-transformation reapers. more plain, more grounded something that might be a little closer in appearance to the boys in the photo. now my favorite headcanons are the ones where the saja boys are older demons, like jinu (you can see a topknot[?] in the shear gat fabric, something the modern band didn't have) but the head canon that this failed boy band was integral to making this a functioning boy band with jinu's leadership is incredibly enticing AND I THINK a good vehicle to huntrix to investigate rescuing souls behind the honmoon. if it was recent enough and they found a way to connect the dots, i feel it would not be inconceivable that there could be an avenue to see a return of the saja boys.
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FWEW, and now that THAT's out of my head, here's one more head canony pondering.
there's speculation that we see jinu's mom and sister in the intro. this implies that jinu was there (in the underworld, not necessarily there at the battle) when the first honmoon was created. it makes me wonder if the honmoon also shielded humans from gwi-ma's influence, and that jinu was one of the last reapers created. demons can still slip through obviously and he still has a hold on them, but i wonder if, especially as weak as he has become, if he would have difficulty creating demons through temptation. after the honmoon started tearing apart, it was easy picking to get everyone to march to their doom.
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ok thanks for reading! y'all are doing a great job!
Time management. 40-50 hours/wk of work. 10-12 hr/wk school. Housework. Exercise. Chores. Downtime.
How to become a study girl. And a working girl. And a healthy diet girl.
Increase calorie burn without increasing hunger.
How to study and not eat more because of whatever makes me want to eat all the things at night. Like last night. I should have been focused. Instead I was continually looking for snacks even though I had obviously eaten more than enough.
Limit night eating.
Limit availability of UPF.
Keep calories within limits. Easier with turkey and chicken items, but I have alot of pork and beef.
Focus time needed for work and school items. (If I need brainpower for work items, I struggle with school focus that day.)
I sometimes get the urge to ramble on thots and things and it honestly never occurred to me until just now that I could purge all my feels on my tumblr to get them out of my head.
I’m working on my mcshep Big Bang (posting date July 31) and I’ve not written anything in years. The last thing I posted to AO3 was in 2016 and my original fic has been languishing as well. Around 2015 I slid into a depression (which is chronic for me) and it’s pretty much been me trying to get out of it since then in some form or another and writing has been far from my mind during this time.
Or rather it’s been far from my actions. I think about it a lot but haven’t had the spoons, you know?
Anyway I thought this challenge would be a good push to get writing again and it is and it has been but I’m just so fraught with doubt about the story and my writing and I thought ‘oh I’ll just put a disclaimer note in my fic when I post it. A sort of hey I’m worried about this and here it is’
But I’m also trying not to self sabotage and that kind of feels like that. Also, while I do want to post the story and I always like getting kudos ans commemts, I try to write for me and this has really been about that journey as well - back to writing in a safe place (as I’ve always found fandom very warm and welcoming).
So then I was like, okay, I won’t put this self-doubt note on my work and I’ll just put my stuff out there (assuming I will finish it - ha ha sobs uncontrollably as she realizes the deadline is looming) but I have this crippling fear that all the things I think are wrong with it will be so painfully obvious and it’s like it hurts less to point them out myself first than to wait and post it and think that people find those flaws and think I’m oblivious to them.
So then I thought, okay I will put this on tumblr so it’s separate from my story but I’ll also feel like I’ve gotten it ‘out there’ and also hopefully it will be a bit purged from my mind as o often need to get shit out of my brain so that I can focus on something else.
I gotta keep working on the fic. My scrivener says o need 1000 words a day to finish and I can’t seem to get characters where I want them to be in a short amount of words.
I've been rolling around the idea of a sophisticated human society that functions without numbers. What would that world look like? Can we comprehend such a thing from within our frame of thinking? Can I break free from my own structured thoughts and create this world? Our human brain learns by categorizing. We create categories and build on them from the age of 2 onwards. Things, items, physical existence is divided instead of combined in the very foundation of our thinking. Currency. Is the idea of currency innate? Food in, poop out? Are we destined to be consumers vs creators? Is it even possible to write a world without numbers?
A list of things I need to do for school [formatting will come later]
The time of the semester has come again where I need to write out things I need to get done so it's not a jumbled mess in my head. Geology: Start looking/pick out an interesting topic to do research on for the semester paper. Email Barry about the topic. Read up on faults, etc. I think it was in Chapter 8. Look up conversions again and get practice on it. I believe it was m/km to ft/mi, and ft/sec to km/hr. Fuck being the only country in the world not doing metrics. Frick Read the rest of the chapter on metamorphism bc wtf is it about ....yeah I think that's all for now. Math 103: Finish hw sec. 5.7 Watch the vidyas and then take comprehension assessment for 5.8 (or whatever the next one is) Take a look at the study guide... which should be up soon. Hopefully tonight?? Principles of Conservation: Do the research for bee conservation. Send the articles to my team mates. Looks like I want to focus on the fact that at least 1 of the bumblebee species in the PNW is making a comeback, and how to make your garden more "bee friendly". Along with that project, look at what Duncan just posted abt. the group project. Read Chapters 5 and 6 for the next quiz. Write some shit down cuz god knows he isn't really teaching it. It's all good though. Personal: Take a fucking nap. Eat. Love Lucas. Do some yoga or something. Visit kitties. Go to bed at a decent hour. Hug your mama. Idk, stop smoking all that weed
