#personal cactus

this is (i think) my third time listening to “the monster’s reflection”, and i always remember that it makes me cry, but still, the memory doesn’t really do justice to just how much it makes me FEEL. and especially part 3, every time, i’m sobbing.

you just think about how all three of them - juno, benzaiten, sarah - each deserved so much better. they all deserved so much better from the world, from jack, from each other. and the episodes do such a good job of painting the picture for you (which of course is the point), not just of how they deserved better, but of how it all went wrong, of just exactly how all the things that shouldn’t have happened to them, happened, one after another, trickling into each other. and you can’t know exactly what would have happened if things hadn’t gone wrong, but it’s so easy to imagine, and that idea of what “could have been” fills the picture in even more, drawing the shadow beneath what “did happen anyway”. juno, benzaiten, and sarah steel all deserved so much better than they got.

obviously i’m really simplifying the episodes’ story/message here, (i’m not super eloquent and doing a proper analysis is beyond the scope of my abilities), but these three episodes are so masterfully crafted. “the monster’s reflection” is my favourite set of juno steel episodes for a reason, and that reason is that it is some of the best storytelling i have ever heard in my life.