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3 weeks ago. What. How. No.
Exactly 24hrs without you. I don't know what to do. I miss you. It doesn't feel real at all, I honestly wish it wasn't. I wish I could see you. Hopefully you and grandad are together again.
We talk about this far too passionately for me to not reblog this <3
I don't think we're paying half of the attention we should be to the inherent horror of the Isekai trope. God knows I love it, like a stupid amount but can you even imagine?
Typically, the character firsts dies, hit by a bus, some illness, murdered, and that's your starting point. You die, in some gruesome way you are ripped from your world and then thrusted into another. You stopped breathing, you ceased to exist, you died. You didn't though. Because you're alive. All of a sudden, it's like nothing happened. But it did, didn't it? Tell me, is a wound still a wound if there's no scar? Where do you put all your grief if there's no grave?
There's no time to focus on that though, because you're in a stranger body. That's body horror, babe. Your skin is fairer, your hair is curled, your legs are longer, every part of you is not your own. Your hair, the colour of your eyes, the damn figure of your body, you don't look like yourself. Your nose is too straight, your smile lines are gone, your cheeks are rosey. Your hands aren't worn in the right places, maybe not at all, where are your burn marks from the stove, your calluses from your work, the cheap, chipped nail polish. You can't walk on these legs, these aren't the legs that took your first step, they aren't the legs you scraped learning to ride a bike, these legs haven't carried you through your life.
And what of these people who know you? No, not you, the person you're living in. It's their name you must respond to, their memories you must bluff through, their fate you must live through. You must abandon all sense of self to survive, you can never be yourself again because you died, you never existed here, because you are someone else now. You have been pulled on stage without a script, how long until they realize? That you can only echo back what they've said? That their child doesn't know their parent anymore? Their childhood friend, their lover, their rival.
What about them? Did they die for you to take their place? Have they taken yours? What have they endured, what did they love, why did this happen, how are you suppose to carry on when you have you have no idea if they're safe? Every good thing that happens to you should have been theirs, every bad thing that happens to you they've had ten times over.
What about the complete loss of your original world, hm? Especially in a fantasy world. You will never stand in your childhood home again, never eat your regional dish again, never hear the popular songs on the radio. Everyone you have ever known is in a world divorced from the one you are trapped in. You will never see them again and they will never know why.
You are an imposter in every meaning of the word, you never wanted to be, and you can never stop, and no one will ever understand because you're the only real person in this world. You will always be alone, in your happiest ending, you will never escape the world you were dragged out of to be reborn.