#''brightest light casts the darkest shadows'' thing feeling a lot more KH now that I know KH stuff

[loregoddess]

con't Octo2 observations, except under a cut bc I'm getting into endgame speculation...I have the triple-threat of Stormhail chapters next, and then Agnea's second-to-last chapter, and then I'll be well and on my way to final chapters, so I'm nearing all the endgame stuff anyhow...

there's like, three? kids in Mother's Garden with really unusual descriptions in their notes if you inquire/scrutinize them (moonfang blood, whitewolf language, and something else related to shadow stuff, I was not taking notes like I should have been), but all the other kids have n/a for their notes. If I remember, visiting the orphanage after Throne's route is completed, all the kids get normal descriptions bc actual decent humans are running the place, but this is still very hmmm-worthy, bc we know Throne's got her special night ability, and the Slaver had that weird ability to sniff out poison like a search hound, so I'm really thinking some of the Blacksnakes just have...weird powers bc of their ancestry. This potentially puts Hikari's entire deal into a new perspective as well, and also makes me wish we got some solid explanation about what the heck was up with D'arqest since he's the root of every single weird thing and problem in this story.

aside from Ori talking about her brother a lot more than I realized she did, I also noticed something interesting about her in that she's the only Moonshade member to directly involve herself in her counterpart's activities. Like she goes out of her way to help Partitio promote the department store, he doesn't ask her, she proposes the idea first, and that means she's actively participating in the hope he's trying to spread and grow. Like, the other members have different levels of interaction with their counterparts (Kazan does help Hikari take back Ku, but we know Kazan is so far gone that no amount of goodness on Hikari's part was going to save him and he was manipulating the situation a lot more than he let on anyhow; Trousseau may have worked directly with Castti, but some of his dialogue in the Winterbloom flashbacks make me think he was a bit unstable before meeting Castti and loosing his sister definitely didn't help any of that, so reading the book Claude gave him was really more just a tipping point for a disaster waiting to happen--Castti's the only protagonist aside from Hikari who almost gets taken by The Shadow as well except she has no connection to D'arqest, so the stress of the apothecary job just just isn't good for anyone's mental health apparently; Tanzy meets Agnea and hangs out with her but doesn't like really interact with Agnea too much, and apparently isn't that moved by the Song of Hope, possibly bc she was pretty far gone due to the grief/guilt/latching onto Arcanette? possibly? Tanzy doesn't get a lot of writing, but honestly she seems to be in just as bad a place as Kazan or Trousseau; all the other members are actively villainous so there wasn't really any hope for them to begin with)--but anyhow, Ori's the only one who actually actively participates in spreading hope with Partitio, and I think that's part of the reason she's the only member to make it out alive and switch sides in the end (aside from Partitio being such a bright ray of sunshine that he can apparently save someone just by believing in them hard enough). Anywhos, I just found it interesting that she's so...actively involved with Partitio's story.

actually took a good look (er, as good as I could) at the chimera in Harvey's lab that doesn't erupt out of its test tube, and it's vaguely human-shaped? so like I dunno if this is Rita's corpse (since Harvey took her blood and used it to fuel the golem) or just there to imply that he was also experimenting on people (which still makes me think he had something to do with the Roi > Dark Entity thing), but very unsettling no matter what

somehow totally missed it my first run bc I was distracted by the avalanche of plot reveals, but Harvey calls the Lumine family the "Lineage of Light" so now I'm gonna have to keep an eye out to see if Kura and/or Alpates also have "Lineage of Light" tied to their ancestral clans or nah.

ALSO when Eir's Apothecary's left Healeaks and then returned to Trousseau poisoning the entire place isn't given a specific timeframe (we just know it couldn't have happened that far before Castti's Ch1 bc she can't have been at sea too long), so it technically is entirely possible that Malaya is the apothecary in Partitio's Ch1 and that shortly after she headed back to Healeaks. Which is still a really interesting implication for the timing of events, since a few of the characters' chapters seem to come before or after other characters' chapters, which is an interesting thing to add to the story.