#(mentioned/relevant to the premise)

[girlwiththegreenhat]

i am never going to recover from the death shroud radio play actually

[fire-tempers-steel]

Regarding Sawa and Kusumoto

I’ve had some meta-thoughts rattling around my brain about Kuwana / Yagami parallels. The game makes a lot of these parallels completely textual – “Two Sides of the Same Coin”, Kuwana’s own words…

Kuwana is Yagami’s shadow, of course– shadow-self, another path he could have taken. 

What I want to talk about in this post is the parallel roles of Sawa Yoko and Kusumoto Reiko in Yagami and Kuwana’s respective justifications for their sense of what’s right. In a very real sense, Sawa is Yagami’s trump card for his justification, and Kusumoto is Kuwana’s. 

I’ll also get into how Sawa-sensei and Kusumoto-san’s respective agency and experiences play into or contrast with how Yagami and Kuwana are interpreting their stories, and make some remarks about what the game does with those narratively.  

*

Starting with Kuwana, Kusumoto is clearly the person in his history he’s the most protective of. He makes frequent reference to how he’d never give her away, and believes for a long time she would never betray him either. And he even forgives her without hesitation upon learning she betrayed him for Mitsuru’s sake. 

Kusumoto-san, I believe, crystallized the purpose he set for himself in order to assuage his guilt. She also gave him company in that, by taking up some of that blood on her own hands, and conferring a kind of gratitude that was almost like forgiveness to him, for his inaction. 

I loved that the game let Kusumoto’s decision to come clean completely eviscerate Kuwana, just have him on the floor begging and bawling. She really was a foundational brick in the foundation of his vigilante-justice-in-the-hands-of-the-forgotten narrative, and the breakdown he suffered was pitch-perfect.

Now what of Kusumoto Reiko herself? I think it’s interesting that the game does give more than ample space to ask the question of whether she’s justified, from a few different angles. 

First, Kawai’s judgment, from her personally. She wanted to give him a chance to show he truly meant it when he begged her for forgiveness. He failed completely to recognize her, acting like a boor. The game itself also narratively tells us in other places that he bragged about his bullying – no remorse there. 

Her torture of Kawai before his death seems to have had an effect on her– she doesn’t regret it, but it was difficult for her, she didn’t relish in it. And at the end of the day, she still was grateful to have the chance to enact justice, and it gave her a kind of bitter peace. 

But the revenge didn’t help her son live. And the moment he came to life, she realized that she could not undo the blood on her hands, that she had, in her rage, erased her chances to live a normal life with her son. She was in the shadow. 

Now, let’s talk about Yagami and Sawa. 

Much to-do is made of how often Yagami harps on “what happened to Sawa-sensei” as his one and only fallback for justifying to Kuwana and his accomplices (co-murderers?) that their actions are wrong. Others apart from me have pointed out that the narrowness of his argument is exactly the point: without cold, hard evidence that someone had gotten hurt as a result of their web of lies, Yagami has a lot less to go on (even to himself!) to make his case. 

This holds weight with Kusumoto, because of Sawa’s fundamental decency (in contrast to Kawai’s, might I add!). 

And ultimately the combined guilt of having betrayed the one decent classmate to Mitsuru, and the parallels of “keeping secrets for life kills” that Sawa presented did wear down Kusumoto and influence her decision to come clean. 

The fact that Yagami pins his convictions on Sawa-sensei makes sense. But it is interesting to contrast that with how she is. 

Sawa is in some ways, powerless and even lacking in conviction to act on what power she does have. Sawa has been a bystander for not one, but three cases of serious bullying, by the time the game starts (Mitsuru, Toshiro, Koda)-- and has never been able to follow through on speaking up for the victims. Speaking out against those who covered up their horrendous neglect (hello? What even happened to that horrible teacher who covered up Toshiro-kun's bullying??)

Yagami, on the other hand, handles Koda’s bullying case with uncanny grace for an outsider. Not only does he prevent the bullying and start to turn on the minds of the bullies, he does so by encouraging the other students to speak up. 

This also provides the parallel that I’ve teased out in the earlier discussion of Kuwana and Kusumoto’s relationship: both Yagami and Kuwana provide tools that they previously lacked to deal with the bullying problem. Yagami, some preventative medicine that worked wonders. And Kuwana, well, the power of Incredible Violence, I guess. The fact that Kusumoto embraces Kuwana’s tools whole heartedly, and Sawa resists Yagami’s interventions despite seeing them work is, I think, another interesting contrast between Sawa and Kusumoto. 

But to round it back to Yagami/Kuwana parallels and discussion, the contrast in the methods they both offer is, philosophically, is why I still align more so with Yagami than I do with Kuwana, even though I’m sympathetic to the realities the game is presenting: that the justice system failed the bullying victims. To focus on the prevention of further violence and injustice seems to me the kinder thing than to enact retribution in the shadows that’s so utterly violent that you believe it’ll prevent further violence (I don’t think this is true! I think Kuwana is very wrong about this! Punitive justice is not good!). 

I’ll end this with a tantalizing question – what kind of paths could be explored if Sawa had not been killed by Soma? I think there could be some really interesting canon-divergence AUs there, and I’m not guaranteeing they’d be positive ones either. Without Sawa’s death giving Yagami more solid justification for staying strong, there’s a lot less he could do, persuasion-wise, and internally, to get people on his side. But by the same token, there seems to be less of an immediate impediment to Kuwana and Yagami being on opposite sides…opportunities for both redemption arcs and corruption arcs there. 

Food for thought for ficcers ;) and feel free to run with this, if you like it. I’m a “many cakes for many concepts” fic enjoyer, so even if I did write such an AU, I’m sure it’d be particular and different. 

And if you've read this all, thank you! Kuwana and Yagami are living in my brain rent-paying <3

[feverdreamsandlucidnightmares]

I am doing more research on religious archetypes and symbolism for my fucked up little trigun paper than I did in an entire year of theology classes in undergrad so uh

[unproduciblesmackdown]

1909 edition of alfred sutro's english translation of the 1894 original published "la mort de tintagiles" open access internet archive digitization, for interest

asia kate dillon in triptych, ft. one-acts “phenomena & existences” by daniil kharms, “SPIDERS ARE REAL! THEY’RE ALIVE AND THEY HATE YOU!!” by t. adamson, and “le mort de tintagiles” by maurice maeterlinck

[eddiespornstache]

you know what i’m looking forward to? buck just offhandedly mentioning tommy in a throwaway line in an episode in which tommy does not even appear let alone impact the plot. just the fact of him being baked into the premise of the show. buck has a boyfriend and he exists even when he’s not relevant

[electricbathsalt]

Things I want to talk about/touch upon/see people mention more but cannot compile individual coherent posts about:

1. The fact Pops’ daughter apparently had a “falling out” with Pops (over her marriage??) that caused her to completely abandon the yakuza and maybe also cut contact with Pops (the dude is suspicious guys)

2. The fact that in the Overhaul-LOV initial meeting, Chisaki had to have intentionally chosen not to kill Mr. Compress.

3. The idea that many of Chisaki’s thought processes at least partially stem from his time in AFO’s facility. And of course, Pops.

4. How much Chisaki seems to lack a proper reaction to any sort of pain (He was beat to a pulp by Mirio & Midoriya, exploded himself, & got his arms cut off and I’ve never heard him so much as yelp) while still complaining about how overhauling himself hurts?? Yet he doesn’t show it.

5. (Highway scene) How Chisaki only screamed once the realization he wouldn’t be able to ever wake up Pops sunk in (isn’t confirmed but. I’m convinced).

6. The fact that there’s absolutely no way Chisaki wasn’t negatively impacted by being raised in the Yakuza. It’s simply inherent.

7. The blatant disregard Pops had to have had for both Chisaki and Eri’s well-beings to have designated Chisaki as her caretaker.

8. The endless amounts of potential for Chisaki & Dabi/Touya dynamics post-war, platonic or otherwise. (Multiple fics with this premise in my WIPs, lol)

9. The fact Chisaki seems practically incapable of holding a grudge. Like, think about it; is there a character you can say Chisaki genuinely, wholeheartedly hates and wishes the worst upon. You know what—what IS his opinion on Shigaraki/the LOV these days??

10. Realizing that in the initial Overhaul-LOV meeting, Chisaki literally just tone-matched them. Look:

Mr Compress says all that, and then Chisaki later explains:

Which, once you break down what Mr Compress said/how he said it, and what Chisaki said/how he said it… blunt statement of facts. Mr Compress told Toga how faded out the Yakuza have become with no sugarcoating, and Chisaki took that and said. “Well. Yeah.” But then when Chisaki did the same thing (blunt but true & valid criticisms of the LOV/Shigaraki’s leading skills (bc let’s be real, he was an ass leader at the time in terms of actual planning and execution)), the LOV got pissed. He pointed out all the relevant flaws and mistakes in Shigaraki’s leadership and then said it’d be better if he was the leader because he actually has a plan, and they got pissed at the mere prospect of serving under somebody else. Do you realize how much the story would’ve been altered if the LOV didn’t decide to just start attacking Chisaki here?? 💀 Sorry I’m exceptionally passionate about this bc the fandom gaslit me for a while into believing Chisaki was the one starting shit here 😔 but then I read it (a long time after I'd watched it in the anime) and was like. "what. he didn't initiate literally any of this shit. and everything he's saying is true??"

There’s probably more I could add to this but it’s getting long enough lol.

[jymwahuwu]

Soooo i read your last post on the wedding day sex, and you mentioned getting whipped for consuming lewd media, but what if the reader got a masochist streak and came even harder from that, imagine the birb's shock.

cw: spanking, being spanked to orgasm, (not mentioned here but) yandere

Premise: Sunday does not allow you to browse any pornographic websites/content…

🤭🥺👉👈Love this. this…this…is so relevant to me. I definitely couldn't control myself during the spanking… Sunday couldn't understand what was going on (or Sunday quickly understood and used it as an excuse to punish again).

"Please remember - this is not for my pleasure. I am not here to seek pleasure." Another whip was swung on your red and swollen butt. You whimpered pitifully, tears streaming down your cheeks as you moved your legs forward, then kicked them up as if it would relieve the pain… but you knew it was to hide something more shameful. "This is to cleanse you of your sins."

Sunday's tone was calm, and he put the whip on your ass again, rubbing it as a warning. "Why did you lie to me?"

You stammered your explanation. "I-I, it's just-for some fun!"

Another whip. This time harder than last time.

"See. That's the problem." Disappointment was on his tongue. He gently moved the whip between your legs, gesturing for you to open your legs for the spanking. "You even cheated on me. You thought you couldn't get caught browsing porn sites." But as you sobbed and slowly spread your legs, something more sinister was revealed. His fingers touched your vulva a few times, and there was clear liquid all over it. "What's this?"

Sunday felt the tremble when his fingertips brushed against your shining petals. You were originally lying on the table with your hands, but now your upper body is lying on the table, raising your butt, moaning and intoxicated uncontrollably… Smack! Smack! Smack! A series of merciless slaps on your buttocks. There was a violent convulsion and shaking. Waves of that deliciously painful orgasm wash over your skin.

Sunday blinked and paused for a few seconds, lacking the experience to understand what you were facing now. "…You were spanked to orgasm?"

"I-I didn't!" You denied in panic, squeezing your legs.

Sunday had raised his hand again.

"No, I don't condone lies. Now, the spanking will start all over again because you thought it was for pleasure, not a lesson."

[yurimother]

'I'm in Love with the Villainess' Anime - Episode 1 Review

An astounding and hilarious first outing for the series with the power to revolutionize Yuri

We are finally here, the long-awaited and much anticipated first episode of Platinum Vision’s I’m in Love with the Villainess anime aired on Tokyo MX and is streaming everywhere outside of Asia with a plethora of dubbing options, including English, on day one on Crunchyroll.

The first outing covers most of the events of the light novel’s first chapter, or the first three chapters of the manga, at a rapid but steady and not overwhelming pace. At this rate, the anime should be able to cover much of the series’ first arc, or the first two out of five books, in a single cour. Perhaps a bit less, depending on which of the story’s various adventures it elects to include. This is an exciting possibility, to be sure, as the story is a character-driven, socially mindful, and expertly written and, despite its fantasy setting, an exceptionally relevant tale of romance, socio-economic inequality, and of course, queerness.

While the first arc of Villainess is a triumph, it would be a shame not to see at least some of the developments from the extra chapters that lead into the second story, like (spoilers for the end of volume 2) Rae and Claire’s wedding and their adopted twin daughters May and Aleah. If we are lucky, perhaps they will appear in the final episode or, dare to dream, a second season (end of spoilers).

Now, onto the show itself. For those who, for whatever reason, have not read Inori’s masterpiece, I’m in Love with the Villainess follows Rae Taylor. A salary worker who dies and is reincarnated as the protagonist of her favorite otome game, Revolution. However, Rae has no interest in any of the game world’s three eligible royal bachelors and has eyes only for the game villainess Claire François. Armed with exceptionally magical ability, Rae sets out determined to secure a happy ending for her beloved Claire against the coming revolution and perhaps win her heart in the process.

Now, the opening of I’m in Love with the Villainess is the series' weakest moment in all mediums, which, considering episode one’s outstanding quality, only highlights just how superb the Yuri masterpiece is as a whole. Even with its need to establish the setting, characters, and premise of the series, the premiere managed to be an excellent introduction and set the bar high with lots of laughs, entertainment, and service between our two leads.

I watched the Japanese audio, and Yu Serizawa and Karin Nanami are fantastic in these roles, with Serizawa playing up Rae’s teasing adoration and borderline masochism at full blast, and Nanami explicitly giving voice to Claire’s arrogance and frustration. She even manages to deliver a perfect Ojou-style laugh to seal the character’s elite status and lean into the show’s use of otome tropes. And having the leads sing the excellent opening and ending themes is just icing on the cake.

Speaking of tropes, while Ironi’s original work is a genre-defying masterpiece that broke the Yuri mold, it is never afraid to play with the genre’s iconography and its otome game setting. Every other scene had another allusion, including to the book’s cover. As always, I am likely overeager to see connections, however intentional they may be, but the academy’s halls harken to otome staples, the bells and strings of the first scene's soundtrack conjured blistering memories of Strawberry Panic (perhaps a sacrilegious comparison to make but I digress), and even an areal shot of the campus was another check mark on my “Scenic Yuri” theory.

Now, as mentioned, I’m in Love with the Villainess has to establish the groundwork here, and narratively, these are the weakest moments, often direct exposition, with a few exceptions like Rae’s conversation with her roommate Mash about maintaining Claire’s attention. The narration is at least accompanied by relevant and creative, if perhaps limited, animation. But to their credit, these moments are succinct, existing only as long as they have to in order to provide the necessary information and get out of the way for what matters most: the characters.

Rae and Claire are front and center from the very get-go, and there is little time wasted in showcasing Rae’s intense bottom energy or establishing Claire’s elitism and bewildered anger towards Rae’s excitement in the face of Claire’s carefully calculated cruelty. It is a montage of silly and fun competitions between the two that had me laughing and smiling all the way through, as the Yuri was present in full force, and gives glimpses at the mutual obsession the women have for each other that will soon blossom into a wonderful romance.

These early story beats have a light tone and focus on the bullying, teasing, and rivalry between Rae and Claire, a dynamic that previously and understandably made a subset of readers somewhat uncomfortable. However, assuming the anime unfolds in a similar manner to the manga and light novels, the narrative will explore meatier, heavier subject matter and a far deeper lesbian romance, all without losing its sense of fun and adventure. The next episode or two will be incredibly telling - as the source material is perhaps the most profound and forthright depictions of LGBTQ identity in Yuri, and that all starts with a pivotal conversation that, if it is included, will be coming up shortly.

Overall, I am incredibly excited for this series. The first episode is everything I had hoped for out of an adaptation of one of my favorite works of all time, save the animation, which is average at best. While there is a lot more to see, and we will have to wait to know if I’m in Love with the Villainess lives up to its incredible potential and source material, I am extremely hopeful. We have one of the funniest, most thoughtful, and queerest works of Yuri transformed into a stunning anime project unlike anything that has come before and offers the chance at not just a new Yuri “gateway” but to continue the work of its source material in revolutionizing the genre.

Ratings: Story – 8 Characters – 10 Art – 5 LGBTQ – We shall see… Sexual Content – 3 Final – 8

I'm in Love with the Villainess is streaming on Crunchyroll with English sub/dub.

Review made possible by Avery Riehl and the rest of the YuriMother Patrons. Support YuriMother on Patreon for early access, exclusive article, and more: patreon.com/yurimother

[lisafication]

Digging Graves for your Morals; Or, The Ethical Problem of Outlawry

Hello, yes, I am here again. This one is shorter, I swear (it’s under four thousand words, even). If this is the first post from me you’re seeing, this is a follow-up to my prior essay posted here on the game The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, although it should be able to mostly stand alone.

At the end of my last essay, I touched on both the game’s nearly uncompromising moral scepticism and relativity, but I didn’t really dig into it. I outlined that the game only textually frames actions as ‘morally bad’ in the context of a morality set by the society and the world that has treated them as no better than farm animals raised for the slaughter. Well, I have a lot to say on the topic of ethics on the topic of The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, so buckle in, this one’s going to talk about the social contract, moral scepticism and everyone’s favourite topic: Mrs. Graves.

As usual, this was originally posted and formatted for on Sufficient Velocity and you can perhaps more easily read it there. Spoilers abound, and my content warning from last time still applies.

She’s not too hot on either ethics or her mother

The Meat of the Matter

Since a lot of this is optional or otherwise missable information, let’s review the premise the game gives us. If you’re already aware of all of this, I apologise, it won’t take long.

First off the bat, the quarantine at the start of the game was a hoax-driven money-making scheme of which you can pick up more-or-less all the relevant details of. This is entirely missable and by the time it’s possible to discover, our protagonists have better things to dwell on and have dialogue about, so I’ll give you a summary of what you can deduce from reading the notes and thinking about it.

The quarantine is an organ harvesting operation, as per some documents you can discover in the wardens’ office. They entrap the residents, test their blood types and starve to death those they deem surplus to requirements — alternatively the starvation itself could be their method of ‘preparing the harvest’, there’s evidence in both directions and it hardly matters — harvesting the organs of the others for sale. As our protagonists are AB-typed, the ‘universal recipient’ or ‘most selfish blood type’, they’re some of the first on the chopping block.

If you read through the newspapers and the documents in Mr. Washing Machine’s car, you can discover that ultimately ToxiSoda are responsible, and a similar thing is happening in a different city under the guise of a ‘chemical leak’.  Should you further investigate matters, you will find mentions of the ‘man behind it all’, the doctor, or the Surgeon, as the fandom have been referring to him — you may recall Mrs. Graves mentioned someone similar! Yeah, he’s the guy who runs ToxiSoda, who are themselves partners with the water company that faked the parasite outbreak in the first place.

It’s all a life insurance scam, apparently

How much the details of the operation matter is something open to interpretation — it might just be something for players to figure out and Episode 3 will not cover the Surgeon at all, or he might play a major part; it's not particularly relevant to this essay. What matters is that it happened at all — indeed, it’s fairly easy to justify Ashley and Andrew in everything they did in Episode 1 (flashbacks aside), arguing that if they’d made any other decisions they’d have died — an argument that the victims dug their own graves, even if the Graves siblings put them in them. How correct that is is a matter of debate, but that you can make the argument at all matters, and we’ll be returning to this later. In my last essay (and again in the introduction here), I made an analogy to farm animals, raised without love and for slaughter. Let’s put a pin in the ‘for slaughter’ part for now and take a look at the ‘without love’ part. 

That’s right, it’s time to meet the parents.

As Andrew notes, there are significantly more compelling reasons for you to say that

They Fuck You Up, Your Mum & Dad

They really do. 

Our charming protagonists are, as with many things depicted in this game, an exaggerated, almost farcical example of this phenomenon — one that’s just grounded enough to still feel very real, just like the siblings themselves. 

The late and lamentable Mrs. Graves is just the same: originally a teen mother, hopelessly out of depth with two difficult children — even if one was good at masking it — and an unreliable, emotionally unavailable (at least to their children) partner who can’t hold down a job, ends up foisting them off on each other and doing a Parental Negligence because she simply Cannot Cope. That’s the real part. The part where she gets paid off by an organ harvesting operation to leave them to die, that’s the borderline-farcical exaggeration that throws all the nooks and crannies of her character into sharp relief.

Mrs. Graves does not have a good relationship with either of her kids. Having self-admittedly fobbed the job of raising Ashley off on her son, to the degree that they did not even celebrate her birthday as kids, both of them hold differing degrees and types of resentment for her.

For Ashley, it’s hate — perhaps not quite so clear cut as that, as it’s her that calls for the eulogy and she shows some potential signs of discomfort while cleaning up her parents’ corpses, but by and large, it’s fairly simple and straightforward, as usual for Ashley. The sentiment is not exactly unreturned, either.

This brings Ashley’s heart great delight!

The most clear incident raising her from everyday ‘neglectful’ to ‘wow she wanted nothing to do with this kid’ is the optional ‘birthday cake’ scene, obtained by finding the present in Ashley’s first ‘transitory world’ dream, in which we see Ashley’s birthday  and the founding of a lemon cupcake tradition between Leyley and Andy. She has received nothing from her family, notes that her ‘friends’ would say they were busy before she even told them the schedule and Andy takes her out to buy cupcakes with his pocket money.

This scene gets a callback in Andrew’s dream later. Just remember to Ask Nicely, rather than Kill Her.

Parents of the year, everyone.

So with Ashley it’s as straightforward and obvious as she herself is — she hates her mother, her mother hates her. With Andrew, as with Andrew himself, it’s a fair bit more complicated. His mother is a much more nuanced figure, who is believable in her role as an unfortunate teen parent who was trying her best. He has a degree of trust in her against, seemingly, his own good judgment In her conversation with Andrew, she acknowledges her fault in raising him and seemingly sincerely tries to offer him a ‘way out’, an olive branch.

I think many people have had relationships where they might say this

This scene in particular intrigues me, because she is acknowledging fault in a way that Andrew strictly avoids doing — and well, there’s nothing Andrew likes more than a good way to avoid acknowledging any fault of his own. With her dominant relationship over their father as a model for Andrew to draw comparisons to his own relationship with Ashley with, it’s no surprise that the narrative resonates with him to the point of ‘Accept’ being many people’s first completion.

Of course, that’s not all there is to it. There is a fascinating contrast with her later conversation with Ashley, where she — despite accusing Ashley of brainwashing Andrew — refers to Leyley and Andy as ‘two psychos’ and states that she always knew they were responsible for Nina’s death and that, implicitly, they owe her for not turning them in. 

There's something about mother-daughter relationships here that I just do not have the time or reading to dig into, unfortunately.

Meanwhile, when Andrew interrogates her on her possession of their death certificates, she has… an interesting, plausible story about a life insurance scam and claims that she really did think they died in the fire, implicitly denying the claim that she sold them. It’s entirely possible that she’s describing the details of the ‘scam’ correctly — you can even buy that she genuinely does care for Andrew in some way, if not Ashley, but her claim about being an honest, grieving parent shocked at their deaths… doesn’t add up?

This is a very normal reaction to your supposedly dead children showing up in your house.

As Andrew himself notes after hearing her story, she’s full of shit. This gets into speculation, because there are a few ways to read this, but the most plausible ‘gist’ is that she and her partner were paid off in money and jobs to not raise a fuss — the surgeon she mentioned is almost certainly the founder of ToxiSoda, remember?

The overwhelming difference in presentation between how she speaks to Andrew and Ashley invites investigation — and when Andrew turns down her offer and tells her he isn’t interested in her offer in Decline, her reaction isn’t… despair, it’s shock — and well, there’s a good reason for that.

Why do you think she did it in the first place?

This is the happiest we see her

Well — it’s so she can finally fit into society. That white picket fence, that idyllic 1950s life — hell you can call it the American Dream. She wants that, or as close to it as she can get — the working-class teen mother, living in poverty, aspiring to the middle-class. It’s a very common, very real and very grounded motivation.

And to that end, she effectively sold off her children. It’s no wonder she can’t fathom why Andrew wouldn’t choose the same.

That’s the part that makes you think — just like the deaths in Episode 1, well- maybe the siblings are justified here, too. It’s a weaker argument, but it’s still one you can make under many common moral paradigms today — what goes around comes around, all that jazz. Just look at how awful she was to Ashley.

She’s finally found what she’s been striving for.

Here’s the thing, here’s the thing though — what, reasonably, could she have done? Andrew and Ashley briefly highlight this in conversation about Ashley’s ‘friends’ in Episode 1 — was she supposed to fight gunmen to try and break them out? Throw food to the balcony from four stories?

Moreover, as she herself says to Andrew… would anyone really have been able to do better than her in her position? She was seventeen when Ashley was born, living in poverty with a partner who couldn’t even remember Andrew’s name when he was a kid. Anyone would have had difficulty, let alone with these kids.

Her evils are — they’re not any deliberate action, but rather… prompted inaction. She didn’t have the emotional energy, resources or plain capability to properly parent her children, she didn’t have any solutions to their murder of Nina in a state so blatantly hostile to its underclass, she didn’t have a way to connect with Ashley and she took the money rather than fight a futile and likely suicidal battle against a corporation and its armed goons in a dystopian setting.

Ashley, notably, does not deny this.

Her sin is the one we’re all, I think, guilty of — that of not trying hard enough, that of inaction in the face of difficult tasks, of not standing up on principle because it’s just too much that day and you don’t have the spoons, you’ll do it tomorrow (no you won’t). It’s a petty, everyday kind of evil — that of not doing enough. 

Is that enough to condemn her? Certainly, there’s a pretty manipulative read of her that likely has some truth to it — in the locked door in Ashley’s dream in ‘Decay’ you can discover that she has a ‘not-hatched’ tar soul — but consider that lens — the game won’t make up your mind for you, so you’ll need to choose that for yourself.

The dad is interesting in terms of negative space — but he’s mostly important in that he doesn’t matter, so I decided to not fit him in here. He has art, though — just no sprite, because, well, he’s never mattered to either sibling.

The Contract We Call Society

Right, it’s time to get a little bit Theoretical in here. Not much, but a little. Social contract theory is a complex topic with a lot of nuance, much of which I will be eliding in the name of not writing a twenty thousand word paper on semiotics, law, and anthropology, but the short analogy is… the idea that as long as you play by society’s rules, as long as you are a good citizen, a good person, the state, or the community, will take care of you.

In a number of ways, the harshest penalty levied by many historical states and legal codes was not death, but rather the criminal status of outlawry, a practice that’s cropped up a number of times in history — the practice of no longer being protected by the law. This meant one could be killed or worse with impunity — you were no longer protected by mob justice and, while overexaggerated as a term of reference, certain texts from Medieval England refer to outlaws as bearing a wolfshead, ‘for the wolf is a beast hated by all folk’. Never minding that wolves are actually delightful, this was a time when wolves were actively hunted and sold by people — and the same was intended to happen to outlaws. They were ‘fair targets’ as far as society was concerned, no longer to be treated as your fellow citizens.

This was the gravest punishment on the books, for most of these legal codes — something saved for those who had broken the social contract so completely that there could be no turning back (civil outlawry is… a bit different, that’s not the topic here). Among others, a modern critique of the concept is that it offers no incentive for improvement, no incentive to change or to cease harming society — if an outlaw has none of the social contract’s protections, what reason do they have to obey… any of the social contract? If that seems familiar, well, let me ask you this:

What if the state or community fails its end first? What responsibility does the innocent outlaw have to that contract?

It’s an interesting phrasing, that the world is better off.

It’s time to talk about the incest, and part of why it’s there. The cannibalism too, but that’s less impactful here. If you’ve seen me elsewhere, you might have seen me say that the incest is a load-bearing narrative pillar — in large part due to it being a critical facet of the siblings’ relationship, but in another large part due to it being an equally critical part of how the game uses taboo.

A taboo is in this context something that is considered repulsive and to be avoided by society. It’s a more complex term than that — you can also use it for certain sacred actions or utterances that are only permitted to certain people, for example — but that’s what it is here. Swearing, premarital sex, BDSM and murder are, approximately from weak to strong, some example taboos held in modern Anglospheric society. 

Strong taboos are a staple of horror — they shock, they disgust, they draw people’s attention and it’s that last one that’s critical here. Incest is a very strong taboo — while I am absolutely not segueing into its historical context, the very well-established Westermarck effect gives it a certain timelessness and immunity to desensitisation that most other taboos don’t have — murder, to contrast, is a taboo we’re largely desensitised to in modern media and works of modern media have to put in actual work to make a murder seem horrifying — through atmosphere, cinematography, evocative prose etc.

And this is important because the use of taboo I’m covering in this essay is that the incest is used to invite judgment — it is so ingrained as a ‘wrong thing’ in people’s brains almost regardless of background that it forces the player to engage with the work morally. And that’s where the fun starts.

I’ve mentioned before, very briefly, about the juxtaposition of tone between the Burial & Decay endings, contrasting with the very monstrous difference in morality. Burial is remarkably light-hearted — they play around with the drain blockage, they joke about their mother’s personality and this is further exaggerated on the Love path, where Andrew is much more comfortable with casual contact and the two make a game out of how far they can throw their parents’ skulls, the humour is directly contrasted against their abhorrent actions.

I’ll be real Ashley is far more merciful than I, I’m shuddering at the thought of that gunk in my hair

In comparison, Decay is… bleak. I’ve seen it being referred to as being ‘emotionally sandblasted’ and, yeah I think that’s fair — it’s uncomfortable, it’s heavy and it’s just not fun. And this is the route in which, if you chose Trust into Accept, Andrew has bought into the narrative that his mother’s offered — that he can fit just fine into society if he wasn’t stuck, if not for Ashley — the route that ‘fits’ most closely to the social contract, to Andrew feeling the guilt that we think he should and hating the monsters that they’ve become, as the social contract deems them. Given the pains the game takes to attach the player to the protagonists, this normative moral ending is very easily interpreted as the bad ending.

And well, isn’t it?

Thing is, as mentioned above, the social contract has never held up its end for them. The game takes careful pains to point out to a viewer that they’ve never had the life that society promises people, so why do its moral standards apply?

The game invites you to judge the characters, and in the same motion, asks you from what principles you judge them, making a pretty good guess in that, like most people who haven’t spent a large amount of time navel-gazing and reading some very boring books by very dusty old men, they come from the society around you.

Love even has Ashley express this sentiment directly after the incestuous dream — she asks you — well, Andrew, but this is also something for the player to mull over — why this is what’s engaged your morality or sense of revulsion, rather than the desecration, cannibalism or murder.

Andrew and Ashley are both very funny and very fascinating in this scene.

And that’s the framing that it casts all of its own moral judgement in — even the ‘tar-soul’ aspect is… well, it’s unclear what it even means. Mrs. Graves was a ‘not-hatched’ tar soul, after all. Other than that, it’s society and the world being better off without them, rather than any kind of assertion of objective morality. Due to the present of ‘soul colour’, we’ll presumably see the game make some moral statements in Episode 3, but as it stands?

It’s nearly completely morally sceptical, in and of itself — it’s not interested in moral assertions or education, it’s interested in making you question your own morals. Deconstructive (not that kind), rather than dialectic, to be mildly pretentious.

It uses taboo and shock to invite moral judgement, but then uses tone, charm and our instinct to look for the happiest end for our blorbos to get you to recognise that these are principles you yourself brought into the game, rather than any it’s handed you. 

To summarise: you’ve brought these principles in from society, but what do the siblings, the protagonists, the villains to the world, owe society? Enough that they should follow them? It failed them first, after all.

Closing Thoughts

This one is a bit less energetic than the last, tragically — my sleeping schedule is the stuff of nightmares recently, I love windy weather. Wait, no the opposite. Huge thank you to everyone who commented on the last one, you are the wind beneath my wings and the main reason I managed to get this out this week.

This essay is a bit more interpretative than my last one — certainly, there are alternative readings and I’ve been toying with the idea of deliberately taking a reading I don’t like very much and writing from that perspective as a demonstrative exercise recently — mostly that you shouldn’t just take my word for things!

Otherwise, if the last bit at the end seemed murky, I apologise — I did try to write a more detailed version, but firstly, it was three thousand words and secondly, I re-read it the next day and I could not understand what the fuck I was talking about. Personally, I blame Derrida — suffice to say that I strongly recommend playing through it with an eye towards considering culpability, morality and why you think certain characters are more or less forgivable than others, and for what deeds. See what you get out of it.

I managed to keep one particular thread open to wrap up with here —  I try to keep speculation on Episode 3 content to a minimum in the main essays, but it should be fine here — you might have noticed that I refer to Episode 1 and Episode 2 being on something of a spectrum of justifiability, with the siblings’ actions being ‘more’ justifiable in Episode 1 and ‘less’ justifiable — but still justifiable if you try — in Episode 2. 

To continue the thought of the happiest ending being the one in which they step the furthest away from common morality and to further jar the viewers’ sense of morality by contrasting societal morality and blorbo-oriented morality, Episode 3: Burial could continue this trend in having a major victim be someone who, well, has done nothing wrong and isn’t even guilty of bystander syndrome.

I wonder if there’s any good candidates, someone who’s sweet, harmless and will indisputably be an innocent victim…

…I’m sure she’ll be fine

[evilkitten3]

#i think mdr also doesnt rlly care abt younger ppl's opinions sdffggfds#he's like. old man shakes his fist at a cloud#he is so OLD and i think he believes that its part of why he must be right#like ... he has all this experience. he has lived an extensive life#tried and failed to make 'teamwork' (cooperation) work#so for him it is. it seems naive probably of naruto to believe that this would work#(it is notable tho that he SEES that the shinobi villages are cooperating. he mentions this Twice actually the other time is#right after his edo tensei resurrection. its the very first thing he remarks upon being faced w the alliance#that theyre all wearing the same headbands but they seem to be coming from different villages#this kind of .. does blow his mind. but its too late for him to take on a new ideology Now ^_^#he has to go thru with it. he's so smart and so sexy after all <3 he has to be right. and they must be wrong#bc he has lived and seen that any alliance will just fall apart at the end and so thats why theyre 'pathetic' at the end of the day anyway)#it is very funny tho i think asfgdfdgd#bc obt is like out there screaming and arguing with everyone. and mdr is like ummm who the fuck cares. LMAO#lets beat the shit out of each other and whomstever wins. that one's the one that has rights. and IS right w their ideology#i also do think its notable that team 7's 'teamwork' doesnt actually manage to bring him down BUT#their teamwork does lead to the defeat of kaguya. so. i feel like at the end of the day#u can still say that the teamwork/cooperation ideology is the winner here#bc they get to have a future and konoha continues to exist. whereas mdr fucking explodes and then dies. lmao#so the narrative does. still prove him wrong albeit indirectly

1000% true he only cares about opinions of the youth (hehe) when said youth can shatter his ribcage. and even then he's still more interested in getting kicked again

alternatively i think he might find it somewhat amusing that the way to get everyone to cooperate turned out to be. having them all be really really really about-to-shit-themselves scared of him (obito but that's that same thing as far as he's concerned). moreover, if the only time they can work together is when they have a common opponent, then as soon as that opponent is defeated (entirely hypothetical ofc bc he's perfect and about to become the second sage and can't be stopped ever) then they'll just. go back to fighting each other. which just proves his original point (it in fact does not, but since he never tells anyone anything there's no one who can point out the itty bitty teeny weeny gaping massive gloryhole flaws in his logic such as that. while they can't prove that that's not true. he also can't prove that it is.)

your logic concerning the narrative is technically correct but unfortunately madara operates on his own crazy caveman logic, and while team seven can do. basically jackshit to stop him, as soon as kaguya takes over, they manage to beat her, which i think madara could easily interpret as black zetsu sacrificing madara to bring back someone weaker than him (did kaguya survive maito gai? no. did she survive a living full-power hashirama? no (neither did madara but pointing that out will just make him hard again). as far as he cares, all kaguya did was show up, steal his body via black zetsu hax, and then get pummeled by three teenagers, some corpses, and obito's ex. all of whom tried and failed miserably to stop madara).

now, technically, madara is crazy so his own potential thoughts on All That should be irrelevant.... if that had been the final battle. but the final fight of the series is naruto vs sasuke, and whoever is stronger is the most correctest, ultimately just. proving madara's power-over-all stance to be the correct one (i guess you could argue that naruto worked with kurama? but. idk kurama still doesn't really have the ability to just. leave. so i would at the very least have an asterisk there, personally)

wait so, as the holders if the most and 2nd most insane naruto characters, what did madara and obito have to say about team 7 dynamics ??

As a past memeber of team 7 Obito's opinion doesn't count cause he thinks kakashi's gremlins are the only normal people in the world. I don't remember Madara saying anything on the dynamics of team 7 but I'm not an authority on the matter so I turn it over to my resident Madara Scholars @evilkitten3 and @narutoenjoyer5000

[fortuna-et-cataclysmos]

S5 finale: wrapping up the "running out of time" theme

So I have been mentioning frequently that there is a theme of "running out of time" in season 5, but I wasn't able to make out the meaning of it, until now.

We can say that there are three situations where the theme explicitely manifests:

Gabriel: After receiving a cataclysm wound in Destruction, we often hear Gabriel repeat that he is running out of time. The entire Intuition episode is based on that premise.

Ladynoir: This is the most obvious manifestation of this theme. In Jubilation, Ladybug and Chat Noir live a dream just to be constantly reminded that their perfect life together will end when they wake up to reality. I call it Ladynoir, but actually it is Maribug's love and romantic relationship with Chat in general.

Adrinette: This is the most subtle one, but it is there. Notice how Marinette needs to ease into a relationship with Adrien, and Adrien is doing his best to cut her slack, so much so that he says in Derision, and I quote: "We've got time." Soon after, Adrien is sent to London.

If you think I have forgotten other strings of running out of time, feel free to let me know!

Now let's look at these three strings individually:

Gabriel running out of time

This one is the simplest one as it starts very early on in the season, with the episode Destruction where he gets the cataclym wound, and ends in Recreation with his "sacrifice." Also worthy noting the names of the episodes. What starts as Gabriel running out of time in Destruction is concluded in Recreation with him making his wish, accomplishing his wish, and dying. We can consider this thread concluded.

2. Ladynoir running out of time

Of course, the first episode that comes to mind is Jubilation. In Jubilation we (and the blorbos) learn that they actually desire to be together, romantically. And indeed they get to live a perfect little life in their dream, ignoring the increasingly bigger alarm clocks that are trying to wake them up. Except that at the end Ladybug realises that they must wake up (duty calls!), and she abandons Chat Noir in the dream universe, broken.

From here on, nearly every episode is a warning for Marinette against being romantically together with Chat Noir:

Determination: Marinette accepts that she has feelings for Chat Noir, her reaction to that is crying

Passion: Ladybug's crush on Chat Noir leads to her being distracted and making many critical mistakes in their fight

Reunion: is a cautionary tale about Ladybug and Cat Miraculous holders falling in love

Illusion: (I haven't watched this in a while but I think nothing relevant happens here)

Elation: Marinette is nearly akumatised because of her love to and rejection by Chat Noir

The overarching message from Jubilation to Elation is that: if Maribug ends up with Chat Noir, it'll be a disaster.

So Marinette decides to close up her heart to anyone, and after a brief depression, Adrien finally convinces her to be with him and they become an official couple. From this point onwards, the key ship becomes Adrinette.

Does that mean that Ladynoir has run out of time? Not necessarily. They just decided to love each other in a different way. I should remind here that even though we tend to polarise the sides of the square as fandom, the creators have repeatedly told that the love square is one, there is one love.

The Ladynoir relationship has a direct connection to the Adrinette dynamics because after all, they're the same two people.

3. Adrinette running out of time

Now that Adrinette is finally together, they should have all the time in the world, right? Right? It's what Adrien says, after all.

But I couldn't shake this sense of urgency throughout this season. Every time they said that they had time, it made me feel like they actually don't and they don't know it. And it was exactly what they wanted to make us feel: with Adrien's move to London, it turns out they didn't have time. Worse is that, Adrien actually knew that he'd need to move to London but he couldn't tell it to Marinette, he kept it a secret all the way till he was shipped off to London.

And there is a parallel between Jubilation and Revolution here: in both episodes, their dream is shattered, they share one last dramatic kiss, and they are torn apart from one and other (@asukiess had a big brain time and pointed this out back when Revolution aired).

But now, in Recreation, Gabriel is gone. Everything is fixed? Everyone will be happy, right?

Well... No.

As I pointed out in a previous post, the world that Gabriel creates is a bit too bright, too perfect. The show is notorious for associating the sun with fake happiness at this point, while the "real" moments are rainy and/or dark. And let's see the colour palette in the end:

Another detail that makes me put on my tinfoil hat:

They're not very visible on the static image, but there are white butterflies flying over the flower arch. Those could be symbolising the end, as a reference to how Ladybug releases the purified akuma at the end of each episode. But it might also have a second meaning, a reference to how this world was in fact created upon the ideals of Gabriel.

And that can't be good for anyone. I explain more the consequences and aftermath of this episode in the post I mention above, but basically this world is Gabriel's ideal, and it is far from being a good place for neither Marinette, nor Adrien.

One main reason why: Gabriel has left Marinette with the truth about the Monarch, and she agreed to keep it a secret from Adrien. But we know that it will eventually come out. Either she tells it to Chat Noir, or maybe Lila plots something, but it won't remain a secret forever. And when it does... it will have tremendous impact on not only Adrinette, but also Ladynoir.

This world is a fantasy world where Marinette and Adrien have ended up together, just like in: Chat Blanc, Ephemeral, Oblivio, Jubilation. And at one point the alarm clock will ring, the hammer will drop, and both Ladynoir and Adrinette will run out of time. Except that this time, we may not be able to revert back to the status quo.

Gabriel has left them with a tickling time bomb.

[elfdyke]

New Life is Strange game starring Max Caulfield... no mention of Chloe in the trailer... I'm gonna cry

hi.... AHSJJDNG YEAH ERMM ITS LOOKING GRIM IDK. it kinda feels like they know the OG life is strange is where all the heart of the franchise lays and so theyre trying to go back to that...they were already tiptoeing around it with true colors, considering steph, but they really just said fuckit we'll give her back to you. especially considering the premise is so samey..... i dont know it feels rather odd to me. you could even say strange -_-

not to mention the plot and shit is so.. unrelated to chloe and doesnt seem to leave really much room for her to be relevant at all? which i assume either means A) theyre picking sac chloe as the canon ending (insane thing to do) or B) itll be choice dependent and either chloe is around but not a big part of the story (?????) or that max and chloe went their seperate ways at some point (also very ????? to me). i dont know 😭 im honestly not a huge fan of decknines work, im still sour over how badly they butchered before the storm, what a nightmare of a game i fear i could whine about that one for a good while. but regardless! there we have it. life is strange and dragon age are back! welcome back 2015!!!

[solradguy]

why is xtra hated? Does it have character inconsistencies or something else to have hate towards it?

Ok. So. For starters, one of the main characters is a girl named Mizuha that is very probably a child/young teenager and they draw her like this all of the time (sometimes even WORSE):

(her personality is... fine... I guess. she's just uncomfortably sexualized)

The plot is basic shounen genre trope soup. The other main character, Tyr, has a dragon/Gear arm and was sealed away for a mystery amount of years so he looks like a teenager but is older than Ky (who was ~24 in the canon at the time). They also did that thing where Ky ~just so happened~ to have seen Tyr on the battlefield when he was a kid before he joined the Holy Order, and Tyr is apparently working with/under Kliff. Very "we have a new character and need to speedrun making him relevant. let's shoehorn him into everyone else's backstories."

Tyr's Gear arm (it looks like a normal arm unless he activates it):

None of the characters ever bring any of this up ever again outside of Xtra. It's not mentioned in GG World, any of the guide books/encyclopedias, character profiles, novels, interviews, etc. Which you think it would be if Kliff knew A GUY WITH A GEAR ARM IN THE HOLY ORDER LOLL

The characters that are actually in the games make cameo appearances throughout the comic and I think the artist had more fun drawing them than they did the actual protagonists because they all look leagues cooler than anything Tyr or Mizuha end up doing

I will give Xtra credit for one thing though, and that's for giving us one of the rawest Sol Badguy scenes in the entirety of Guilty Gear:

I just don't get how the guy that wrote Lightning the Argent and Butterfly & Her Gale, two books that are still canon-relevant and generally enjoyed by the (JP) community, ended up writing such a bland story. Was it solely his idea? Was someone else forcing him to make changes to the plot and he just had to go with it?? This was GGX era so Guilty Gear was doing PRETTY GOOD in Japan at the time.

I have no idea why they felt the need to put out something with such an unoriginal premise in a series that frequently bends or breaks genre expectations. Daisuke Ishiwatari is included as an author on this, but I get the impression that was just a legality thing since he wrote basically the entire setting and cast outside of the few new ones introduced in Xtra. None of the Tyr lore beats line up with any of the established Gear lore, either pre- or post-Xtra.

Why did they write Xtra when they could have written something focused on the established cast instead. Going into Xtra for the first time is like when you pick up a cup expecting it to be pop and find out it's water instead but since you were expecting something sweet the water just tastes gross and extremely disappointing. Xtra is my least favorite Guilty Gear entry out of the entire library. Vastedge at least gave us Naoki Hashimoto and Isuka gave us A.B.A. Xtra just gave us wiki editors annoying homework.

You can read Xtra over on Mangadex if you wanna form your own opinions about it. It's only one volume and can be read pretty quickly: https://mangadex.org/title/911025e8-ae47-499c-8eff-453d18b6459a/guilty-gear-xtra

[sunshineandlyrics]

10 June 2024.

Note, Steven Bartlett was (too) kind with Simon and premised the question as Liam having "struggles" and the struggles that come with fame and change. No mention was made about Liam's problems with addiction.

If you want to watch that part of the Steven and Simon interview, just choose the relevant chapter x

[not-feeling-the-aster]

I've been thinking about how things would be in Panem after the revolution. But I mean like 30 years or so in the future, when there's a new generation of children that have been born and raised without the existence of the games. I think about how the themes of memory and rebuilding would unfold. How would the relationship between the districts and the Capitol evolve? And the relationship between the districts? How would they organize themselves? What about the tension between people from the Capitol and people of the districts? And that's without mentioning what would have been of Katniss' and Peeta's lives, and all of the other characters of the series. How would their kids react after learning about everything they had to go through? What would their world view be like? I guess we'll never know. But lately I've been unable to stop thinking about it.

I read somewhere that Suzanne Collins said she only writes when she has something to say. And I mean, we used to think she wouldn't write another book after the trilogy ended, but then the ballad came out and (at least in my opinion) it was a great adition to the universe. Not only it added plenty of layers to the original story, it also introduced new themes and concepts to explore which are just as relevant as the original's were at the time.

What I'm trying to get at is that if she were to write a new book (or series) related to this universe, I think it would be interesting to see the future. I know some people want to know more about Finnick's or Haymitch's games, but there's always fanfiction and fanmade content that can explore those in deep. I'm aware of the discourse regarding this topic, and I agree that the games for the sake of the games (as merely enternainment) goes against the premise of the series. I won't dwell on that because it's been explained before, but I did mention it for a reason: would people be interested in a new story set in a future without any games? One about the rebuilding of a nation, the small steps towards a presumable better world and the awareness of the mistakes of the past?

I don't know, I got caught up in that idea and I wanted to get it out of my mind. I mean, we do get a little hint when Plutarch mentions how stupid humans are and how quickly we forget, at the end of Mockingjay. And then, if a story like that was written, what would be the culmination? Certainly not a utopia, but that's what life's about, right? Constantly trying to do better than yesterday, or at least not as bad? Maybe? Hopefuly?

Anyway, I just needed to rant for a bit.

[twiyorbase]

Opening a thread to talk about what we'll see in the second season of the animated adaptation of “Spy x Family” about Twiyor, Loid and Yor‼️🕵️‍♂️🌹

Before going into details, let's contextualize a bit. The second season was announced in December, and a teaser was released at the end of the first season. Although its length was not specified, it made it clear that it would cover what is known as the TwiYor Date & Cruise arc.

As of the date of creation of this thread, we haven't received much more information. In May, a couple of posters were released, but that's about it. However, that doesn't stop us from keeping an optimistic attitude.

That said, let's go explore what this second season has in store for us!

TwiYor Date/Twiyor bull-shot date or Misión Extra 2

The first thing we will see is one of the most loved and appreciated chapters within the fandom. It is a chapter that was expected to be adapted in the first season, but it could not be and was left for the second in this chapter, we see that Yor takes a bullet in the butt and due to her annoyed expression, Loid decides to take her on a date. With this premise, a series of events and a rather charming moment between Loid and Yor unfolds. Chapter 40.

Although perhaps considered a transitional chapter and not very relevant, it presents a couple of curious aspects. Although they are immersed in a comic situation, Bond actually contributes a lot to the development of Loid's character, especially because of something that will happen later. Chapter 43.

A chapter that begins with an informative introduction and then develops into a comic situation thanks to Franky and his attempt to win over a girl by retrieving a cat with Yor's involvement, we could consider it a subplot, but it actually lays the groundwork for what would become a full arc.

Cruise arc.

This I believe is the highlight of the second season. It is the first extended arc found in the manga and contains what are considered some highlights. Talking about this arc in relation to each character, especially Yor, would require a separate thread that I could do 👀

A highlight is that this is the first time the family is separated and away from their routine of work, secret missions and Eden. This situation intensifies their feeling of missing each other, which makes for some very tender moments and contributes to the development of each of them.

Special mention to the conclusion: chapter 56. It's another chapter that is beloved by the fandom and encapsulates the heart of the Forger family dynamic ❤️

Chapter 58

This occurs after the closing of the cruise arc. This is a rather extensive chapter starring Loid and Bond where, as mentioned in chapter 40, we can appreciate more sincere moments from Loid both emotionally and in his words. Importantly, the speech includes one of the most touching moments we have had so far from the spy.

For now, that's all. I know that there is a moment missing that is transcendental for Twilight's character; however, we don't know how much it will occupy in the second season nor its duration.

Therefore, I close this commentary based on what I believe will be primarily the plot of the second season.

If anything else needs to be added, I'll be on the lookout to do so!

If you made it to the end, thanks for reading this thread. It would be helpful if you could spread it around or comment to let me know what you think! ❤️