Yield My Flesh to Claim Their Bones and (Living) Death
What an event. So much to talk about. I don't want to get too lost in the weeds since some people might not have seen the new content yet but I wanted to talk about one specific thought I had in relation to the Blade Lineage and Kurokumo Clan factions.
While presented as a conflict between two warring Syndicates, both groups are being played by S Corp. It is somehow a fight where both sides have already lost.
The Blade Lineage were originally bodyguards and agents of the corporation until the internal corruption soiled everything they found comforting of their homeland. When that corruption struck at Kim's charge, killing him before he could reveal what he knew about the internal workings of the company, the Syndicate had no choice but to leave their homeland to gather the strength to return and uproot the evil that claimed their District.
Enter the Kurokumo Clan. A subsidiary of the Thumb, they are first seen in Library of Ruina as petty criminals running an extortion racket. However, much of their menace is undercut by their primary members getting whipped by Tanya in seconds (which I mean... fair). In the new chapter, we see more of their current status as doing S Corp's doing on the Thumb's behalf. If Gregor's new Identity Story is anything to go off of, the Kurokumo Clan used to have practicing martial artists and forward trajectory but have now been attached to a Wing that they cannot separate themselves from, stuck in an endless cycle of odd jobs and the long, arduous task of wiping out the remaining Blade Lineage members.
Both syndicates are experiencing their own forms of death, one in the literal sense and one in the metaphorical sense. The Blade Lineage has stuck to their principles and continued to fight the good fight. Unfortunately, they live in the City and are picked off one by one for it. On the other hand, the Kurokumo Clan is on the road to irrelevancy, its members stuck in positions where they have to continue to do the bidding of higher powers while having no options to transfer out without starting their lives over in a new District. They have lives without freedom which one can hardly describe as living.
It's tragic. It's good writing. I've been eating pretty well on the literary analysis front.
✅️ "Smashing with Bamboo-hatted kim would probably be like him thrusting just once, but it would be an extremely powerful thrust that makes you cum instantly and I want to know what that's like. Smash."