#i’m still working on something for my 2000th post and i only have like. 5 posts left for tha deadline smiles. rips my hair out.

[soubiapologist]

So since you've read the Japanese and English version (and are deeper in the trenches than I am) what's your take on how losing ears work. I know with Ritisuka's teacher she still has them cus she's a virgin but later it says its a matter of innocence so while it's possible it was a euphemism I wanna know if I'm trying to assign different reasons for something that isn't there. (Though tbh if innocence is an alternative feel like Ritsuka deffo should have lost his).

hiiiii oki so just fyi i’m not fluent in japanese or anything and i haven’t read the entire thing in japanese, just a few select parts, and mostly i’m trying on google translate heavily for assistance

but i do think it’s a strictly sexual thing. i think it’s a commentary on tying sexuality to adulthood and making value judgements on people based on their participation in cisheteronormative standards of sex and sexuality, as well as an exploration of how sexual abuse can be extremely obvious and people just won’t give a shit. i heard someone say something like “i think yun kouga put it in to prove there’s no sex going on between soubi and ritsuka” which i thought was….. interesting and probably not true but. lol. i thought it was worth mentioning.

i’m really not sure if the ears serve any other function besides flagging someone’s virginity. i do think it’s notable that the female zeroes are the ones that lose their names and thus have to forge their identities for themselves when there’s the (stupid) controversy of “is lesbian sex real sex”, so i think that that part is settled at the very least.

i heard from someone (i think tumblr user ritsukaaoyagi? idr) that yun once said that they come out like baby teeth which makes the tooth chapter like. 500 times weirder lmao but i don’t have like a specific source on that

i also think the conflation of virginity and innocence is interesting, as loveless notoriously does not play in absolutes and likes to let the grey morality of its characters simmer. seimei, notably, still has his ears despite being pretty directly responsible for a horrible sex crime. like nisei fucking sucks but the idea that he would be doing any of this shit without seimei is kind of laughable to me. he was like. a petty bully due to self esteem issues. seimei definitely made him worse, though to what end we still don’t really know. i think the innocence comment was a euphemism, loveless doesn’t really like saying “sex” despite its content revolving around it heavily. it took until mikado for the word “rape” to actually be said on screen, despite the like. literally everything about loveless. also i don’t actually remember the specific part you’re talking about haha but yeah