Sofie > Recent Status Updates

genuinely what the fuck makes miwa a pain.......like at all.......am i missing something bc if anyone's a pain (which is just an awful thing to say about someone anyway but if i HAD to) it's saeko

i'm sorry but wtf kind of resolution is this wdym it's "no big deal" that saeko didn't defend miwa when rika called her a pain in the ass for not wanting to have sex yet?????? it's just fine bc miwa also has things that frustrate her about saeko????? weird

saeko is definitely a bit frustrating as a character even though i understand WHY she's so quick to make a joke about everything, but hopefully she'll grow to learn the importance of mature communication as the relationship progresses

this has been on my periphery for a while now bc i'm always looking for yuri (and also constantly disappointed by them which stifles a fair amount of my searching) but god is this title stupid. BUT a youtuber whose taste i trust most of the time said this was her favorite yuri so here we are hoping for the best despite all my reservations

there are really people out there in this world who read this, saw with their own two eyes the very obvious parallel between louis and vanitas both asking to be killed by noé as the ultimate act of love and trust before their inevitable deaths, and they still staunchly deny vanoé endgame. i don't mean romantically bc that's not the kind of story this is but just NARRATIVELY. baffling

i'm back once again bc this story feels like it lives right under the surface of my skin and when it demands to be experienced again who am i to deny it the opportunity
this genuinely might be as close to a perfect volume of manga as you can get

oh god seeing that the impetus for this story was the mangaka basically just wanting an excuse to write a love triangle WORRIES ME IMMENSELY

okay so now we have life or death stakes for some reason
i’m already hoping that this ends with hinase continuing to exist outside of the binary and Not Dying but that unfortunately might be too much societal and gender critique to expect from a manga like this

so far shiori and azusa are the villains of this story in my mind
“your gender will be the answer to our confessions” HEY HOW ABOUT NO??? how about gender and sexuality are not linked in such a binary, heteronormative way?????? how about someone’s gender actually has nothing to do with YOU??????

(cont.)
her feelings for hinase didn’t “make her a girl”, she was already leaning that way despite what everybody else assumed. hinase saw that and wasn’t afraid of going against the status quo to make it known. and that then gave ritsu the confidence to feel secure in her choice later on

i really like how ritsu’s backstory is framed here. people were so set on labeling her as a boy and assuming that’s what she’d be bc she was sporty and athletic but she didn’t feel connected to masculinity in that way. hinase was the first person to really see her and give her the permission to move towards femininity, with which she always felt more aligned (cont.)

hinase outright saying that they don’t want to choose a gender okay!!!!!! and their hormone level changing potentially being a result of the confessions could be a really cool way to interrogate how our performances of gender can be influenced by heteronormativity in such detrimental ways. we’ve been taught to tie romantic feelings back to our own genders for some ridiculous reason and make sure they “align”

frequent doctor visits to check hormone levels and to poke and prod at their body looking for signs of a “choice” being made is actually horrifying but unfortunately makes complete sense. our performances of gender irl are so monitored especially at a young age so of course in this alternate reality that same close examination and pressure would be taken to a more obvious extreme

these back to back confessions being framed as a horrifying, claustrophobic thing in hinase’s mind gives me hope!!!!!!!!! maybe this won’t be disappointing??

what an incredibly worrisome setup but i hope so badly that this manga is interested in deconstructing these beliefs about the gender binary and how it relates to heteronormativity. we shall see i guess……

my hold on this came in about a week ago but then today i saw that it’s getting an anime adaptation so how could i not take that as a sign
i have also just realized that this character on the cover looks so much like vanitas and yknow what i’m self-aware enough to admit that perhaps that is partially why i am drawn to this

i picked this up for sapphic coming of age yearning but no one told me i was gonna be kicked in the shins with an absolutely devastatingly accurate mother-daughter dynamic

yknow it’s pretty fucking hard to read when tears are blocking the way cg drews did you ever think about THAT
the garden is not EVIL it was twisted into a thing of rage bc of the abuse it suffered, but it could HEAL. it could hunger for warmth instead of blood, for love instead of vengeance

HE JUST WANTED A FUCKING FRIEND HE JUST WANTED TO PLAY
CG DREWS WHEN I CATCH YOU

“did it ever try to hurt him or did he just hurt himself refusing his roots?” yeah. that part.

the metaphor for neurodivergence is so fantastic WOW the overgrown garden that byron tried so desperately to prune and control is representative of all the “abnormal” behaviors that neurotypical people are so afraid of or weirded out by. and the rage from all of that abuse has now consumed it and evander. i really do think this’ll end with him embracing the garden and returning to it, maybe alongside laurie

this reveal also adds to the reasons why laurie didn’t tell evander the truth until he absolutely had to!!! it’s not just for plot convenience, he has DEEP trauma from his past attempts to tell the truth of the garden

my heart is breaking for laurie holy shit????? he and evander are both victims of the same abuse and i know this is a horror novel above all but i REALLY hope they get a semi-happy ending where they can finally be free together

oh god the rubies are growing inside of evander aren’t they. that’s why byron kept him around and kept him starved and pliable and drugged. the garden still lives inside of him

“a little starvation to motivate it to behave” this sums up the entire fucked up dynamic between byron and evander and the garden so perfectly. byron thought that by starving both the garden and evander, they’d be easier to control, but the opposite turned out to be true in the end. he unknowingly fostered starved lions and then trapped himself in a coliseum with them

(cont.) bc USUALLY the people are getting their memories erased by the knights and so they ASSUME that there’s “good reason”. so even when there isn’t, and it’s a knight who has been erased, they feel they have to keep up the same tradition and treat him like a criminal??? they’re hypocrites until they’re not and it’s infuriating

literally why the fuck can’t they just teach him the ways of magic again……..like of course he won’t be able to be a knight anymore bc he’s lost all his knowledge of spell work and fighting but he can still be a witch?????? it seems like more of a principle thing than a logistical thing. once someone has been deemed “worthy” of a mind wipe, they’re branded a miscreant or an outsider (cont.)

okay i do love that one of the knights is getting their memories completely wiped bc uh Karma and Hypocrisy but goddamnit of course it had to be the one who just got confirmed gay ajxmskkzksks i am VERY curious to see the effects of a full mind wipe though, this is something i’ve been wondering about since the very start

and i’m tearing up see i fucking knew it
ignorance due to censorship is so fucking dangerous!!!!!! i greatly admire this manga for continuing to stand ten toes down on this thesis statement. knowledge needs to be available to EVERYBODY, it’s not dramatic to say that it can be a matter of life and death, or at the very least, great suffering, as we see here

oh. oh so this is a fucking nightmare. dagda is forever trapped in a time loop bc custas refuses to let him go. reminds me of a certain other doomed situation in this manga involving memory loss and love and fated death HMMMMM shirahama i’m seeing the bigger picture here and my heart is too fragile for this to keep happening