now that Caine is dead (RIP Caine you would have loved chat GPT) can the crew remember their names now that caine isn't controlling their minds or limiting their memory?
What about the abstracted? Will they be freed from the cellar or unabstract? I think they will be freed but not unabstract. I saw someone say that maybe the crew will be able to return them to their original state when they first arrived at the circus, so they'll have no memory of the circus. Queenie will still know kinger, 'cause they're married and all but ribbit ,for instance, will have no recollection of Jax. if that fails I guess the current crew will maybe delete the abstracted crew's files to at least end their suffering, but I guess that can be considered murder in a way? idk I'm getting off track.
unrelated but, does Caine have anything to do with the fact that Kinger isn't sane? because caine knows that if anyone knows how to get out of the circus or bring an end to Caine, it's Kinger, and we saw that this quite literally happened in episode 8. so maybe before that the dark just, kinda dulled Caine's effect? but we also saw that in the flashback before Queenie got abstracted, he was perfectly sane so maybe it has to do with her abstracting? i think this was mentioned in episode 4 but i have the memory of a goldfish. idk anymore I just want everyone to be happy. I do wonder if Kinger will go back to his original state after the bucket is removed off his head in episode 9, can't wait to see what gooseworks has in store for us!
Notice how in the pilot she raised her right hand which has her blue glove, representing her will to leave (referencing the buttons in ep 7) but in episode 8 after she gave up the idea of leaving the circus, she raised her left hand which has her red glove???
Loid doesn't think Yor is odd because as far as he knows she supported herself and her brother by doing sex work at a young age of course she knows how to throw a punch and kick a man through a wall. That's why he never clocks her freaky strength or judges what he believes is her past. He knows that it's tough out there and that you gotta do what you gotta do to survive.
Yuri's weird possessive obsession with Yor makes sense when you realize that as far as he knows she supported them both as children by going off with creepy old men and coming home bruised and bloody. He thinks she was forced to become a sex worker because he wasn't strong enough to protect her. That's why he gets so weird whenever he thinks about her and Loid getting intimate and why in the beginning he feels like he needs to control her love life by setting her up with guys (that he's fully vetted and can easily blackmail if needed). To him, Loid is just the latest in a long line of creeps that he can't protect his sister from.
Meanwhile, Yor, bless her dumb jock heart, has no idea that people are making these assumptions about her and genuinely thinks that she is getting good grades in being a normal woman, a goal that is both possible to achieve and normal to want.
Loid doesn't think Yor is odd because as far as he knows she supported herself and her brother by doing sex work at a young age of course she knows how to throw a punch and kick a man through a wall. That's why he never clocks her freaky strength or judges what he believes is her past. He knows that it's tough out there and that you gotta do what you gotta do to survive.
Yuri's weird possessive obsession with Yor makes sense when you realize that as far as he knows she supported them both as children by going off with creepy old men and coming home bruised and bloody. He thinks she was forced to become a sex worker because he wasn't strong enough to protect her. That's why he gets so weird whenever he thinks about her and Loid getting intimate and why in the beginning he feels like he needs to control her love life by setting her up with guys (that he's fully vetted and can easily blackmail if needed). To him, Loid is just the latest in a long line of creeps that he can't protect his sister from.
Meanwhile, Yor, bless her dumb jock heart, has no idea that people are making these assumptions about her and genuinely thinks that she is getting good grades in being a normal woman, a goal that is both possible to achieve and normal to want.
!!!CONTENT WARNING!!! Blood, a lot of blood. Knife wound. A vision of child death. Panic attacks. PTSD flashback. Asian level of disappointed-parent speech. Emotional damage.
AHHHH IM SORRY @theunbearablelightnessofbeeing ONE MORE AND I WILL LEAVE U ALONE
i couldn’t get the idea out my head about sss anya so i was like hey ! why not draw all the anya’s (well four of them but still lmao) starlight, parabellum
an art piece that I had in mind for a while, I was originally going to have it be just her assassin outfit but I ended up doing both outfits.
(Protected By ArtShield)
I think the first time Yor and Loid kiss/hug/cuddle post-reveal Loid will break down crying. Yor can already bring that emotionally repressed man to his knees with a few words. Imagine how Loid would react to the first genuine physical affection he's had since he was a little kid. He doesn't even see himself as a person, but a government tool who can't afford those kinds of emotions. Yor will remind him that he is a person who deserves love, and I think it will break him. Kind of like how Anya was subconsciously holding everything in during the bus arc until Yor asked her if she was okay.
So the hijacking arc in Spy X Family is arguably a very important plot development. But I do have a problem with the arc, it's a bit controversial and I know everyone won't agree with it but. In my opinion, the hijacking of the first graders was not taken as seriously as it should have been by the Forgers (yes you read that right), nor the school. I have my reasons.
Let's start with the Forgers. (I won't be talking about Yor because I have nothing to say, she acted accordingly and I have no complaints)
Okay so right off the bat, we all know from episode one that Twilight's goal is to create a world where children don't have to cry. So, don't you think it's a bit out of character that Loid didn't even show a speck of worry when his own daughter, I won't even talk about the other children, had a bomb (I don't care that it was fake) strapped to her neck? That she could have been blown up with another 2 dozen children? That a terrorist grabbed his daughter by the neck and started using her as a human shield? What if Martha had missed and shot Anya instead? What if the Billy wasn't swayed by Anya's words and did blow up the bus? There're so many what ifs that are completely possible, mind you. And all this man did was tell her what she did was reckless and that this might have brought out a source of trauma within her. That's it. In his defense he did come to check on her in the guise of a guard, his presence is what counts but what's bugging me is that he didn't ask her how she felt when her life was so close to ending? And compared to all the other parents, why was he the only one who didn't ask her if she was okay? Even after Loid Forger came back from his business trip, he could have shown a little bit more concern, don't you agree?
After he saw that his 6 year old (who, mind you, isn't even 6) child was an inch away from being shot, blown up and used as hostage, his first thought was to "whip her favourite dinner or something." I get that he doesn't want to get attached, but could he have shown just some sympathy? Grown ass adults were deeply traumatised by this? why shouldn't she? All because she seemed fine in the morning, if anything Loid Forger of all people should be aware that it is NOT that simple.
I get that Anya has reached some sort of a point where she can't distinguish between normal behaviour and when her life is actually in danger, her mind still doesn't realise that "oh I could have lost my life" which I get, she's still a child, but it's such a shame for an arc that had so much potential to develop the Forgers' relationship
Yk why Anya cried when she saw her mother? 2 reasons
she's a child who went through something nobody should ever have gone through
She was relieved she hadn't been abandoned all over again
the reason why Anya seemed to detach in her conversation with Damian is because she was Anya all over again, not Anya Forger but the child who has always been afraid of being abandoned, the child that's always been scared her mama and papa would stop loving her, the same child that was returned to an orphanage 4 times in the same year. Not Anya Forger.
I do remember seeing someone say that the reason Loid found it 'normal' is because he basically lost all sense of 'what's right and what's wrong' because he grew up in horrible conditions in the war and was raised to be a weapon. While I do agree that he did grow up in bad conditions, he acknowledged that she was in danger, he just didn't act upon it. And what about Yor? She grew up in horrible conditions, having to sacrifice her childhood so her little brother could have some sort of a normal one, raised to be a weapon, she still checked on her daughter? Also, why is she still taking the bus throughout the rest of the series? Is Loid waiting for her to die to realise that he fucked up? The arc had so so much potential for developing Anya and Loid's relationship, all of the Forgers, for him to realise how much he truly cares about his family.
And in chapter 107, he 'gets overwhelmed by the amount of new connections he can make' and abuses the incident of the hijacking arc under the guise of "being concerned for the parents" when after all he just wanted connections. Now, in retrospect, I wouldn't have given this much care IF HE DECIDED TO CARE ABOUT HIS CHILD BEFORE OTHERS'. Be concerned with your own daughter, sheesh. I'm going to try to be considerate of the fact that Loid is not emotionally intelligent and that is why Yor is here, but it's still kind of a common sense thing if I'm being frank.
As for the school, now we know since early season one that Eden College isn't that great of a school, how they put heavy expectations that children can't carry, the discrimination based on social status and family income, the whole ordeal. What really bugs me that (if I recall correctly, feel free to correct me) is that the parents were not informed of hijacking and had to find out through the news, not the school. The necessary precautions after the event were not taken, no extra security measures were taken, nothing. And did the school just not check to see who was on the bus beforehand? You let a terrorist operate a vehicle with a few dozen 1st graders? Isn't that grounds for a lawsuit? Everything was thrown under the rug to preserve Eden's image to the public (which is expected). A bunch of rich, important people's children get taken hostage by terrorists and after a few apologies, life goes on as normal? These children are victims and it breaks my heart that they had to go through something like this and put on a brave face.
And that's it!! I won't lie the action in the arc itself is really good and we even got some plot development between Melinda and Damian which is a very very good thing, but it's such a shame that it wasn't used towards the Forgers aswell.
And as always, thank you for reading. This is your host, Jeje, signing off, live long and prosper!!
I wanted to ramble and the community here is soooo cool everyone comes up with amazing analyses, so I guess I wanted to discuss my favourite character with others ^^
(been editing this here and there to correct mistakes or add pictures or go deeper into my thoughts, so that's why things might seem different if anyone's rereading. Not sure why anyone would though)
In 2022 when I first started watching the anime back when it had only 3 episodes (which is crazy to me) and then started reading until I caught up to Loid's backstory, I didn't really get loid. I had 0 braincells so I didn't get the different dimensions, the layers, in fact I didn't even get what I was supposed to call him because who was Loid? Was he Loid forger? Twilight? And there's redacted too, where does he come into this?
Then I saw this diagram
It's not the exact one but this is my recreation of it, with some changes. It was perfect, and I started to understand Loid better.
When I use "loid" I'm referring to the character as a whole, who is different from "Loid Forger"
There's seemingly 3 or 4 main divisions, depending on if you see the overlap as it's own division.
There's Loid forger, who is the role loid is playing. The fakest of loid, the psychiatrist who lost his wife and had a young daughter, who's just a nice guy and a bit of strict father when it comes to his daughter's education, but first and foremost he's a family man with a deep kindness. He's a guy who was against Donovan's position but then started to change his mind when hearing Damian's report "from Anya". He usually had big round happy shiny eyes and preppy voice.
Then there's twilight, who Loid thinks is his core, his actual self. Twilight is the agent who is cold and ruthless, who is efficient. He's talented and aware of everything. He's westalis's best spy. Twilight is the one we mainly see, the one Anya hears in Loid's mind, the one who has the narrowed eyes, a cold voice and much more calculated demeanor.
There's an overlap between these two sometimes. I like to see this overlap as when twilight starts to act like Loid forger but out of personal reasons instead of any logical reason. When he's just kind and loving to Yor and Anya without and real reason. When he acts fatherly or like a loving husband because he feels affectuon for them. When he cares about their opinions and thoughts and emotions even behind closed doors. When he's acting as "Loid forger" even when they don't need the act. On some level he always needs to be loid forger, but it's toned down, and it's always a conscious act. Around Anya especially Loid is much more casual. It's when these actions are natural rather than a conscious thought done to achieve something that the overlap exists in.
This strange little zone Loid as twilight isn't used to navigating is because it ventures into affection and attachment he isn't supposed to feel. This version of him appears like in the mole hunt arc where he calls Yor "Yor-san" instead of "Yor briar" like other agents do. It's the one that got immediately defensive of Yor against swan and later almost punched him for Anya's sake.
But the thing is, I feel like Loid doesn't particularly like this overlap. He thinks to himself right after Yor reassures him it's fine: why did he get mad? She's not even his real wife. With all his identities before he's had no problem separating himself from the act. But this overlap starts to get to twilight, leaving little cracks in his mentality that encroach on twilight as a spy, so "for the mission" is born.
Because now he can relate all these actions he can't logically explain and rationalise them. He can choose to go out of his way to treat Yor even when everyone believes them to be a lovely-dovely couple; or go easy on Anya's studying and let her have fun when she needs to be working to get Stellas, but it's all "for the mission": keeping them happy is not something loid personally wants to do (he does) but simply a rational action twilight performs to maintain the important factors of operation Strix. It denies any personal attachment or affection in his actions so he can tell himself he's still distant.
In this diagram, the overlap starts small early on, but I think as the series goes on, it grows. It grows until the mole hunt arc where he realises how big that overlap is. What happens with wheeler makes him see how soft he's become, because twilight of the past would have killed Yuri. But Twilight now knows that it would devastate Yor to lose Yuri when he means so much to her. He knows he'd be too guilty to face her. I love that someone pointed out whenever we see twilight disguised, his real self is behind his disguised self because he's quite literally the shadow hiding under a mask. But right after he leaves Yuri alive, he's in front, looking tired and haunted and just so exhausted on a bone deep way.
I've come to interpret this as him being exposed; his softness being fully exposed to anyone there aka loid and us. As his true self, his true emotions. He's not hiding as twilight behind his disguises. And just, gosh he looks so tired, it makes me so sad.
At the centre of everything, we've got redacted, who before the flashback we didn't have a name for. Redacted is loid before all the trauma. Redacted is also Loid during the war. Redacted is who Loid has always been. Redacted has been hidden and erased and pushed down so twilight so can exist: so twilight can make a better world. But redacted is still there, even though I don't think Loid knows or notices his true self is still there. We see redacted when Loid looks at the briar siblings and feels jealous they always had each other through the toughest times.
Redacted is who tells Yor about his mother, then it's twilight who then acts as Loid forger to reassure Yor, still completely meaning the words and praise he has to give to her.
We see redacted right after Loid wakes up from his flashback, and instead of scolding Anya, or even praising her in his head for making progress with plan b, he tells her something very fatherly and loving. He tells her to cherish her friends, remembering his who are long gone. I wonder if Anya saw them in his mind. To me, this is why Anya is so surprised by his response. She only really knows twilight. She's not old enough to understand the layers to loid. Her "papa" is Twilight who lies when he's acting as "Loid Forger." But in this moment, he wasn't twilight. Obviously she's not really seeing it like that, but he responds in a way she totally didn't see coming based on what she knew. She related getting closer to Damian as "plan B," expecting Loid to do the same. But he sees it differently, showing it isn't twilight at the helm. One could mistake it as Loid forger, but given we see him think about redacted's friends, we know it's Loid's real self.
Redacted has softer eyes than twilight but they're not as wide as Loid forgers. They have a small shine too, from what I've seen, but that might not always be entirely accurate.
Twilight can only exist because of redacted. Because of what redacted when through, twilight exists to make sure no one else ever goes through that. I'm not the first to point this out, but in the Japanese manga, loids famous line "a world where children don't cry" I believe the larger writing, the katakana, reads "kodomo" - children, but the smaller text next to it on hiragana reads "jibun" - self, or myself. Having seen the previous panel of redacted crying, we can infer what twilight really means is "to create a world where no child has to cry like I did."
(And beautifully, Loid quite literally "rip his mask off" as he thinks that to himself. But also who was it that pointed out his back was turned t us as he admits that, because he would never say it to anyone. He doesn't say it to world, Anya and us only see it/hear while seeing his back. There was something else to be said about this but I can't remember -_-)
At his centre, loid wants to make sure no one ever has to cry like he did. Feeling so powerless all he could do was cry... Twilight's core, his ideal and his reason for doing everything he does is all born from redacted. Twilight's detachment is also because of how redacted loved and the lost everything he loved. It's likely Loid is afraid of the grief he went through. He doesn't want to go through it again. It was so bad he turned to revenge and bloodlust to cope, only to find out he's been mercilessly killing humans just like him, to find out he's been nothing but a pawn who knew nothing, who changed nothing by wielding a gun, who was still so powerless as he was when he was a child.
Twilight is Loid's safe space. It's not actually safe since being a spy is dangerous and exhausting, but as twilight loid can avoid everything that hurt redacted so bad. He can avoid feeling the love that hurt him so badly when it was lost. He can avoid ever being so ignorant and being used by his country to slay "monsters", he can avoid being so ignorant he stands by as his friends walked to their deaths. Twilight controls the very things that redacted could not. Twilight is meticulously in control of everyting. He feels like a response to all the trauma redacted went through. Twilight corrects everything that wronged redacted.
So whenever he's in that overlap, it's likely a source of stress as he's out of the Twilight zone which not only is he used to after a decade of being a spy, but is a mindset that has kept him alive all these years. It's hard for him to step out of it, so I always find myself patient when he doesn't act as fatherly or loving as he want him to. When he refuses to open up, remains dense or cold or distant. It's hard for him too. Trauma can't be easily undone, and his is quite severe. It's only been 6 months so far.
Being a spy and being genuine as a person, father, husband etc are in opposition for him. He's meant to be fake but every time he is it doesn't particularly work with the Forger family, either because Anya can tell or Loid feels guilty for lying to Yor. In @piracytheorist's post
💬 2 🔁 38 ❤️ 298 · While it's valid to say that Twilight's reaction to the whole hijacking incident was underwhelming, I think it plays a r
(sorry I have no idea how to embed posts onto the users name) this is a really nice post that is kind to manga readers who were disappointed with Loid's lack of reaction but also does explain he is caring in his own way, in much more subtler ways. I talked about how he's stuck between those 2 areas (in the tags), so he ends up compromising in small ways. He does little things like driving Anya to school with a car he got from WISE after the bus hijacking, and he can justify that as Loid forger being worried for Anya after such a tragic event or simply caring for Anya after such a traumatic event, but we all know he's just genuinely worried and wants to make sure himself she's safe. But when he thinks about Anya's trauma, he immediately links it to the mission. It kinda saddens me to be honest, because he's so intent on denying his attachment, but the mole hunt arc shows us he knows. Every time he makes progress, as Twilight he has to regress, to be cold and detached, to be the spy that considered abandoning Anya and would have killed Yuri. But if he keeps acting as that spy it gets in the way of being a good father and husband for operation Strix.
Loid has changed huge amounts - it's subtle but there. There's a moment in the manga that shows this but I want to avoid manga spoilers, and there's plenty in the anime. All those times he shows genuine care and worry, even if it's under the guise of "for the mission." But compared to Yor and Anya, who are freely allowed to grow for the better, anytime Loid starts to grow it's in conflict with Twilight, which is Loid's natural state of being and how he, ideally - in his mind - needs to be. So out of the 3 of them, he's changed the least. I remember endo mentioning this in an interview when asked the question "who's changed the least and the most."
Ok I had more but Tumblr's being dodgy so I'll save the rest for another post if I can be bothered
Okay so, first off, Hi I haven't posted anything here in a while
Second off, I have an entire history unit I should be studying but I won't because history is history, don't cry over spilled milk!!!
Third off, I saw a post a while back that said Anya's past is intentionally empty due to her likely having some kind of memory loss or blocked memories. That she barely remembers her past, her real mother/parents or her lab and just avoids the topic whenever something in relation comes up, we can see it in these 3 panels:
Okay, so your first thought is probably gonna be "Jeje, she's literally been lying since day 1, why should we believe that this isn't just another fib?" which is a valid thought, on the surface level. Anya is a really bad liar. That girl could not lie to save her life (did happen actually and she almost died). And if it was a lie, Twilight would have been able to see through it, but she's actually telling the truth here.
Before I get into details, I just want to establish what the word "Phycological trauma" means, since people do seem to have a wrong idea about what it means.
The National Library of Medicine states:
"The word "trauma" derives from the Greek word for "wound" or "hurt." Mental health or psychological trauma has since become more broadly defined as an experience that is subjectively perceived as painful or distressing and results in acute or chronic mental and physical impairment or dysfunction. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5), defines a traumatic event as the exposure to "death, threatened death, actual or threatened serious injury, or actual or threatened sexual violence. Trauma may be experienced either through direct involvement or by witnessing or learning of such an event happening to others and is often accompanied by a sense of shock, helplessness, or loss of control.
Trauma can be categorized and described across myriad factors, and one such categorization is acute versus chronic forms of trauma. These can include the sudden loss of a loved one, physical abuse, sexual predation, natural disasters, or exposure to war and violence, among many others. Causes of trauma are thus ubiquitous and a nearly universal human experience."
So, we know that Anya used to be a test subject in a lab where she was experimented on, which is qualified to be called a traumatic period in her life.
Now when someone experiences danger (psychology crash course incoming!!!) there's a part in your brain called the amygdala that is responsible for detecting that, it sets off one of what I like to call the 4 Fs, fight, flight, fawn or freeze.
So, there's another part of your brain that stores memories, it's called the hippocampus, it stops storing memories when you are in danger, it instead pumps cortisol which kinda stops you from feeling pain so you can focus on survival but that isn't really the topic right now.
When you experience a traumatic event, the survival brain (amygdala) takes over your rational brain (the part you use for everyday tasks) so in this context, what Anya did experience was, to put it bluntly, child abuse, in a medical context to be specific. So, seeing as this was a repeated event, there's typically a trigger that sets off an alarm in your amygdala, it doesn't necessarily mean you're in danger in this context could be a color, a smell, anything really, said brain just associates this thing with danger.
So, when someone experiences trauma, their memories are jumbled up, it's their brain protecting them because memories aren't stored correctly in a traumatic event. Anya is very confused about her past, she doesn't remember it, she avoids the topic because the alarm in her brain is set off her memories don't work the way they should.
When Loid asked her if she was in an environment with classical language, she was visibly confused, kind of on edge, you could see it in her eyes, she really wasn't lying. Her brain is trying to protect her, trauma does that. Her eyes were blank because her brain started disassociating from something she should know but doesn't.
When Loid corrected the spelling of her name, she was uneasy because she genuinely had no idea what he was referring to. She wasn't able to recall her memories because they weren't stored correctly in the first place.
Also, slightly off topic but the reason why I think why she wrote her name as "Ania" is because she likely did grow up in an environment where classical language was used. Loid mentioned that no one really uses classical language anymore but that doesn't necessarily apply to the lab she was in. I just HC classical language to be like really old German since Ostania and Westalis represent east and west Germany during the Cold War. So, in German (German crash course!!!) the equivalent of the English letter "Y" is "J" they're both pronounced the same, so in German the name "Anya" would be "Anja" so I wonder if "Ania" is some sort of equivalent of it.
Anyways, thank you for reading!!! This is mostly just a huge psychology lesson more than it was a theory discussion, I hope you enjoyed nonetheless!!
This was your host, Jeje, now signing off. Live long and prosper!!
(P.S. I will NOT be finishing that history unit any time soon <3)
Everyone else in Yor's life seems to believe she was. I'm sure Yuri would have taken any lie Yor told him about her work at face value, especially when he was a child who wouldn't understand. But he isn't stupid. And unlike with his suspicious about Yor's marriage, everyone else in his life also believes this. Yuri probably put the pieces together when he got older which only made him more overprotective.
This would recontextualize a lot of Yuri's actions. From his perspective, his sister was a victim of repeated child exploitation from unknown men. She purposefully didn't tell him and Yuri wasn't able to do anything. Now a strange unknown man has apparently been married to his sister and she didn't tell him? It probably felt like the same thing was happening all over again. But this time he could do something about it.
That's why he did a complete 180 from trying to find Yor a boyfriend to trying to have Loid executed. Why any suggestion of them being intimate sets him off more than anything else. And why he is so focused on eliminating scumbags from their country.
I think this was hinted at in Yuri's very first appearance. We have never seen him behave as violently as he did in his introduction scene. Yuri started off his interrogation with Mr. Hayward pretty calm and jovial. But when Mr. Hayward says that he was "spending money on ladies" and claiming that Yuri should know what that's like as a man, Yuri explodes. He starts sadistically torturing Hayward while screaming about protecting his family. To him, this man was as bad as the people who took advantage of his sister.
And it can't even be argued that it was the treason that set him off. He did not have the same reaction to the photographer, and Yuri even tried negotiating a quiet surrender with Twilight. He wasn't delighted to hurt Twilight or put the photographer in prison like with Hayward. Nor did he mention protecting his family. These guys were doing much more treason yet they didn't elicit the same personal response and sadistic rage.
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