“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.” - John Steinbeck, East of Eden
In lieu of a real chapter summary for the epilogue, I decided to use this quote instead. It’s probably the most famous line from East of Eden by John Steinbeck and for good reason. I feel like it really encapsulates the whole thesis of trouble’s always gonna find you, baby (but so will i) and I think it really fits the canon story of Spy x Family as well.
Anyways, just making this post to say that Chapter 15: The Cards and Chapter 16 (Epilogue): A House in Luwen are both posted. If you’ve been following along with this WIP, thank you so much! And if you’ve been waiting for this WIP to be completed, it’s now waiting for you to read it!
I have a theory about this arc and I want to share it
(137-?)
Spoilers below
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I think this arc is going to parallel the tv station arc in terms of Fiona's character development. I also have hopes for this arc (and I'm gonna get there) but my prediction is that Fiona is going to see that Yor is competent—in fact, in some ways, more so than herself, either in protecting Anya or in caring for Loid or both—and will realize that Twilight deserves better than her, and begin to move on.
My reasoning for this is partially timing—we did just see Yuri begin to have this emotional journey—but also her thoughts at the start of the arc, partially foreshadowing that Yor's competence is going to matter soon.
There's also a peak chance in this arc for Fiona to see a different competence from Yor: her ability to care and comfort Loid/Twilight, that Nightfall would never succeed at providing.
And—if this is finally, finally the "Loid/Twilight realizes his feelings" arc, how completely incredible would it be to have Fiona giving him permission, implicitly or explicitly, with something of the form: "For your own good you need to trust someone to carry some of your burdens, and she is a better partner for you than I am."—would this be enough, you think, to get him to reconsider? Or would Sylvia need to weigh in as well?
And this brings me to some hopes for this arc:
Soft twiyor moments I will never apologize for wanting this
Twilight stays helpless, these are the consequences of his failure to trust anyone else
Yor and Fiona are badasses together semi secretly
Fiona getting over Twilight because she sees how good Yor is for him as discussed above
And finally! Really I think Endo has been doing a great job bringing Twilight as low as he can be without being completely incompetent and I am really hoping this is in service of him realizing his feelings and deciding to trust!!
Anya and Yor being in danger while he can do nothing about it is peak on the list of possible triggers here
Twilight realizing how important it is to let people in
And this gets to none of the possible Strix action that could occur but let's just say I'm here for it!!!!
(...a few months ago I wrote a post-reveal twiyor-go-to-a-neurological-conference fic, where they learn about Anya, so I'm soooooooo excited to see what happens here)
do you like sxf fanfiction? what about sxf fanart? perhaps even some sxf fan merch?
you do??? wait, really??? okay now for the most important question of all…
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i mean, no hard feelings if not but 🥺 be honest. do you like me?
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it features a short fic i wrote!! here’s an excerpt:
wow! tantalizing! i wonder what it’s about!
i also drew a THREE PAGE COMIC for it! here’s a sneak peek:
oh my!! who could that be!
and, if you get the full bundle, you’ll get a surprise made by yours truly! it’ll look a little (literally) like this:
i swear it’s not all that pixelated!!
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ALL PROCEEDS GO TO CHARITY!*
* the specific charity will be announced soon
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c’mon, it’s pretty cheap! it costs less than my average taco bell order! the physical zine only package is $13 and the full bundle is $25. you can buy it and STILL have enough money to fill your car with a full tank of gas!
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thank you so much!! and, just so you know, i like you too 😉
So…I’m in the early stages of creating the tagfyb prequel at the moment and tbh don’t have as fully fleshed out of a story in my head currently like I did w the original work! Doing some outlining and drafting a bit of the first chapter but basically all of this to say: I’m looking for someone to help me beta the tagfyb prequel! Mostly someone to help me bounce ideas around for the structure, characterization, and major plot points and also beta reading the completed chapters. Aiming for the total work to be around 30k-50k words (60k MAX but I would like to keep it within that range) so if you’re interested let me know! Ok that’s all for now bye 🏃🏻♀️🏃🏻♀️
chapter 30 of 'if you want a lover' is live! fun fact, i've actually had the dialogue for this one drafted since March, so it's very exciting to finally be able to share it!
there's something so good about a character who hasn't had enough comfort and warmth in their life and now has weird complicated kinda sexual feelings about being treated with actual basic respect and dignity and they feel like an awful gross pervert for it. i like those wires getting crossed
I've mentioned noticing the fuzzy little orbs that appear in certain Spy x Family panels and how during Loid's "confession" about Yor to the SSS agents has hints of these orbs but not full-fedged orbies, which I think is a sign that Loid doesn't really believe what he's saying but means it nonetheless. You can read my initial thoughts about that here
But this latest chapter also features these little orbs (along with a cheeky subtle blush on Loid's face)
I don't think it's a coincidence that these appear moments before he starts wondering if Yor is good or bad for Strix
Whether he realises it or not, I genuinely do think Twilight is panicking about how much he actually cares for her
As a result, he immediately deflects these thoughts onto himself - telling himself that he isn't a good enough spy
After thinking about it for a little while, I think this is a sign of more to come. I think once Twilight catches on to his feelings and stops playing ignorance to them, he'll start really beating himself up about how spies shouldn't form attachments and that he has grown too soft
I did think that this was how Loid's arch would pan out. Yor is in a position where relationships are not discouraged. If anything, as an assassin, having a partner is shown to be pretty normal in chapter 116 and Short Mission 16. But Twilight's line of work doesn't account for something like this happening
From what I remember we only hear tiny little mentions of the personal lives of the other spies. Nightfall's love for Loid is different because they are both spies. We hear a mention of The Handler having a family in chapter 22 but she speaks about her daughter in past tense. We can only assume Handler had to leave her family for the sake of her work or even their safety perhaps, or maybe something happened to them that led to Handler becoming a spy. There are a lot of question marks surrounding her as a whole actually
I do think that an internal crisis from Twilight is definitely in the pipeline and I do believe it will include him tearing himself a new one for letting himself get into this mess - especially with his whole "best spy in the world" title being put at risk
With the way things are going, this might actually happen a lot sooner than what I've been expecting. I thought it was way on the horizon but off in the distance but it actually could be in the next arc or so
Whenever it happens, I'm sooooo looking forward to it (人 •͈ᴗ•͈)
Sometimes it's easy to forget how sinister Twilight can be. Or at least how sinister he used to be before he slowly settled into his family man persona.
Aside from his initial attitude toward Anya ("when this mission is over she's going straight back to the orphanage"), he also planned to coerce/seduce/con Yor into marrying him within one week.
"First I get her to take on this small favor, but by the end I'll make her agree to get legally married."
Of course Yor surprised him by proposing first, so we never got to see that dark path emerge.
...Except actually we sort of did. Twilight did try to go down that dark path briefly in Chapter 35, but Yor knocked him out and made him think she had no romantic interest in him. If she hadn't done that...it's sad to think about what would have happened (as @katzennstack wrote here).
Fast forward to the mole arc:
Instead of manipulating Yor for his benefit, he nearly lost his life to protect her from getting hurt (emotionally). Several months of living with Yor and subconsciously admiring her strength and kindness had indeed made him "lose his edge" as he sort of mentioned to Nightfall.
If another family crisis had emerged, would he still have tried to coerce/seduce her into staying in the marriage at that point? Unclear. But his decision to spare Yuri seems to indicate he would have hesitated a lot.
Fast forward again to when Yor comes to terms with her feelings:
Instead of seeking to trap her, he thought, "If...Yor insists she wants to be freed from our agreement, I'll have to respect--" before he cut himself off and his thoughts went to Plan C. But before all the rationalizing, as others have pointed out, his emotional reaction occurred first. He looked just as terrified/shaken as in the mole arc when he thought the SSS had gotten the jump on him (but it turned out to be a WISE colleague):
He may still be willing to go to extremes like tranquilize Yor just to escape an SSS party, but to cause her lasting harm like he'd initially been willing to...I think not. Seems like he's subconsciously locked into "How can I minimize the amount of harm I'm inflicting on Yor and Anya" while continuing to carry out his mission.
Except at some point, like in many fanfics, he may crash into the reality of how much he's inevitably going to hurt them when the mission ends and he has to leave/"die", or they find out he's been deceiving them the whole time. Will that be part of the next Twilight spiral?
