#anya and yor are basically attached at all time

[assassinnumber9]

TwiYor's Love Languages

So as you guys may or may not know, a little over a year ago I published a fanfic on Archive of Our Own called Loid Forger is NOT A Cuddler, which is basically just 5 chapters (so far) of Loid cuddling and denying it.

It's practically an essay for how his love language is physical touch.

And while I do like to joke about how Loid Forger is a cuddler and whatnot because of my fanfic and headcanon, this most recent manga chapter of Spy x Family gives me a perfect opportunity to talk about this headcanon and why it's in line with Twilight's character as well as Yor's own love language and how they relate.

We'll look at the obvious and pretty much explicitly stated first.

Yor's Love Language: Acts of Service

As previously mentioned, she basically says it outright. Her growing feelings toward Loid are much more obvious than his, and so it's easy to point out that her wanting to help him and have him rely on her is both a way for her to care/love him outwardly and a way for her to know he's accepting of that love.

I think Loid being the one to rely on her also makes her feel even more loved/trusted/confident, because Loid Forger is just so perfect at anything and everything he tries. From the outside, he really doesn't need any sort of help from anyone.

And, Twilight would likely agree. He's confident in his abilities and doesn't seem to want help from anyone as far as we've seen. The only missions he shares are the ones where more than one person is really needed.

Fiona could be potentially seen as someone he accepts help from, except that her help is more of an employee to an employer (or inferior to superior in their case.

And Franky... acts almost like a brother to Twilight? So like, they just force each other to help. Neither of them are accepting any kind of help, just going, "You're doing this."

All this to say that Yor is the only one that Twilight accepts and asks for help from. In the latest chapter, we see Twilight is comfortable enough to ask her.

And, she's ecstatic at hearing him ask for it.

She gets to finally show her love the way she knows how - the way she showed Yuri during her childhood.

Now for Loid Forger, rather Twilight.

Twilight's Love Language: Physical Touch

So far in the story, we have not seen much in terms of love when it comes to Twilight.

Emotions, and love especially, are weaknesses for spies unlike assassins, where emotions and attachments can be seen as strengths. Both fight for their respective loved ones, but the former has to do so hidden under a mask without being caught and the other is able to outwardly express these protective instincts through their actions (assassinations).

So, Twilight, like the great spy he is, hides his love.

You could possibly argue his love language is the same as Yor's (acts of service), but his acts are to keep her happy to ensure she stays with him (ie actually for the mission).

He also seems to give words of affirmation as well, but he only does so when he needs to provide them.

Gifts and Quality time can also be crossed out, because we don't really see him giving Yor gifts and we haven't seen him really go "I need to be with Yor more" yet. The only time we ever saw him think of her when they weren't together was during the cruise arc. But that’s not enough solid evidence for that specific one yet.

Also keep in mind that we haven't seen him express any of these languages to anyone else either.

There is one language we do have solid proof for, and of course that's physical touch.

While no, it's not proof that features Yor or even Anya.

We both hear and see it when it comes to his mother.

He explicitly states that he loved being held by her.

While this story was meant to show his mother's strength as a person, it confirms that loving physical touch was a large part of his childhood

Because he remembers it

Twilight remembers loving being held by her.

He can't remember her face, or his father's face, and is even flustered and confused after his PTSD flashback when he was unconscious. His memories are covered in trauma, and I believe one of the only reasons why he can remember what his friends looked like are because he saw them later in life.

It's hinted that he remembers very little of his childhood - likely due to the trauma.

But his mother holding him stayed with him.

Physical touch was an influential thing during his childhood.

Like Yor's love language during hers.

I would really like to believe that we'll see him learn to love touch again when he finally learns to accept his emotions, and in turn, his "weaknesses" (which will likely be turned to strengths).

And Yor being strong, a trait he remembers of his mother, only strengthens my theory that he'll learn to love physical touch again.

Because, he'll once again be able to know that everything is fine when he's holding her - just as he felt with his mother.

[itsmaferart]

Hey Itsmaferart! I got a sensitive question for you: Do you think nowadays, Loid’s more known for Yor and his relationship with her than him as an actual character? It could be me but I noticed a large proportion of posts with him is basically either how smitten he was with her or how he should just kiss her. Plus, I can’t shake this feeling that some people only like him for the Twiyor ship instead of his multilayered character as people don’t discuss his other relationships or character that often.

I’m not oblivious to the fact Anya and Yor are far more popular and loved, as well as, the fact their are some character interactions that we are most invested than others but it’s abit of a personal thing pet peeve of mine when people only value or like a character for a ship when said character has far more complexities and relationships beyond than that. Nothing against the ship itself btw. I like Twiyor too but it feels like a disservice imo, especially since it’s not a romantic animanga.

Hello Thank you very much for your question!!!

Well, I must say that.... yes, and it is quite normal!

I have always believed that physically Twilight has a rather conventional physique but he manages to have enough charisma to attract the reader. As Endo himself says, he has the "just a guy" effect. But you manage to connect with his motivations and actions. Twilight puts his own well-being above the mission many times. He is a man pursuing a noble purpose.

However, I think it is a theme that has developed because of the latest controversy among the fandom and not because it is something that actually happens in the story. I really understand that much of the discontent has been generated because the pace of the episodes has felt slower, Endo's constant pauses due to his possible exhaustion from work, added to the fact that there have been episodic and quiet episodes that may or may not have repercussions in the plot has made much of the fandom question the pace of the series and when it has progressed.

And this was directed at the shipp, specifically with Twiyor. Sparking a dispute that has divided whether or not Yor and Loid have really moved on, or if Twilight has a better relationship with Nightfall….. Valid arguments and some debatable ones.

In fact, we know that it is very common for fandom to focus excessively on aspects of the plot such as shipp or action plots. But as I say, it's more of a dilemma that tends to happen in fandom until eventually it's overcome and the plot continues. I don't really feel it's an issue of Endo forgetting Twilight as a character, but it's clearly necessary to see an evolution. And it's clear that her relationship with Anya and Yor are necessary to see the change between them, and the attachment it has generated.

But I do think that sometimes fandom disputes make people only see Loid as a character destined for a relationship with Yor and forget about all the other aspects. I think they should not be considered as something relevant, and not divide us for unnecessary things.

Evntually, the story itself will take its course with the characters!!! thank you for your question.

[quakiebaka]

I hope that when twilight and yor kiss for the first time that for twilight, it's under the pretense of "for the mission" (perhaps practice kissing) and then when he actually gets to kissing yor, it all just clicks and he realizes he wants to do that again without the strings of mission attached. that or he still doesn't realize why he craves kissing his wife again. because ofc he would never spend a second evaluating how he feels.

and for yor, her head is just full of thoughts like "wow! having a husband is so cool I wish this were real :D". she just fully delves into the wife/mother role as she usually does. the kiss has some effect on her, but she can easily chalk it up to "this is helping loid and anya"

basically role reversal, if that makes sense. yor starts out very flustered by the romance aspect then fully accepts that it makes their marriage more believable (muddying her actual feelings along the way) while twilight could hide his feelings behind "for the mission" but now realizes this is what he actually wants so he becomes the flustered mess

[kindaorangey]

I don’t even know what sxf is but your art makes me want to watch(?) it so bad. (Feel free to pitch it to me!)

EEK THAT'S SO LOVELY okay here's the pitch:

spy x family is a manga-turned-anime comedy series - do not let ANY of what the fandom says let you forget this, because people tend to talk about it like it's some serious dark noir/forbidden love story - NO! it is a COMEDY SERIES first and foremost! and while the comedy obviously translates better in the anime, the manga is still mega funny. it takes all the best parts of comedic manga and anime - i.e. the hyperbolisation of everything to an absurd degree - and does it perfectly and consistently throughout the whole show. there's a lot of serious stuff i love about sxf, but the biggest appeal is just how fun it is to watch. it's silly, it's funny, it's fucking adorable and heartwarming. each episode is 20 minutes of joy.

and the premise is basically that a spy, loid, has to put together a fake family to pose as a regular citizen as part of his spy mission. and so he adopts a kid, anya, and then enters a marriage of convenience with a woman called yor, who agrees to it because living as a single woman in their country makes her an easy target for the secret service (which was a real phenomenon with single women in history btw!). so yor doesn't know loid is a spy and thinks he just agreed to help her out.

but yor is also leading a double life. she's an assassin, a very good one, and so she has 10x the reason to want to keep the secret service off her back. loid does not know that she is an assassin, and so they have a mutual thing going on where they try to hide their secret lives from each other while maintaining a fake relationship

and on TOP of that, anya, the daughter loid adopted, was a victim of wartime experimentation and has telepathic powers as a result. so she knows loid is a spy, knows yor is an assassin, is herself 4 years old and thinks they are the coolest people alive, and tries her best to help out with her parents' missions without letting on that she can read their minds. but most of the time she just uses her telepathy to manipulate her parents into letting her get, like, the snacks she wants. again, 4 years old.

very silly, very sweet, they're all hiding their secret identities from each other and form a united front to pretend to be a normal family to the rest of the world

and it ends up being like the fake dating trope (with loid and yor, obviously) where pretending to be married leads to sitcom shenanigans and eventually real romantic feelings developing. but the fun of the fake dating trope is expanded to the whole family, where the three of them have to pretend to have known each other and loved each other for a long time, have to work together to avoid suspicion from outsiders, and in doing so form very genuine familial bonds. this is particularly significant for loid, who intends to leave the other two behind once his mission is complete, so he has incentive to not get emotionally attached. but he can't help it. he grows to love them both. which is a very juicy emotional dilemma, and the impending choice loid will have to make about prioritising his family, or his work as a spy, is the emotional crux of the show.

yeah. it's an absurd setup done completely unironically with boatloads of tenderness and cuteness and comedy. it's sort of my favourite thing to watch ever and i highly, highly recommend it.

[alexiethymia]

The anime really elevates the manga. I love the fact that despite they know that Yor is a lethal cook, they still eat her cooking voluntarily anyway. They’re in the same class as Yuri, family. And I just love, love their reactions, especially Loid’s in that he looks innocently delighted. Despite Anya feeling hungry and despite that he acknowledges that he and Yor don’t snoop into each other’s business, he still makes sure they eat together as a family. There’s no planning and calculations here. He gets clumsily worried when Yor cries, and he’s just really relaxed around his family. He shows them his overworked and deadpan face, but also he act differently around them as compared to when he is the ideal family man towards outsiders. He’s sweet and peaceful around them, but there’s no artificiality. 

He lets his guard down around them basically, like how despite being a master spy, his gut instinct is that Yor is clean despite instantly suspecting Yuri and despite that Yor isn’t actually that good at hiding her night job. Even when he was suspecting Yor, his thoughts were that she prove her innocence. He’s actually compromised when it comes to Yor and doesn’t know it, which is why it’ll take a long time before he even discovers her secret.

Bonus: 

The way he looks at Yor, and the fact that despite putting away the love-love set, they still keep the close family photo up on the mantel along with their formal one. 

It’s going to be pretty heartbreaking actually, because despite her night job, Yor really sincerely loves and gives her all for her family. Anya knows the truth about both her parents, but Yor doesn’t. It actually gets highlighted in the second half with Loid becoming melancholy and deciding to drink with Franky instead of spending time with Anya and Yor like he originally planned to do. He has to remind the both of them that they can’t get attached, and looks affected by it and by the fact that his ‘relationship’ is because of his job. Despite it’s Yor who’s the assassin, I think when she comes to find that her whole family is fake in multiple senses of the word, it’ll break her heart and consequently that of Loid’s as well if or when she comes to hate him. 

[hirayarts]

my spy x family self insert slash oc or whatever that's been in my mind for months but has now finally been brought to life. info under the cut!! find them on AF here

HOW THEY MET THE FORGERS

The Forgers usually got everything in the house under control. Both Yor and Loid do a good job of taking care of Anya, and Loid is the one who mainly helps her with her homework. Sometimes they’d even have Yuri over, and sometimes Loid could get Franky to watch over Anya if things get particularly busy for both him and Yor. But at the end of the day, Yuri and Franky are still busy people with their own jobs. Yor eventually brings up to Loid that maybe they should get a professional tutor for Anya. Even though Loid can manage pretty well, she says it wouldn’t hurt if they get some extra help and could even shoulder some of the expenses. Loid feels like it’s unnecessary, but he’s willing to listen to Yor’s advice. He’s only very skeptical about trusting just anyone into the Forger family home. Luckily, Yor just happens to already have someone in mind.

Sol has professionally worked with kids in both school settings and private one-on-one settings before, so Yor has faith in their capabilities. And it just so turns out that Yor’s known them since they were both kids. Loid thinks they can be trusted, and after seeing how quickly Anya warms up to them, ends up agreeing with hiring them as Anya’s private tutor.

And so it begins.

THEIR ROLE IN THE FORGER FAMILY DYNAMIC

Anya quickly takes a liking to Sol. They’re the kind of fun auncle that would let her get away with a few things that her parents (mostly Loid) wouldn’t allow her to, but never does anything that would let her get harmed. Eventually Anya gets too attached to them and doesn’t ever want them to leave. And as such, Sol becomes more than just Anya’s tutor — Yor and Loid also start ringing them up whenever they need a babysitter for Anya, and eventually they just become their go-to for any extra house help they need, especially when it comes to taking care of Anya. They kind of become the Forger Family’s go-to fixer and jack-of-all trades.

THEIR ROLE IN THE COMEDY

Sol doesn’t have a hidden agenda or secret double life. Instead, their unpredictability as a character makes them serve as an agent of chaos, throwing a wrench into everyone’s plans. Anya can read minds, but she doesn’t need to read Sol’s mind at all, because they’re quite the open book and say whatever they’re thinking, usually with no filter. If Anya would read their mind, sometimes there’s just really nothing going on there.

Loid isn’t completely convinced about this, though. To be honest, Sol kind of intimidates him a little, and he’s sometimes suspicious of them, leading to overanalyze a lot of what they say. It doesn’t help that one of their best skills is being great at disguises, technically speaking.

CHARACTER TRAITS

Genderweird (positive): Sol’s gender presentation depends on either whatever fits their mood or whatever’s the most convenient. They end up confusing a lot of people, including Yuri. Sometimes they do this unintentionally, other times they do this on purpose to mess with people. Their one goal in life is to make their gender as puzzling as possible.

Cosplay veteran: Sol is a passionate cosplayer. They’ve been cosplaying since they were a kid, and so they’ve had a lot of experience. They’re basically a shapeshifter and this is how they got really good at presenting themself however they want. They’re able to do their own makeup and sew their own clothes, but makeup is more of their strong suit, and they sometimes opt to commission other people for their outfits. They still work closely with designing everything they wear, though.

Weird wardrobe: They wear the same base dress almost every day. For every day of the year, they shift the hue of their dress ever so slightly. If you’ve been seeing them everyday, this isn’t something you’d notice right away until you think back to what color they were wearing last month. Aside from this, the patterns and theme of their outfit also changes depending on what they’re doing for the day. When they first started as Anya’s tutor, they’d dress up according to whatever subject they were going to teach Anya that day (hence the math variant of the outfit as proof of concept). Additionally, if they’re animated, the patterns on their outfit would move on their own (like in Chowder).

General disposition: They’re very upbeat and approachable, especially to kids since that’s their job, but also because they enjoy it. They say whatever they’re thinking, but this is less of a bluntness and more of a “thinking out loud” type of situation. Their movements are usually very exaggerated and they’re kind of loud sometimes. They’re nosy but will never gossip only because they couldn’t even remember what they heard in the first place. Their head is playing the Wii music theme on repeat at autopilot, and Anya knows this.

Character Inspirations:

Ms Frizzle

Mary Poppins

Amelia Bedelia

Thoma (Genshin Impact)

Osana Najimi

Chika Fujiwara

CHARACTER DESIGN NOTES

Bald: They shaved their head because it’s easier to put wigs on that way (according to them).

Tapered arms and legs: Their arms and legs are shaped like cones that are thicker at the top and tapers downwards.

Tiny hands and slender fingers: Pretty much what it says on the tin.

Silhouette: Blocky; it’s important that the area around their head has a lot of negative space compared to everywhere else (especially the highlight of their silhouette, which is their comically oversized trapezoid skirt).

EXTRA INFO

Base outfit is heavily referenced from this outfit from the Christian Lacroix Couture Fall/Winter 1988 lineup.

They usually carry a matching parasol around. Unlike their outfits which they change on purpose, their parasols change every time they’re seen because they always end up losing the previous one they had.

[casliveblog]

Custom Toonami Block Week 144 Rundown

Spy X Family: It’s the second half of the season and it’s DOG ARC time! The family goes to get Anya her dog but Loid’s spy shop is just full of bara dogs doing Jojo poses at them like why even take her to that one like if anyone blows the cover on that shop you publically going there is dangerous. But yeah Loid gets called away and busts a ring of college students planning to use dogs with bombs attached to them to murder the foreign minister and start World War whatever world war number this world is up to. This is pretty suspicious as college kids don’t tend to have ‘buy government hyperintelligent dogs to strap bombs to’ money which is a lot more than it takes to buy, you know, a gun. Meanwhile Yor and Anya are at another pet show and Anya trips across one of said Data Dogs who already has a picture of the Forger family in its memories so she wants to go see what the fuck that’s about and runs off after promising not to run off like five minutes ago and Yor has apparently been taking lessons on watching your kids from Stu and Didi Pickles because she doesn’t notice a fucking thing. Anya tries to free the Data Dog but because she’s in the hideout of the afformentioned college students with dog bomb money she gets fucking caught and they just wanna fucking slit her throat like geez guys. Luckily Data Dog frees himself and protects her which… I guess he could’ve done that at any time? Why did he need Anya? But still he’s able to use his Data Dog powers to predict the phone will ring about Loid busting the other hideouts and they use that distraction to get away but turns out Data Dog is in the Anya tier of ‘having superpowers doesn’t mean you’re any less of an impulsive moron’ camp and just kinda runs in circles for a while. Though they ran past Yor when they ran out so you can already see where this is going, Yor beats the shit out of the college students and saves Anya from what she thinks are human traffickers which is supposed to be a funny overreaction but given these guys were gonna snap her neck with their bare hands apparently I think she undershot it this time.

Inuyasha: I feel like this episode must’ve run REALLY short because we have like a five minute intro of Kagome reflecting on meeting Inuyasha and heading back to the feudal era for like no reason, like it makes you think the episode is gonna be a clip show but it does eventually get on with the plot. So back to that gate to the afterlife Hakudoshi had Kagura tell Inuyasha’s group about, like Miroku and Kagome even talk about how this couldn’t be a more clear trap if they tried like they even have Saimyosho fucking leading them to the spot but Inuyasha’s just like ‘yeah, yeah Naraku’s traps, we’ve all seen em, I’ll just shoot sword beams until the trap doesn’t work anymore’. I always did kinda like the setup for this setpiece though, it’s a stone gate to the underworld guarded by two statues that come to life and ask if someone wants to pass through the gate and they’re like ‘Yeah bro you can pass, but it’s the afterlife so we can’t let anybody living in so we gotta fucking kill you’ which I always found kind of hilarious like what’s the point of the fucking gate then like if you die you’re gonna go there anyway (the answer is it’s pointless and ends up being a weird plot point in Yashahime which would be an amazing callback if I ever thought any of this was planned out ahead of time) but yeah, the statues are basically invulnerable as with most gate guardians and even the Wind Tunnel doesn’t fucking work because… yeah they’re still giant dudes made of stone, makes sense. Really feel like Inuyasha is a D&D campaign where the DM realized they let Miroku’s character have a fucking broken ability and had to keep finding ways to nerf it. Myoga tells Inuyasha that the statues go back to sleep once the gate opens and closes so Inuyasha actually fucking defaults to the Red Tessaiga for once (thank god I’m so sick of him hitting it with the regular Wind Scar and then having it do nothing and having to switch or just missing his chance to kill the bad guys) and busts open the gate and Kagura has a horde of demons bum rush the gate to get into it before Inuyasha but turns out all the demons turn to stone because, you know, can’t go into the afterlife while alive, but like what’s the point of the guardians at that point? Like not only is the gate pointless if you need to be dead to get through it because the same thing happens when you die anyway but guarding it is pointless because if someone tries to jump through they just get Dr. Stone’d anyway, this whole system is just full of double redundancy. But yeah Kagura’s not too happy about that and the statues go to sleep but Kagome does confirm that through the gate is a jewel shard. Kagura goes back to Hakudoshi like ‘wtf bro you tried to kill me’ and he tells her to chill out because he sent all the fodder demons with her so there was only like a 40% chance she’d die and more importantly a 0% chance he would die because he wasn’t even fucking there. Kagura tries attacking him but Naraku can apparently long-distance squeeze Kagura’s heart and is just like ‘don’t try that again bro’. Anyway next is the Princess Abi arc and she’s easily one of my favorite tertiary characters like her design is so fucking cool, her and Yura are really awesome underused characters.

Yu Yu Hakusho: So yeah, Spirit World’s Law & Order Special Demons unit arrive on the scene and turns out they wanna fucking kill Yusuke… again, like bro’s already dead but turns out it doesn’t count unless you destroy the body (which was mentioned in the first arc so that’s a cool callback) But yeah turns out these guys can close up the hole in demon world in like ten days AND send a squad to make sure nothing passes through (also neat little lore bit about one of these guys being the one that hunted down Yoko Kurama, the lore in YYH doesn’t always feel the tightest so it’s nice when things come together like that) so basically the living world was never really in any danger, this whole thing was basically so Koenma didn’t have to tell his dad he fucked up. Like to be fair Sensui isn’t here and if he wasn’t kicking Hiei, Kurama and Kuwabara’s asses there’s a good chance he’d be fucking murdering all the SDP guys and they do say that them just being in Living World does kinda distort reality a bit and it’s hard to clean up so there’s a couple reasons why we couldn’t have just skipped to this part but it does kinda take the wind out of the stakes a bit. Anyway Koenma and Seaman stall the cops long about what a good guy Yusuke is for him to start reviving because yeah apparently he’s a demon and if anyone in his bloodline dies while having a power level high enough to activate the devil gene they just fucking go nuts and become a demon. And in true Yusuke fashion he plays up being the lord of darkness and shit despite not having changed a bit and shows the SDP guys as the pussies they are because it doesn’t matter if they’re afterlife cops, Yusuke Urameshi says fuck the police. Also Puu is this badass phoenix thing now that resembles what Koenma said the Spirit Beast would look like all the way back in the first arc so that’s pretty cool. Like I’m torn because admittedly this revelation came out of absolutely fucking nowhere with no foreshadowing but I do kinda admire how Yusuke just kinda rolls with it and makes a badass entrance to go kick Sensui’s ass like it’s an asspull among asspulls but can’t really argue with results.

Jujutsu Kaisen: It’s the conclusion of the Mahito fight and Kento and Yuji are kinda onto his Ditto bullshit now and are just beating the crap out of him before he can shapeshift and on the off-chance he can shapeshift with the two of them there they’re able to whittle down his form and pin him down easier. But if there’s one thing shonen anime teaches us it’s that almost dying makes you more powerful and Mahito unlocks his Domain Expansion which traps Kento in a realm where he can just do the whole ‘squibby squoodle your soul is now a noodle’ deal without actually touching you. Meanwhile Yuji has to murder soul gremlin zombies which even though I don’t think anyone considers them people anymore I do respect the series for actually making Yuji kill them despite his principles like a lot of shows confront the protag about it and then weasel out of it like YYH did or the kinda just forget that the protagonist is supposed to care about murder halfway through despite going absurdly out of their way to not have them kill any humans in the first half like Naruto and Bleach did. Anyway now that Kento thinks he’s gonna die we basically get his whole backstory where he’s revealed to be the only thing more evil than a cursed spirit: a stock broker. Basically what I gather is that Kento is Yoshikage Kira but he grew some empathy before the murder impulses kicked in and his own self-loathing and the feeling of saving people that he feels contribute more than him gave him a reason to live which is why he thinks about the bakery girl he saved and how her gratitude was his reason for living and tells Mahito to fucking shove his gratitude for having them unlock his next form. Meanwhile Yuji is able to punch his way into the Domain Expansion because ‘Why would you want to break INTO the realm of infinite torment where the bad guy can morph your soul at will?’ is valid logic. Unfortunately it seems like Mahito can’t turn OFF the soul-warping effect once you’re I his sphere so Sukuna’s just like “WHAT THE FUCK DID I SAY ABOUT YOUR DIRTY FRANKENSTEIN HANDS ON MY SOUL BRO!?” and just fucking murders him. Since Mahito’s critically injured and basically had all his energy used up by the Unlimited Hand Works he tries to Semi-Perfect Cell and bust out of there but pops like a balloon and ducks down the sewer to get the fuck out of dodge. And to my surprise they don’t do any shenanigans about bringing Junpei back to life or any of that shit, he’s fucking dead and Yuji has to live with that and everyone around Junpei has to own up to their part in making him a domestic jellyfish terrorist which is kind of weird they gave him like a whole power set to let him use it for like five minutes and then kill him and they stuck him in the opening just to be a red herring but okay I can respect not backpedaling the trauma of it and making Yuji want to solidify his goals so he can meet up with Megumi and Nobara again.

Ranking of Kings: Okay so A LOT happens this episode, Miranjo and Spear Guy meet Hilling and her guards and Shield Guy out front of the castle with a bunch of the chimera creatures and two of the escaped criminals and all hell kinda breaks loose. It looks like they’re losing ground and Shield guy gets Hilling to run but Ouken cuts them off and almost kills Hilling’s Guard Captain but Hilling is able to heal her own injuries and save her captain from having a slashed throat while chugging down Gatorade stamina potions to make sure she doesn’t fucking pass out from spamming healing magic. Apparently Hilling DOES have offensive spells or at least status spells and casts a holy blinding spell on Ouken which freaks him out enough to have him stumble into town and start killing people there. Meanwhile Gnasty Gnorc slams down on Shield guy and the beasts are about to kill Hilling but Spear Guy has had enough and saves her, demanding to know why Miranjo wants her dead anyway, man took him long enough, like it’s been like eight episodes of unquestioning simping and murdering for a girl made of glass and he’s finally like ‘babe why we murdering your crush’s ex?’. Turns out Miranjo had Bojji’s mom killed because giant women are one and done when it comes to kids and set him up with Hilling so he’d have a second son that didn’t have all his potential sacrifice to a demon to reincarnate into. Man luckily Hilling didn’t have a girl or else this would be VERY awkward for Bosse to just be in the body of a twelve year old girl. But yeah Miranjo is like ‘man if I sit here and make you watch them kill Hilling and Shield guy you’re just gonna betray me more so let’s go kill Sword Guy and Kirito’ so Spear Guy shouts down to Shield Guy to protect Hilling and he starts beating the shit out of the chimeras but still gets his leg dripped off when they dog pile him. Meanwhile two of the prisoners steal Miranjo because they love chaos and the schemey prisoner is like ‘oh geez sorry we stole your mirror girlfriend bro, here have her back’ and fucking bodies Spear Guy. Meanwhile Bojji and the Underworld Guards have arrived in town where Ouken is just murdering dudes left and right and the Guard Captain remembers Despa telling him not to fight Ouken until he arrives nor to let Bojji fight him since their styles are perfect opposites of each other (supporting my theory from last time that Ouken has Bojji’s sword style of disabling but on the ‘bleed it out’ path instead of ‘knock out and talk’ skill tree) so since the Captain can only obey one of those two requests he agrees to take on Ouken and sends Bojji to go help Hilling.

Vinland Saga: So Askeladd’s group is being held at arrowpoint by the second Welsh kingdom and Bjorn points out that if they wanted them dead they’d be fighting already but this is all just sword rattling so the Welsh don’t seem like pussies who let the Danes come in and demand the shirt off their backs for some protection. Askeladd meets with the Welsh leader along with their own Welsh escort and we get kind of a bombshell that Askeladd is actually the son of a Viking warrior that enslaved a Welsh noblewoman that was actually a distant relative of King Arthur… why does anime always come back to King Arthur I swear. But yeah, Askeladd says he promises a good deal for Wales because he’s half Welsh but knowing Askeladd like we do I don’t know how much we can actually trust any importance he holds on his heritage but he does seem to hate his Danish father who treated his Welsh mother badly so there may be more truth than it appears to his talk of ‘I hate the Danish, all my homies hate the Danish” even though he’s been murdering and plundering with a group of Danes for most of his life, guess that’s something he and Thorfinn have in common. Speaking of our supposed main character, Thorfinn calls Canute out on being a fucking pussy which actually gets a rise out of him in a fashion that I’m sure has yaoi fanfic writers drooling. Like I literally couldn’t write a more generic yaoi fanfic if I tried than ‘spoiled bishie rich boy and gruff warrior boy with a tragic backstory hate each other’s guts and also they were roommates’. But yeah, new plan is to pretend to be prisoners and sneak across Wales and make a MIIIINOR trek through enemy territory to snake around back to the main Danish forces, I’m sure everything will go fine.  

[aislingyngaio-manga]

5 Delusions of Agent Nightfall I’m Hoping Will Be More Explicitly Debunked In-Universe

(Preferably by an in-universe character straight into Nightfall’s face)

Note to anime fans: spoiler alert up to Mission 60.

5. She would be a better fit for the mother role for Strix.

Even if you set aside the very specific circumstance of Anya’s origins (the internal image of Nightfall’s “mothering” methods would have simply recreated the cold sterility of Anya’s lab environment, a situation so harrowing for her that Anya, by age four, I repeat, FOUR, ran away from. ESPer or no, for a four-year-old child to run away from the only life she knows takes a LOT of trauma to overcome her fear of the outside world/unknown), even a normal child do not need to read minds to know their “mother” didn’t care for them and would absolutely start to rebel. Raising children isn’t a matter of min-maxing them into a “stellar star procurement machine”, they’re human beings too. Say what you like about Twilight’s shortcomings as a parent due to his long-suppressed EQ, he at least attempts to learn parenting when he acknowledges he doesn’t know much about it (just look at the mountain of books he checked out in Mission 1), and he is absolutely willing to take advice from Yor when she stops him with a gentle question of “does Anya want to be an imperial scholar?” - see Mission 10. Nightfall on the other hand, expects Anya, a four-pretending-to-be-six girl, to conform to her mission without a single thought to Anya’s wellbeing or needs. Even with any other child, this would have spelled failure for Strix from the beginning (and Twilight openly admits to this in Mission 35 - also see number 3 below).

4. She knows Twilight best.

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Sorry but that’s just so funny to me. Let me explain... the coffee incident in Mission 30. Nightfall thought Twilight drank his coffee black, only to be shocked when he pours milk into it. She then quickly decides it’s actually proof of how invested he is in the Loid Forger personality and “that’s why I love you”. Except... not five minutes ago she was berating him for personally walking Bond with Anya as part of his Loid Forger identity lmfao. So why was that not ok and grounds to openly question his handling of Strix, but the white coffee made her go “uwu that’s why I wuv u Twilight-senpai”, especially when you consider that publicly walking Bond actually helps reinforce his public image as a loving and attentive father to his daughter (i.e. not a spy with no attachments), while drinking his coffee with milk literally could not be less consequential to the role of Loid Forger? Well... because she attempted to use him walking Bond as a method to put down Yor’s suitability as a wife, while if she admitted that it is Twilight and not Loid Forger who drank his coffee with milk, it would shatter the delusion that she knows all of Twilight’s faces (”step down and let me handle this” will never not be funny to me in how wrong Nightfall is), and that it was in fact Yor who actually got his coffee preference correct, despite only being his wife - and fake wife at that - for a few months.

3. She was only not assigned to Operation Strix because she wasn’t available at the time of its commencement.

Nightfall works for WISE, the agency that’s infamous for being so short-staffed the entire manga storyline is basically WISE pulling Twilight out of Strix into other missions and overworking him to exhaustion. NIGHTFALL LITERALLY JUST GOT DONE REQUESTING TO TEMPORARILY PARTNER WITH HIM FOR TENNIS ARC WHILE HE WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF STRIX - see Mission 30. Is anyone actually expecting me to believe that, if Nightfall were the least bit suitable for Strix, a) WISE wouldn’t have assigned Nightfall from the very outset instead of expecting Twilight to trawl through the general Ostanian female population to find a wife IN A WEEK (AND RISK HIS SPY IDENTITY BEING EXPOSED BY A LIVE-IN WIFE), even if it meant double-booking her on missions like they constantly do to Twilight and b) Twilight couldn’t have put in a request to have her play the mother role for Strix temporarily (not wife though, since if he was willing to put Franky up to trying out for the mother role, it meant he clearly didn’t need a female WISE agent to fill the wife role either, just the mother role). In other words, both WISE top brass (Sylvia?) and Twilight independently assessed the remaining female WISE agents not yet caught up in the sweeps, and both actually concluded that risking exposure through a false marriage with a complete outsider is preferable to involving anyone internally - that’s how frickin unsuitable Nightfall is (TWILIGHT CONSIDERED FRANKY FOR ANYA’S PRETEND MOM, LET ME REMIND YALL AGAIN LMAO).

2. Her abilities as a spy is on par with Twilight / she’s the best fit as Twilight’s partner.

No she’s not lol. Don’t get me wrong, her technical spy skills are clearly excellent, but she does not possess the mentality or even worldview required to run a mutually beneficial course in her decision making - see Mission 60, where she actively sabotages her assets’ safety in order to engineer a situation where she plays the hero, or even Mission 30, where she actively disobeys a direct order from both Sylvia (HER BOSS) and Twilight (HER MENTOR) to not interfere with Strix, which leaves me to doubt her loyalty to WISE and even to Twilight when (not even if anymore) their interests start diverging from her own [Twilight and Sylvia both view peace as their end goal, but Nightfall views peace, specifically her being the driver of the peace Twilight seeks and not peace in and of itself, as a means to her own end - the trophy of Twilight’s affections. Twilight feels sorry for the people caught up in his spy activities, including both Karen and the bomb vest dog, even as he viewed it as a necessity, and he actually cared enough about Franky’s feelings to go drinking with him when Franky gets rejected, while Nightfall simply views even her assets as mere stepping stones to her goal, to the point of actively risking their anonymity and safety (I would almost say blackmailing their well-being), purely so she can get what she wants (with allies like Nightfall, who needs enemies amirite)]. She also doesn’t listen when Twilight tries to teach her, even back when she was in training - see Mission 30 - Twilight tells her “hide her emotions”, she decides he actually meant “stone-faced for the rest of my life” even when he’s like “no that’s not what I said”. Twilight knows the value of a fake smile, he knows that he gets more info with honey than vinegar, and he definitely knows the benefit of cultivating mutually beneficial relationships (again, see him and Franky vs Nightfall and Franky). Nightfall however, refuses to learn this from him because she decided that he told her to learn B when he actually told her to learn A.

1. She’s in love with Agent Twilight.

She’s not lol, not the actual Twilight at least. She’s just obsessed by the Twilight in her delusions, the one that constantly praises her and defers to her, and she wants the trophy that is his affections and considers that ‘love’, but she doesn’t respect Twilight’s consent, choices or advice. When real Twilight breaks this delusion she gets angry and insults him, projects her own shortcomings on him**, thinks he’s wrong and she’ll “show him” - see Mission 30)

** Nightfall is literally disobeying both Sylvia’s AND Twilight’s orders to not interfere with Strix because she believes her personal obsession feelings for Twilight justifies her actions, and if he isn’t fawning over/agreeing with her behaving as she believes he should, it must mean his feelings for his Forger family are “making him soft”. Pot, meet kettle. She completely ignores that every time she tried to interfere with Strix it was due solely to her personal ambition, WISE be damned. Whether or not Twilight is softening towards his family (and there is no denying that he absolutely is softening), to date he has yet to show that he would prioritize them over WISE or his mission for peace (not even the aquarium short mission count because the outing that he nearly refused another mission over [keyword: nearly] was specifically happening due to him overhearing his neighbours gossiping about his absence), even as he regrets having to constantly do so. The only two times I can recall him coming very close to the precipice (and that cannot be explained away as fOr dA mISHuN) was in Mission 1 (risking blowing his cover to save Anya) and Mission 5 (nearly punching that douchebag teacher out during the school interview) [again, keyword: nearly]. So where does Nightfall get the absolute gall to throw stones at Twilight?

[I sure hope Nightfall isn’t gradually escalating into Gaston/Prince Demand levels of obsessive entitlement over Twilight...]

[happysassyfairy]

The new Spy X Family chapter 35 is a blessing.

Moving ahead now. There'd be spoilers.

So. I have this theory about Twilight after this chapter.

Endo has established the fact that Yor is basically starting to catch feelings for Loid. To the point that she's jealous of Fiona replacing her and Loid actually "Loving" and choosing her over Yor.

Except Yor is too dense/timid to spell it out when sober. And at this point of the story (which I assume would keep on going to be a slow burn) even this much development is Great. I love it!!

But here's what I think guys. Twilight? He's catching feelings too and I think he's already fallen pretty hard for Yor. He's just in some sort of a denial cause hey he has to keep up with his stoic and unemotional image so that he doesn't get "too attached" to his "family".

Now you may think why I came to such a conclusion...it's because :

1. In chapter 34 Twilight feels bad about lying to Yor. Seriously? A spy? Who has lied to people a million times, had fake relationships with women a million times before is now guilty of lying to Yor?

And I also love it how he instantly compares the Colonel's real family to his "fake" family. It's as if he considers Anya and Yor his real family and feels bad about lying to them.

2. Remember when Twilight bugged Yor? After the entire fiasco, he came to the conclusion that Yor is just a simple office clerk and is an innocent citizen. She's just as unaware as another citizen and won't have any information useful to him regarding the secret service or anything else really. So far Twilight has only had romantic relationships with women who could supply him with some information.

Then why oh why did Twilight do the proposal at all? 😂

My thoughts? Well twilight really wants a real relationship with Yor. From twilight's perspective she's an innocent citizen (and not thorn princess), Yor can't really give him any intel or vital information.

Twilight tends to attribute his protectiveness towards his daughter to the vitality of success of operation strix. He hates the fact that he has to lie to Anya and therefore denies the fact that he loves her as much as a real daughter.

The same thing probably happens with him here. He realises that he likes Yor back for 1 second, goes into denial and just starts assuming that he can have a "fake" (ha! lol!) relationship with Yor. For the Mission 😂 Point is, he just needs an excuse to dismiss his own attachment/feelings everytime. Operation strix becoming the prime excuse.

3. Guys! He thinks Yor is like his own mom! He sees his mother in her and he thinks that there can't be anyone else better to be Anya's mom. He also thinks she's strong and tbh I think it's a genuine compliment. He does admire her and is ready to accept that. He's just in denial about having romantic feelings for her. Which would come. I'm sure. Eventually. Until then I'm just going to enjoy this view...

Oh my heart !!! ❤️