#operation strix is the main focus of the story and had more to do with twilight and anya

[atomicpinks]

sincerely hope endo-sensei keeps up the slow plot and doesn't rush it

[wondrousmay]

SPYxFAMILY CODE: White movie review (spoilers ahead)

I finally have some time to gather my thoughts so here’s my belated review of the movie!

I had a really good time! I did my best to avoid spoilers and my efforts paid off. A lot of scenes would lose some emotional impact if I had knew about it beforehand. I think one important thing to keep in mind is how the movie is essentially a filler movie (an original story that is not from the manga) so the status quo of the main plot in the manga can’t be changed too much. The movie aimed to appeal to fans of the manga, anime-only and for new fans so some of the plot points might feel repetitive. I personally didn’t mind it since the movie had its own interpretations of events.

Major spoilers under read more!

I did think the plot was the weakest aspect of the movie. The incident that kickstarted the plot was how the higher ups at WISE wanted to replace Twilight’s role in Operation Strix. However, no explanation was given on how the replacement would actually work. I know this isn’t important in the grand scheme of the story but it did bother me a lot lol. I didn’t mind the Eden cooking competition though because it gave us the excuse for the Forgers go on a family trip. The villains were also pretty weak (writing-wise). They were quirky and served their purpose as obstacles for the Forgers but they weren’t compelling as the characters in the manga in my opinion.

The movie biggest’s strength is the focus on the Forgers (individually and together as a family). Each member of the Forgers got the chance to shine in their own way. Personal highlight for me was Yor. She’s my favourite character and the movie emphasized her importance in the Forger family. She is irreplaceable to both Loid and Anya and it made me really emotional to see how far she has come. Of course, she still has insecurities of being replaced but this is just a small part of her character.

While Yor’s fight scenes with Type-F was really hype-worthy, my favourite scene with Yor is a simple conversation between her and Loid. It was when she told Loid that they should all go with him to find the last ingredient together and explained to him that Anya was probably feeling lonely and wanted to be with him and the family since they came on this trip together. I can’t remember what she said exactly because the subtitles were quick but it was a really emotional scene and the fact that Loid listened to her meant a lot to me.

I also liked how the movie handled Loid’s character. The writing did a good job of balancing Twilight the spy and Loid the father. Twilight’s priority was to show progress for Operation Strix because he didn’t trust another agent to handle the mission. We saw his dedication to find the ingredients for Anya’s cooking competition but in doing so, he neglected his family during the trip. I really liked seeing this kind of conflict. Anya called him out on it and Yor had to convince him that Anya was being lonely too. It was a very interesting character journey for him. I loved that he didn’t hesitate to rescue Anya too.

My favourite Loid scene was his reunion with Anya! Loid figured out that the reason Anya ran away was because she went searching for the last ingredient (the syrup/wine thingy) but we never found out what he was actually thinking despite Anya reading his mind. We only see his fond smile and Anya having a happy expression. I really liked this kind of open-ended scene because it feels really personal and intimate for the characters.

The other instance where this happened was after Twiyor’s Ferris wheel scene. Anya read both of her parents’ minds after they cleared up the misunderstanding but we didn’t get to know what they were thinking. Just that Anya was happy about it. Again, I liked that their thoughts are kept private and open to interpretation.

Another favourite scene was the one where Loid, Anya and Yor were reunited after Anya was rescued! It was very touching and emotional! I also loved when Yor and Anya came to help Loid with the steering wheel to steer the airship away from the city. The aftermath of this scene (Yor asking Loid how he knew to pilot the ship) reinforces my theory that both Loid and Yor know that the other is hiding something/is more than what they say they are but they decided not to think too much about it.

Another little scene I want to mention is Yor and Anya playing together when they got to their hotel room. The way Anya’s expression lit up when Yor played along with her was too adorable for words!!!

I guess I should also mention the poop god scene lol. This sequence gave me secondhand embarrassment but it got so much laughter from the audience though. It felt like it went on forever too.

Since the main focus of the movie is the Forgers, the supporting characters do show up but they didn’t have any major scenes. The production value of the movie was fantastic. The aerial scenes and Yor’s fight scene with Type-F were the highlights for me! It was also wonderful to see the Forgers on the big screen!

Overall, I do recommend this movie to both old and new fans of SxF! I can guarantee that you will fall in love with the Forger family even more!

[part-timewonders]

#TWIYOR: we are falling (but not alone)

for @dailytwiyorprompts: sharing your day

(read on twitter or ao3)

“How was your weekend, Dr. Forger?” An innocent question from an innocent colleague. Twilight prides himself on his improvisational skills; necessary work for any spy, but he thinks faster on his feet than most. But for the last few months, he hasn’t had to make anything up, because there’s always something new going on in the life of Dr. Loid Forger these days.

“Anya had a field trip to the zoo with her classmates, so Yor and I volunteered as chaperones.”

Admittedly, it was a nice ‘ooting.’ The weather was mild for early spring, and the animals enjoyed it as much as the humans did, especially the chattering class of Eden Academy first-graders.

Maybe it was a weekend miracle, but WISE didn’t give him any extra missions to complete at the zoo either—he remembers the aquarium debacle of several months ago all too well—so he was able to focus fully on being Loid Forger for once.

It was also an opportunity to observe the younger Desmond son again—neither his older brother nor parents would make an appearance at something as common as a first-grade field trip, but the boy gravitated to Anya more than Twilight expected, given the tales of their animosity. He filed it away as something to think about another time.

What was even better, though, was Anya fast asleep in Yor’s arms as they walked upstairs after dinner, to the delight of their gossipy neighbors. Good. News of their happy family day out would spread throughout the building, giving an extra layer of protection to their cover story. Every believable answer Twilight provided to the questions about his family life, even a question as simple as ‘what did you do this weekend?’ was another small step towards the success of Operation Strix.

“Oh, that’s wonderful. You must feel like you’ve won the lottery, with such an adorable family.”

Yes, Twilight did consider himself lucky. Lucky to have found such a good cover family, even if Anya’s academic skills weren’t exactly where he hoped they’d be. That could be worked on. But she was a charming little girl who’d somehow made inroads with the Blackbells’ daughter and had the protection of her Headmaster. And Yor Briar had been an excellent choice for his wife—a City Hall employee with no black marks on her record other than her previously-single status. And she was a wonderful mother figure to Anya, which was all that mattered, despite Fiona’s strange concerns. She was the perfect match for Loid Forger, an honest, respectable citizen who was definitely not a spy and whose main concerns were his only daughter’s happiness and education.

He smiles pleasantly at his colleague. “Indeed. I’m very lucky to have them both.”

[piracytheorist]

OUAT-style heart-ripping headcanons!

I swear this is gonna go into Spy x Family territory don't worry read on.

So until some years ago I was very, very into the TV show Once Upon a Time. It's a show that went off the rails so many times and so poorly, but it had this concept where you could remove other people's hearts (or your own) via magic. Doing so will not kill your victim (as long as magic is intact) and apparently won't have effects on their way of life, but by holding their heart in your hands you can either hurt them, control their actions, or kill them.

In rare cases, depending on circumstances and intentions, removing one's heart dulls their emotions. There was a case where a character removed her own heart (and kept it safe and protected in a box hidden away) to stop herself from feeling emotions so she could focus on her ambitions instead.

It may or may not be inspired by Kingdom Hearts, I haven't played those games so I don't know for sure but I have heard about it over the years of watching OUAT.

In any case, it was a very interesting storytelling device which unfortunately the writers didn't use as much as they should have imo, and one of the things that have stayed with me since I first watched the show up until now, more than ten years since.

And I was thinking... this would 100% be something someone like Twilight would do. You can pretty much keep the story as is, only have it so that magic users are very few and have enough weak spots that they decide to hide instead of using their powers to take over the world.

And in this scenario, WISE has a few such magic users, employing them for their deep, dark secret: all of its spies that work on the field have agreed to have their hearts removed, for three main reasons: First, so that their emotions won't get in the way of their work. Second, so that if they're captured by enemies, the enemies won't have a heart to control and force them to spill their secrets. And third, in case they're compromised and captured beyond salvation and have no ways of killing themselves, WISE would do it for them by crushing their hearts.

Fully prepared to lose all sense of self in the name of peace, Twilight agrees to have his heart removed and joins their ranks. For quite a long time, it's an actual relief to not feel the pain of his past, to forget his grief and despair and loneliness.

But what they didn't take into account for this is what motivated Twilight. He wants to create a world where children don't need to cry - that's a very empathetic motive, one that shows how sensitive he is to other people's feelings and how much hope and trust he has for the next generation, that he wants to create a peaceful environment for them to grow up in. And those were his thoughts when he stood in front of WISE's magician and allowed them to bury their hand into his chest and pull out his heart.

And so, against their knowledge and planning, a part of himself stays intact. For most of his missions, this doesn't prove to be an impediment or cause any issues. He never has to work with children, so his buried feelings about them don't resurface... until he's assigned Operation Strix and he has to adopt a child and get married.

Story proceeds as in canon. Anya sometimes hears Twilight's thoughts about how WISE spies are "heartless" but she doesn't take it literally. Heart-ripping isn't a technique known to the wide public, and only a few elite crime organizations employ magic users to rip out the hearts of enemies and hostages to abstract information.

So Anya doesn't realize Twilight literally means he's heartless, until Nightfall's visits the Forger household the first time. In Nightfall's case, her main thought while getting her heart ripped out was to prove her worth to Twilight so they could end up together, so her feelings for him have stayed intact, and she doesn't bother about telling WISE that their heart-ripping plan has flaws.

During that visit, Nightfall thinks about all that and Anya for the first time realizes what her papa has meant all along; he literally doesn't have his heart in his chest and is unable of feeling anything... and a few minutes later, she hears Nightfall's thoughts about how his smile has an inkling of true emotion hidden behind it.

That's enough to console her and believe that her papa is Special™ and can actually feel things.

Now, WISE does indeed have gaps in their knowledge about heart-ripping. Since it's established that magic users operate in the shadows, there's no actual evidence or research about how that whole thing works. They've just noticed how more robotic and cold people act without their hearts, and they've drawn the conclusion that it's an effective means of making their agents more professional as well as ensure they won't ever reveal any intel against their knowledge. Plus, all agents give free, full and informed consent for the procedure, so WISE doesn't care about the moral implications of the whole thing.

Twilight does the same... until the Realization of Feelings™ hits. He spends, of course, a lot of time denying it, and then he has a huge dilemma of whether he should tell WISE that despite their efforts, "heartless" people can still be influenced by their feelings. Yor, who'd heard before about the so-called "heartless" spies, finds out that her fake husband (whom she's in love with by that point) is one of them, and that makes things even worse and shatters her trust of him. At the same time, Twilight finds out about her, they fight, enemies attack, Yor is heavily wounded and Twilight for 2.07 seconds thinks "I should let her die"... but then he picks her up, brings her back home and nurses her to health. Yor trusts that at least he cares enough about Anya to not want her to lose her mother, so she agrees to a reluctant cohabiting for Anya's sake.

Anyway, full Identity Reveals ensue a little later, Twilight has the Shock™ of his life when he learns Anya knew everything all along... and after a mission blunder where WISE wants to remove him from the operation he tells Handler that the heart-ripping plan didn't work, and he doesn't want to be removed from the family until absolutely, life-threatening necessary.

Handler (who is also "heartless") reveals to him she knew he was growing feelings but didn't have the heart (heh) to do anything that could disrupt the happiness he'd been due all along. She agrees to pass on an excuse to her bosses so Operation Strix can be continued, and everything stays stable... until Twilight hits her with the question of whether he can have his heart back.

Now this worries her a LOT because a spy getting their heart back basically equates to a resignation letter, but Twilight wants to stay in the field. She refuses, saying it's either one or the other. Twilight is conflicted because he's realized he loves his family a TON but feels half of a person and wants to be whole for them. On the other hand, he doesn't want to resign and stop fighting for peace.

And well, I don't know where the story is going or how it's going to conclude (I don't read the manga either so please no spoilers about it), but I think he'd only be satisfied with a secure peace treaty between the two countries... but there would need to be Angst™ about him wanting his heart back to give his family the same amount of love and dedication they're giving to him.

That's all I got for now lol. Thought I'd share since I wrote it all up :D

[i-shit-my-pant]

I get the feeling that after this has all settled down and Anya's able to go back home, that Yor will try to withdraw her from Eden. They lied to her about her kid still being at the field trip, and just being in Eden put Anya in serious danger.

We've seen Yor and Anya get harassed by the school staff when they were trying to enroll Anya into the college, then Yor had to defend Anya from getting attacked by teenagers who were trying to mug her since she goes to a pretentious school, and now the field trip was hijacked by terrorists who had absolutely zero qualms with killing children (save for Billy.) Yor might conclude that Eden is far too dangerous to have Anya enrolled in.

And if Yor advocates for withdrawing Anya, that could put some serious strain on operation Strix. I can't imagine Loid would be too happy about the highjacking either, after all his main goal is to create a world where children don't have to suffer, and in the first chapter we see him more than ready to relinquish Anya if his operation puts her in danger. But now he is so far into Strix that he can't just retract Anya, dissolve the family, and try a different approach to getting close to Donovan. Plus Anya will DEFINATELY be getting a Stella Star after this which pushes Loid closer to his goal.

This could create some discord between the two if Yor tries to withdraw Anya from Eden while Loid tries to keep her in. On top of that Loid might bury himself deeper into his missions so he can try to nip these issues in the bud so Anya won't be in danger, further separating himself from the family and creating even more conflict with Yor who wants to focus on Anya's direct safety. (But it's also very possible Yor will feel immense guilt for not finishing off Red Circus the first time making her bury herself further in her assassination work which also would drive a deep wedge between Loid and Yor's communication)

I noticed that Yor is the type of person who solves things head on, this is represented through her assassination work where if there is an individual or a group causing issues she just kills them without further investigation. While Loid takes a more roundabout approach by infiltrating targets social groups and aiming for the metaphorical support beams. It would almost be a waste if we didn't see their ideologies clash in some way in the story. This is a prime opportunity for that to happen if Yor wants to take Anya out of the school while Loid wants to solve the problems surrounding it

There is also another option for how this plotline will go but I'm not sure how I feel about it, WISE didn't inform Loid about what was happening to his daughter. His whole goal is to create a world where children are safe. But during this entire terrorist attack, which targeted children, he was off completing a mission completely unaware of it all. This may begin to make him resentful of WISE, I mean, who wouldn't be angry? His daughter was nearly killed and they left him to work on a mission that was probably inconsequential in comparison. Truthfully WISE was correct in not informing him, he was too far away and there probably wasn't much he could do if he did know. But he might not care about that, it was still his daughter and several other children who were put in harm's way and they could have died with him having done nothing to stop it. We've seen him throw rationality out of the door when it comes to his daughter and this could become a catalyst in him trying to become more separate from WISE and their plans, possibly going against them at some points. this could be the beginning of the Forgers becoming a family independent from any plan or operation.

But me, personally, I want that to be further down the line. I'd prefer if the story focused on Loid and Yor's conflicting ideologies than the beginning of the family becoming independent, some more character growth before Spy x Family begins to end