Update: Its Gotten Worse. They Cried Real Tears Over Chapter 40 And Recommended It To Their Mom.

Update: it’s gotten worse. They cried real tears over chapter 40 and recommended it to their mom.

My only claim to fame is getting multiple people to read fan fictions for fandoms they aren’t in, get emotionally invested in the characters, and then get into the fandom without ever engaging in the medium the characters are from while still being able to partake in fandom content and discourse

Yes this is a vague post about A3! And OCAM

Taichi energy

Spring: All Of Us Would Die For Sakuya

Summer: *thinking in unison* I'm the only trans person in a room full of cis people

Autumn: Taichi Protection Squad

Winter: It's not gay if it's method acting

i fucking love shintaro kisaragi. he’s canonically a genius with an iq of 146 but he’s also so pathetic and cringefail and he doesn’t even try to hide it. he can’t watch horror movies without crying and when the mekadan went to the amusement park he thought he was going to die on a rollercoaster. the light novel opens with him bragging about being the best musician in the world only to reveal seconds later that he’s never finished a song. in manga route 2 he trips over nothing and breaks all his bones and momo isn’t even surprised about it. when a fan compared jin to shintaro his response was essentially “don’t say that i hate him”

ok so hopefully quick saeru thread on why trying to empathize with him actually undermines his role as a character (im making this because im very passionate abt kagepro's overall narrative and it's themes, and saeru is a core part of that as the villain) this was originally on twitter and is very long so im putting it under the read more lol

to start off, all of azami's snakes were created from some sort of trauma or surivial instinct. despite his sentience saeru is STILL one of those snakes. his feelings are technically fabricated from azami's desire to find herself and later on her fear of change. the reason i believe he is sentient is the fact he was born from such a complicated wish, so he was created with the necessary complicity in order to carry out said wish for azami. and factors like other people, weren't taken into account for his creation. so the sentience wasn't an issue for the hundreds of years azami would be alone. it only became an issue when she met tsukihiko and started a family. this was an unexpected turnout on saeru's part, because the world azami created was one created from isolation and despair. saeru doesn't have the capacity to understand love or kindness because he wasn't born from it. (this is why the idea of him caring for kenjirou doesnt make sense either but thts a whole other can of worms). what he has for azami isnt love, it's devotion. such severe devotion that he is willing to do things that only hurt her just because it's what he believes is right for her. he has to keep living bc she needs him to survive. so now that we've kind of established saeru's character we can move on to his role in the narrative... kagepro obviously revolves around the idea of repeating time, or timeloops. from a simple story perspective it's because of saeru, he pushes marry to the brink of despair, causing her to rewind time in order to be with her friends again. going a bit deeper in manga route 2, we find out his real motivation is to keep living in order to grant azami's wish to find her true self. so lets go back to the idea saeru is only created from azami's loneliness, or her crushing isolation of simply existing, and combine it with the idea that SAERU is the one causing the world to repeat. that saeru hates the idea that azami could find happiness in others. that saeru believes azami cannot be happy in a world created in her image. that saeru causes so much suffering he recreates a medusa in marry, and he feasts off of that despair. what does this mean? thematically saeru is supposed to represent the idea of resisting change, resisting it through constantly forcing oneself to relive traumatizing and hurtful moments in life out of a belief that this is what it always should be. from the comfort in despair. so lets take that and apply it to a different character, the protagonist, shintaro. specially route x shintaro. in route x shintaro refuses to forget ayano, replaying moments in his head over and over and over where he shouldve reached out, shouldve done better. he ignores ene, someone who cares for him and wants to help him, because he believes that by completely indulging himself in his despair and regret over ayano, she will continue to live on in his mind. so, what is that similar to? it almost directly parallels to saeru's idea of causing despair in order to feed off of it to survive. but, there is something that separates saeru from route x shintaro. the fact that shintaro can understand love. when he deletes ene, he almost immediately regrets it. and is horrified by what he's done. he's so horrified that he literally ends his own life, essentially ending ayano's memory. this is the exact opposite of what saeru wants. saeru is desperate to keep living. to keep the despair, bc it's all he is. without it he's nothing. without it, azami is nothing. if saeru was meant to be empathized with, then it would encourage literally every bad thing to happen in kagepro's story. bc he is a representation of that, and can almost parallel to every character with it. kano's painful emotional stagnation, the unhealthy devotion seto has to marry resulting in neglect of his loved ones, kido's belief that she was born

essentially broken, etc. all of these r themes that show in saeru's character. the character that brutally kills the mekakushi dan over and over, seeing their lives as little more then warped reflections of his master. he views it as a game, he finds joy in tragedy. he mocks marry for finding love just like azami had, he mocks her for trying to change the repeating story he had written. he's a hypocrite, because just as marry tries to gain autonomy so is he. so basically, he is portrayed as pure evil because he is the resistance to finding happiness through others despite pain and trauma, and the entire point of kagepro is learning to love the world despite all of the horrible things in it because at least one person can still love another. that the time spent with others can be some of the most precious things in a lifetime, that even when those times pass, those feelings never leave. saeru is a subversion of this, basically screaming in the readers face that "good feelings are temporary and bad ones last forever". he is a direct antithesis to the narrative marry attempts to create as the new medusa, not a a story created from the despair of loneliness, but one from love and care. if saeru was ever meant to be empathized with, then it undermines the themes of summer time record completely. saeru is supposed to be a complete monster, and interpreting otherwise warps the themes jin is trying to portray in the first place.