I Felt Like Crying During Canto III - Tumblr Posts

Hong Lu and Sinclair getting the Blubbering Toad E.G.O makes me sooo sad because the toad is inspired by a Korean children's story about why frogs cry in the rain told as a moral lesson about respecting and listening to your parents.

Growing up the little frog disobeys time and time again when his mother tells him to do something, and soon he grows up, still disrespectful and never doing what his mother asks. Eventually she grows old and weak and asks that he buries her body on the riverside - hoping he will disobey as he always has and instead bury her on the mountain. But after his mother passes he finally decides to be a good son and listens to her, so he buried her on the river like she asked, despite his worries about what would happen when it rains. And so he cries and cries every time it rains hoping that it will not wash her grave away.

The two Sinners are both so deeply entangled in family obedience and failing to be a good son or trying desperately to become one. The constant mourning and grief expressed in the Abnormality, crying out and alone, with the right answer being to just sit by it and let it cry it out... Sinclair's dead family and Hong Lu's complicated relationship with his family... It all ties in so well for the two of them