Nov 06, 2023
"Oh come on, that's a stretch. Emitting mustard gas can't possibly be a—No, wait. I see it." - My thought process while reading this chapter
"Sometimes a girl ripping sick clouds is just a girl ripping sick clouds." - Sigmund Freud, probably.
You know, I never made the connection between Masako's troubled smoking and Lucille's troubled vaping and drug use. (And Shun's smoking? I really did take it at face value that it's a good way for an author to break up dialogue with action tags.) I just never identified it as a theme, or a tendency, and thought of it as a coincidence.
I guess, in a way, I always felt Lucille's fantasies of living in slide-of-life anime Japan would clash too hard with the unwholesome reality of her drug use, but real Japan's got unwholesome social problems too, in the form of smoking, drinking, gambling, etc. Maybe she'd have to lean on different vices, but she'd still have the same underlying disease.
So I've never read Boundary Scramble or Destiny Marine. Maybe I should one of these days, but if the description of Boundary Scramble's principal here is accurate, it appears to fit right in with Lucille's Eva fandom.
OK, I've been beating around it too much, but I simply loved the conclusions Lucille came to on her vision quest. I don't think everyone picks up writing because they're lonely, or write as therapy, but certainly many do. Even so, she's got the right attitude. Writing is fucking kickass. There doesn't have to be a single reason for it. It's less destructive than many of the other things she's doing, and if she enjoys it, all the better!
The pandemic stuff got me though. I can't believe we're like 5 months from the 4-year anniversary. Where did that time go? During the lockdown, it seemed to both stretch on forever because of the dread, but the days also blended into each other so much that, looking back on it, it's hard to say it lasted very long at all.
Anyway, so as to not leave it on a downer: I loved this chapter.
