Shadows House (Official Colored) - Ch. 233 - A Suspicious Messenger
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Barbara!
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Is Barbara finally being brought back into the story?
edward as a tsundere leader of his group of tsundere need to be honest about it. i bet he was actually shocked that shirley was vanished after the debut
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I wonder what will happen when Barbara found out all the things Anthony did ?
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Thanks for the chapter
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We've got a lot of catching up with Barbara and Barbie to do, I think - it has been a while since we last saw them, and I believe the last time we saw them, Barbara was on the edge of a complete breakdown over Christopher, and the only thing keeping her glued together was the brainwashing coffee and the belief that Christopher was back, which was partly encouraged by Kate.
We've already seen with Belle that fragile characters in a similar situation are able to see past what might look like a betrayal or deception by Kate are actually Kate doing her best to help, and maybe Barbara will come around, too - or maybe she's already come around. But, Barbara does seem to have been in a particularly bad state, so unless she has recovered a lot and has been spending her time out of sight putting things like that together more or less on her own, she's got a lot of catching up to do. Either way, we're surely in for a bit of story from her point of view!
Jeremiah/Jeremy have also been out of the picture for quite a while, and quietly slipped back into play in this chapter. They seem to have a solid case of "beware the quiet ones" going on: they've never said much, but when they do speak up, it's usually to reveal that they've been quietly taking part in a pretty big plot twist that Kate didn't see coming! Jeremiah/Jeremy seem to be one of the more proactive and strategic pairs of characters in the story, along with Kate/Emiliko, Candy/Stella, Rosemary/Maryrose, Christopher/Anthony, and Edward, so it should be a surprise if they haven't been putting plans of their own in motion.
Speaking of Edward, as expected, Edward seems to be willing to work with Kate's group and Rosemary/Maryrose, in spite of his misgivings about doing so, instead of picking up the villain ball again. I confess to laughing out loud at the gag abut Edward having nothing better to do than market and manufacture Shadows House board game merchandise! The insults for Kate's group also put a smile on my face - that's still in character for him, but the puzzle built into the results was an interesting token of respect for the children's intelligence, besides being a clever way to avoid detection if the messages were to fall into the wrong hands: it's kind of a nice touch of characterization for him.
Maybe a different way to look at the fact that Rum/Shirley were left out of the insulting messages: Edward was certainly hard on Rum and Shirley in eliminating them from their debut, but it seems to have been more of a pragmatic weeding out of characters he seemed to sincerely believe to be weak links in the good of the Shadows House, knowing the elders expected someone to lose, rather than eliminating Shirley and Rum as an act of deliberate cruelty. In fact, I don't think that I remember Edward gloating or rubbing it in when he collected Rum and led her out of the maze at the end of the Debut, though he certainly could have, so perhaps he wasn't without some kernel of mercy and compassion for her even then. I'd say that Edward must have surely seen poor Rum as a lost cause who, isolated and silenced as "a faceless doll", couldn't have been in a position to help him now even if he had included her, and so Edward would have had no reason to add to her hardship and misery by sending her insulting encrypted messages he didn't expect her to solve or do anything about, on top of her suffering as a faceless doll, and the assumed loss of Shirley. (I've a feeling Edward might be in for a shock at just how much he underestimated Rum and Shirley! Underestimating Kate's group seems to have been a running theme for him all along, so maybe respecting the group's intelligence and resourcefulness in solving the riddle in the messages is a sign that Edward is learning from his mistakes, and growing in his time away from Shadows House?)
And, speaking of Shirley, another interesting bit of news in this chapter: blink and you might miss it, but Shirley (who has also spent many chapters out of sight) is on a secret mission, and I have to assume it involves bringing at least some of the characters we've been out of touch with up to date with what's going on, and putting them in play for what's about to happen. Some likely candidates include Barbara/Barbie (which might make a lot of sense, given that the mission is mentioned in the same chapter that Barbara/Barbie are brought back into the story!), Suzanne/Suzie and Evelyn/Eve (I think the last we saw of either of these pairs of characters, they would have been trying to hold the children together who were being trained to fight in Anthony's war, with Eve looking pretty disillusioned about it, and Suzie remembering her past as Sean's sister), Nancy/Anna and Lydia/Lydie (I don't think we've seen much from these Researchers in a while, and they've not really had big roles to play in the story yet), and Oliver/Ollie (I don't think we've seen much from them since the recent chapter where they annoyed King a lot, and they haven't had much involvement in the story in quite a while otherwise....) There's also the new group of debutantes, who seem to have mostly faded into the background since their debut, and I suspect it's about time for their return to the story..
And, I think the Disciplinary team have been pretty quiet for a while - they seem to have been relatively minor characters so far, aside from the relatively short story arc that introduced them. I don't expect to see a whole lot out of them, but who knows?
Oh, well: I guess we've got another month to wait for the next chapter, with plenty of time to wonder what will happen next.
So, who do you think will be the next long-absent characters to re-appear in the story as Anthony's plot thickens? (I expect that the Second Debut Group sounds about right, perhaps followed by Suzanna/Suzie and Evelyn/Eve, but what do you think?)
We've already seen with Belle that fragile characters in a similar situation are able to see past what might look like a betrayal or deception by Kate are actually Kate doing her best to help, and maybe Barbara will come around, too - or maybe she's already come around. But, Barbara does seem to have been in a particularly bad state, so unless she has recovered a lot and has been spending her time out of sight putting things like that together more or less on her own, she's got a lot of catching up to do. Either way, we're surely in for a bit of story from her point of view!
Jeremiah/Jeremy have also been out of the picture for quite a while, and quietly slipped back into play in this chapter. They seem to have a solid case of "beware the quiet ones" going on: they've never said much, but when they do speak up, it's usually to reveal that they've been quietly taking part in a pretty big plot twist that Kate didn't see coming! Jeremiah/Jeremy seem to be one of the more proactive and strategic pairs of characters in the story, along with Kate/Emiliko, Candy/Stella, Rosemary/Maryrose, Christopher/Anthony, and Edward, so it should be a surprise if they haven't been putting plans of their own in motion.
Speaking of Edward, as expected, Edward seems to be willing to work with Kate's group and Rosemary/Maryrose, in spite of his misgivings about doing so, instead of picking up the villain ball again. I confess to laughing out loud at the gag abut Edward having nothing better to do than market and manufacture Shadows House board game merchandise! The insults for Kate's group also put a smile on my face - that's still in character for him, but the puzzle built into the results was an interesting token of respect for the children's intelligence, besides being a clever way to avoid detection if the messages were to fall into the wrong hands: it's kind of a nice touch of characterization for him.
Maybe a different way to look at the fact that Rum/Shirley were left out of the insulting messages: Edward was certainly hard on Rum and Shirley in eliminating them from their debut, but it seems to have been more of a pragmatic weeding out of characters he seemed to sincerely believe to be weak links in the good of the Shadows House, knowing the elders expected someone to lose, rather than eliminating Shirley and Rum as an act of deliberate cruelty. In fact, I don't think that I remember Edward gloating or rubbing it in when he collected Rum and led her out of the maze at the end of the Debut, though he certainly could have, so perhaps he wasn't without some kernel of mercy and compassion for her even then. I'd say that Edward must have surely seen poor Rum as a lost cause who, isolated and silenced as "a faceless doll", couldn't have been in a position to help him now even if he had included her, and so Edward would have had no reason to add to her hardship and misery by sending her insulting encrypted messages he didn't expect her to solve or do anything about, on top of her suffering as a faceless doll, and the assumed loss of Shirley. (I've a feeling Edward might be in for a shock at just how much he underestimated Rum and Shirley! Underestimating Kate's group seems to have been a running theme for him all along, so maybe respecting the group's intelligence and resourcefulness in solving the riddle in the messages is a sign that Edward is learning from his mistakes, and growing in his time away from Shadows House?)
And, speaking of Shirley, another interesting bit of news in this chapter: blink and you might miss it, but Shirley (who has also spent many chapters out of sight) is on a secret mission, and I have to assume it involves bringing at least some of the characters we've been out of touch with up to date with what's going on, and putting them in play for what's about to happen. Some likely candidates include Barbara/Barbie (which might make a lot of sense, given that the mission is mentioned in the same chapter that Barbara/Barbie are brought back into the story!), Suzanne/Suzie and Evelyn/Eve (I think the last we saw of either of these pairs of characters, they would have been trying to hold the children together who were being trained to fight in Anthony's war, with Eve looking pretty disillusioned about it, and Suzie remembering her past as Sean's sister), Nancy/Anna and Lydia/Lydie (I don't think we've seen much from these Researchers in a while, and they've not really had big roles to play in the story yet), and Oliver/Ollie (I don't think we've seen much from them since the recent chapter where they annoyed King a lot, and they haven't had much involvement in the story in quite a while otherwise....) There's also the new group of debutantes, who seem to have mostly faded into the background since their debut, and I suspect it's about time for their return to the story..
And, I think the Disciplinary team have been pretty quiet for a while - they seem to have been relatively minor characters so far, aside from the relatively short story arc that introduced them. I don't expect to see a whole lot out of them, but who knows?
Oh, well: I guess we've got another month to wait for the next chapter, with plenty of time to wonder what will happen next.
So, who do you think will be the next long-absent characters to re-appear in the story as Anthony's plot thickens? (I expect that the Second Debut Group sounds about right, perhaps followed by Suzanna/Suzie and Evelyn/Eve, but what do you think?)
she failed the merging through seer willpower. Lou hands got charred by soots. Louise turned into hulk, but it seems like she can turn into adult.
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I think we can take the Unification Ritual as a (fairly transparent) metaphor for literally "growing up" in a dysfunctional family, and I believe we're seeing an adult-sized Louise (who I believe doesn't look much taller than the "adult" characters, and has "grown up" in more than just the obvious physical way - see her uncharacteristically introspective monologue in Chapter 216, compared to the beginning of Chapter 192 for example, to see how much her character development has matured her! This is the most dramatic transformation in personality for a shadow we've seen since Shirley's following her failed debut!)
To support my impression that unification comes with a "growth spurt" for the unified Shadow, I point to the fact that Edward, for example, looks quite adult-sized, though he's not a lot older than Lou (there are flashbacks to just before Kate's arrival where we see a much younger-looking pre-unification Ed!)
For a more detailed refresher about what happened with Lou and Louise or to catch up on what you might have missed if you missed the chapters, I think you'll want to look at chapter 189 ("The Unification Ritual"), optionally with the chapters leading up to it in which Edward maneuvers the pair into Unification, and 191-193 ("Lost Memories", "Monster", "Operation's End") for the aftermath of the ritual. Chapter 202 ("The Remaining Allies") reintroduces Lou into the story after her recovery from the Unification, and Chapter 216 ("Louise's Awakening") is Louise's surprising formal reintroduction to the story after her recovery following her failed unification rampage (it took over 30 chapters following the close of the Unification story arc to bring Louise back that reveal!)
To support my impression that unification comes with a "growth spurt" for the unified Shadow, I point to the fact that Edward, for example, looks quite adult-sized, though he's not a lot older than Lou (there are flashbacks to just before Kate's arrival where we see a much younger-looking pre-unification Ed!)
For a more detailed refresher about what happened with Lou and Louise or to catch up on what you might have missed if you missed the chapters, I think you'll want to look at chapter 189 ("The Unification Ritual"), optionally with the chapters leading up to it in which Edward maneuvers the pair into Unification, and 191-193 ("Lost Memories", "Monster", "Operation's End") for the aftermath of the ritual. Chapter 202 ("The Remaining Allies") reintroduces Lou into the story after her recovery from the Unification, and Chapter 216 ("Louise's Awakening") is Louise's surprising formal reintroduction to the story after her recovery following her failed unification rampage (it took over 30 chapters following the close of the Unification story arc to bring Louise back that reveal!)
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