Shadows House (Official Colored) - Ch. 235 - Hidden Feelings

[MangaDex]

 

[swimminginsand]

There is nothing I want more than for Barbara to unlock her soot power and put that massive output of soot to work on Anthony. iirc like 60-80% of the soot used for the house's energy is just Barbara.

 

[UncleKaos]

so she was basically being hurt ON purpose so she could get back to live again.. did i get it right?

 

[ntbnhien2013]

so she was basically being hurt ON purpose so she could get back to live again.. did i get it right?

What I understand is that while Barbara already has low self-esteem to begin with, after the whole fiasco with the old star bearers, Maryrose, Edward,and everything after, Barbara became completely depressed and even suicidal, so when "Christopher" showed up again, even though she, on some level, knew that the current "Christopher" is a fake, she clings onto it because she just any reason, no matter how filmsy it is, for a reason to live.

 

[Justking14]

Damn. Imagine how much more broken she would’ve been if he’d actually managed to propose to her before dying

 

[Hem]

Anthony throwing all of this at Barbara as a final "Fuck you." to her and his "useless" old shadow is interesting and all..
Especially when he pointed out that she doesn't give a fuck about the other kids and didn't have any real intent to hinder him.
Though I do understand her main purpose was to seek that final closure so she could move on and live with purpose instead of moping and pining for things that will never come to pass.


But Anthony letting her live after having his fun crushing her underfoot? Why?
Like what would he have done if she had just Jihaded everyone in the fucking room right there? Explode smugly?

Maybe he expects her to just go blow herself up/wither away later, but I'll be pretty disappointed if there is no future scene where he sends a squad of assassins after her to clean up loose ends.

 

[Curetwinkle]

Anthony is a liar in a way the children will never know. He says he hated Christopher but that wasn't completely true. For Anthony, his feelings toward Christopher were a an uneasy contradiction (refer back to ch199-200). A being he should not care for and recognize the humanity within because its not really human and just a tool for his own agenda, which is ironically the same view the Shadow nobles have of humans but inversed. The worth of humans is not much beyond their useful faces and bodies. Their compassion is a flaw, their individuality a testament to their will to live. It's why their spirits must be broken first. But despite the conditioning and propaganda, Christopher was a good person. Never ratted Anthony out, and cared about Anthony's well being in his last moments enough to order him to run away after the botched unification that Anthony word for word said he thought having to kill Christopher was "regretable," so he actually went along with a process that required his own demise to keep Christopher alive. He wouldn't have thought that if he really hated him, the fact that Christopher had to use his powers to force him to leave says a lot. I hope Maryrose and Rosemary call him out about his true feelings, they're the only two that could at this point.

This is a good turn of events for Barbara. I (hesitantly) look forward to what the children will do next with their growing number of outside allies--each group with their own agendas we don't really know yet. What we do know is that for now its a truce, though I wonder how the shift in the power structure will change for the better in the end. Does anyone have any second thoughts about Joseph? I'm still skeptical. Wdym you spent over half a century being the right hand of a being you somehow still don't know much about. Something about that and The Great Grandfather is still not adding up, so I look forward to future reveals that answer the mystery of what happened the day the once benign and docile morphs went on a parasitic rampage to unite with human hosts. The behavior reminds me a lot of clingers and how they try to shove themselves into human hosts.

At the beginning of the story, I couldn't really see a scenario in which the Shadow clan continues to exist. I kinda pictured a goodbye on the same level of Shirley disintegrating, except on a grand scale, and the Shadows going back to being morphs or something. Now I'm not so sure. But obviously, its unethical to keep morphs contained in the conditions they're currently trapped in (unless they mimic humans they don't seem very sentient), and likewise it's unethical to essentially kidnap and traffic children for the literal use of their bodies. Then there's the troubling issue surrounding the need for consistent soot production from the shadow children at the expensive of their health. The economy of the island is directly tied to the wealth of the Shadow clan too. Not to mention, once the soot brainwashing wares off for the most affected villages and the weirdness of the concept of Shadow nobles sets in, the humans will start asking questions about the family members they never heard from again. Every Shadow adult has committed the sin of permanent identity theft. Is there some kind of co-existence only the human children and shadow children will be able to forge for peace on the island? I'm genuinely curious about where the story will leave things.

 

[TestAddress]

Anthony will probably die by execution..

 

[Claresilver47]

But Anthony letting her live after having his fun crushing her underfoot? Why?
Like what would he have done if she had just Jihaded everyone in the fucking room right there? Explode smugly?

Maybe he expects her to just go blow herself up/wither away later, but I'll be pretty disappointed if there is no future scene when he sends a squad of assassins after her to clean up loose ends.

Anthony is a narcissistic psychopath, when he thinks he broke someone or got away with something he completely loses interest in the consequences of his actions because in his mind his clean up was flawless and thus there are no consequences.

 

[Hikineet]

Thanks for the chapters.

 

[AAA1]

Anthony is a liar in a way the children will never know. He says he hated Christopher but that wasn't completely true. For Anthony, his feelings toward Christopher were a an uneasy contradiction (refer back to ch199-200). A being he should not care for and recognize the humanity within because its not really human and just a tool for his own agenda, which is ironically the same view the Shadow nobles have of humans but inversed. The worth of humans is not much beyond their useful faces and bodies. Their compassion is a flaw, their individuality a testament to their will to live. It's why their spirits must be broken first. But despite the conditioning and propaganda, Christopher was a good person. Never ratted Anthony out, and cared about Anthony's well being in his last moments enough to order him to run away after the botched unification that Anthony word for word said he thought having to kill Christopher was "regretable," so he actually went along with a process that required his own demise to keep Christopher alive. He wouldn't have thought that if he really hated him, the fact that Christopher had to use his powers to force him to leave says a lot. I hope Maryrose and Rosemary call him out about his true feelings, they're the only two that could at this point.

This is a good turn of events for Barbara. I (hesitantly) look forward to what the children will do next with their growing number of outside allies--each group with their own agendas we don't really know yet. What we do know is that for now its a truce, though I wonder how the shift in the power structure will change for the better in the end. Does anyone have any second thoughts about Joseph? I'm still skeptical. Wdym you spent over half a century being the right hand of a being you somehow still don't know much about. Something about that and The Great Grandfather is still not adding up, so I look forward to future reveals that answer the mystery of what happened the day the once benign and docile morphs went on a parasitic rampage to unite with human hosts. The behavior reminds me a lot of clingers and how they try to shove themselves into human hosts.

At the beginning of the story, I couldn't really see a scenario in which the Shadow clan continues to exist. I kinda pictured a goodbye on the same level of Shirley disintegrating, except on a grand scale, and the Shadows going back to being morphs or something. Now I'm not so sure. But obviously, its unethical to keep morphs contained in the conditions they're currently trapped in (unless they mimic humans they don't seem very sentient), and likewise it's unethical to essentially kidnap and traffic children for the literal use of their bodies. Then there's the troubling issue surrounding the need for consistent soot production from the shadow children at the expensive of their health. The economy of the island is directly tied to the wealth of the Shadow clan too. Not to mention, once the soot brainwashing wares off for the most affected villages and the weirdness of the concept of Shadow nobles sets in, the humans will start asking questions about the family members they never heard from again. Every Shadow adult has committed the sin of permanent identity theft. Is there some kind of co-existence only the human children and shadow children will be able to forge for peace on the island? I'm genuinely curious about where the story will leave things.

or the author can just leave it unsolved just like what she did with kuro, her previous manga. i hope i am wrong

 

[BalrogDeMorgoth]

Thanks for the chapter

 

[gamria]

As nasty as Anthony is, I find something odd about his treatment of Barbara.

See, given his cold rationale, one would think that given the showdown with the adults is kicking off, he would capture Barbara and prepare to use her as a dirty bomb by feeding her some Fragments of Grace.

And yet, when she showed up, instead of leading her along to the frontlines, he tells her to go back to bed. He was also satisfied with merely just upsetting her and making her crawl on the ground in surrender, without dragging her to war.

So is Anthony... not interested in using Barbara as a bomb? Although I don't approve, strategically speaking this would've been very effective against the adults.

--

Same goes for when the original Christopher was writing his marriage application. In terms of efficiency, Anthony would've considered such acts unnecessary and excessive to Anthony's cause. And yet, Anthony never interfered, he allows Christopher to persist in his futile efforts, when he could've instead stopped him immediately and focus on more productive things like learning to be more adult-like.

It reinforces my feeling that for all of Anthony's harsh words for him, he unconsciously has a soft spot for Christopher. And refraining from using Barbara as a bomb could be something similar, done out of respect for Christopher?

 

[Dudewheresmymecha1]

so she was basically being hurt ON purpose so she could get back to live again.. did i get it right?

Anthony's treatment of Barbara in these last two chapters aside, I think that characters like Barbara and Sarah, with high soot output, are being hurt on purpose, just to get as much soot as possible from them. It's established that it's a function of how stressed, worried, and miserable the Shadows are: the more they agonize and worry and despair, the more soot they produce, and the Shadows' economy runs on soot. I don't remember which chapters they explain that in now, but there was an explanation, and I'm pretty sure that Edward provided it, in reference to poor Sarah, in regards to stringing her along with a fake marriage proposal.

In these chapters, it seems in character for Anthony to simply drop his mask from time to time, and tell the people he's manipulating what he's really doing and what he really thinks about them, when he thinks they've reached the end of any usefulness to him, and he believes there's nothing left they can do about what he tells them.

In short, I think Anthony has made a grave mistake and underestimated Barbara, assuming she's far weaker than she really is. And that's fair enough: she's only just beginning to show a little spine, and that much seemed to surprise even Kate's group!

 

[TJ_Frozen_Shades]

There is nothing I want more than for Barbara to unlock her soot power and put that massive output of soot to work on Anthony. iirc like 60-80% of the soot used for the house's energy is just Barbara.

I mean this is just 100% gonna happen, that's like Maryrose's whole thing (controlling soot and being powerful with large quantities)

that's how she survived and that's how she will fight

 

[Dudewheresmymecha1]

And just think: Barbie and Barbara still don't know yet that the Adults were tampering with the medicine that was supposed to be healing Barbie's face, so that her scars would never heal. When THAT finally comes out, I don't think I'd want to be on the wrong side of Barbara!

I'm trying to remember now which chapter it was where that was revealed to the readers, and who was behind that one - I seem to recall it was Thomas' idea?

EDIT: Yes - Chapters 136-137 explains this, and that's where the explanation about Barbara being deliberately made miserable in order to produce extra soot energy can be found, the conversation is between Thomas and Lewis. And in Chapter 187, Edward gloats to Douglas/Doug about finding a replacement for Barbara in Sarah, revealing the marriage proposal; and in Chapter 205, we might infer this sort of scheming to be one of the reasons that Joseph exiled Edward and his friends to Coal Mine!