even if this is purely escalation of her attempts to get him to pay attention to her she's already crazy if she thinks literal murder and piracy is a reasonable escalation lmaoI'll reserve judgment for 1-2 more chapters; thus far she's shown that she'll act out to a considerable extent if it gets Al to look her way and pay attention to her. If it's a matter of her escalating the severity of what she's doing, both to others and to herself, to retain his attention and focus, then "acting crazy" would be a progression of that line of behavior, and it's all in service of keeping Al from walking away like he did before.
Or she's actually nuts, but that....almost feels like it'd be too much of a swing for her character to come out and be "the truth" in chapter 2. Maybe it's me putting too much faith/hope in the author, but her being "simply unhinged" feels like a failure of writing. Unless there's considerable backstory/character development to justify that, and we just haven't gotten there yet.
But I guess we'll see. Hoping, but won't hold my breath.
even if this is purely escalation of her attempts to get him to pay attention to her she's already crazy if she thinks literal murder and piracy is a reasonable escalation lmao
edit: also it means that they never supposedly had decent communication despite the fact that they're literally childhood friends and it was previously shown that they were still in direct contact via the scene where she shows up at the seawall corps building. if she isn't crazy then it's poorly written because the entire plot could literally just be solved by them having a simple conversation.
of course, the first chapter 100% sets it up like that. it just leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth though. feels like they're both stupid just for the sake of that kind of drama. We only see her insistence of herself being a pirate and him dismissing her, but never seeing her attempting to actually complain about him not paying attention. I'll still be checking out the next few chapters to see if things get handled a bit better with more context.The lack of decent conversation would be his fault, then - even as children, he ignored his childhood friend constantly in favor of his studies, which resulted in her acting out, breaking into his upper-story room and all but dragging him out to the coastal town because she figured he'd follow her to keep her out of trouble. He walked away from her in chapter 1 when she was hurt, begging him not to go, and then we smash cut to 15 years later where he threw himself into the navy in service to his seeming obsession with pirates.
Why wouldn't she turn to piracy then, if that's all it seems he cares about? If she wants him to pay attention to her, then that's the best way, arguably, for her to make it happen. He keeps ignoring her and sidelining her and then calls her his 'childhood friend', when we never see him actually play with her, at least without her having to almost-physically drag him along.
Plus, we haven't seen her murder anyone yet. He asks if she was responsible for the bodies on the deck, and she just replies "could be, what if I said I did?" Hell, her follow-up of "I could [kill them] because I'm a pirate, after all" could be an argument for her being crazy, but not because she's killed people, but because she'd fake it, if she though it would get his attention and focus on her.
Thus far though, she strikes me as a very imaginative young woman who has always been very attached and focused on Al, who never gave her the time of day, and she's been ramping up her actions to continuously keep him looking her way.
I'm not saying she can't be crazy, or that it would even necessarily be a problem for the narrative, if her being crazy is established via her backstory and the events in the 15 year time-skip. If it's just "cute quirk" with no in-world justification, then yes--bad call on the author's part.
We just don't know yet, hence my reserving judgment. It's the second chapter, I'm gonna give it a few.
made an account just to reply to this "his fault"? like bro they are children and even if he wasn't a child it wouldn't be his fault, and even as he grew up you think it is likely that he would prioritize his studies even more now that him and his childhood friend got abducted and beaten by pirates?The lack of decent conversation would be his fault, then - even as children, he ignored his childhood friend constantly in favor of his studies.
Made an account just to not address the majority of my comment?made an account just to reply to this "his fault"? like bro they are children and even if he wasn't a child it wouldn't be his fault, and even as he grew up you think it is likely that he would prioritize his studies even more now that him and his childhood friend got abducted and beaten by pirates?
sure he should've given her more attention as she WAS the reason he hated pirates, but if you need to talk to a girl who would kill people just because she wanted your attention you need to run away